Nebraska congressional candidate Austin Ahlman speaks with Mehdi about that viral launch video and why his candidacy can’t ‘spoil a race that’s already been spoiled.'
Vice President JD Vance all but confirmed a detail being floated as part of the tentative U.S.-Iran peace deal: Iranian access to $300 billion in reconstruction funds. Vance was asked by CBS’s Ed O’Keefe Monday morning about whether the rumored detail was true, and he said that it could be possible if Iran adheres to the agreement. “That’s the sort of thing they could have access to, funded by the Gulf coast coalition, so long as they honor their end of the obligation,” Vance said. He noted that Iranian officials and media would be emphasizing the benefits they receive from the deal as opposed to what they concede. CBS: The Iranians are saying they're gonna have access to a $300 billion reconstruction fund. True or false?JD VANCE: That's the sort of things they could have access to so long as they honor their end of the obligation pic.twitter.com/30Ip8CGItn— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 15, 2026Vance’s admission contradicts what he said on Friday, when he claimed in an X post that Iran would not be “receiving any cash, and no funds are being released simply for signing a deal or attending a meeting.” In addition to the U.S. and its allies paying $300 billion in reconstruction funds, Iran reports that the U.S. has agreed to release $25 billion in frozen Iranian assets.Conservatives, including Trump and Vance, have long criticized the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal, which involved the U.S. lifting sanctions and sending Iran $1.7 billion to settle decades-old failed contracts between the two countries. That deal was also succeeding, with international observers stating that Iran was adhering to all its nuclear terms. It was Trump who decided to break it in his first term and then start a war with Iran in his second. Now, he’s only pushing a deal because his efforts are failing spectacularly, costing money, innocent lives, and American credibility.
The Trump administration has approved media conglomerate Paramount’s $111 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros., one year after Paramount and Skydance Media signed a similar merger that placed Paramount’s movie studio, streaming service and broadcast network CBS under the control of the multibillionaire Ellison family, founders of Skydance and close allies of Donald Trump. The Warner Bros. merger, if completed, would bring an even larger slice of the industry’s market share into Ellison control. It’s been contested for months as a likely violation of antitrust laws amid a wider trend of corporate consolidation in the media and entertainment industry. “This has been one of the most shallow and corrupt merger review processes we’ve ever seen,” says Craig Aaron, co-CEO of the advocacy organizations Free Press and Free Press Action (not to be confused with Paramount Skydance’s conservative news outlet The Free Press), about the Justice Department’s greenlighting of the merger.
The deal will place two of the largest U.S. broadcast news networks — CBS News and CNN — under the control of a single company that “has shown it is willing to warp and manipulate news coverage to please the president,” Aaron says. He warns that the many violations of press freedom committed by CBS News since its acquisition last year could soon be seen at CNN, including “getting rid of independent journalists asking hard questions [and] spiking stories about crimes being committed by the Trump administration.” In a consolidated media landscape, he adds, “we get fewer and fewer choices, and we get more and more of the same kind of cookie-cutter content produced.”
Permanently installing a heat pump system in a building is expensive. But new window units can deliver many of the benefits with far less cost and go with renters when they move.