THE WAR ROOM: Unable to bring Iran to its knees with bombing and threats of further bombing to send it back to the Stone Age, President Trump now says he will impose nuclear economic sanctions on the country he can’t defeat.

  The President posted on his Truth Social that: “Therefore, today, I am announcing the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY! This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale.”

  Of course, this being Trump, it will be economic warfare like nobody’s ever seen before. He went on to threaten any country that helps or gives Iran an economic lifeline. Trump bragged; “This will be an ECONOMIC D-DAY, and we need all of our Allies to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat. These maniacs are on the ropes, and these HISTORIC MEASURES will cripple them and their ability to project terror worldwide. IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON.”

STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER: The publisher of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, Max Lederer, has quit citing new editorial controls imposed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

  The Stars and Stripes has a long history of independence, legendarily defended by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower during World War II who thought the troops should not be fed military propaganda. He shielded the famous cartoonist Bill Mauldin, who drew his characters dirty, bearded, and cynical in the trenches.

  Not so under Pete Hegseth, who decreed that the paper cannot publish cartoons or any material from outside sources, including the Associated Press. A killer line in the memo outlining the new rules says, “Stripes content must be consistent with good order and discipline of the military.”

  The DOD is also pushing to make the newspaper strictly digital. Willie and Joe would have to find someplace to recharge their devices in a trench outside Bastogne.

INFINITE SCROLL:

— The US national debt hit $40 trillion yesterday despite President Trump’s campaign promise to reduce it. The country is on track this year alone to borrow $2 trillion to pay the bills.

  Back in 2016 Trump said he would eliminate the national debt within eight years.

— The Department of Homeland Security is openly threatening deportation for tens of thousands immigrants who lost temporary protected status as the result of court rulings. Among those are the Haitian immigrants in Illinois wrongly accused of eating their neighbors’ pets.

  Homeland Security posted on Twitter/X that, “Under President Trump, the TPS grift is OVER. Those with terminated status have two options: either leave NOW or be REMOVED.”

  DHS General Counsel James Percival said in an interview on the right wing Newsmax that  TPS designations were a “bait and switch and a grift on the American people.”

— The Kennedy Center in Washington plans to add President Donald Trump’s name back to the front of the building, lawyers for the center told a federal judge in legal filings. They say the center will add an inscription below the Kennedy Center’s sign that says the venue was “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”

  The filings also say another reference to Trump may be added after endowment reaches $100 million. Meanwhile, the tarpaulins covering the Kennedy name remain in place.

— Down deep in a NY Times magazine story to be published this weekend about the role Secretary Pete Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, at the Pentagon, writer Elisabeth Bumiller notes that the Hegseths are members of  Christ Church Washington, owned by the Conservative Partnership Institute, part of an evangelical organization that believes the United States should be a Christian nation and that votes should be cast only one per household, ideally led by a man.

SQUISH CONTROL: New rules went into effect this week for environmentally conscious California for how much replacement tires can deform while moving,  a phenomenon known as “squish.” 

  The more a tire squishes the more energy it takes to move the car, burning more gasoline. Replacement tires tend to have more rolling resistance than original equipment. California imposed its squish limits to further reduce air pollution in a state that already regulates tailpipe emissions.

CENTER COURT: Dr. Renée Richards, an ophthalmologist who as a tennis player in the late 1970s became the world’s most famous transgender athlete, is now 92 years old and says in a new biography that she regrets suing the world of professional tennis to be able to play in women’s tournaments.

  Richards was Dr. Richard Raskind before she transitioned. She successfully gained entry into some women’s competitions and was denied by others. Richards said in a recent interview that, “If a male who becomes a female went through male puberty, that person has an advantage over other females who were never males in the beginning and didn’t develop larger long bones and bigger chest cavities and larger hearts and a greater amount of muscle mass and bigger cardiac output and lung capacity.”

  Richards said being deprived of testosterone is not an equalizer. She said that at the time she was competing; “I was selfish. I was looking out for myself. I was trying to do, first of all, what was good for me and making me happy, and only secondly, what was fair for the world.”   

THE SPIN RACK: Britain’s Prince Harry and actor wife Meghan Markle are moving back to England after six years in the US. It’s possible that the cost of living in Santa Barbara is squeezing them out. Harry, who has strained relations with his father, King Charles, and the rest of the royal family, will remain a non-working royal. 

BELOW THE FOLD: College admission standards just aren’t what they used to be. The frat bro who ran a big cocaine dealership at Penn State University was busted in part because he was accepting payment through a Venmo account established in his real name.

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