So, let’s start with Melania Dearest, who insists she had no ties to Jeffrey Epstein, even though she was not under oath to tell the truth, you have to wonder if a Congressional Committee will ask for a repeat performance.. William Kristol, writing at The Bulwark, suggests she threw hubby under the bus. “What Melania Didn’t Say.”
Standing behind a podium bearing the presidential seal, speaking at the White House Cross Hall where so many presidents have addressed weighty matters of state, and where her husband last week spoke to the nation about Iran, the first lady read a six-minute statement about her and Jeffrey Epstein.
Melania’s focus was on . . . Melania. She began, “The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today.” Her purpose, she said, was to defend “my reputation,” to clear “my good name.” (Emphasis mine.)
And so she asserted that “I have never been friends with Epstein” and that “I . . . was never on Epstein’s plane.” She also claimed that “My email reply to [Epstein’s imprisoned accomplice Ghislaine] Maxwell cannot be categorized as anything more than casual correspondence.1My polite reply to her email doesn’t amount to anything more than a trivial note.”
Left unsaid, but not unimplied, was that none of these claims could be made about her husband. He was a pal of Epstein’s. He was on Epstein’s plane. His relationship with Epstein, as exemplified for example in his contribution to Epstein’s birthday book, was more than “casual” or “trivial.”
Melania also chose to express concern for Epstein’s victims, something her husband has conspicuously not done.
And she went on to say that
Now is the time for Congress to act. Epstein was not alone. Several prominent male executives resigned from their powerful positions after this matter became widely politicized. Of course, this doesn’t amount to guilt, but we still must work openly and transparently to uncover the truth.
So the Epstein investigation is not, as her husband has asserted, a “hoax.” Nor is it yet time, as her husband has said, to move on. The truth hasn’t yet been uncovered, and we need to uncover it. And if doing so leads more “prominent male executives” to resign, so be it. One wonders: Could Melania have one prominent male chief executive in mind?
Melania chose not to include in her statement any assertion of her husband’s innocence of complicity in the Epstein affair.
Melania is perhaps not a deep thinker, but she’s no fool. Since immigrating to the United States three decades ago, Melania Knauss has done well for herself. She’s shown that she has a shrewd sense of how to operate in her adopted country. She’s risen to the top, while mostly avoiding being directly engulfed in all the scandals that have raged around her.
There is surely a lot of evidence suggesting she knew him well. But, with the Iran War being waged like a lethal version of mud wrestling, let’s see if the due diligence will be done by the press. This topic really skates on Slut Slamming, but it’s hard to cover earnestly. Emptywheel has an interesting story on the mostly out-of-view First Lady. “Melania’s Immigration Witness, Paolo Zampolli, Asked to Get His Baby Mama Deported.” I wonder if she’s worthy of any Congressional questions.
The biggest denial may be this one:
I met my husband by chance at the [sic] New York City party in 1998. This initial encounter with my husband is documented in a detailed [sic] in my book, Melania.
The entire stunt seemed like a response to Michael Wolff. After all, when Melania listed the people who’ve had to retract claims — James Carville, The Daily Beast, and Harper Collins, in conjunction with a biography of the Andrew formerly known as Prince — she did not mention Wolff (or Hunter Biden), whom she has been threatening to sue for some time, with whom she has been stuck in litigation for months.
She has threatened Wolff in the past, who has made claims about how she met Trump, whether Epstein had fucked Melania before Donald did, and whether Donald and Melania first fucked on his plane. But thus far that litigation remains pending, and she didn’t mention him (or Hunter Biden, whom she also threatened to sue) in this appearance.
Wolff has many recordings about what Epstein told Wolff, whether Epstein’s claims were true or not.
But I’m more interested in another detail.
Melania cites her own book for the definitive account of how she met Donald (she has done this in past lawsuits).
Why would she do that? She has a witness to some of this: Paolo Zampolli, the agent who imported her on the same Einstein visa scam as Epstein used for his victims.
Zampolli not only remains in the Trump circle, but he flew to Hungary to do errands for Russia with JD Vance this week.
…
Epstein survivors had plenty to say about the performance. This is from The Guardian. Shrai Popat has the story. “Survivors of Epstein’s abuse accuse Melania Trump of ‘shifting burden’ onto victims, Outrage from survivors follows first lady’s statement calling on Congress to hold public hearings with victims of Epstein’s abuse.”
More than a dozen survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse have accused Melania Trump of “shifting the burden” onto them after she called on Congress to hold public hearings with victims of Epstein’s abuse.
“Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have already shown extraordinary courage by coming forward, filing reports, and giving testimony,” said a group of 13 people and the brother and sister of the late Virginia Giuffre, who was one of the most vocal Epstein accusers, in a statement. “Asking more of them now is a deflection of responsibility not justice.”
Their response came after the first lady delivered a surprise statement in which she said denied that she ever had a relationship with Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. She also said that she was not a victim of Epstein, had no knowledge of his crimes, and said that the late convicted sex offender did not introduce her to her husband, Donald Trump.
“The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today,” she said, adding that “numerous fake images and statements about Epstein and me have been calculating [sic] on social media for years now”.
It remains unclear what specific accusations prompted her remarks. Her senior adviser, Marc Beckman, told Reuters that she “spoke out now because enough is enough. The lies must stop”.
During her statement, the first lady also urged Congress to hold public hearings and take sworn testimony from survivors of Epstein’s crimes.
In their statement on Thursday evening, the group of Epstein survivors said the first lady “is now shifting the burden onto survivors under politicized conditions that protect those with power: the Department of Justice, law enforcement, prosecutors, and the Trump administration, which has still not fully complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act”.
“It also diverts attention from Pam Bondi, who must answer for withheld files and the exposure of survivors’ identities,” they said. “Those failures continue to put lives at risk while shielding enablers.”
“Survivors have done their part,” the statement concluded. “Now it’s time for those in power to do theirs.”
It appears that the majority of the country is suffering under the impact of the Iran War. CNBC’s Jeff Cox has this headline. “Consumer sentiment hits record low, inflation fears rise amid Iran war.”
Consumer confidence plunged to a record low in April as fears mounted over rising energy prices and the broader impact of the Iran war, according to a University of Michigan survey Friday.
The university’s headline index of consumer sentiment tumbled to 47.6, down 10.7% from the March survey to its lowest on record. Current conditions and expectations indexes also saw double-digit monthly declines.
The drop in sentiment coincided with a sharp spike in inflation expectations, with respondents seeing prices up 4.8% in a year from now, a full percentage point rise from the March reading to its highest since August 2025. The one-year outlook in April 2025 was 6.5% following President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement.
Survey comments “show that many consumers blame the Iran conflict for unfavorable changes to the economy,” said the survey’s director, Joanne Hsu.
However, Hsu also noted that most of the interviews were completed before the April 7 ceasefire. The survey, then, primarily reflects conditions from March.
“Economic expectations will likely improve after consumers gain confidence that the supply disruptions stemming from the Iran conflict have ended and gas prices have moderated,” she said.
The ceasefire President Donald J. Trump announced Tuesday night fell apart almost immediately. Israel complained that it hadn’t been consulted, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted Israel did not accept an end to its bombardment of southern Lebanon as a way to dislodge Iran-backed Hezbollah militants. Steven Scheer of Reuters noted today that Israel has been under a state of emergency that halted the work of the judicial system, but with the end of the war, Netanyahu’s trial for corruption is scheduled to begin again on Saturday.
Iran has been permitting certain ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, but responded to Israel’s continued bombing by closing the strait again.
Vice President J.D. Vance said there was a “legitimate misunderstanding” about whether the ceasefire included Lebanon. “We never made that promise,” he said. But in fact, Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif, who posted the terms of the ceasefire on Tuesday, noted that the agreement did include a ceasefire in Lebanon. He tagged Vance in the post.
As more information about the achievement of the ceasefire became known, it reflected poorly on Trump. Humza Jilani, Abigail Hauslohner, and Demetri Sevastopulo of the Financial Times reported yesterday that while Trump claimed Iran was begging for a deal to end hostilities, it was actually the Trump administration that was pushing Pakistan to broker a deal with Iran. Tyler Pager and Katie Rogers of the New York Times reported that the White House was helping to craft Sharif’s social media statements, suggesting Trump “was actively looking for a way out of the crisis” as his own imposed deadline drew closer on Tuesday evening.
Although Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claims the U.S. has had a “historic and overwhelming victory” that achieved “every single objective,” David S. Cloud of the Wall Street Journal wrote yesterday that Iran saw the ceasefire as a “triumph” because it had survived a 38-day barrage from the United States and Israel and because it had gained control over the Strait of Hormuz, inflicting deep damage on the U.S. economy. Iran claimed the U.S. had suffered “an undeniable, historic, and crushing defeat.” Iran’s new leadership is even more anti-Western than the previous leadership, killed in the early days of the U.S.-Israeli strikes.
Yesterday the president posted his own interpretation of the terms of the agreement, but they were aspirational and asked for Iran to agree to terms that were less advantageous for the U.S. than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that President Barack Obama negotiated in 2015 and Trump tore up in 2018.
The actual terms of the ceasefire agreement were murky. On Wednesday, Iran released its version of the points of the agreement; the White House said those points weren’t the basis for the ceasefire.
Also yesterday, Trump suggested the U.S. was considering joining the Iranians in demanding tolls for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. “We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It’s a way of securing it,” he told journalist Jonathan Karl. But today Trump posted: “There are reports that Iran is charging fees to tankers going through the Hormuz Strait—They better not be and, if they are, they better stop now!” Hours later, he added: “Iran is doing a very poor job, dishonorable some would say, of allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz. That is not the agreement we have!”
I’d like to think I have the vocabulary to describe how I feel about all these idiotic, powerplay antics, but I really don’t. We are clearly dealing with people who don’t have a clue and don’t care to understand our democratic republic. This article from The Guardian blew me away. “Pete Hegseth’s holy war: the militant Christian theology animating the US attack on Iran.” This article deserves a full read from us. We should never forget Hegseth’s weird diatribe.
Nine months and six days before a Tomahawk missile tore through the gaily decorated classrooms of the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran, ripping apart the bodies of schoolchildren, teachers, and parents, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s personal pastor delivered a sermon at the Pentagon.
“There’s a temptation to think that you’re actually in control and responsible for final outcomes, especially for those who issue the commands and do the aiming and the shooting,” preached Brooks Potteiger, Hegseth’s closest spiritual adviser, at the first of what have become monthly Christian worship services at the Department of Defense. “But you are not ultimately in charge of the world.”
Citing a verse from Matthew 10, Potteiger told the gathered leaders of the US military: “If our Lord is sovereign even over the sparrow’s fallings, you can be assured that he is sovereign over everything else that falls in this world, including Tomahawk and Minuteman missiles …
“Jesus has the final say over all of it.”
The available evidence and a preliminary investigation by the US military all suggest that the US was responsible for the 28 February school bombing that killed more than 175 people, most of them children, but neither Donald Trump nor Hegseth has taken any responsibility, nor have they expressed any remorse.
Instead, Hegseth has persisted in framing the war in Iran, which reached a temporary ceasefire on Tuesday after six weeks of fighting, as divinely sanctioned, repeatedly invoking “God’s almighty providence” and expressing surety that God is on the side of the US military. Amid boasts about the US’s superior firepower and theatrical disdain for “stupid rules of engagement”, the defense secretary has promised to give “no quarter” to the “barbaric savages” of the Iranian regime and called on the American people to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ”.
Hegseth’s distinct combination of piety and bloodlust was most prominently on display at the 25 March worship service at the Pentagon, the first since the war in Iran began, when he prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy”. The prayer was so shocking that it appears to have provoked a direct rebuke from Pope Leo, who preached on Palm Sunday that God ignores the prayers of those whose “hands are full of blood” from making war.
Hegseth will hardly mind harsh words from the head of the Catholic church, however. The 45-year-old US army veteran and former Fox News host is a member of an obscure, deeply Calvinist wing of evangelical Christianity – John Calvin broke from the Catholic church during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation – that rejects the pope’s authority and is rooted in a belief in predestination.
“They believe that nothing happens that isn’t in God’s will,” said Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, who researches this branch of Reformed Christianity. “They believe that God directs everything that happens.”
Even a bomb falling on an elementary school full of children?
I really just want to cry.
Have a good and peaceful weekend. Try not to give up hope.
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Did the Pentagon actually threaten the Vatican and hint at establishing a counter papacy like the Avignon papacy of the 1300s?Why not? The United States is acting like a bandit power from the middle ages. The Pope has got the bandit's number. http://www.mediaite.com/media/news/p…
Following Pope Leo’s “state of the world” address this past January, the Pentagon invited Holy See ambassador to the U.S. Cardinal Christophe Pierre for a meeting. The move was characterized as “unprecedented” in the report, as “there is no public evidence of any Vatican official ever taking a meeting at the Pentagon.”
There, U.S. officials expressed their disapproval of the Pope’s speech. The report continued:
According to both Vatican and U.S. officials briefed on the meeting, Pentagon brass picked apart the pontiff’s January speech, reading it as a hostile message directed at Trump’s policies. What particularly enraged the Pentagon, one Vatican official said, was the passage in which Leo appeared to challenge the Donroe Doctrine—Trump’s update of the Monroe Doctrine, which asserts unchallenged American dominion over the Western Hemisphere.
In his speech, the Pope declared: “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies.”
At one point in the meeting, the report said, one U.S. official made mention of the Avignon Papacy of the 14th century. During this time, the French Crown used its military power to influence the papacy.
The pope is refusing to come to Trump’s Fourth of July trailer park bash…
Instead, on July 4, 2026, the American pope will visit Lampedusa, a tiny island in the Mediterranean that serves as a gateway for North African migrants risking everything to reach Europe. No pope has ever been more aware of what that date means, and Leo is too deliberate to have chosen July 4 by accident.
One Vatican official put it bluntly: “The Pope may well never visit the United States under this administration.”
Good.
Always exciting to see the Avignon Papacy in the news
Yesterday morning Trump threatened to wipe out Iran’s civilization beginning at 8:00 last night–the deadline he had set for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz. Here’s what he posted on Truth Social:
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he wrote. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”
The obvious implication was that he would use nuclear weapons. Of course it turned out to be another Taco Tuesday, as Trump backed down and the White House dictated a ceasefire agreement to Pakistan and then Trump said that Iran’s 10-point plan was a good starting point for negotiations.
*many people are saying* it sure looks like the White House wrote this for Pakistan’s PM, who posted it then quickly deleted the top part 😬
According to state media, Iran will only accept the war’s conclusion once details are finalised in line with a 10-point peace plan reportedly submitted to the White House via Pakistani intermediaries.
The list of 10 points, published by Iranian state media, include a number of conditions the US has rejected in the past. The plan requires:
The lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions on Iran.
Continued Iranian control over the strait of Hormuz.
US military withdrawal from the Middle East.
An end to attacks on Iran and its allies.
The release of frozen Iranian assets.
A UN security council resolution making any deal binding.
That certainly doesn’t sound like a great starting point for Trump. At the moment, Iran is still collecting tolls for ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and they are demanding that the U.S. close all military bases in the Middle East, plus they want compensation for losses from the war and the return of frozen assets going back to the George W. Bush administration.
Iran, the United States and Israel agreed to a two-week ceasefire on Tuesday, an 11th-hour deal that headed off U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash a bombing campaign that would destroy Iranian civilization. Hours after the announcement, Iran and Gulf Arab countries reported new attacks Wednesday, though it was not clear if the strikes would scuttle the deal.
All sides have presented vastly different versions of the terms. Iran said the deal would allow it to formalize its new practice of charging ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said the U.S. would work with Iran to remove buried enriched uranium, though Iran did not confirm that.
Pakistan and others said fighting would pause in Lebanon, which Israel has invaded to fight the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said early Wednesday that the deal doesn’t cover fighting against Hezbollah.Israeli strikes hit several dense commercial and residential areas in central Beirut Wednesday afternoon without warning, killing dozens and wounding hundreds of people.
The ceasefire may formalize a system of charging fees in the Strait of Hormuz that Iran instituted — and give it a new source of revenue. Iranian attacks and threats deterred many commercial ships from passing through the waterway, through which 20% of all traded oil and natural gas passes in peacetime.
Good Wednesday morning. This is Jack Blanchard, still slowly exhaling. It’s Day One of the ceasefire in Iran. Get in touch.
In today’s Playbook …
— The war in Iran is on hold for now. So who wins the peace? [….]
WHAT DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES: “A big day for World Peace!” Trump trumpeted on Truth Social at 12:01 a.m., a mere 16 hours after threatening to erase an entire civilization off the face of the planet. Iran has “had enough” of war, Trump said, and “so has everyone else.” Plenty of people will be nodding along with that.
So let the good times roll: “There will be lots of positive action!” Trump predicted. “Big money will be made. Iran can start the reconstruction process … This could be the Golden Age of the Middle East!!!” You don’t need to read too far past the hyperbole to get the crucial point: “Two-week” ceasefire or no, Trump is already moving on.
And let’s be clear: Given the unpopularity of this war in America, the devastating impact on oil prices, the rapidly worsening global economic outlook and Trump’s looming May 14 summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, it’s hard to imagine Trump reviving his bombing campaign. Oil prices have already plummeted below $100 a barrel following the ceasefire announcement. Stock markets are surging. He’s not going to want to go back.
So brace yourselves for the White House comms blitz. Your zone is about to be flooded with Trump world messages that America won the war, even before this two-week negotiation gets underway. This is “total and complete victory,” Trump told the AFP last night. “100 percent. No question about it.” It’s the first of what will surely be many “exclusive” calls with journalists today….
But here’s the problem: This “total victory” narrative looks tough to sell. Clearly these past few weeks have been painful for Tehran, and Hegseth and Caine will rattle off an astonishing number of military targets that U.S. and Israeli missiles flattened. But is the regime actually worse off?
The charge sheet: Iran’s leadership structures remain intact. Its hard-liners now have total control. Sanctions have been lifted, for now. Missiles can be rebuilt. The enriched uranium remains in Iran. And the discovery that even the full force of the American military cannot prevent Iran from turning one of the world’s most important shipping lanes into a de facto parking lot — with a hefty pay-to-leave barrier — will not be quickly forgotten.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi
Strait talking: Crucially, the ceasefire statement from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi last night — reposted in full by Trump on Truth Social — states that even during this two-week period, safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will only be permitted “via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces.” In other words, the U.S. has already accepted that Iran can impose limits on shipping in the Strait — limits that did not exist before the war began.
And there’s more: Iran is already charging punitive tolls for passage through the strait, and AP reports this will continue during the ceasefire. Trump’s description of Iran’s 10-point list of demands as “a workable basis on which to negotiate” suggests further concessions are entirely possible. Iran’s national security council is already taking a victory lap, though Trump railed angrily at CNN last night for reporThe ting it.
Much remains unclear. Pakistan — the central mediator — said the ceasefire includes Israeli attacks on Lebanon, but Israel said overnight it does not. There are reports Iran continued firing missiles at neighboring countries after the ceasefire was agreed. And there’s no clarity at all on what happens to Iran’s enriched uranium, though Trump told AFP it will be “perfectly taken care of.”
Just 90 minutes before President Donald Trump’s 8 p.m. deadline to wipe out “a whole civilization” with massive strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure and bridges, he granted a two-week extension for diplomacy to continue.
“Subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said Tuesday on social media, “I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks.”
“We have already met and exceeded all Military objectives,and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran,” Trump said. A 10-point proposal received from Tehran, he said, was a “workable basis on which to negotiate.”
Trump added, “This will be a double-sided CEASEFIRE!”
After Trump’s announcement, a statement posted by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, which he attributed to the Supreme National Security Council, said it too was responding to Pakistan’s request and Trump’s “acceptance of the general Framework of Iran’s 10-point proposal for negotiations.”
“If attacks against Iran are halted,” it said, “our Powerful Armed Forces will cease their defensive operations.” For two weeks, it added, “safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordination” with the Iranian military.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif
Trump said his ceasefire decision was in response to an appeal from Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and military chief Gen. Asim Munir. Pakistan has led a group of mediators, including Egypt and Turkey, that has been looking for an exit to the war that has destabilized the entire region. Trump has forged a particularly close relationship with Munir and, in an interview with Fox News before the extension announcement, described Sharif as “a highly respected man all over.”
In a statement following Trump’s announcement, Sharif said U.S. and Iranian delegations were invited to Islamabad on Friday “to further negotiate for a conclusive agreement to settle all disputes.” He said that the ceasefire would include Lebanon, where Israel is engaged in a massive bombing campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Unfortunately, Netanyahu didn’t agree to include Lebanon in the ceasefire.
In a brief statement issued in English by his office early Wednesday, local time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he supported Trump’s “decision to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks subject to Iran immediately opening the straits and stopping all attacks on the U.S., Israel and countries in the region.”
“Israel also supports the U.S. effort to ensure that Iran no longer poses a nuclear, missile and terror threat. … The United States has told Israel that it is committed to achieving these goals … in the upcoming negotiations,” Netanyahu said.
In a caveat that did not bode well for the negotiations, he added that the ceasefire “does not include Lebanon,” contradicting Sharif’s claims.
The Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday it had “ceased fire in the campaign against Iran” but would continue “its combat and ground operations” in Lebanon.
Mr. Trump’s tactic of escalating his rhetoric to astronomical levels certainly helped him find an offramp he had been seeking for weeks. That success alone may fuel his belief that the tactics he learned in the New York real estate world — ignore old conventions, make maximalist demands — works in geopolitics as well.
The Strait of Hormuz
Without question, it was a down-to-the-wire tactical victory, one that should, at least temporarily, get oil, fertilizer and helium flowing again through the Strait of Hormuz, and calm markets that feared a global energy shock would lead to a global recession.
But it resolved none of the fundamental issues that led to the war.
It leaves a theocratic government, backed by the vicious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in charge of a cowed population that has been pummeled by missiles and bombs, and finds itself still under the thumb of a familiar regime, even if under new management. It leaves Iran’s nuclear stockpile in place, including the 970 pounds of near-bomb-grade material that was, in theory, the casus belli of this war.
It left Gulf allies reeling, with the discovery that the glass skyscrapers of Dubai and the desalination plants that make wealthy enclaves in Kuwait livable can be taken out by Iranian missiles and drones. Gas prices have soared, and are about to test Mr. Trump’s promise that they will fall again to old levels as soon as the fighting stops.
And it has left Mr. Trump’s political base fractured, with onetime supporters now accusing the president and his loyalists, starting with Vice President JD Vance, with violating their promise not to get America tied up in unwinnable wars in the Middle East.
It all happened at a moment when Iran has demonstrated that it can absorb 13,000 targeted strikes and still conduct an impressive asymmetric war, choking off oil supplies and sending its cyber army to attack American infrastructure.
Now Mr. Trump faces the challenge not only of reaching a more permanent settlement but proving to the United States and the world that this conflict was worth fighting in the first place. And to do so, he will have to demonstrate that he has removed Iran’s death-grip on the 21-mile channel that makes up the strait, and its chances of ever building a nuclear weapon.
On that point there was an ominous-sounding element buried in the Iranian description of the deal. Shipping would proceed, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote, but under the control of “Iran’s Armed Forces,” who would determine who passes, and when.
And then there’s that 10-point list of demands.
“Iran remains in the control of the Strait, which was not the case before the war,” said Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. “I find it hard to believe that the United States and the world could accept a situation in which Iran remains in control of a key energy checkpoint indefinitely. That would be a materially worse outcome than existed before the war.”
So might a final agreement. Four weeks ago Mr. Trump was demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender,’’ saying he would determine when the country had been completely defeated. On Tuesday evening his tone was different. He agreed to base the next two weeks of talks on a 10-point plan Iran submitted to the Pakistanis. Mr. Trump called it “a workable basis on which to negotiate.”
“Have you looked at Iran’s plan?” asked Mr. Fontaine. “It reads like a Tehran wish list from before the war, calling for a global recognition of Iran’s right to enrich uranium, the removal of all American forces from the region and a lifting of economic sanctions. And it calls for the payment of reparations to Iran for damage caused in the war.”
Use the gift link to read the rest, if you’re interested.
Officials in the U.S. and Israel learned of an intriguing development on Monday, with President Trump’s ultimatum looming: Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had instructed his negotiators, for the first time since the war began, to move towards a deal, according to an Israeli official, a regional official and a third source with knowledge.
Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei
The big picture: As Trump was publicly threatening total annihilation, there were signs of diplomatic momentum behind the scenes — though even sources close to Trump didn’t know which outcome to expect right up until a ceasefire was announced….
Setting the scene: On Monday morning, as Trump worked the crowd at a White House Easter celebration, a “very angry” Steve Witkoff was working the phones.
The U.S. envoy told the mediators the 10-point counter-proposal the U.S. had just received from Iran was “a disaster, a catastrophe,” a source with direct knowledge said.
That began a “chaotic” day of amendments, with the Pakistani mediators passing new drafts between Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and the Egyptian and Turkish foreign ministers trying to help bridge gaps.
By Monday night, the mediators had U.S. approval for an updated proposal for a two-week ceasefire. It was then up to Khamenei — whom the sources said was actively involved in the process on Monday and Tuesday — to make a decision.
The intrigue: The involvement of the new supreme leader was necessarily clandestine and laborious. Facing an active threat of assassination by Israel, Khamenei has been communicating primarily via runners passing notes.
Two sources described Khamenei’s blessing for his negotiators to cut a deal as a “breakthrough.”
The regional source said Araghchi also played a central role both in handling the negotiations and in pushing commanders from the Revolutionary Guards to accept a deal.
China was also advising Iran to seek an off-ramp.
But at the end of the day, all major decisions on Monday and Tuesday went through Khamenei. “Without his green light, there wouldn’t have been a deal,” the regional source said.
How it happened: It was clearby Tuesday morning that progress was being made, but that didn’t stop Trump from making his most harrowing threat: “A whole civilization will die tonight.”
Some U.S. media outlets reported Iran was breaking off talks in response. Sources involved in the negotiations told Axios that was not the case, and that there was actually some momentum.
Vice President Vance was working the phones from Hungary, dealing primarily with the Pakistanis.
Meanwhile Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in frequent contact throughout the day with Trump and his team — though the Israelis were growing increasingly concerned that they’d lost control of the process.
By around noon ET on Tuesday, there was a general understanding that the parties were converging on a two-week ceasefire.
I’m old enough to remember when President Trump assured us, “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”
That was a month ago.
Since then, Trump has bombed and blustered and caused all manner of damage to Iran, to its neighbors, to the United States, and to the world. But Iran hasn’t unconditionally surrendered. It hasn’t even conditionally surrendered. It’s agreed to a ceasefire followed by negotiations. These negotiations will be based not on Iranian surrender but, as Trump said last night, on a ten-point proposal from Iran that Trump believes “is a workable basis on which to negotiate.”
So we’re off to negotiations. Trump and the Iranian regime are making wildly contrasting claims and promises about what has been or will be agreed to. For now, as Gregg Carlstrom, Middle East correspondent of the Economist, put it:
So if you’re keeping score at home, the ceasefire includes Lebanon but also doesn’t include Lebanon, America has agreed to all of Iran’s demands and Iran has agreed to all of America’s demands, America will recognize Iran’s right to enrichment and also insist on zero enrichment, Hormuz is completely open but also Hormuz is subject to unclear limitations.
Oil market researcher Rory Johnston wittily called this “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.”
But the fog of ceasefire doesn’t mean that we don’t know anything. In fact, we know quite a lot already.
We know that the Iranian regime remains in place. The mullahs and the IRGC remain in control of Iran.
We know that the Iranian regime still has its enriched uranium (even if they can’t get to a lot of it right now). And we know that while its military capabilities have been much degraded, it still has functional missile and drone capabilities. We know there’s no reason not to expect Russia and China to be willing to rearm Iran.
We know that primary and secondary sanctions on Iran seem likely to be relaxed or even lifted.
We know that at least for now the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened. But it’s unclear whether it will remain an international waterway, as it was before, or whether Iran will be able to charge fees or tolls for passage. And we know that the fact that the Iranian regime was able to close the waterway, cause significant damage to the global economy, and live to boast about it, can’t be unseen. Whatever promises are now made, Iran will retain leverage with respect to the strait.
We know more generally that Trump’s war has further shaken any confidence our allies might still have in us. It will be seen as confirmation that Trump’s United States of America has become just another rogue nation in the international arena, if a less disciplined and cunning one than Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China. We know that the old international order with the United States as its anchor is gone.
What we know mocks Trump’s claim in an interview with AFP last night that the United States “won a total and complete victory. One hundred percent. No question about it.”
That’s about all I can handle for today. We have a fool as president, and I’m not sure we can survive the rest of his term. Our only hope is that Democrats can wind the House and Senate and impeach and remove him.
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Trump: After I'm finished with this, I can go to Venezuela. I will quickly learn Spanish. It won't take too long. I'm good at language, and I will go to Venezuela. I'm gonna run for president.
Trump's latest ravings:- Wants the USA to charge ships for permission to transit the Strait of Hormuz- Would like to seize Iran's oil- Threatens to destroy every power plant in Iran on Tuesday night- Says feud with NATO started because they refused to give him Greenland
Trump: "I did one other but this one was not picked up: Osama bin Laden. If you read my book, I said you gotta take him out one year before the World Trade Center came down. So you should read the book."
"What he’s threatening is not the kind of war that vaguely adheres to any rules or laws. He’s making openly terroristic threats."Yep. The Domestic Terrorist-in-Chief.
Trump actually said that PUTIN explained NATO to him…And that he has a very good relationship with Putin.Then Trump called NATO a "paper tiger."It's always been a concern that Trump values Putin's opinion, but even more so now when Putin is aiding Iran against the U.S.
“While preparing to spend the day at his golf course, Trump tweeted his heartfelt and compassionate Easter morning message to the world.”John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Easter Sunday is one of those days when nearly every American Christian heads to church. There’s a big ol’ Gay Easter Parade down here in New Orleans, and if I am out at all, that’s likely where I am. Easter has always been about finding the best hat for some folks. I slept in, then woke up to the weirdest headlines I think I’ve ever seen. Orange Caligula used the F-Bomb, followed by “Praise Allah” in his Easter rant. I want to see how the Evangelicals deal with that. The Pope spoke out, so that’s a bit of blowback.
The Guardian has this headline. “‘Unhinged madman’: US politicians react to Trump’s expletive-laden threat to Iran. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Bernie Sanders among those responding with alarm to Trump writing ‘open the fuckin’ strait, you crazy bastards.’ I wonder if anyone will still argue that #FARTUS is the second coming?
Some US politicians have reacted with alarm and questioned the US president’s mental state after Donald Trump issued an abusive, expletive-laden threat to Iran in which he called on the regime to “open the fuckin’ strait [of Hormuz], you crazy bastards”, as he threatened to further attack the country’s energy and transport infrastructure.
The US president wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
It comes as the Trump administration hurtles towards anotherself-imposed deadline – this time, Tuesday evening – for Iran to reopen the strait of Hormuz. One of the world’s most critical shipping lanes for oil and gas, the strait has been effectively shut since the US and Israel launched war on Iran at the end of February, causing oil prices around the world to skyrocket to record highs.
Trump has threatened Tehran with several deadlines in a bid to reopen the key maritime corridor, and has fixated his frustration on European and Nato allies who have rejected the legality of the US-Israeli war on Iran and refused to intervene in the strait of Hormuz crisis – prompting Trump to threaten to withdraw the US from Nato.
Mehdi Tabatabaei, deputy for communications at the Iranian president’s office, said on Sunday that Iran would only open the strait after receiving compensation for war damages, paid via a “new legal regime” based on transit fees.
He added that Trump, with his threats to attack Iran’s civil infrastructure over the strait’s closure, had “resorted to obscenities and nonsense out of sheer desperation and anger”.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former staunch ally turned Trump critic, said everyone in the Trump administration who claims to be a Christian needs to “beg forgiveness from God” and intervene in the president’s “madness”.
Yesterday’s New York Times had some strange adjectives for Orange Caligula’s mad rant. “In New Threats, Trump Seems Emboldened by a Successful Rescue. In an expletive-filled social media post, Mr. Trump said Iran should open the Strait of Hormuz, or he will bomb bridges and power plants.” The word ’emboldened’ does not quite fit the rant, imho. I’d like to ask writer David Snanger if he had any say in the headline.
After celebrating the recovery of a lost airman from the mountains in Iran on Saturday night, President Trump began Easter morning with a blistering threat to Iran that he would begin bombing its electric grid and bridges starting Tuesday morning, using an obscenity to punctuate his demand that the government in Tehran reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Mr. Trump has never shied away from threats and occasional vulgar language on social media, but this post would have stood out on any day, much less on what most Christians consider the holiest day of the year.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” he wrote a little after 8 a.m. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.”
The president has swerved in the past week between claiming that the strait is not his problem, because the United States barely purchases oil flowing through the 21-mile-wide passage, and threatening to go after civilian infrastructure if Iran continues to restrict which ships can pass — and to charge $2 million tolls to those few ships it lets through.
On Sunday morning he was back in threatening mode, with a vengeance.
Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, called Mr. Trump’s comments “completely utterly, unhinged” in a post on X.
“He’s already killed thousands,” Mr. Murphy wrote. “He’s going to kill thousands more.”
Under the Geneva Conventions, striking power plants and bridges that are used primarily by civilians is off limits; they are not considered military targets. Administration officials are already beginning to make the argument that hitting them would not be a war crime because they are also crucial to the missile and nuclear programs. But that loophole could apply to almost any piece of civilian infrastructure, even water supplies.
Mr. Trump’s vehemence may well underscore to the Iranians how powerful a tool control of the strait remains, perhaps their most effective surviving weapon after the loss of their navy, their air force and much of their arsenal of missile and launchers. The strait is not only the passageway for about 20 percent of the global oil supply, it is critical for fertilizer and for helium, which is critical to the manufacture of semiconductors.
I’d also like to think there’s a more apt word for ‘vehemence’. Here’s another happy Easter Story from the Trump Regime and the New York Times. It’s straight from my home state, Louisiana, the prison capital of the USA. “ICE Agents Detain Newlywed Spouse of Soldier Training to Deploy. The 22-year-old wife of an Army staff sergeant came to the U.S. as a toddler. She was taken from a military base where the couple planned to live.”
A U.S. Army staff sergeant and his wife arrived at his base in Louisiana last week, expecting to begin their life together as newlyweds.
The couple checked in at the visitor center, identification in hand, ready to complete the steps that would allow her to move into his home on the base.
Within hours, that plan had unraveled.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered the base and detained his wife, an undocumented Honduran immigrant who was brought to the U.S. as a toddler. By nightfall, she was in a detention facility with hundreds of women facing deportation as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The detention came just days after Annie Ramos, 22, a college student with no criminal record, and Matthew Blank, 23, celebrated their marriage with family and friends. Sergeant Blank, who enlisted more than five years ago, is assigned to a brigade at Fort Polk, La. that is set to begin training at the end of the month for deployment.
The soldier is likely to be deployed to the Iran War Zone area. I have Joyce Vance’s latest Substack to offer you today. “The president of the United States greeted the country with this Truth Social post about his intentions in Iran on Easter Sunday: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.
No one seems to have got so far into the post as to notice that he said “Praise be to Allah,” which he would most certainly say was a jest, if asked. But imagine Joe Biden, or worse still, Barack Obama, saying that “in jest” and how Republicans would have responded. Trump is completely off the rails and Republicans are turning a blind eye, pretending it’s not happening.
Earlier this week, Trump’s “spiritual advisor” Paula White-Cain compared him to Jesus. Trump, too, was “betrayed and arrested and falsely accused,” she said. No one in the Republican Party seems to have believed they need to strenuously resist that characterization.
And so, we enter the new week with an unstable president at the helm in wartime. Meanwhile, at home, there are plenty of issues mounting. But Trump seems to have largely gotten away with knocking his connection to Jeffrey Epstein and allegations about his personal conduct off the front burner.
I’m pretty sure the press are distracted by the war, because they’re always ready to cover a war, in my experience over the last few years. However, I really think the people have given up on getting justice for the victims of Epstein. We’ll just have to see. This read shows more about exactly how terrible the DOJ has become in this second term of Orange Caligula, with the now-gone Bondi at the helm. The source is Wired. “The DOJ Misled a Judge About How It’s Using Voter Roll Data. The acting head of the DOJ’s voting section told a judge last week that the agency had not touched the nonpublic voter roll data it has collected. That wasn’t true.”
Last week in Rhode Island, in a hearing over the Trump administration’s efforts to access the state’s unredacted voter lists, US district judge Mary McElroy asked a Department of Justice lawyer what the agency had been doing with the voter roll data it already amassed from other states in recent months.
“We have not done anything yet,” said Eric Neff, the acting chief of the agency’s voting section, a core part of the DOJ’s civil rights division that focuses on enforcing federal laws that protect the right to vote. Neff added that the data the DOJ collected from states—which can include Social Security numbers, drivers licenses, dates of birth, and addresses—was being kept separate.
“The United States is taking extra concern to make sure that we’re complying with the Privacy Act in every conceivable way,” Neff added. The Privacy Act of 1974 regulates how government agencies collect and use personally identifiable information about US residents.
But Neff was not telling the truth: The DOJ, he later admitted, was pooling the data and already analyzing it to identify voting irregularities.
In a court document filed on March 27, Neff walked back his claims. “The United States represented that each data set was stored separately,” Neff wrote. “The United States also stated that no analysis had yet been conducted on the data. To correct and clarify the record, preliminary internal data analysis of the nonpublic voter registration data has begun. In particular, the Civil Rights Division has begun the process of identifying and quantifying the number and type of duplicate and deceased registered voters in each state.”
The revelation confirms what was widely speculated, which is that the DOJ appears to be pooling the data and using it to identify potential issues with suspected voting irregularities ahead of the midterms, which is a core part of Trump’s broad attack on elections.
Really, this stuff is not only embarrassing, but it’s also an ongoing signal of democracy’s backslide. I would like to think a lot of these ‘lawyers’ will get disbarred in short order when we finally get rid of Trump. From what I’ve read, Bondi is indictable and can be called to appear before Congressional hearings. I guess we’ll see. PBS has this headline for the day’s reads. “What’s next for the Justice Department after Bondi’s firing?”
“President Trump has ousted the second member of his Cabinet in less than a month. Attorney General Pam Bondi will be leaving after just 14 months. Bondi faced criticism for her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and the president himself expressed frustration over her lack of prosecutions of his political enemies. Ali Rogin discussed what’s next for the Department of Justice with Mary McCord.
…
Ali Rogin:
Fourteen months in, what is Pam Bondi’s legacy going to be as attorney general?
Mary McCord:
Well, I think probably the things that people will remember her for the most probably is the debacle of the Epstein investigation. I mean, way back early in Donald Trump’s tenure, she really promised that the client files were on her desk.
That had to have just been made up, because it was only months later that she said, we don’t have anything here. I’ve investigated this along with the FBI director. There’s no criminal cases coming out. There is no client list.
And then, of course, we’ve seen what has happened since then. There are so many other things that she did that I feel like she should be remembered for. And these are mostly not good things at all, completely undermining the independence of the Department of Justice from the White House, saying famously in the Great Hall the first time she addressed the men and women of the department that she was so pleased to be working under the direction of the president of the United States.
And that’s really complete anathema to the prosecutors who, in order to show the American people that justice is not being used for political purposes, want to keep that distance.
Ali Rogin:
Why do you think this is happening and why now?
Mary McCord:
I have actually thought for some time that this was going to happen. And it’s getting in — Donald Trump’s minds about when he — mind about when he decides to do something is difficult to do. It’s usually tied to a news cycle or to try to distract from news, I think.
And so, today, it’s not clear. He had a bad day in the Supreme Court yesterday with the birthright citizenship argument, which had really nothing to do with Pam Bondi, but still perhaps he wants a distraction. Now, whether this is the kind of distraction he wants, I don’t know.
The Epstein matter, this all — what this really will do is bring that back into the fore of discussion, even while people were starting to discuss other things, because, again, I think that’s really one of the things she’s most known for.
It’s a crazy country we live in right now, creating crazy news and stressful days for us and the world. Even Bill Kristol agrees that now would be a great time for another impeachment. You can read this in The Bulwark today. “Impeach Him Again. And create friction against him within the executive branch.”
“How are we going to make it through thirty-three more months of this?” a friend asked yesterday.
“This” is of course the presidency of Donald J. Trump. The query from my normally calm and composed friend was prompted by Trump’s Easter Sunday post:
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”
One might minimize the importance of this one post. Perhaps the president merely got carried away at his keyboard, as one does. But later in the morning, Trump told ABC News that if there were no deal immediately to open the Strait of Hormuz, “We’re blowing up the whole country.” He repeated to Axios that “if they don’t make a deal, I am blowing up everything over there.” And of course this post is merely one item in a long train of assaults on decency and sanity by the current president.
The simple fact is that we have a president who is irresponsible, reckless, and indeed unhinged. And he’s all the more dangerous because he is unconstrained by both his subordinates in the executive branch or by Congress.
What’s to be done? Let me offer two suggestions, one having to do with those subordinate officials in the executive branch, and one with Congress. I offer both of them in a spirit of tentativeness and as an invitation to further discussion. They may seem to be radical ideas—even desperate ones—but desperate times call for desperate measures.
The first proposal is that we think seriously about the case for internal resistance within the executive branch. When the head of the executive branch shows a repeated willingness to enrich himself, to lie to the public, to break the law, senior officials can appropriately recall that the oath they take is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. They can remind themselves that they are obliged to obey the law rather than the illegal wishes of their boss or their boss’s boss.
In current circumstances, this means that serious people within the executive branch have to think soberly about what they can do every day to minimize Trump’s damage to the rule of law. Senior officials do have discretion. They can move quickly or slowly. They can act privately or more publicly. They can make life more difficult for their political masters who are seeking to engage in misconduct or abuses of power.
Even if such resistance doesn’t stop but merely exposes illicit schemes, it would be doing a service. And if conscientious public servants find they cannot stay in their positions, they need not resign politely and then keep quiet. They could—and should—rather force their political bosses to fire them for standing up against impropriety, and then should speak up about what they have seen inside.
I still can’t say I thought I’d ever live in a reality where I consistently agreed with Bill Kristol, but again, these are dark times that we live in. Even though we differ on what constitutes a democracy, we both believe in democracy.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
o, let’s start with Melania Dearest, who insists she had no ties to Jeffrey Epstein, even though she was not under oath to tell the truth, you have to wonder if a Congressional Committee will ask for a repeat performance.. William Kristol, writing at 
There is surely a lot of evidence suggesting she knew him well. But, with the Iran War being waged like a lethal version of mud wrestling, let’s see if the due diligence will be done by the press. This topic really skates on Slut Slamming, but it’s hard to cover earnestly. 
Epstein survivors had plenty to say about the performance. This is from 
It appears that the majority of the country is suffering under the impact of the Iran War. 
There’s no good news coming out of the Iran War. This is 
I’d like to think I have the vocabulary to describe how I feel about all these idiotic, powerplay antics, but I really don’t. We are clearly dealing with people who don’t have a clue and don’t care to understand our democratic republic. This article from 
Yesterday’s 
I’d also like to think there’s a more apt word for ‘vehemence’. Here’s another happy Easter Story from the Trump Regime and the 
The soldier is likely to be deployed to the Iran War Zone area. I have Joyce Vance’s latest 
I’m pretty sure the press are distracted by the war, because they’re always ready to cover a war, in my experience over the last few years. However, I really think the people have given up on getting justice for the victims of Epstein. We’ll just have to see. This read shows more about exactly how terrible the DOJ has become in this second term of Orange Caligula, with the now-gone Bondi at the helm. The source is 
Really, this stuff is not only embarrassing, but it’s also an ongoing signal of democracy’s backslide. I would like to think a lot of these ‘lawyers’ will get disbarred in short order when we finally get rid of Trump. From what I’ve read, Bondi is indictable and can be called to appear before Congressional hearings. I guess we’ll see. 
It’s a crazy country we live in right now, creating crazy news and stressful days for us and the world. Even Bill Kristol agrees that now would be a great time for another impeachment. You can read this in 
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