Iran marks first night without US strikes in two weeks as tensions persist

The U.S. and Iran militaries did not exchange fire overnight Saturday, breaking a streak of 13 consecutive days of tit-for-tat strikes over alleged violations of a ceasefire agreement signed last month.  A spokesperson for the country’s health ministry confirmed there were no new attacks in a Saturday social media post.  “It seems our dear Iran…

Terrorist Attack at Berlin Gay Pride Event

A white van drove into a crowd of the alphabet supporters at the big gay pride event in Berlin, Germany.  At least one person is killed with many more reported as injured.  Police are looking for the suspect who drove away. Berlin AP — A van slammed into people gathered for Berlin’s famed LGBTQ+ event […] The post Terrorist Attack at Berlin Gay Pride Event appeared first on The Last Refuge.

Onlookers rejoice as federal court slaps down Trump’s attack on mail-in ballots

A federal court dealt a major blow to President Donald Trump’s efforts to limit the use of mail-in ballots for the upcoming midterm elections, sparking a chorus of celebration among Trump administration critics.On Saturday, The U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to block a lower court order that prohibited the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) from carrying out the president’s executive order on mail-in ballots. Signed in March, Trump’s executive order would require states to send the federal government a list of all its voters it plans on sending absentee ballots. The USPS could then refuse to deliver mail-in ballots to any voters not on the list, essentially forcing states to fork over private and detailed voter information to the executive branch.With Trump’s efforts to restrict mail-in ballots hitting another hurdle on Saturday, a number of onlookers celebrated, including Kristen McKnight, an advocate for survivors of abuse and a retired clinical psychologist.“Good news,” McKnight wrote Saturday in a social media post on X.Craig Goedecke, an amateur weather observer and retired photojournalist, not only celebrated the federal court’s decision Saturday, but argued that the ruling boded poorly for Trump’s other top priority, the SAVE Act, his controversial voter ID bill.“Back the F off from our mail ballots. Your SAVE Act crap is over. The First [Circuit] Court denied your request to allow the USPS to move forward,” Goedecke wrote Saturday in a social media post on X.“It’s illegal. Our election. Our votes. Our mail-in ballots. Not yours. You are not rigging our election… and the Senate is not passing it.”Good news.👇 https://t.co/zRdfxQkw8I— Kristen McKnight (@kristenmcknight) July 25, 2026

Report: As Its Leaders Fight, Iran May Now Be Coming Apart From Within

Mamdani’s municipal bond mess will only get worse as mayor prioritizes anti-Israel policies over NYC’s fiscal health

New York City's municipal bond prices continue to decline as Mayor Zohran Mamdani doubles down on his Marxist Third-Worldism, every minute of every day, it seems.

Trump ordered military not to conduct strikes in Iran Friday

President Trump directed the U.S. military not to conduct new strikes in Iran on Friday, breaking a nearly two-week streak of daily attacks, two sources with knowledge of the decision said.Why it matters: The president's directive came after he approved daily strikes over the previous 13 days. It is unclear if Trump's order on Friday was a one-off or whether the lull will continue. Trump's decision reflects both his willingness to provide more space for diplomacy and a recognition that — short of a return to major combat operations — the current level of U.S. strikes has reached the limit of its effectiveness. If Trump orders a return to strikes, the U.S. military can mobilize on relatively short notice. The U.S. military is still preparing plans for a possible return to major combat operations, but Trump hasn't given orders to move in that direction, the sources said. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.Driving the news: Every afternoon for the last two weeks, Trump has approved strike plans submitted by the military. They were conducted within hours.On Friday, Trump received a similar plan but did not give a green light. Instead, he directed the military not to conduct strikes, the sources said. Shortly after he gave the Friday directive, Trump told reporters at the White House that he has the option of continuing strikes or even escalating them, including "knocking out everything they have." But he made clear that he thinks the "smarter strategy" is to "make a deal" with Iran. "We're talking to [the Iranians] right now. I think they're getting more and more serious as the days go by. We're locked and loaded and ready to go, but we're talking to them," Trump said. Later on Friday, during his remarks at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, Trump said he didn't think Iran is ready to make a deal at the moment, "but I'm willing to listen." State of play: Trump's order to hold fire was given several hours after an Omani delegation arrived in Tehran Friday for talks on a new arrangement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.Two regional sources with knowledge of the negotiations said progress has been made in the talks and that an agreement between Oman and Iran could be reached over the weekend. President Trump would then have to decide whether to accept the proposed deal.

Iran’s leaders at war with each other as hardliners push for wider conflict

Iran's leaders are fighting each other almost as much as they're fighting the West, with some senior politicians scrambling to save US talks while the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leans into the renewed war, regional sources told The Post.

Experts dump cold water on 'massive' Trump attack rumors

Amid swirling rumors that President Donald Trump and his administration are plotting a "massive" renewed military assault on Iran, experts who spoke with The Hill dumped cold water on the idea, warning that such a thing likely would not be enough to subdue Iran.In a report published Saturday morning, The Hill cited conversations with various foreign affairs and defense experts who warned about the efficacy of "an intensified air strike campaign" against Iran, even one that might, as Trump has threatened repeatedly, target "bridges, water facilities and electricity plants." They warned that even this sort of plan would not be enough to extract major concessions from Iran in the ongoing peace talks.“I don’t think it will change Iran’s calculation in any way, because from Iran’s perspective, this is when they said it publicly, that this is a war of survival for them. So bombing from the air is not going to change Iran’s calculation, even if the U.S. intensifies it,” Sina Azodi, director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Washington University, told the outlet. “The only thing that will happen is that, first of all, the entire region is going to suffer more. The Iranians have made it very clear. I think it destroys any chance of diplomacy.” He added: "You can’t just do a ceasefire. You need a comprehensive agreement that it’s language is no longer open to interpretation. And quite frankly, U.S. has to, when it makes a commitment, it needs to abide by it."Another source, described as an anonymous "former senior U.S. defense official, told The Hill that airstrikes are unlikely to yield any meaningful progress, and argued that it would be impossible "without collectively enforcing the naval blockade, securing to some degree the traffic going through the Strait of Hormuz and absorbing some of the international economic cost as a long-term strategy.""But you’re not going to bomb yourself into a ceasefire," they said. "I think you’ve got to be able to put the economic instrument of power just as make it just as significant as what you’re doing [militarily]."Michael “Mick” Mulroy, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, also cast doubt on the efficacy of heavy airstrikes, but also noted that the options left to the U.S. at this point "aren’t good.""If we allow them to sell their oil, if we unfreeze assets, they’re going to use it to rebuild those capacities potentially faster than we really rebuild the precision munitions and interceptors that we use during a conflict, and we have to get into a new nuclear agreement," Mulroy explained. "If we don’t, then this, at least from the nuclear side, would be a perpetual conflict, because the other way of preventing them from ever getting a nuclear weapon is to periodically target the facilities that are making the potential nuclear weapon. So the options are not good.”