Trump Threatens to Bomb Yet Another Middle Eastern Country

After campaigning on a promise of “no new wars,” President Donald Trump just threatened to bomb yet another country.

During a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, a reporter asked Trump whether he would accept a short-term deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that would allow Iran and Oman to control the essential passageway for global trade. Trump claimed that “nobody” would control the Strait of Hormuz, but that the U.S. would “watch over it.”

“It’s international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow ’em up,” Trump said. “They understand that, they’ll be fine.”

The so-called peace president’s remarks were shockingly violent, and at odds with other reports.

The U.S. and Iran are reportedly finalizing a draft “memorandum of understanding” that would require the U.S. military to withdraw its forces from the region and lift the blockade on Iranian ports, according to a report on IRIB, Iranian state television. In return Iran, in cooperation with Oman, would restore trade through the Strait of Hormuz to prewar levels within one month.

The White House pushed back against the report Wednesday morning, calling it “a complete fabrication.”

A Democratic House candidate running in Texas raised eyebrows when she promised to turn an ICE detention facility into a “prison for American Zionists.” It turns out she was bankrolled by a major GOP fundraiser.

Maureen Galindo’s candidacy was anything but normal: The sex therapist faced national criticism for her antisemitic remarks, which involved pledging to turn ICE centers into “castration processing” facilities “for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists.”

Galindo nonetheless shocked state Democrats when she placed first in the March 3 primary—although not by enough to avoid a runoff.

Shortly afterward, Galindo’s small campaign—which had just a few thousand dollars in the tank—was infused with nearly $1 million from a mysterious super PAC, Lead Left, which was formed on April 24. The enormous donation forced Democrats to contend with the possibility that Galindo could actually win the Democratic nomination in Texas’s 35th congressional district, which was recently gerrymandered in order to heavily favor Republican candidates.

Lead Left went to great lengths to conceal the identities and political affiliations of its backers, though it proudly announced on its website that it “stands against MAGA extremists who will infect our country with Donald Trump’s agenda.” New reporting, however, reveals that’s not so likely.

Galindo’s windfall came by way of Caleb Crosby, the treasurer of the Congressional Leadership Fund, which serves as the primary super PAC of the House Republicans, Judd Legum reported via his Popular Information substack Wednesday. Crosby also serves as the treasurer of the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC for Senate Republicans.

Several details ultimately tie Crosby to the fundraising venture: Some of his other entities, connected to his political compliance firm Crosby Ottenhoff Group, share the same address as Lead Left, according to Legum.

Nebraska Public Media also found that the original Lead Left website included a snippet of code that linked out to WinRed, the predominant Republican fundraising website.

But the race to fill the Texas House seat isn’t the only campaign where Lead Left has inserted itself. The secretive super PAC also intervened in Democratic primaries in critical races in Nebraska and Pennsylvania, and has spent more than $2.4 million to date on political ads targeting Democratic primary races across the country.

Earlier this month, the Campaign Legal Center, or CLC, accused Lead Left PAC of violating federal reporting rules by funneling its money through two newly formed shell companies, Piruzi LLC and OTG Media LLC, in what the CLC claimed was an attempt to “conceal the actual vendors” and undermine “crucial electoral transparency for voters.”

President Trump’s America 250 celebrations on the National Mall will feature military demonstrations, a 110-foot ferris wheel, and a slew of performers who are questionable at best.

Flo Rida, Milli Vanilli, Martina McBride, and Vanilla Ice will headline the “Great American State Fair” in Washington, D.C., which runs from June 25 to July 10. Young MC, the Commodores, C+C Music Factory, Morris Day and the Time, and Bret Michaels will all also perform.

Flo Rida, Milli Vanilli, and Vanilla Ice are not people who come to mind when considering which artists would best represent American art, history, and culture on its 250th birthday. But those people—from Stevie Wonder, to Bruce Springsteen, to Taylor Swift, to Beyoncé—probably wouldn’t be caught dead performing for this administration. We’ll have to wait and see who the next wave of performers brings.

Everyone’s favorite federal prosecutor is back in the White House, albeit in a far less important role.

Pam Bondi has been appointed to an advisory committee on AI policy by President Donald Trump, Axios reported on Tuesday.

The committee, officially called the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, includes 13 members, most of them tech billionaires. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen are all part of the club.

Bondi doesn’t appear to have a background in AI policy. Panel co-chair David Sacks—another wealthy white tech bro—wrote on X that she will “advise the President on legal and regulatory barriers” in her new position.

Trump tapped Bondi as attorney general in 2025, but she soon came under extreme criticism for mishandling one of the most important prosecutions of modern times.

After the Epstein Files Transparency Act was pushed through Congress—despite Trump dismissing his friendship with the deceased sex trafficker as a “hoax”—Bondi led a sloppy, incomplete rollout of the files, leading to ongoing accusations that the Department of Justice is covering up Trump’s involvement with Epstein.

First, the DOJ blew past the 30-day deadline it was given to release the files in November, claiming it needed more time after it coincidentally discovered new records. Then Bondi was caught lying about the files. She bragged to Fox News in February that Epstein’s client list was “on her desk,” only for the DOJ to backtrack months later and say the list never existed.

In January, the department released approximately three million files. Great—except nearly 100 victims’ names and nude pictures were mistakenly left visible, while key information on the criminals was redacted. The DOJ withdrew thousands of files, blaming the mistake on “technical or human error.”

Since the release, no one has been arrested in the U.S. for involvement in Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring. There are also 2.5 million documents that are still under wraps, meaning tons of information about Epstein’s circle continues to be withheld from the public.

Trump fired Bondi in April, though reports suggest this was more because she failed to prosecute enough of the president’s political rivals than it was about the Epstein files.

Axios also reported that Bondi was diagnosed with thyroid cancer shortly after leaving the Trump administration. Bondi herself confirmed this to CNN on Wednesday, adding that she had surgery a few weeks ago and is “doing well, though.”

President Donald Trump can try to pour billions of additional dollars into the U.S. military, but restoring the country’s weapons systems will still take years.

A new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies published Wednesday found that munitions depleted during Trump’s military onslaught against Iran have created a multiyear “window of vulnerability” for the United States in potential future conflicts. 

The study estimated it will take until at least 2030 to replace the more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles the U.S. fired deep into enemy territory. While Raytheon aims to produce more than 1,000 missiles a year, the current production rate is less than 200. It will also take until at least 2029 to restore the interceptors used in U.S. air defense systems, as well as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, and Patriot missiles, according to the study.  

Earlier this month, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost roughly $24 billion to replace the munitions expended on Trump’s military campaign alone. Trump has moved to deliver a record-breaking $1.5 trillion to the U.S. military for the fiscal year 2027, by sapping taxpayer dollars from other federal agencies. But the report says, “The problem today isn’t money; it’s time.

“It takes time to expand production capacity and to build these complex systems,” the report said. “Thus, there will be a window of vulnerability for several years until inventories return to their previous levels and another several years before they get to the levels that war planners desire. The DOD will need to make plans for dealing with this gap.”

The report warned about potential future conflicts in the Western Pacific, but said that the outlook was “not all bleak.” The U.S. military’s major show of force in Iran and in operations against Venezuela and the Houthis could act as deterrence against China, which has “no recent combat experience.”