On his 80th birthday, President Trump is celebrating an agreement that temporarily solves a problem his war helped create, writes Eli Lake.
President Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron are scheduled to meet Monday at the G7 summit in France. The meeting comes after the Trump administration on Sunday reached a preliminary deal with Iran that it said would open the Strait of Hormuz. Trump is also threatening France with 100 percent tariffs on all wine and…
A military expert shredded President Donald Trump's agreement to end his war with Iran as nothing short of capitulation.The 80-year-old president claims to have reached an agreement confirmed by Iranian officials, but retired U.S. Naval War College professor Tom Nichols published an article for The Atlantic analyzing the details that have been reported so far."The details of the agreement remain unconfirmed, but the president, of course, is eager to spin the outcome as a victory," Nichols wrote. "Trump was in a hurry to sign the deal on his birthday; the Iranians, who now seem to be in charge of this whole business, instead said they will send someone to a meeting in Switzerland on Friday. But even before we have the details, it is clear that Trump has failed to achieve every one of the goals he put forward for this war of choice, and now he is determined to sign, seal, and deliver America’s capitulation as quickly as possible."Nichols wasn't so sure the war had ended in defeat for the U.S., saying Iran had taken significant damage from the military operation, but he said the regime remained intact and in control of the Strait of Hormuz – which he said were Tehran's key strategic aims."Indeed, the United States has perhaps done worse than gaining nothing," Nichols wrote. "Iran, while temporarily weakened, is now an even more powerful political actor: The regime in Tehran stood up to a massive U.S. onslaught, survived, and then inflicted pain on various states in the Gulf as punishment for going along with Trump’s war."The Strait of Hormuz will reopen when the agreement is signed, but Nichols said Iran held a stronger hold over the crucial waterway than before Trump launched the attack, and he said the president had agreed to give the regime $24 billion over the next two months and another $300 billion for reconstruction."The war leaves Iran battered, but more powerful and with more cash at its disposal, while it leaves America weaker, with important stocks of weapons depleted, and with its consumers paying the price for the war at the gas pump," Nichols wrote."Trump began this war by promising the Iranian people that they would be able to seize their government from the theocratic tyrants who oppress them, and he repeatedly said he would settle for nothing less than 'unconditional surrender,'" Nichols concluded. "Had Trump toppled the regime in Tehran, he would have had the thanks of most of the world — and congratulations from even his most dedicated critics. Instead, the United States has been defeated."
Vice President JD Vance denied that Iran will receive "billions of dollars of assets" as part of a the U.S.-Iran deal that was announced Sunday and is set to be signed later this week.
A well-known nemesis of Donald Trump is seizing on the president's birthday.Alex Vindman is trying to give Trump a birthday he won't enjoy.As the president marked his 80th on Sunday, the retired Army lieutenant colonel and key witness in Trump's first impeachment blasted out a fundraising appeal billing himself as the president's "worst nightmare" and urging supporters to help "make it backfire in the best way possible."The pitch leaned hard on Vindman's history with Trump. "Nothing would make Trump angrier," the email from the Alex Vindman Victory Fund argued, than being represented by Vindman in the U.S. Senate "holding him accountable."That framing draws on a well-known backstory. Vindman, a 21-year combat veteran who was wounded in Iraq and awarded a Purple Heart, was serving on the National Security Council in 2019 when he testified that he heard Trump pressure Ukraine's president — testimony that helped trigger Trump's first impeachment. He and his twin brother, Eugene, now a Virginia congressman, were pushed out of their NSC posts after the trial.Now Vindman is running as a Democrat for Florida's U.S. Senate seat, challenging Republican Sen. Ashley Moody — the former state attorney general whom Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed to fill Marco Rubio's seat after Rubio became secretary of state. Moody, who carries Trump's endorsement, faces voters for the seat for the first time in November's special election.To argue the long-shot race is winnable, the email pointed to a new poll showing the contest essentially tied: Moody 43 percent, Vindman 42 percent.That number comes with heavy caveats. It echoes a string of Vindman campaign-cited polls that have kept the race within the margin of error — but independent surveys have been far kinder to Moody, including an Emerson College poll putting her up 8 points and a University of North Florida poll showing a 7-point lead. Florida has trended firmly Republican; no Democrat has won a Senate race there since 2012, the GOP holds a voter-registration edge of roughly 1.4 million, and the Cook Political Report rates the seat "Solid R."Vindman also has to clear an Aug. 18 Democratic primary first, where state Rep. Angie Nixon is among those running.Still, his campaign is betting that nationalizing the contest — and lashing it directly to Trump — can fire up donors in a race Democrats would love to steal. As Vindman put it when he launched his bid, the last time many Americans saw him, he was "swearing an oath to tell the truth about a president who broke his."
Cormier deleted the post and later wrote, "Are people really this dumb?" after it appeared his X account was hacked and victimized by a crypto scam during the UFC Freedom 250 event.
Aggressively promoted by President Donald Trump, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (AKA the SAVE America Act or SAVE Act) is drawing strong criticism not only from Democrats, but from some GOP lawmakers as well. Four Senate Republicans, in early June, joined Democrats in voting against advancing the bill: Maine's Susan Collins, North Carolina's Thom Tillis, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). But according to NOTUS reporter Al Weaver, the SAVE America Act refuses to die — even though some Republican lawmakers wish that it would."The SAVE America Act just won't go away for Senate Republicans, no matter how many times they think it's dead and gone," Weaver reports in NOTUS. "Republican lawmakers have been locked in a monthslong battle over the conservative voting bill as it has become evident they don't have the votes in the upper chamber to pass the bill, no matter the avenue. This has left members miffed — they want to finally turn the page, but are again faced with a zombie."If it became law, the SAVE America Act would require voters to prove that they are U.S. citizens. Regular state-issued driver's licenses would not be enough to prove citizenship; voters would have to present another document as well, such as a U.S. passport or a birth certificate. But critics of the bill are noting that many Americans don't own passports and that millions of married women would lose their right to vote, as their married names likely differ from the names on their birth certificates. A Senate Republican, interviewed NOTUS on condition of anonymity, said of the SAVE America Act, "It just keeps coming back. It's like the 'Night of the Living Dead'…. There is a frustration. It's not just the president. We have other members who keep pushing this when they know.… we don't have the votes. I don't know how you can be more clear than that. I don't know why they keep pushing something that's basically not possible."Trump, Weaver observes, "tried to resurrect the issue last week by calling for it — alongside hundreds of billions of dollars in defense priorities — to be part of a third party-line budget reconciliation package."Another Senate Republican, also interviewed on condition of anonymity, told NOTUS, "I don't know why they keep pushing something that's basically not possible. It doesn't get us votes. Literally, we lose votes with it."On February 11, the SAVE America Act passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, 218–213, along largely partisan lines. Only one House Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), voted with Republicans. But the bill stalled after reaching the Senate. A Senate GOP aide told NOTUS, "We agree on voter ID, but the bill Trump wants is far beyond that scope…. It's taken on a life of its own. It's not rooted in reality and it’s not rooted in what we can actually achieve."
Deal of SortsIt's a deal to negotiate a deal with a terrorist regime that suppresses its own people and seeks to dominate against little and big satan. The President pulled back from historic and impressive military superiority once the Iranians captured the Strait and held
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.”