“After weeks of haggling over how to end the war, he and his Iranian counterpart have signed a short peace memo. It amounts to the promise of lots and lots of money for Iran, so long as it can satisfy Mr Trump that it has abandoned any plans for a nuclear weapon. That is a huge and unlikely gamble and it leaves the countries of the Middle East with some hard thinking.”

“Trump’s surprising move will give Pulte access to the most secret of U.S. intelligence data despite concerns he could use such information to target foes of the president.”

New York Times: Bill Pulte, a bulldog for Trump, prepares to take reins at spy agency.

Nothing seems to irritate President Trump quite like having his newly-signed Iran deal compared to Barack Obama’s.

Which is strange, because the comparison is unavoidable.

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.”

“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.

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.

“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.'”

“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.”

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.

“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.”

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“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”