DIRE STRAITS: The war that Donald Trump says is over continues. 

  US forces yesterday struck Iranian military facilities believed to be the source of “unprovoked” missile, drone, and small boat attacks against American warships in the Strait of Hormuz, US Central Command said. Centcom said Iran targeted three American destroyers but failed to score any hits.

  Trump has repeatedly said Iran “wants to make a deal,” but he has no deal in hand. He bragged on his Truth Social last night about how quickly the three destroyers dealt with the threats and “just like we knocked them out again today, we’ll knock them out a lot harder, and a lot more violently, in the future, if they don’t get their Deal signed, FAST!”

  Every time Iran sends out its swift attack boats the crews must know they’re about to die. David French writes in The NY Times that Donald Trump is flummoxed by the Iranian regime because he doesn’t know how to deal with people willing to die for what they believe. French describes Trump as purely “transactional,” a man to whom every thing and person has a price so long as you name it. French says, “Threatening death to people who are willing to die for their cause doesn’t have the same effect as threatening people who seek mainly wealth and power.”

RACIAL LINES: Tennessee’s Gov. Bill Lee quickly signed a new congressional map into law that carves up Memphis in a way that distributes Black voters into neighboring districts, eliminating the state’s last Black and Democratic House seat.

  It is the first district map drawn since the Supreme Court weakened the provision of the Voting Rights Act that made it necessary to craft majority-minority districts. The court left the door wide open to racial gerrymanders that could be made in the name of party politics. 

  Chief Justice Samuel Alito said in his ruling for the majority that “the Constitution almost never permits the Federal Government or a State to discriminate on the basis of race.” In shooting down discrimination in favor  of Black voters the court made it more difficult to prove discrimination against them.

  Alito said that America has changed since passage of the voting rights act, and Tennessee immediately demonstrated that it has not.

OUTBREAK: Health officials on four continents are tracking as many as 30 passengers who debarked from a cruise ship before the fatal outbreak of hantavirus on board that killed three people. Hantavirus usually infects humans by exposure to rodents, but the variant that hit the cruise ship is believed to be a rare one that spreads person to person.

  The ship Hondius, operated by Oceanwide Expeditions, originated its cruise at the southern tip of Argentina and was bound thousands of miles to Cape Verde off Africa. A Dutch couple, both of whom died, are believed to have contracted the virus while on a bird watching trip in Argentina.

  The ship is on the way to the Canary Islands with about 150 people still quarantined on board.

BLACK GOLD: The national average price of gasoline has risen to $4.66 because of the Iran war, according to AAA.

  Not everyone is hurting. The British oil giant Shell reported  profit of $6.92 billion in the first three months of the year, up 24 percent over the previous quarter.

  In a understatement, Shell said the strong profit came amid an “unprecedented disruption in global energy markets.” 

TAXING SITUATION: New York’s democratic socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani is in a confrontation with billionaire investor Ken Griffin over taxing the second homes that the ultra-rich keep in the city. Mamdani made a video of himself standing outside the Central Park South tower where Griffin keeps the $238 million penthouse he barely uses.

  Standing outside Griffin’s tower, Mamdani announced an annual fee on second homes worth more than $5 million, specifically mentioning Griffin and his penthouse. Griffin said that the video put him in danger and, “To turn me into a political puppet was just in poor taste, really poor taste.”

  Griffin’s 23,000-square-foot penthouse is the most expensive home ever sold in the United States and is valued at just $9.4 million by the city for tax purposes. New York requires luxury condos and co-ops like Griffin’s to be assessed on the hypothetical income they would generate if they were rental properties, far less than their sale value.

  Mamdani said his tax would rake in $500 million for the city. 

INFINITE SCROLL:

— A panel of federal appeals judges indicated yesterday that they would not give the green light for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to punish Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a retired Navy captain and former astronaut, for appearing in a video warning active-duty service members they have a duty not to follow illegal orders.

  The video outraged Hegseth, although all it did was recap the code of military justice. Two of the three judges on the panel appeared to side with Kelly’s claim that Hegseth’s attempt to reduce his retirement rank was an attack on his right to free speech. 

— A panel of federal judges found that President Trump violated the law when he imposed a 10 percent tariff on most importers following the Supreme Court ruling striking down his  previous regime of punishing trade tariffs.

THE OBIT PAGE: Philip Caputo, who wrote the blistering novel “A Rumor of War” about the disillusioning experience of being a Marine in Vietnam, died at home in Norwalk, Connecticut at age 84.

  Caputo wrote that his book was about “the things men do in war and the things war does to them.”It is considered one of the greatest books written about war.

BELOW THE FOLD: A German tourist was awarded about $1,100 in damages because he and his family were never able to secure longe chairs in the sun while on vacation in Greece because other guests got all the loungers first.

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