Surprise: Iranian Ex-Official Involved in Peace Talks Was Just Bombed

The United States and Israel bombed the home of Iran’s former Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, killing his wife and leaving him “gravely wounded,” according to Iranian media.

Kharazi has been seen as a potential peace negotiator in the current conflict given his role as head of Iran’s Foreign Policy Council. Two Iranian officials said Kharazi was attempting to assemble a meeting with U.S. Vice President JD Vance, according to The New York Times, leading many within the Iranian government to believe that the attack was meant to derail peace talks. Did Israel push the button while the U.S. stood by, allowing them to drag out this deadly war? Or is the United States lying about peace talks to locate and assassinate any of the Iranian leaders still willing to negotiate?

“Targeting Kharazi sure looks like an effort to undermine peace talks and prolong the war,” The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristoff wrote Thursday on X. “It would be good to know if the attack was American or Israeli, and if Israeli whether the Americans signed off on it.”

Kharazi was complaining about this lack of diplomatic transparency on Western media just last month.

“Trump had been deceiving others and not keeping with his promises, and we experienced this in two times of negotiations—that while we were engaged in negotiation, they struck us,” he told CNN.

The U.S. and Israel have now killed multiple Iranian state leaders, nearly 2,000 Iranian civilians, and over 1,200 Lebanese civilians.

Two more members of Donald Trump’s Cabinet could soon be on their way out.

The president is reportedly considering axing Attorney General Pam Bondi and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Trump has polled his top advisers about the duo’s fate, asking other Cabinet officials in recent weeks whether he should give them the boot.

His gripe with Gabbard relates to her decision to shield a former deputy who disagreed with Trump’s war with Iran, people briefed on the discussions told The Guardian. It’s not clear if Gabbard will actually be fired, or who could possibly replace her.

Meanwhile, Bondi’s administrative future is apparently on the fritz due to her handling of the Epstein files. Trump has been “frustrated” with her leadership at the Justice Department, and is considering tapping Lee Zeldin—the current administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency—to replace her.

Yet Trump is still opting to publicly display his confidence in Bondi. The duo traveled to the Supreme Court together Wednesday for the court’s birthright citizenship case (something that no sitting president has ever done), and Trump chose to heap praise on Bondi’s performance when asked about the situation by The New York Times.

“Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job,” Trump said in a statement to the Times.

In comparison to his first administration—which was practically a revolving door for the president’s underlings—Trump has been much more sparing with his staffers over the past year. Still, Bondi and Gabbard would not be the first officials from Trump’s second term to receive a pink slip from the Oval Office.

Trump axed Kristi Noem from her position atop the Department of Homeland Security last month, immediately following a string of abysmal appearances before Congress. Her position among the higher echelons of the Trump administration had become increasingly tenuous in recent months due to a series of scandals, though most notably after ICE agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, marring Trump’s immigration agenda—a chief MAGA priority—in the process.

President Donald Trump said that if there’s no deal with Iran, then he’ll blame Vice President JD Vance.

Speaking at an Easter lunch Wednesday, Trump asked Vance for an update on negotiations with Iran in front of his guests.

“He’s working on the deal, right? How’s that moving? Is it OK? The big deal?” Trump said.

“It’s going good, sir,” Vance said from the audience.

“Do you see that happening?” Trump pressed.

“We’re gonna brief you too,” Vance said.

“So, if it doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance. If it does happen, I’m taking full credit,” Trump said to laughter.

“No, I think it’ll be uh. I think it has to happen. I think they’re desperate,” he added.

Not desperate enough, it seems. Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Iran believes it is still in a strong position and is not currently willing to engage in substantial negotiations to end the U.S. and Israel’s military onslaught, U.S. officials told The New York Times Wednesday.

Trump has claimed that the U.S. has satisfied nearly all its objectives in the region—but will continue to hit Iran very hard over the next two weeks. Meanwhile, he has offered no plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Donald Trump doesn’t think the federal government should fund childcare, Medicare, or Medicaid.

At an Easter lunch reception at the White House Wednesday, the president told guests exactly what he thought about what the U.S. should be prioritizing, and it doesn’t bode well for the government’s most widely used and popular social programs.

“I said to [Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought], ‘Don’t send any money for daycare because the United States can’t take care of daycare.’ That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of daycare. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people,” Trump said. “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too. They should pay. They’ll have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up.

“It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country. But all these little things, all these little scams that have taken place … you have to let states take care of them,” Trump continued.

It’s a glaring admission from Trump, who confessed point-blank that he thinks the government’s only responsibility is to fund the military. It explains why he supported a bloated military budget even before starting the war in Iran. It also explains why he didn’t seem to mind massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid with his “big, beautiful bill” last year. The White House’s YouTube account, after broadcasting Trump’s remarks live, has made the video private on the website.

The Trump administration tried to use childcare funding as a way to punish five Democratic-led states earlier this year, suspending federal funding for public welfare programs in New York, California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota and making false claims about fraud. While that decision was struck down by a federal judge on Tuesday, his comments about Medicare and Medicaid don’t bode well for the millions of Americans who depend on them. How will Trump’s fellow Republicans, and the rest of the country, take these disturbing remarks?

This story has been updated.

House Republicans have finally caved, agreeing to pass a bill to end the shutdown without additional funding for ICE and parts of Customs and Border Protection.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced in a joint statement Wednesday that instead of holding the nation hostage on this issue, they will later fully fund the Department of Homeland Security through appropriations and reconciliation, a longer process has more administrative hurdles than a normal budget bill, but only requires a simple majority in the Senate rather than a filibuster-proof 60 votes.

This is the same proposal from Senate Democrats—and Republicans—that Johnson rejected days ago, calling it a “crap sandwich.”

Last week, Republicans in each legislative chamber were at odds, as the Senate passed a bill that would fund DHS without additional funding for ICE and CBP, a sticking point for Democrats who have called out the agencies’ violence and legally questionable tactics.

The House, meanwhile, passed a bill that would fully fund DHS (ICE and Border Patrol included) for 60 days, which would require enough Senate votes to avoid a filibuster, given Democratic opposition. The impasse meant the shutdown extended through yet another weekend, and that long security lines taxing unpaid TSA agents continued. Oddly, many Senate Republicans still decided to travel out of town before the week was out.

But now, Johnson and Thune have agreed on something that could have happened on Friday, or even weeks before. The sudden reversal seems to have come after Trump’s own 180, as he blessed Republicans on Wednesday to move forward with the two-track approach, and demanded a bill to fund DHS on his desk by June 1.

“Unlike Republicans, Democrats want to DEFUND the Police, Border Patrol, and all Immigration Enforcement. They want to allow Criminals, the Mentally Insane, and Lunatics from all over the World to come into our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, putting Americans in serious danger,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “That’s why we are going forward to fund our incredible ICE Agents and Border Patrol through a process that doesn’t need Radical Left Democrat votes, and bypasses the Senate Filibuster (which should be repealed, IMMEDIATELY!), working in close conjunction with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Leader John Thune.”

In short, Johnson and Thune kept government workers unpaid and traveling Americans frustrated, all because Republicans couldn’t agree on how to ignore the serious issues with ICE. Now, instead of addressing those concerns, they’ll try to ram through funding for immigration enforcement over any opposition.