The Daily

This week, the Senate is debating the contentious SAVE America Act, a strict voter identification bill that could overhaul who gets to vote. President Trump has called it his “No. 1 priority,” threatening to not sign any other legislation until it is passed. Michael Gold and Nick Corasaniti, reporters for The New York Times, discuss why some Republicans are standing against the president to block it, and the administration’s other plans to try to reshape the electoral process.

Nearly three weeks into the war in Iran, the United States and Israel have largely decimated the regime’s missile capacity, taken out key leaders and disrupted its central command. Yet, the regime in Iran has become more hardened and is wreaking more havoc than ever. Eric Schmitt, a national security correspondent for The New York Times, discusses the state of the war and President Trump’s options for getting out of the conflict.

This past weekend, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war in Iran. Last month, Stephen Colbert said he had to drop an interview with a Senate candidate because of F.C.C. guidance that targeted political interviews on late-night shows. Jim Rutenberg, a writer at large for The New York Times, explains how the Trump administration is trying to shape media coverage to fit its agenda.

At the heart of the Iranian regime’s defiant stance toward the United States and Israel in the war is Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader and a son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the regime’s longtime ruler. Farnaz Fassihi, who covers Iran for The New York Times, discusses the extraordinary jockeying that led to his selection and whether the United States and Israel helped motivate Iran to replace one hard-line leader with another.

With the world’s attention on the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, a second front in the conflict has opened in Lebanon. Israel has pummeled an area in the southern outskirts of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway, as well as southern Lebanon, with airstrikes, displacing almost one million people. Israel has also expanded its assault into other parts of Beirut, the capital. Christina Goldbaum, The New York Times’s bureau chief in Beirut, explains how the crisis in Lebanon connects to the broader war, what Israel hopes to achieve and what people in Lebanon fear might come next.