“Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer have all been meeting with foreign officials seeking agreements to stave off the crushing tariffs President Donald Trump has threatened to impose next month.
But Trump’s three-headed negotiating team is often working at cross purposes, or at least that’s how it seems to 11 foreign officials, business leaders and advisers on trade talks, who say they are receiving mixed messages from different departments, in what one person close to the talks described as a contest for Trump’s loyalty.
Their differing approaches have occasionally slowed down progress, the foreign officials say, like when the Commerce Department tightened restrictions on some Chinese technology in May, quickly derailing an agreement with Beijing that was negotiated by Bessent.”
Seems like Trump announced a ceasefire before many Israeli and Iranian government officials knew about the talks or agreement. There was a period between the announcement of a ceasefire and the time it went into effect when Israel and Iran struck each other while they still could. The ceasefire appears to have been broken, but may be holding now.
Claims that the Iranian nuclear program was obliterated sound like silly propagandistic lies by the Trump administration. The nuclear program was greatly damaged, but not obliterated, and Iran can rebuild. Depending on how fast Iran can rebuild, this may have ultimately been a futile attack that only makes Iran more determined to get a nuclear weapon.
“Five major U.S. cities are suing the Trump administration over funding to prevent nuclear attacks and terrorism that they argue has been illegally withheld by the Department of Homeland Security.
The lawsuit filed by Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver and Boston alleges that the administration has not reimbursed cities for relevant security expenses since February and has failed to award funding for 2025.”
“President Donald Trump will extend the deadline for TikTok to divest its U.S. assets by another 90 days, the White House said Tuesday, marking the third time enforcement of the 2024 law has been punted.”
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“In Congress, Republicans are increasingly frustrated by the repeated extensions, but are still granting Trump space to negotiate a deal.
“We voted that it should be banned, and I look forward to the day that they can’t continue to propagate Chinese talking points,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) on Tuesday before the announcement.
Few lawmakers have been willing to voice their frustrations publicly, wary of crossing the president, even as they’re frustrated by a TikTok negotiation that shows little sign of movement.
One exception is Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), the head of the House select committee on China, who warned in a public op-ed in March that nothing short of complete divestment from Beijing would suffice.”
“California may have gone too far this time in nudging the industry to ever-higher sales of zero-emission vehicles. The rules would have required automakers to hit increasing percentages — 35 percent by model year 2026 and 68 percent by model year 2030 — before reaching 100 percent of new-car sales in 2035.
Maybe that would have worked if it were just about California. But a dozen other states are signed on to California’s targets, and they have been slower and less generous with incentives and EV charging infrastructure. Where California has more than a quarter of its new car sales coming from EVs, New Jersey is at 15 percent, and New York is under 12 percent”
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted Wednesday that military veterans and active-duty troops urged the Trump administration to rename American military bases after Confederate traitors who took up arms against the government to defend the enslavement of Black people — a move the secretary claims is “important for morale.””
If the U.S. wanted the Israel-Iran war to end, one strategy to end it was to use U.S. bunker busters to destroy nuclear sites, helping Israel achieve their goals and end the war sooner. Time will tell whether this strategy worked.