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Iranian diplomats reacted positively to a plan presented by Qatari mediators to restore traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Trump administration is running out of ways to pressure Iran, with its airstrikes failing to end Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz or force the country back to the negotiating table. So now the military is asking for “unconventional” new ideas.CNN reports that an officer in the U.S. Central Command’s intelligence branch sent a message Wednesday to military analysts “looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran.” It’s an unusual thing to ask over email, according to CNN, and shows that President Trump knows his options are limited as the war with Iran enters its sixth month.The email was sent before Trump threatened new airstrikes against Iran and then relented, over the weekend, after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other Gulf leaders talked him out of it. Among the plans were attacking Pickaxe Mountain and other Iranian sites reportedly housing nuclear equipment or material.Those sites are deep underground, however, and would have likely required deploying American ground troops, which Trump is trying to avoid. Eighteen American service members have been killed in the war, according to official counts, and the administration has been criticized for its lack of transparency on military casualties.“At the end of the day, POTUS will want a deal, so he’ll continually look for ways to get tough and get out of this,” an unnamed source told CNN. “You need creative minds at times—especially if you’re running out of conventional options.”But more bombing probably won’t change Iran’s negotiating position, according to the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency. Trump has effectively backed himself into a corner with his ill-advised war, and is having trouble with being able to walk away with anything he can call a victory. American missile stockpiles have dwindled, scores of civilians have been killed, and the global economy, including gas prices, has taken a massive hit. Trump needs a way out.

Negotiations to end the Iran war do not seem to be going well.The White House and Tehran are apparently not even on the same page when it comes to resolving the nearly six-month conflict. Iranian officials directly contradicted Donald Trump Monday by telling Reuters that talks were not currently underway and that there were no plans to resume them.Trump called off another slate of attacks against Iran Sunday, backing down yet again from the threat of a major assault.Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One that day, Trump said that he had scrapped the “massive” attack after being lobbied by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.“We were all set to go, but when our allies ask to call it off, you sort of have to say, ‘Well, let’s see,’” Trump said.“And the reason they asked is they think there’s a deal. There’s a deal on Hormuz, and then there will be a deal on the nuclear—or you might call it the denuclearization of Iran. I call it the denuclearization of Iran,” Trump said. “So we’re holding it. We can do it anytime we want, but we were asked by the three primary groups, we were also asked by Iran very strongly actually. They said, ‘We’d like to make a deal.’”The president then predicted that Tehran would turn around and say, “We don’t know what he’s talking about” with regard to a potential peace deal.“Obviously they don’t want to be attacked,” Trump said.The negotiations were set to take place Monday afternoon, according to the president.Iran is currently in talks with Oman to establish a safe, temporary route for ships through the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei. “To avoid any ambiguity, it should be clarified who the negotiations are with. We currently have no negotiations with the United States; the negotiations are with Oman,” Baghaei told CNN Monday, adding that the tentative arrangement would not automatically reopen the strait. “Whether this stage and this process can be connected to another process that leads to a reduction of tensions in the region, we must wait and see.”Baghaei also blamed U.S. officials for blowing up the memorandum of understanding in June, prolonging the unpopular and bloody hostilities.“It violated all of its commitments, reinstated the illegal maritime blockade, revoked the authorization for the sale of Iranian oil, and effectively declared almost all of the other commitments it had accepted under the memorandum null and void,” Baghaei said.

The Department of Justice’s move to dismiss its criminal case against Olympian David Hearn exposed just how bad things have gotten inside the Trump administration. In a new episode of his Justice Matters podcast, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner argued that the DOJ’s motion to dismiss revealed just how shoddy its case was to begin with. Kirschner noted that Donald Trump’s DOJ blamed the Department of the Interior for initially claiming that the damage was “entirely caused by vandals” and admitted that the DOJ hadn’t fully investigated the matter. “Talk about finger-pointing,” Kirschner said. “Talk about the refusal to take responsibility for your botched indictment. That is ugly. That is unseemly. As a career federal prosecutor, including decades that I served in that very office, the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, you don’t indict first and investigate later. Nor do you take the word of another agency of government.”In its filing Friday, the DOJ acknowledged that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was caused by flawed installation by the contractor—contrary to the narrative Trump has been pushing for weeks.In a statement Saturday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum scrambled to keep up the story. “The evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool. Some of these acts were even caught on camera,” he wrote on X. Kirschner also slammed the U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for mounting prosecution before fully investigating her own case.“That is not the way prosecution works,” Kirschner said. “Not in the ‘Before Times,’ but in the legal upside-down [world] courtesy of Trump and Todd Blanche and Jeanine Pirro, it is ready, fire, aim, and that is inexcusable. It’s horrific, and it is a gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion and power.”Trump criticized Pirro’s decision to drop the case. In a Truth Social post Saturday, Trump admitted there “may have been some contractor difficulty” in the lining installation, but “the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” he wrote.

Texas Senator John Cornyn and North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis just caved to Donald Trump’s demands, paving the way for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to move toward a full Senate confirmation.The two Republican holdouts announced Monday that they had reached a deal with the Justice Department that they claimed satisfied their aims to end Trump’s $1.8 “anti-weaponization” fund.“We are pleased that the Department of Justice has issued a formal order terminating the anti-weaponization fund,” the outgoing lawmakers said in a joint statement. “Additionally, the Department has acknowledged in a binding written order that the audit settlement is limited to the plaintiffs and the scope does not extend beyond the defendants in the lawsuit, the IRS and the Treasury, addressing concerns that multiple of our Republican colleagues share.”Cornyn faced a barrage of criticism Sunday after he decided that Blanche’s vague assurances against Trump’s slush fund were good enough.Cornyn had previously predicated his support for Blanche’s promotion on the fund’s end. But a tricky memo released by Blanche Sunday night seemed to have tripped up both senators’ offices—and their conditions.On its face, Blanche’s note appeared to terminate the fund, specifying that the order was “rescinded and shall have no force or effect.” However, journalists were quick to comment that the language employed in the rest of Blanche’s memo not only suggested that the honey pot fund would be preserved in some form, but also failed to terminate Trump’s underlying IRS immunity arrangement.But vague gestures at accountability were apparently all Cornyn and Tillis needed to get in line.In his own comments addressing the backlash on X Monday morning, Tillis wrote that he and Cornyn had only sought a “written document addressing our concerns on the IRS audit agreement and the anti-weaponization fund” and “legally ending the anti-weaponization fund.”“Additionally, the Department has acknowledged in a binding written order that the audit settlement is limited to the plaintiffs and the scope does not extend beyond the defendants in the lawsuit, the IRS and the Treasury, addressing concerns that multiple of our Republican colleagues share,” he added.But attorneys responding to Tillis flamed the North Carolinian for his paltry litmus test.“You cannot unilaterally alter a settlement agreement, and you know it,” responded lawyer Robin DesCamp.The fund was the result of an unprecedented deal that Trump made with himself after he dropped his faltering $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. The arrangement included a curious addendum from Blanche, immunizing Trump from further federal prosecution. The government of the United States, Blanche wrote, would be “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “any and all claims” against Trump, his family, or his business. The fund itself would be used as reparations, paid for by U.S. taxpayers through the Department of Justice, to virtually any right-winger that felt impugned by the previous presidential administration.The idea of the fund fell apart following weeks of backlash, numerous lawsuits, and opposition from even Republican lawmakers, who felt the issue had gummed up party efforts to pass a reconciliation bill.But Trump has refused to let the topic go, repeatedly affirming his support for the supposedly defunct fund.“It is dead, but I wish it weren’t, to be honest with you,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Friday. “I think people were horribly treated, horribly abused.”Trump doubled down on the fund while speaking with reporters on Air Force One Sunday. He said he wanted it to provide “a reimbursement for the pain” his supporters have supposedly endured.“A lot of people like it. A lot of big supporters of Trump like it,” he insisted.Blanche’s efforts to salvage the fund should be viewed as yet more evidence that the fund is not as dead as officials have publicly claimed.“Let’s be clear: It’s more certain that Trump is still pursuing bounties for rioters today than when this started,” wrote legal journalist Adam Klasfeld on Monday. “Trump is openly stating that’s the goal, taking legal action to get there and refusing to do the one thing that would kill it.”Cornyn and Tillis are in the twilight years of their last term in office, after their decades-long careers were cut short by Trump’s decision to endorse another candidate in Texas’s and North Carolina’s GOP primaries. The cut cord has granted the pair the breathing room to ignore larger party directives and push back harder against the Trump administration’s off-color orders, but apparently, they are only willing to take that so far.This story has been updated.

Trump’s White House runs a mob-style extortion racket that will bankrupt the country the way Trump bankrupted his casinos.