Lawmakers said the Justice Department has indicated Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon -- a candidate to replace Pam Bondi as attorney general -- will represent her in a transcribed interview later this month, raising ethical concerns. read more
OpEd: When Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in February that the Defense Department would sever ties with Harvard University, he framed the move as an act of ideological hygiene. read more
Reporters Without Borders (or RSF, to use the initialism for its French name, Reporters Sans Frontières) today released the 2026 version of its venerable World Press Freedom Index ... read more
More than two months into a conflict that has failed to deliver a decisive military or diplomatic win, President Donald Trump faces the risk that a standoff with Iran will drag on indefinitely and leave an even bigger problem ... read more
The world's largest container carrier plans a new service linking Europe with isolated Middle East ports, using trucking across Saudi Arabia and smaller vessels in the Persian Gulf instead of transiting the blocked Strait of Hormuz. read more
Trump announces 'Project Freedom' will pause as US seeks a final deal with Iran
www.scrippsnews.com
... President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the U.S. would pause an effort it began on Monday to provide security for shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. He said the pause would give time to evaluate whether the U.S. could reach a lasting peace deal with Iran.
"We have mutually agreed that, while the Blockade will remain in full force and effect, Project Freedom (The Movement of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz) will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalized and signed," the president wrote on social media.
The president said Pakistan and other countries had requested that "Project Freedom" be paused. ...
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that Iran no longer controls the Strait of Hormuz. He said "hundreds" of ships from around the world are now lining up to pass through the waterway. ...
Trump sees himself as a world-historical figure -- like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon
attentiontotheunseen.com
... Had President Trump, we wondered, possibly been reading or at least thumbing through -- just maybe -- the works of ... Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel?
Impossible.
And yet.
Hegel's theory of "world-historical individuals," men who redirected the course of humanity, focused on three figures: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte. Hegel described them as unlikely "heroes of an Epoch" for upending established orders that had previously seemed fixed.
They were "practical, political men" who were each condemned in their age for smashing norms and for other conduct "obnoxious to moral reprehension" -- as Trump has been accused of, centuries later.
And though Trump has long compared himself to America's two greatest presidents, we were recently told by two people who are in a position to know such things -- a senior administration official and a longtime Trump confidant -- that the president had, in private conversations, begun thinking about himself less as a peer of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and more as an addition to Hegel's immortal trifecta.
"He's been talking recently about how he is the most powerful person to ever live," the confidant told us.
"He wants to be remembered as the one who did things that other people couldn't do, because of his sheer power and force of will." ...
@#6 ... U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that Iran no longer controls the Strait of Hormuz. ...
Huh?
WTF?!?!
If what Sec of Defense Hegseth says is correct, then why are there so few, if any, ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz?
Or is Sec of Defense Hegseth just lying (again?)?