THE WAR ROOM: Iran sent negotiators back to Pakistan for talks with the US. President Trump is sending his son-in-law Jared Kushner and personal envoy Steve Witkoff, as one Democrat said, “a couple of real estate guys from New Jersey.”

  Despite Trump’s claim this week that he could make a deal any time he wants, he doesn’t have one in hand. Now both the US and Iran are blocking the Strait of Hormuz, choking the movement of twenty percent of the world’s oil supply and raising gasoline prices around the globe.

  Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said yesterday that the US is prepared to keep the blockade in place for as long as it takes. He opened his press conference with pure propaganda saying, “Unlike the endless wars of the past that dragged on for years and for decades with little to show for it, Operation Epic Fury has delivered a decisive military result in just weeks.” He said, “It’s a bold and dangerous mission, a gift to the world, historic, courtesy of a bold and historic President.”

 Hegseth and Trump continue to claim total victory without being able to secure peace and a resumption of world commerce.

  Trump says high gas prices are a small price to pay for a nuclear free Iran. Iran has insisted that it has a right to enrich uranium and even have nuclear weapons. 

REVENGE SERVED: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is doing everything in his short-term power to investigate, indict, and prosecute President Trump perceived enemies, The NY Times reports.

  Blanche, formerly Trump’s personal defense lawyer, is moving ahead against multiple targets including John Brennan, the former C.I.A. director who helped investigate Russian influence in Trump’s 2016 campaign, the Democratic fund-raising organization ActBlue, former FBI Director James Comey, and state prosecutor Fani Willis in Atlanta.

  Blanche has even given the green light to going after Cassidy Hutchinson, the first-term Trump Administration low-level aide who testified before Congress that Trump was complicit in the January 6^th insurrection.

  But in what must be a disappointment to Trump, the Justice Department dropped its investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who the President loves to hate.

HARD TO SWALLOW: President Trump is reported to have spoken for an hour Thursday night at a dinner thrown “honoring the Trump White House” by Paramount owner David Ellison and executives of CBS News.

  Only in an upside down universe would journalists attend a dinner to honor the man who calls them fake news. CBS News did not report on the event.

  Present from CBS were several executives and correspondents including former anchor Norah O’Donnell; Jan Crawford, the chief legal correspondent; Nancy Cordes, the chief White House correspondent; and Weijia Jiang, the White House correspondent who is president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

  Guests from the administration included Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller, the architect of deportation policy, subjects of near daily coverage.

INFINITE SCROLL:

— A federal appeals court ruled to block President Trump’s executive order suspending asylum access at the southern border, a pillar of the President’s crack down on immigration.

— The Department of Homeland Security has issued new guidance that immigrants can be denied a green card for such activities as participating in pro-Palestinian campus protests, criticizing Israel on social media, and desecrating the American flag.

— The Trump administration said it would allow the use of firing squads in federal executions. President Trump has been pushing for more executions.

— President Trump is ending his boycott and attending the annual White House Correspondents dinner in Washington tonight, the event known as the “nerd prom.” 

— In his campaign to re-make Washington, the President told reporters yesterday that he’s going to have the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool resurfaced to an “American flag blue.” He said, “You’re going to end up with a beautiful, beautiful reflecting pool, the way it’s supposed to be. Much better than it ever was, actually.”

MURDER BEAT: The mystery of two missing doctoral students at the University of South Florida is unravelling after the body of one of them was found on a Tampa Bay bridge and a roommate was arrested for murder.

  Zamil Limon and his friend Nahida Bristy, both from Bangladesh, had been missing since last week. After Limon’s body was found police arrested his roommate, Hisham Abugharbieh.

  Although her body has not been found, police have told the family of Bristy that they believe she also was killed based on the amount of blood found in Abugharbieh’s apartment. 

THE OBIT PAGE: Joy Harmon, the actress who soaped her way into Hollywood memory with the car washing scene in the 1967 Paul Newman move “Cool Hand Luke,” died earlier this month at age 87.

  With platinum blonde hair, ice blue eyes, and a figure to kill, Harmon appeared in a tight housedress as she leaned over a 1941 DeSoto with a working chain gang across the road, dripping soapy water on her chest.

  “Hey, Lord, whatever I’ve done, don’t strike me blind for another couple of minutes,” the character of George Kennedy says.

  Oh, God, she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” another prisoner says.

  “She knows exactly what she’s doing,” Paul Newman’s Luke responds. “She’s driving us crazy and loving every minute of it.”

  Harmon went on to have bit parts in movies and television, but her role as “the girl” washing a car in “Cool Hand Luke” was the pinnacle of her career.

THE SPIN RACK: Wealthy big game hunter Ernie Dosio, 75, from California was trampled to death by elephants while on a hunt in Gabon. Dosio, was looking to kill a yellow-backed duiker, a deer-like animal, when he startled five elephants in the bush. 

BELOW THE FOLD:  Maryland is set to become the first state to ban “surveillance pricing,” charging grocery customers based on personal information about where they live, what they have previously bought and shop for online.