Iran Says It Tried to Warn JD Vance About Kushner and Witkoff

During negotiations with the U.S. in Switzerland last month, the Iranian government reportedly warned Vice President JD Vance that President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner were undermining the chances of a peace deal.

Drop Site News reports, citing an unnamed Iranian official, that Iranian negotiators believed Witkoff and Kushner were more interested in trying to profit off the talks in financial markets than reaching a lasting agreement. The Iranians were also worried about Kushner and Witkoff leaking information to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Drop Site.

The Iranians sent a private message to Vance through an intermediary following earlier communication through Pakistani mediators. Those earlier communications reportedly included written documentation that “individuals close to President Trump” were using the war and diplomatic talks to manipulate markets.

“Even before the Islamabad talks kicked off [in April], we had already sent multiple messages to Trump through the Pakistanis, warning them about [Witkoff’s] overall destructive role in the previous negotiation,” the Iranian official told Drop Site. When the U.S. didn’t address the Iranians’ concerns, they sought to communicate with Vance “through an exclusive channel.”

Drop Site said it couldn’t confirm whether the intermediary delivered the message, although the Iranian official said his government was confident Vance got it. The Trump administration denied everything.

“A message of this nature was never conveyed to the Vice President or his team,” an unnamed U.S. government official told Drop Site. “Additionally, any insinuation that the other members of the president’s trusted negotiating team are operating under motives other than serving the president and delivering on his mission is false.”

Additionally, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly further denied the report and attacked Drop Site.

“No such message was ever transmitted to the United States. It’s sad that Drop Site News ‘reporters’ are so filled with hate for America and devoid of respect for themselves that they have become full-throated propagandists for the Iranian regime,” Kelly said.

With negotiations breaking down and hostilities resuming between the U.S. and Iran, the Iranian government does have an incentive to make the Trump administration look worse than usual. Unfortunately, even if this report is false, the White House’s track record makes it seem all too plausible.

Market manipulation has become all too common in Trump’s second term, particularly during the Iran war, with Trump making carefully timed statements that seem designed to create short-term stock gains. Suspiciously timed bets on prediction markets during the war also raised suspicions that insider trading was taking place within the White House, with the Trump administration even warning staff not to bet on world events.

It’s not the first time the business activities of Kushner, a real estate developer, seem to have overlapped with his work for the Trump administration, either. He and Witkoff reportedly pitched real estate projects and an investment fund to sweeten a deal with Iran. Kushner is also involved in the administration’s plans for Gaza reconstruction, where he has floated real estate projects too.

Bedrock civil rights milestones are at risk of withering away under the Trump administration—including in the physical sense. Hot conditions in a new National Park Service exhibit under the Lincoln Memorial are imperiling rare 1860s copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment, Emma Uber of City Cast DC reported Wednesday.

Uber cites unnamed NPS staff members who are concerned that “screens designed to shield the records from harsh light have been defective and temperatures inside the display case have repeatedly reached more than 80 degrees.”

For reference, the National Archives advises families to store their archives below 75 degrees, and it keeps its own display featuring the Constitution and Emancipation Proclamation at 67. A preservation specialist told Uber that historic documents should not be stored in environments exceeding 75 degrees, “and even then … that level of heat is only safe if humidity and light are carefully controlled.”

The documents at the Lincoln Memorial Undercroft carry Abraham Lincoln’s original signature, and—a detail perhaps more likely to move the Trump administration’s top brass—they’re worth millions of dollars.

An NPS spokesperson assured Uber in somewhat vague terms that the documents are “cared for.” But while on the scene at the undercroft, the reporter spied unsubtle evidence of the heat problem: a fan conspicuously directed toward the display case. “The Park Service did not respond to questions about why the fan was there,” Uber reports.

President Donald Trump’s protracted Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool saga may not be ending anytime soon. Records first reported Wednesday by The Independent offer a clue as to how long the public’s view of the monument may remain obstructed by fencing that currently surrounds the pool’s perimeter.

Trump’s renovations to the Reflecting Pool, including installing an “American flag blue” lining, have been dogged by algal blooms and peeling paint, requiring repeated drainings and refillings. Further, at least according to the president, progress has been stymied by left-wing vandals.

Meanwhile, the project’s price tag has rocketed from an initial estimate of $1.8 million to more than $16 million, and its deadline has been pushed from July 4 to who knows when.

Purportedly to fend off those alleged saboteurs, fencing now surrounds the pool. Workers have also added opaque mesh screens to the barrier. Chain-link fencing was first installed on June 23—more than three weeks ago as of Wednesday—by the Department of the Interior.

Records show that the federal government awarded an in-progress $37,000 contract to a construction company, National Construction Rentals, for “REFLECTING POOL TEMPORARY FENCE” that started last week. According to the contract summary, the contract is not set to end until January 8, 2027.

The revelation raises questions: Is the renovation going to take that long? Is the possibly illusory specter of left-wing defacement really expected to persist for almost half a year longer? If the administration’s past handling of the Reflecting Pool renovation is any indication, we’re not likely to get clear or sensible answers anytime soon.

The Trump administration is being sued over its sanctions on the International Criminal Court.

Two American nonprofits, Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide, or TAAG, sued White House officials in federal court Wednesday. The lawsuit is a response to President Trump’s February 2025 executive order, which placed sanctions on ICC judges, prosecutors, and Palestinian human rights groups seeking to investigate alleged U.S. and Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The lawsuit alleges that the sanctions violate the Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech and “unconstitutionally restrict Americans from seeking justice on Palestine at the ICC,” including by “limiting what Americans can say to an international tribunal or to foreign advocates, as well as by limiting their ability to associate with the sanctioned parties.”

As a result of Trump’s order, DAWN and TAAG said that they have avoided filing submissions to the ICC and working with those hit by the sanctions, like Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestine, out of fear of facing criminal charges themselves.

“The Trump administration is using the blunt instrument of economic sanctions not only to punish human rights defenders, but to police the political expression ​of millions of Americans,” said Omar Shakir, executive director of DAWN, in a statement.

Trump’s 2025 executive order followed a similar attempt to target the ICC in his first term. That attempt was blocked by a judge in 2020 and formally rescinded under President Biden in 2021. This lawsuit comes two days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration would seek to dismantle the court, possibly through tools such as travel bans, visa revocations, increased sanctions against the ICC and its affiliates, and diplomatic pressure on countries to withdraw from the ICC.

In an op-ed column for The Wall Street Journal, Rubio called the court “a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states—and to prosecute and arrest our citizens … backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.”

Late last month, three ICC judges sued the Trump administration over sanctions imposed against them, which left them unable to access any assets in the U.S. or engage in any transactions with American entities, including through the “provision of funds, goods or services.” Wednesday’s lawsuit seeks to protect Americans who are trying to seek justice for Palestine from the same fate.

The White House has found a novel way to ensure Donald Trump’s nominees ascend to power.

Federal judges in the Western District of Washington swore in former King County Superior Court Judge Roger Rogoff as U.S. attorney Wednesday morning. Within 54 minutes, Trump fired him.

The district’s 17 federal judges have been trying to find a replacement for Seattle’s First Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd, after Trump failed to formally nominate him. Floyd was appointed in October, though his name was never officially advanced to the Senate for consideration.

Federal law grants a district’s judges the power to appoint a U.S. attorney if the president and the acting attorney general fail to do so within 120 days, subsequently stonewalling the procedural Senate hearings.

Instead, Floyd became an interim U.S. attorney and, later, the first assistant, in an attempt to “sidestep the nomination process,” according to The Seattle Times.

Rogoff was elevated to the bench by Democrats and had been appointed to one of his previous roles by ​former Washington Governor Jay Inslee, also a Democrat. The veteran prosecutor told the newspaper that he was waiting in the lobby of the U.S. District Courthouse downtown to meet with Floyd when he received an email notifying him he’d been fired.

“We are working on legal action right now,” Rogoff said. The legal team representing the former federal prosecutor is expected to sue the administration and the Department of Justice, according to the Times.

The White House has taken a heavy interest in the regional position. One month after returning to office, Trump inexplicably fired Tessa Gormon, another court-appointed prosecutor. Gormon, too, represented the Western District of Washington and was ultimately replaced by Floyd.

Donald Kinsella, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, also faced the ire of the White House earlier this year for daring to do his job unclouded by the interests of the administration. Kinsella was appointed in February by a panel of federal judges, but much like Rogoff, was fired within hours.

The New York State Bar Association condemned Kinsella’s abrupt ousting, describing acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s interference at the time as an “insult to separation of powers and the administration of justice.”

“While it is hardly surprising given the president’s regular abandonment of even the veneer of independence for the DOJ, it is no less appalling,” the organization wrote in a statement.

Blanche is currently in the midst of his own confirmation hearings to officially take on the role of attorney general. Hundreds of former federal prosecutors—including some of his own ex-colleagues—have urged the Senate to deny him the opportunity.

This story has been updated.