Donald Trump said he will make a “final determination” regarding Iran, in a strange announcement Friday that laid out his ideals for a potential peace plan.The pitch requires Iran to “never” have a nuclear weapon and demands the immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz with “no tolls” and the termination or removal of “all water mines.” “Ships caught in the Strait due to our amazing and unprecedented Naval Blockade, which will now be lifted, may start the process of ‘heading home!’ Say HELLO to your wives, husbands, parents, and families from me, your favorite President!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.The president also demanded that any and all enriched uranium—which he referred to as “nuclear dust”—in Iran be extracted by the United States under the supervision of the Islamic Republic and the International Atomic Energy Agency. It would then be destroyed.He shared that he was entering into the Situation Room in order to make a “final determination” on the matter. It was not immediately clear if Tehran had agreed to Trump’s stipulations.It was also not clear if any of Trump’s make-or-break items had already been included in the preliminary agreement drafted this week.“No money will be exchanged, until further notice. Other items, of far less importance, have been agreed to,” Trump noted in his post.The U.S. and Israel have been at war with Iran since late February. The conflict is currently in its thirteenth week and has seen several potential peace deals thwarted by miscommunications and ceasefire violations. Earlier this week, U.S. forces attacked Iranian boats and missile launch sites, violating the ceasefire mere hours after Iranian officials arrived in Qatar for discussions to end the war. The boats were reportedly attempting to lay more mines along the Strait of Hormuz.The U.S. and Iran have talked more since, and a deal is closer to gaining approval from both sides, though there are several details that still have to be ironed out, The New York Times reported Thursday.
It seems that Texas Senator John Cornyn may have finally learned not to trust Donald Trump—but it’s a little late for that. Cornyn turned to social media Friday to share an “old, but apt fable” that appeared to reflect Trump’s sudden betrayal that led to the senior senator’s defeat in the Texas GOP Senate primary.“A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across,” Cornyn wrote. “The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it killed the frog in the middle of the river. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: ‘I am sorry, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s my character.’”It seems clear that Trump (the scorpion) stung Cornyn (the frog). Or maybe, the frog is the entire Republican Party, which will now struggle to mount an effort on behalf of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who cheated on his wife, was impeached by his own party on corruption charges, and illegally targeted his donor’s enemies as state attorney general, among other transgressions. Trump has explained his stinging defection from Cornyn was a result of the senator’s “disloyalty,” but it’s Trump who has turned on his own party, claiming he doesn’t care about midterms anyway. As The Bulwark’s Will Saletan pointed out to Cornyn: “The reason they wrote these fables is so you’d learn them as a child, not when you’re 74.”
Former Attorney General Pam Bondi threw acting Attorney General Todd Blanche under the bus during her closed-door testimony with the House Oversight Committee on Friday, stating that she “delegated oversight” over the disastrous release of the Epstein files to him. “These investigations span FOUR administrations … The only time federal prosecutors were permitted to launch investigations against Epstein and Maxwell was when President Trump occupied the White House. Only under President Trump were 3 million Epstein-related documents released,” Bondi said in her prepared opening statement. “This was an enormously complicated and labor-intensive process. To the best of my knowledge, the Department produced everything required under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.” “As the head of a large Department with broad responsibilities, I did not lead every aspect of this effort or conduct that document review myself. I delegated oversight over this process to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche,” Bondi continued, making sure to place as much possible blame on the man who replaced her after she was fired in April. “The team of professionals who reviewed all of the materials that we collected assured me the only materials that were withheld were either non-responsive, privileged, or duplicative. Although not required by the Act, the Department has given Congress access to unredacted, duplicative materials in the Reading Room in an effort at maximum transparency.”Bondi’s assertion that the DOJ abided by the Epstein Transparency Act has been widely contested, as the department has withheld and heavily redacted thousands of files. Bondi admitted to the omissions herself, saying that there were “redaction errors.” The DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files has been marked with nothing but chaos—from the moment Bondi backtracked on her own claim that she had a client list “sitting on [her] desk right now,” to when she paraded MAGA influencers around for a photo-op with big white binders labeled “The Epstein Files: PHASE 1,” to when the department released a bunch of blacked out files and told the MAGA base that there was nothing further incriminating at all.
The real division in western politics is between the pathological centre and challenge on the so-called “far” left and right — meaning political forces reasonably enough challenging the centre’s mass death project. Of course, the far right is based upon a con — its core spaces are dominated by the same billionaire-funded mass death agenda [...]
The treatment of the flotilla activists by Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was shocking only to those who continue to clothe colonial violence in the soft language of security. There is now a mountain of evidence before humanity: Gaza has become not merely a place under siege but a geography of calculated despair, where starvation [...]