LIKE NEVER SEEN BEFORE: President Trump last night in his first speech to the nation since going to war against Iran threatened that, “We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong” over the next two or three weeks.

  Trump said if there is no peace deal, “We are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.” 

  Oil prices jumped and stocks slid because Trump did not give a time frame for ending the war.

  The President claimed that regime change “was not our goal” but has been achieved by killing several levels of top Iranian leaders and there are now peace discussions. 

  Trump renewed his claim that, despite declaring that Iran’s nuclear weapons program was destroyed last June, Iran was once again on the brink of having a nuclear bomb and missiles capable of striking anywhere in the world. He said that the nuclear sites are now so obliterated and contaminated that no one would go near them.

  The president’s speech as usual was laden with superlatives about his own leadership, denigration of his predecessors, and insults to allies who have declined to enter the war.

  Much of what he said he repeats every day … “Like never seen before.” Trump said that the US doesn’t need the oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz even though the war’s closure of the strait has raised oil prices for the world.

  Trump said that when the war ends the Straits of Hormuz “will open up naturally, it’ll just open up naturally” because Iran will need to sell oil. “They’re gonna be able to sell oil because that’s all they have to rebuild,” he said.

  US Central Command says its forces have struck more than 12,300 targets inside Iran since the war began.

  Iran’s president said yesterday in a message to America that his country is open to negotiations and that, “The choice between confrontation and engagement is both real and consequential; its outcome will shape the future for generations to come.”

BORN IN THE USA: President Trump sat in yesterday as the Supreme Court heard arguments and expressed skepticism about the constitutionality of his executive order to end birthright citizenship. The President left after the government presented its case.

  Trump is the first sitting president to attend a Supreme Court session.

  The President and government lawyers have argued that the amendment’s guarantee of citizenship does not apply to children born to parents in the country illegally or those on temporary visas. Solicitor Gen. John Sauer told the court, “It demeans the priceless, profound gift of citizenship.” 

  The court adopted the current interpretation of a right to citizenship in 1898 in the case of Wong Kim Ark, a man born to Chinese immigrants in San Francisco.

  Sauer argued that the 14^th Amendment right to citizenship was never meant to cover illegal immigrants. Chief Justice John Roberts said, “The examples you give to support that strike me as very quirky … children of ambassadors, children of enemies during a hostile invasion, children on warships. And then you expand it to a whole class of illegal aliens here in the country.” Roberts said, “I’m not quite sure how you can get to that big group from such tiny and sort of idiosyncratic examples.”

TO THE MOON: NASA last night succeeded with the fiery and thunderous launch of its Artemis II rocket sending four astronauts on a 10-day flight around the dark side of the moon.

  Spectators and reporters watching from miles away said they could feel the shockwaves in their chests. 

  Everything was perfect, but just hours into the mission the crew reported a problem with the toilet … the fan was jammed. NASA was sending repair instructions and told the crew that the toilet could still be used for #2 but not for #1. TMI.

  The crew includes the first woman on a moon launch, and the first Black man. The astronauts are on a mission to travel further from Earth than any humans before them. This morning they are more than 29,000 miles away from Earth and 224,000 miles from the moon. 

INFINITE SCROLL:

— President Trump is reported to have discussed firing Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi and replacing her with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who has no experience as a prosecutor. “Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job,” Trump said in a statement to The New York Times.

  Praise is sometimes the last thing you hear before getting fired.

  Bondi has been widely criticized from all sides for her handling of the files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein allowing it to grow as a political issue, even as she’s obviously been trying to protect President Trump.

— House and Senate Republican leaders announced an agreement to move forward with legislation to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, resuscitating a bipartisan deal that President Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson angrily rejected last week.

  The plan would fund the department through September 30th without money for the ICE and the Border Patrol executing Trump’s immigration crackdown. Republicans are holding firm against imposing new standards of professional behavior on immigration officers.

THE SPIN RACK: The director of the Rutherford County Library system in Tennessee was fired for refusing to move about 100 books on gender identity or that contained violence from the children’s shelves to the adult section. — World soccer body FIFA has raised prices for the World Cup final in New Jersey to nearly $11,000 for a premium seat.

BELOW THE FOLD: Gregg Phillips, the top official in charge of disaster response at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is defending his claim that more than once he has been “teleported” through space and time to a different location, including once to a Waffle House in Georgia roughly 50 miles from where he had been.

  He didn’t say what he ordered.

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