aacj

June 16 2025

Israel Air Dominance; Deportation Focus Shifts; Drone Aids Capture; AI Plan Leaked; A Nation of Small Cities?

Greg Loving

16 Jun 2025 • 6 min read

Smoke rose following an explosion in central Tehran on Sunday. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Israel Achieves Rapid Air Dominance Over Iran as Conflict Enters Fourth Day

Trump Administration Shifts Deportation Focus Away From Agriculture, Hospitality Industries

Drone Aids in Capture of Suspect Accused of Killing Minnesota Lawmaker

White House AI Plan for Federal Government Exposed in Data Leak

A Nation of Smaller Cities? Data Shows 9 in 10 Americans Live Outside Major Urban Cores

1. Israel Achieves Rapid Air Dominance Over Iran as Conflict Enters Fourth Day

JERUSALEM - Israel said it has gained air superiority over western Iran, including Tehran, within just 48 hours of launching military operations Friday, allowing Israeli warplanes to drop bombs from within Iranian airspace rather than relying on costly long-range missiles. The rapid achievement of air dominance - a feat that has eluded Russia's much larger air force in over three years of war in Ukraine - enabled Israel to strike dozens of Iranian surface-to-air missile sites and kill the intelligence chief of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps along with his deputy, Israeli officials said Sunday. On Monday, Israel announced it had struck the command center of Iran's elite Quds Force as the confrontation intensified.

The escalating conflict has produced the heaviest casualties in the decades-long enmity between the two nations, with Iran's health ministry reporting at least 224 deaths and over 1,400 injuries, while Israel has suffered 24 civilian deaths and roughly 600 wounded from Iranian retaliatory missile barrages. President Donald Trump dispatched the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier toward the Middle East and warned Iran it would face "the full strength and might of the US Armed Forces" if American forces are attacked, though U.S. officials revealed Trump had vetoed an Israeli plan to assassinate Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Oil markets initially surged more than 7% Friday but have since retreated, with Brent crude falling as much as 1% Monday and WTI trading at $72.40 as of 6:21 a.m. CST today - a muted response compared to historical Middle East crises, reflecting how U.S. shale production has diminished the region's strategic importance and reduced overall market volatility.

WSJ, NYT, Daily Mail, Reuters, Bloomberg

2. Trump Administration Shifts Deportation Focus Away From Agriculture, Hospitality Industries

The Trump administration has abruptly shifted the focus of its mass deportation campaign, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants, according to an internal email and three U.S. officials with knowledge of the guidance. The decision suggested that the scale of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign — an issue that is at the heart of his presidency — is hurting industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose. The new guidance comes after protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration’s immigration raids, including at farms and businesses. It also came as Mr. Trump made a rare concession this week that his crackdown was hurting American farmers and hospitality businesses.

NYT

3. Drone Aids in Capture of Suspect Accused of Killing Minnesota Lawmaker

The largest manhunt in Minnesota’s history came to an end on Sunday when a man accused of assassinating a state lawmaker and shooting another was finally captured, after SWAT teams used drones to track him crawling through a wooded area outside Minneapolis. The suspect, Vance Boelter, 57, was arrested and charged, concluding an extensive two-day search that rattled Minnesotans. Mr. Boelter surrendered near Green Isle, Minn., a town where he had a home with his wife and children. The police said they searched the area after a resident spotted the suspect on a trail camera.

NYT

4. White House AI Plan for Federal Government Exposed in Data Leak

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration's plans for a sweeping artificial intelligence initiative across the federal government were inadvertently exposed through a public GitHub repository before officials quickly removed it, revealing a July 4 launch date for a new AI.gov website that will serve as the central hub for agencies to integrate AI into their operations. The leaked documents show the initiative, led by General Services Administration Technology Transformation Services director Thomas Shedd—a former Tesla engineering manager and Elon Musk ally—will feature a government chatbot, an API connecting agencies to AI models from companies like OpenAI and Google, and a monitoring system called "CONSOLE" to track AI usage across federal departments in real time. The ambitious project reflects the administration's broader push to automate federal work and replace employees eliminated in widespread layoffs, though cybersecurity experts have raised concerns about potential risks as AI systems would process confidential government data and citizens' personal information.

The Register

5. A Nation of Smaller Cities? Data Shows 9 in 10 Americans Live Outside Major Urban Cores

Earlier this month, discussing an NBA Finals contested by two of the league’s smallest markets, Commissioner Adam Silver dropped a bizarre yet beguiling statistic: About 300 million Americans, or 88 percent of the populace, live in cities smaller than Oklahoma City and Indianapolis. Is that true? Do almost 9 in 10 Americans live in small or midsize towns? We quickly found that it’s technically correct — within a few percentage points — that almost 90 percent of us live in cities smaller than Oklahoma City or Indianapolis, a stat that Silver got from a social media post by Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt. But a few minutes of additional mapping and measuring show us that number’s not what it seems to be. We bet you’ve already guessed why, but the key word is “cities.” The mayor based his stat on each city’s population. In fact, strict city-level measurements like those aren’t usually the best choice. East Carolina University professor Steven Richter, who has built a career out of crunching numbers on the size and shape of cities, was kind enough to explain why. “If you look at [a city] from space, you just see a giant island of concrete,” Richter told us. “And the city boundaries have little to do with the size and shape of that island.” no suburb or city should really be considered on its own. Larger cities have evolved into complex regional economies where, in some cases, you’d even be hard-pressed to define a single hub. Any serious analysis of this type will account for that, typically by using something like a metropolitan statistical area, a geography defined by the White House Office of Management and Budget. It clumps counties together based on how many of their workers commute across county lines, which gets us a fairly organic — if blunt — measure of interconnected urban regions. If you run Silver and Holt’s calculation again, using metro areas, you find only 157 million Americans (47 percent) live in metro areas smaller than Oklahoma City. In other words, most of us (53 percent!) live in metros large enough to host this NBA Finals. All told, about 31 percent of Americans live in primary cities, 55 percent live in those cities’ suburbs, and just 13 percent live in rural areas (1 percent fell victim to rounding; may they rest in peace).

Washington Post