If the WH lawn is safe enough for a UFC event why do we need a ballroom?

More: And although the money itself belongs to Iran " the funds are frozen under sanctions " it would be a solution for Mr Trump, who broke his campaign promise and led America to war on Feb 28.

With no country other than Israel by his side militarily, and without any public or diplomatic backing from traditional allies, the US president promised that overwhelming force would bring a swift victory and prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Instead, with higher oil prices and the chances of a global recession higher than at any time since the 2020 pandemic, peace will probably mean releasing those billions in cash to a regime that, despite Mr Trump's numerous promises and declarations, remains standing.

For the White House, the problem is not only the scale of the payment. It also sends a contradictory and electorally risky message to American voters as Washington's political calendar turns from war into a midterm election cycle.

For starters, the cash does not return a fully fledged peace agreement but something closer to a vague one-page document that provides "the framework for future negotiations".

If that is indeed the case " and statements from both sides in the conflict seem still very much at odds " it will be an endpoint a long way from Mr Trump's starting point.

Announcing the beginning of the war from Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and resort, the president pledged to destroy Iran's missile industry and eliminate regional terrorist proxies. He also urged the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the regime.

Yet the one-page outline agreement appears to address none of those objectives, instead leaving them to be discussed during the 30 to 60-day period that is expected to follow. Indeed, on Monday, the president watered down his original demand that Iran's highly enriched uranium be handed over to the United States.

Releasing billions of dollars is as legally difficult as it is politically complex. Just $2bn (1.6bn) of Iran's assets are thought to be frozen in the United States. Much of the remaining money, calculated to be worth about $100bn (80bn), is held in international bank accounts frozen by the United Nations.

To release it, Washington would probably need to waive sanctions, cooperation from foreign governments and a mechanism to guarantee the cash not used by the regime to rebuild its nuclear weapons programme or fund its proxies.

More: Judge Craig A. Karsnitz rejected an ACLU challenge to a charter permitting voting in local elections by the entities that own most of the property in the Town of Fenwick Island, one of several municipalities in the state with similar provisions. Karsnitz dismissed the lawsuit from Delaware's Superior Court, citing "the principle of one person/entity/one vote."

"Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction," but "trusts, partnerships, limited liability companies, and corporations are expressly recognized as persons' in the Delaware Code," the judge said.

Karsnitz, writing in a 19-page opinion Tuesday, rejected an array of constitutional arguments advanced by the ACLU, including the claim that entity voting dilutes the political power of living people.

The lawsuit "does not allege discrimination based on race or political partisanship," show "that entity property owners vote sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat the preferred candidates of natural persons," or assert "that Fenwick's charter distinguishes between natural persons and entity property owners with the discriminatory intent to fence out natural persons," the judge said.

More: Mullin appeared on Tuesday's edition of Hannity on Fox News, where he boasted that DHS has arrested "tens of thousands [of] gang members that are in categories of terrorists."

He provided no evidence for his claim that such an enormous number of "terrorists" have been apprehended.

The secretary then explained that DHS has been floating the idea of preventing international flights from arriving in certain cities, especially Newark, New Jersey, because of the ongoing protests at Delaney Hall, a detention facility holding up to 1,000 immigrants. He said local law enforcement is not assisting federal agents there.

"[T]he street, it belongs to the city, "Mullin said. "If it belonged to us, we would take care of it, but it belongs to the city, and they're barricading our employees from coming in and out of the facility ... Why are we processing international flights into the airport there? And we are currently, which we're not initiating it yet, but we're currently drawing up plans to say, listen, in these sanctuary cities where the local, radical left Democrats aren't allowing us to do our job and enforce federal laws, then we shouldn't be processing international flights into their cities either because they don't want us to enforce immigration."

On Monday, ICE agents fired pepper spray at protesters and Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) outside Delaney Hall. Kim said he was trying to broker an agreement between protesters and the agents. Several inmates at the facility are on a hunger strike. On Tuesday, Border Czar Tom Homan said the inmates will be force-fed "if it gets bad enough."

Kind of hurts to know SC is better at democracy than NC these days.

#5, Meant that funny to be a newsworthy.

They're all part of one larger species Epsteinus Distractus.

This new hasbara op must be where censored is working now.

More: Three officials with knowledge of Defense Department assessments told The Washington Post on Thursday that the lopsided effort "underscores the extent to which Washington has shouldered the burden of countering Iranian ballistic missile strikes during Operation Epic Fury."

U.S. forces, according to those assessments, have used up to half their total inventory of certain high-altitude interceptor systems, while Israel has deployed its own at a slower rate.

"The numbers are striking," Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at D.C. think tank the Stimson Center, told the Post.

"The United States absorbed most of the missile defense mission while Israel conserved its own magazines," she went on, adding that the rate of use had left production unable to "keep pace with demand."

The situation has apparently sparked alarm among American allies in Asia, particularly South Korea and Japan, which depend on U.S. anti-missile defense systems to deter attacks from hostile states such as China and North Korea.

More: The idea emerged, the sources said, as Olsen and other officials brainstormed about how the federal government could take control over elections from U.S. states, an idea publicly aired by Trump.

Olsen wanted a national system of hand-counted paper ballots, the sources said, a frequent Trump demand some election-security experts say would be less accurate and potentially riskier than the current system of machines with auditable paper trails that almost all cities and states use.

Many from the first batch he brought over ended up going home from what I read. The US was too violent for them.

More: The donation, which came through a Reynolds subsidiary and brings to $8 million the total donated by the subsidiary to MAGA Inc., the Trump-backed super PAC, was revealed in a campaign finance report filed Wednesday night.

The donation came on April 30.

Two days later, a top executive at Reynolds and two lobbyists who represent the company had lunch with Mr. Trump at his golf club in Jupiter, Fla. Also attending were two executives from Altria, another tobacco company.

At the lunch, the tobacco industry representatives expressed dissatisfaction with the way the Food and Drug Administration was regulating the industry, as The New York Times reported last week.

Mr. Trump interrupted the conversation to call Dr. Marty Makary, the F.D.A. commissioner.

When Mr. Makary did not answer, the president dialed Dr. Makary's boss, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and another top health official, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The president complained to the men about the F.D.A.'s regulation of e-cigarettes, according to three people briefed on the meeting who were not authorized to discuss it.

Less than one week later, the F.D.A. issued new guidance that could pave the way for major tobacco companies to begin selling flavored vapes and to snare a chunk of the $6 billion e-cigarette market away from illegal Chinese competitors.

More: Among those who must comply with Bates' order are White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the National Security Council, Council of Economic Advisers and employees working within the Executive Office of the President. Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance are not covered by the judge's directive. The injunction takes effect at 9 a.m. on May 26.

The decision stems from a memorandum opinion issued by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel last month that claimed the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional because it exceeds Congress' power. The office said Mr. Trump therefore didn't need to comply with it.

Two historical and government oversight groups, the American Historical Association and American Oversight, as well as the Freedom of the Press Foundation, sued to invalidate the Justice Department's opinion. They asked the judge to order White House officials to comply with the Presidential Records Act and preserve records.

In his decision granting that request for relief, the judge wrote that the Presidential Records Act is "likely constitutional," splitting from the Justice Department's determination.

"To adopt the government's position that the Act is unconstitutional would disable Congress and future Presidents from reflecting on experience, in defiance of the very words engraved on the National Archives Building in Washington: 'What is past is prologue,'" Bates wrote. "And while the presidency is a singularly important institution, that gravity does not free it from modest constraint. Quite the opposite. Each branch of government derives its authority from the trust placed in it by the People, and Congress has validly determined that this Act helps to maintain that trust by shining some light on the activities of the President and his aides."

The judge noted that there has not been another Watergate-level scandal since President Richard Nixon, which "suggests that the sunshine disinfectant of the Records Act is working as intended."

"It is not for this Court, [the Office of Legal Counsel], or the White House to second guess Congress's lawful determination " made pursuant to at least two different enumerated powers " that citizens ought eventually to have access to these records of presidential activities carried out in their name," Bates wrote.

That's nice and all but it'll never get past the House. MAGA Mike probably won't even let it get a vote.

Tillis is such a disappointment. He's been a senator from my state for 11 years+ now and spent all but the last few months or so rubber stamping Republican extremism. He could have voted no on confirming Hegseth and saved us a lot of trouble but he lacked the spine.

Does the Navy not wear all their ribbons on their service uniform? Dude has fewer ribbons as an admiral than I had as a corporal.

Expansion of the surveillance state.

Yeah. So he didn't "drop" the case. He "settled" it. (Ordered the DOJ to pay him)

Yeah they weren't reporting the settlement was actually happening when I first posted the article.

More: The dismissal came on the heels of controversy over reports that the Department of Justice was negotiating a settlement with the president that could see the federal government pay $1.7 billion toward a fund to compensate allies of Trump who allege wrongful treatment by the Biden administration.

Democratic members of Congress said that would be a "slush fund."

CNBC has asked the DOJ if Trump's dismissal of the suit is being made in conjunction with a settlement by the government of his claims outside of court.

The court filing on Monday said Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and The Trump Organization were voluntarily dismissing the lawsuit against the IRS "with prejudice."

"With prejudice" means the plaintiffs can not renew the same claims in another civil complaint.

The notice of dismissal came two days before a deadline set by U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams for the DOJ and Trump's attorneys to answer whether a "case and controversy exists in this matter so as to establish the Court's jurisdiction."

Williams' question suggested that because Trump is suing "entities whose decisions are subject to his direction," there might not be enough actual adversity between the parties to satisfy a constitutional requirement that federal courts only adjudicate cases or controversies.

The filing on Monday said Trump's dismissal means "no judicial analysis is appropriate, and any "subsequent order purporting to dismiss all claims' . . . [would be] a nullity."

#3,

Don't believe it.

Why bother with good policies that help Americans when you can gerrymander your way to victory? -Republicans

More: Technically, officially, Mr. Hegseth's $1.5 trillion was a budget request, and it had thousands of pages of figures and line items to go with it. But what's even more astonishing than its size is that it wasn't really a budget, not in the way you or I would think of it.

The word "budget" ordinarily implies picking among options, living within your means. Earlier military budgets, even the most gigantic ones, made trade-offs " canceled weapons programs, deferred maintenance, smaller fighting forces, to name a few. Mr. Hegseth's plan avoids those choices almost entirely.

It would funnel more money to the traditional military contractors that Mr. Hegseth previously called out for feasting on a wasteful, bloated system. It would bankroll President Trump's weirdly retro military wish list. On top of all that, Mr. Hegseth has asked Congress for $350 billion that would come with far less oversight or accountability than the rest of the sum. And that's before the bill for the Iran war comes due; the Pentagon estimates it has cost $29 billion so far, up from an estimate of $25 billion a few weeks ago.

"They're just doing an all-of-the-above approach," says Todd Harrison, a military budget expert at the traditionally right-of-center American Enterprise Institute, so that they "don't have to make difficult choices."

Mr. Hegseth's team says it needs flexibility in order to keep up with the head-snapping pace of change in technology but promises the budget will be "fiscally responsible." Angus King, the usually hawkish independent senator from Maine, said that a quarter of the budget was "essentially a slush fund." It's a giant blank check with "Trust me" penciled in. So let me ask you: How much do you trust Pete Hegseth?

"we would do it in our politics the same way we do it in our church structure," he told me recently.

Religion is evil.