Iran Leader Opens Door to Face-to-Face Talks
“Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtab Khamenei endorsed direct negotiations with the U.S. late Thursday in a statement read by state media,” the Associated Press reports.
Said Khamenei: “It is obvious that the face-to-face negotiations that will be held in the future will not mean accepting the enemy’s opinion.”
Tom Kean to Return to House After 117-Day Absence
“Rep. Tom Kean Jr., the New Jersey Republican who has been missing from Capitol Hill since March 5, will return to work later this month — 117 days after his last vote,” Politico reports.
Trump’s Anthropic Restrictions May Be Illegal
Politico: “The administration is using export controls — rules that restrict the transfer of sensitive technologies to foreign parties — to bar Anthropic from allowing its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models to be used by foreign nationals, including those inside the United States, without a license. The directive prompted the company to disable access to the service on Friday…”
“But if left unchallenged, the maneuver could embolden the agency to impose the same restrictions on high-end models across the entire AI industry, allowing them to potentially choke off access for any foreign person who uses models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.”
Bloomberg: Anthropic Lays Out Vision for How to Bolster AI Models’ Safety.
Vance Issues Blunt Warning to Israel
“Vice President JD Vance on Thursday delivered an extraordinarily direct rebuke to Israeli critics of the U.S.-Iran peace agreement, as he sought to defend the preliminary deal with repeated misrepresentations of its terms,” the New York Times reports.
Said Vance: “Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.”
He added: “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”
New York Post: Vance issues harsh warning to Israelis slamming Trump’s Iran deal.
GOP Iran Hawk Blasts Trump’s Iran Deal
“One of the Senate’s most prominent GOP Iran hawks is bashing President Donald Trump’s deal to end the Iran war, a blow to the administration and a sign of big problems ahead,” Punchbowl News reports.
“Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) said in a statement that the U.S. memorandum of understanding with Iran ‘negotiates away the victories of Operation Epic Fury in ways that are completely out of step with the President’s goals.'”
Vance Worries About Situation Room Tapes Being Leaked
“Vice President Vance on Wednesday said he was ‘legitimately worried’ about audio tapes of conversations from the Situation Room being leaked to journalists at The New York Times,” NewsNation reports.
“His comments come after a recent report alleged that Vance led the administration’s response to fallout from the release of files tied to deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein. A separate report from the Times detailed President Trump’s discussions in a series of meetings inside the Situation Room pertaining to U.S. strategy throughout the Iran war.”
Trump Orders Federal Employees to Wear ‘Freedom’ Pins
“The Trump administration is ordering National Park Service employees to wear pins promoting Freedom 250, a semi-private group that the president has used to turn celebrations of the country’s 250th anniversary into what critics call a partisan party for himself,” Mother Jones reports.
Vance Touts Iran Deal as Win for U.S. No Matter What
“Vice President JD Vance prepared to start a two-month sprint of negotiations with the Iranians by saying that it wouldn’t matter if Tehran didn’t honor its commitments or even if a final deal was ultimately struck because the U.S. had already won,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Vance: “We have all of the cards. If the Iranians want the benefit of the bargain, they have to give us the things that are necessary to get those benefits.”
Bloomberg: Vance Says Iran Deal Is a ‘Win-Win’ for the US.
Jay Clayton Nomination Remains up in the Air
“Senate Majority Leader John Thune signaled deep uncertainty Thursday over the fate of Jay Clayton’s nomination as director of national intelligence,” Politico reports.
“Its future, he told reporters, is essentially up to President Donald Trump.”
Said Thune: “I’ve never been asked to slow a nomination down before.”
White House Delivers Iran Agreement to Congress
The White House sent the “memorandum of understanding” putting hostilities with Iran on hold to Congress on Thursday, after days of complaints from lawmakers of both parties that they didn’t receive the agreement sooner, Politico reports.
American Scoundrel
A must-read: American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn’s Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump by Kai Bird.
A biography of super-lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn, whose shocking exploits over four decades have shaped the modern political era, most prominently the ascent of Donald Trump.
What Did You Expect?
Daniel Shapiro: “President Trump exulted over every bomb that dropped on Iran, every naval interdiction, and every joint U.S.-Israeli operation. Before that, he spent years preaching a policy of “maximum pressure” sanctions on the Islamic Republic. And before that, he harshly disparaged the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal reached by Barack Obama, from which Trump withdrew the United States in 2018.”
“And now? With a misguided war going poorly, with global economic chaos spreading, with Iran handed maximum leverage by its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, in an instant, Trump has upended every pillar of his approach to a still-dangerous Iran.”
The Democratic Base Is Ready to Go
Elaine Godfrey: “It’s a dynamic that has some Democrats chewing their cuticles, despite a fairly promising political landscape for their party. These Democrats expect, of course, that many of their candidates will perform well in November.”
“But they worry that victory will paint a too-cheery gloss over the party’s bigger issues—and prolong the time it takes to solve them.”
Aide’s Book Exposes Trump’s Pressure Tactics on GOP
The New York Times reviews Glory, Grief, and the Gavel: An Inside Guide to Running for Speaker of the House by John Leganski.
“It is unusual for a top congressional aide to write a tell-all book, and much of Mr. Leganski’s is filled with the kind of wonky detail that only a political junkie would crave. But his real-time account of the arm-twisting sessions that Mr. Trump has employed for years to keep Republican lawmakers in line provides fresh insight into a familiar phenomenon that is seldom recounted on the record by someone who witnessed it firsthand.”
Are We Back Where We Started on Iran?
Washington Post: “So what was this all for?”
“That question is already dividing some Republicans and foreign policy hawks. The memorandum ends the fighting, reopens the Strait of Hormuz and gives Trump a chance to claim he prevented a broader economic crisis.”
“But many of its core terms appear to return the U.S. and Iran to roughly where they were before the conflict: with Iran’s government still in power and its long-term nuclear commitments still unresolved.”
Saudi Supertankers Cross Strait of Hormuz
“Three supertankers from Saudi Arabia loaded with 6 million barrels of oil have crossed the Strait of Hormuz,” CNBC reports.
Centrist Democrat Concedes to Socialist for D.C. Mayor
“Former City Councilman Kenyan McDuffie, who ran as a tough-on-crime centrist, has conceded the Democratic mayoral primary in Washington, D.C., to Janeese Lewis George, a democratic socialist and D.C. councilwoman,” the New York Times reports.
“The Associated Press has yet to call the race, but Ms. Lewis George currently has around 53 percent of the vote, enough to give her an outright victory without tabulating the ranked choices in the election. In an overwhelmingly Democratic city, she would almost certainly win the general election in November.”
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