'The notion that we can just bully our way or bomb our way to solutions may sometimes seem appealing'
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…
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's jobs may be at stake if they continue to oppose President Donald Trump's Iran deal, a senior White House official warned.The threat emerged in a report published Sunday by the right-leaning Israeli daily Israel Hayom, which detailed a bitter internal White House battle over the emerging memorandum of understanding with Tehran."The debate has been settled. Those who oppose it may pay a personal price," a senior US official told the outlet.According to the report, Vice President JD Vance, envoy Steve Witkoff, and Trump envoy Jared Kushner have driven the push for a deal, arguing the Iranian regime is unlikely to collapse soon and that Gulf states — particularly Qatar — have pressed hard for an agreement.Rubio and Hegseth argued the opposite: that Iran is buckling under economic pressure and Washington should tighten the screws, not ease them. The two men had been the public faces of that harder line — touting "Project Freedom," a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force, only for Trump to shelve it hours after they publicly praised it.Trump has since sided firmly with the deal camp. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly warned that lifting sanctions would be nearly impossible to reverse, but the Israel Hayom report said his objections changed the terms only slightly."This is an American game being managed with utter foolishness…Trump is acting badly and against the American interest, not only the Israeli one," Oded Ailam, a former senior Mossad official, told Israel Hayom.Sanctions on Iranian oil sales are expected to be lifted — at least in part — after the Strait of Hormuz fully reopens, according to the report.
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.
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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."