THE WAR ROOM: The US and Iran have traded fire again threatening the shaky truce. “I think it’s over,” President Trump said. He called Iran’s leaders  “evil, sick people” and “cancer.’’

  Oil prices jumped six percent on the news.

  The US revoked permission for Iran to sell oil around the world and carried out air strikes in  response to what the Pentagon said were Iranian attacks on three commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

  US Central Command said on social media that its forces “have begun launching a series of powerful strikes against Iran to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway.”

  Iran says it hit US military targets in Bahrain and Kuwait. 

  The US had waived its sanctions on the sale of Iranian oil as an encouragement to make a permanent peace deal, showing Iran how much money would be in it for them.

  Speaking in Turkey earlier President Trump was dismissive of the situation. “The war with Iran — or whatever you call it, it’s not even a war,” Trump said. “It’s a military operation. It’s a denuclearization, that’s really what it is.”

THE BALLOT FIX: In further attempts to control voting, President Trump and his administration say they will withhold anti-terrorism funding from states that refuse to change their election rules, including a switch to paper ballots and verification of citizenship.

  The Justice Department also sent letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia threatening criminal prosecution of top election officials if ballots cast by noncitizens were counted in upcoming elections. Vote fraud and voting by non-citizens in any significant numbers have never been proven to exist.  

  In the matter of anti-terrorism funding, FEMA, the federal emergency management administration, told states that it will withhold 20 percent of some terrorism-preparedness grants unless they comply.  The grants, which total $1 billion a year, help pay for such things as physical barriers and other security measures, as well as planning, drills, and cybersecurity protections.

  Trump’s restrictions would most likely just make it more difficult to vote.

  The Constitution clearly gives states the power to control voting and similar attempts by the Trump administration have been blocked. But that does not stop Trump from attempting an end run.

  As for non-citizen voting, the letter from Harmeet Dhillon at the Justice Department’s civil rights division says that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on the state’s voter list “or facilitates noncitizens in receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.”

  The letter gives the states five days to say how they would comply. 

VIVE LE PEN: An appeals court confirmed the embezzlement conviction of far right French leader Marine le Pen, but shortened the amount of time she must sit on the sidelines before running again for president. She can now make her fourth run in 2027.

  Le Pen ran second to Emmanuel Macron in 2022, winning more than 41 percent of the vote.

  Le Pen has claimed that the charges against her were part of a political witch hunt … a familiar theme … and would deprive millions of French people of their votes in the next election. Incredibly, Le Pen is a declared candidate for French president who is required to wear an ankle monitor. 

INFINITE SCROLL: 

— Speaking at the NATO summit in Turkey, President Trump reiterated the US “need” to possess Greenland and threatened countries that did not support the US-Israeli war on Iran.

  The president called the Spanish “hopeless, bad people” and said he was cutting off trade with the country. He denounced France, Germany, Italy, and Britain for not joining the war on Iran. 

— The dean of Yale Law School and some faculty members are trying to block a deal with the Trump administration regarding the university’s admissions practices, arguing that the potential agreement would jeopardize the school’s independence and threaten the rule of law.

  Trump has been trying to eliminate diversity, equity initiatives in admissions. Yale might have to knuckle under to continue receiving federal money.

THE OBIT PAGE: Louise Lasser, the comedic actress who starred in the 1970s Norman Lear sendup of soap operas “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” died on Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 87.

  Lasser started her career in Woody Allen movies and was married to him, but it was “Mary Hartman” that made her and her character a household name. She played an Ohio housewife dealing with sex scandals and even mass murder while wearing pigtails and worrying about waxy yellow buildup on the kitchen floor. 

THE SPIN RACK: A federal appeals court struck down parts of Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act” that restricts the teaching of ideas related to race, sexism, and unconscious bias in college classrooms. The court ruled 2-to-1 that the state cannot control the speech of a professor whose salary it pays. The law “runs headlong” into the Supreme Court’s endorsements of academic freedom, wrote the two judges who voted in the majority. — Immigration and Customs Enforcement says one of its officers shot and killed an illegal Mexican immigrant trying to run over the officer with his car in Houston. An ICE spokesperson said, “From information we are receiving, he rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer, resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.” — A former Manhattan office building near Grand Central Terminal under conversion to 1600 apartments is in danger of collapse. Steel beams are buckling. An evacuation zone has been set up around the former headquarters of Pfizer drugs as workers try to shore up the building.  

BELOW THE FOLD: Vice President JD Vance and wife Usha have installed a chicken coop at their official residence on the grounds of the National Observatory. No word on who will tend the chickens.