THE WAR ROOM: Stock markets took a dive yesterday and the price of oil rose again in discouragement about the Iran war and President Trump extended his deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz before he orders the bombing of power plants. 
   Trump during a cabinet meeting yesterday continued to bluster that Iran must accept a peace deal or otherwise “we’ll just keep blowing them away.”
  “They’ll tell you, ‘We’re not negotiating,’” Trump said. “Of course, they’re negotiating. They’ve been obliterated.”
  Reports say that Trump’s 15-point peace plan calls for a complete termination of Iran’s nuclear program and strict limits on its missile arsenal. Trump wrote on social media that, “Talks are ongoing and, despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the Fake News Media, and others, they are going very well.”.
  Investors and oil traders don’t believe it. Stocks suffered their largest daily decline since the start of the war.  The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose to $108.01 a barrel, its highest this week.
 
GET ON LINE: Congress is reported to be on the brink of reaching a partial end to the partial government shutdown before leaving for a two week vacation today.
  The agreement approved by the Senate would fund Homeland Security, including the Transportation Security Administration, with the exception of Immigration and Customs (ICE) and the Border Patrol that have been at the front of the immigration crackdown.
  The shutdown has caused hours of waiting on airport security lines President Trump had said he will sign an emergency order to pay TSA agents who have gone without paychecks for weeks, causing at least 500 to quit and many more to call in sick. 
 Trump posted the outright lie that Democrats “are refusing to fund Immigration Enforcement unless the Republicans agree to their Open Border Policies.”  The Democrats are in fact holding out for imposing professional policing standards on ICE and Border Patrol agents.
 
RIGHT TO A LAWYER: A federal judge in new York yesterday questioned why the federal government is blocking the government of Venezuela from paying for the criminal defense of deposed President Nicolás Maduro. Judge Alvin Hellerstein said the “paramount goal” is Maduro’s right to a defense.
 
INFINITE SCROLL:
 
  President Trump delivers shocking news faster than you can forget yesterday.
In his continuing campaign to put his name, likeness, and mark on everything in the White House and Washington, he plans to be the first living president to put his signature on the dollar bill. The Treasury Department says it’s in celebration of the 250^th anniversary of the country.
  This comes on top of plans to put Trump’s face on a “commemorative” gold coin.
  Trump is also reported to be considering converting the second-floor White House Treaty Room into a bedroom with its own bath. The room has historically been a meeting place for diplomats and statesmen.
  Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and William McKinley used the room for cabinet meetings. It’s where the Spanish-American War peace protocol of 1898, and the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963, were signed.
  Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, told The NY Times that; “President Trump is the builder-in-chief with an extraordinary eye for detail and design, and his bold vision will be imprinted upon the fabric of America and be felt by generations to come. His successes will continue to give the White House the glory it deserves.”
  Trump yesterday also defended voting by mail in a special election this week despite his claims that that vote-by-mail is “cheating.” He wants a national law to make it illegal but said that in his case it’s justified “because I’m president.” 
  He also spent several minutes in yesterday’s cabinet meeting extolling the virtues of the $5 Sharpie pens he uses to sign documents as opposed to his predecessors. “I came here. They have thousand-dollar pens, and, you know, you hand pens out, you’re signing and you hand them out. You’re handing them with all these people, sometimes you have 30 or 40 people, and they were $1,000 apiece.”
  Previous presidents did use expensive pens, but they cost about $200 apiece, not $1,000.
 
THE OBIT PAGE: Dash Crofts of the 1970s  duo Seals & Crofts, which had a hit with success with “Summer Breeze,” died in Austin, Texas at 87. Seals died in 2022.
 Both Crofts and Seals were followers of the Baha’i faith and embedded their music with religious themes.  
  “Summer Breeze” hit No. 6 on the charts. “Summer breeze makes me feel fine / Blowing through the jasmine in my mind.”
 
 
THE SPIN RACK:  South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden signed a law that requires proof of citizenship to vote in his state. It does not apply to residents already registered to vote.  — Just eight days after revelations that labor hero Cesar Chavez was a sexual predator, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law re-naming Cesar Chavez Day as “Farmworkers Day” just before the March 31 holiday. — Alpine skiing legend Lindsey Vonn, 41, posed for the cover of Vanity fair in a black dress slit high up her thigh, displaying her left leg bandaged after surgery following her devastating downhill crash at the Olympics. She’s got legs. — Italian authorities seized about $23 million in assets paid for with money stolen from the Swiss actress Ursula Andress, who rose to fame in a white bikini as the first “Bond girl” opposite Sean Connery in “Dr. No.” She’s 90 now.
 
BELOW THE FOLD: Shay Taylor-Allen, 32, spent 10 years as a janitor at  Yale New Haven Hospital, where she was also born, mopping floors and taking out the trash. She is now an anesthesiology resident at the hospital. 
  “I still can’t believe it,” she told The Washington Post. “It is surreal.”
  Raised by a single mother, she started college in 2013. When she told her adviser that she wanted to be a doctor he said, “I just don’t see it for you.”

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