WAR OF WORDS: President Trump backed off his threat that “a whole civilization will die” after 8pm last night and announced a ceasefire with Iran just 90 minutes before his deadline.

  The US announced that it had stopped its air strikes and Iran’s foreign minister said his country would “cease their defensive operation,” and “for a period of two weeks” allow shipping through the Strait of Hormuz if coordinated with Iran’s military.

  Trump posted just after midnight, “Big money will be made. Iran can start the reconstruction process.”

  This came after American forces had carried out 90 strikes on Kharg Island, Iran’s oil export hub, in an effort to ensure that military targets were disabled. The US said Iranian oil facilities were not hit.

  Iran also had stepped up attacks both before and after the announcement of ceasefire. The deal, if it holds, includes Israel and its war against both Iran and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

  The price of oil immediately slipped nearly $20 a barrel on news of the ceasefire that had been pushed on all parties by Pakistan. Stock futures rose. 

   President Trump’s turnaround yesterday was at least the fourth time he set a deadline for Iran and relented. Trump had said in an earlier social media post yesterday that; “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”

  With Trump, who ever knows?

  At 6:30 last night Trump announced a 10-point peace proposal that he described as “workable” and that his reason for stopping the bombing “is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.”

— Shortly after the ceasefire agreement was reached, President Trump accused CNN of reporting a fake statement of victory from the Iranian Security Council that read, “The enemy, in its unfair, unlawful, and criminal war against the Iranian nation, has suffered an undeniable, historic, and crushing defeat.”

  Trump posted a more conciliatory statement in which Iran’s minister of foreign affairs said, “If attacks against Iran are halted, our Powerful Armed Forces will cease their defensive operations.”

  Trump posted: “Authorities are looking to determine whether or not a crime was committed on the issuance of the Fake CNN World Statement, or was it a sick rogue player? CNN is being ordered to immediately withdraw this Statement with full apologies for their, as usual, terrible ‘reporting.’”

  CNN and other news outlets say they verified the statement they reported from the Iranian Security Council.

THE MOON AND BACK: This morning the Orion space capsule is 207,000 miles from Earth on its return journey.

  NASA released spectacular photos taken by the crew on their flyby of the moon.

INFINITE SCROLL:

— Acting Attorney Gen. Todd Blanche said “nobody has any idea” what led to Pam Bondi’s firing from the Justice department other than the President. “I grow tired of people in the media saying why President Trump did or didn’t do something because President Trump is the only one that knows that,” Blanche said. 

  Just guessing, but it could have been because of the Epstein files, that Bondi failed to prosecute Trump enemies, and she’s a woman.

— The Justice Department has tasked its civil rights division with investigating Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide who outraged President Trump four years ago when she testified before Congress that he was in part responsible for the January 6^th insurrection. 

  It appears to be yet another effort to prosecute the President’s perceived enemies. The inquiry was opened when Pam Bondi was still the Attorney General. 

— The Senate subcommittee on investigations is looking into the finances and awarding of contracts under former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and her mile-high club aide Corey Lewandowski.

  Under particular scrutiny is Kara Voorhies, who joined DHS as an outside contractor and worked closely with Lewandowski, who also was not a government employee but wielded tremendous power. 

— A man was critically wounded yesterday when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers fired at him during a vehicle stop in Patterson, California. The officers were seeking to arrest Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez, who they said was a gang member and undocumented immigrant wanted in El Salvador for questioning in a murder investigation.

THE SPIN RACK: The newlywed wife of an American soldier snatched on her husband’s Louisiana military base by immigration authorities has been released. Annie Ramos, 22, is an undocumented immigrant who arrived in the US from Honduras as a toddler. She was told that she was under a deportation order issued in 2005 when she was 22 months old. — Freelance American journalist Shelly Kittleson, a Middle East specialist, has been released by the pro-Iran militia that grabbed her off the street in Iraq. — Republican Clay Fuller, a district attorney, won the special election runoff to fill Marjorie Taylor Greene’s seat representing Georgia in the House. He defeated Democrat Shawn Harris, a retired Army general. — After a winter light on snowfall, researchers say they’re measuring record low snowpack in the Colorado Rockies, signaling water shortages to come this summer.  

BELOW THE FOLD: Wireless, a major London-based hip-hop festival, has been cancelled after British authorities banned the event’s headliner Kanye West from entering the country. The government blocked the American rapper, who goes by “Ye”, because of his history of antisemitic statements.

  British music fans will be denied seeing West and more importantly his wife, Bianca Censori, who entertainingly appears in public nearly naked. 

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