HOLDING FIRE: President Trump announced yesterday that at the request of leaders from three Persian Gulf countries he’s going to “hold off on our planned Military attack of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was scheduled for tomorrow.”

  The request, according to Trump, came from leaders of  Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Trump said, “serious negotiations are now taking place” and that  “a Deal will be made, which will be very acceptable to the United States of America.”

  He said, however, that he told the Pentagon to be prepared to go forward with “a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice, in the event that an acceptable Deal is not reached.”

THE SHOOTING GALLERY: Three people were killed before two teenage shooters took their own lives in an attack on a Mosque yesterday outside San Diego.

  A security guard who was killed is being credited with fending off a much worse attack. The other two victims were not identified.

  The shooters are reported to have been 17 and 19 years old, found dead in their car. The LA Times reports that that investigators found anti-Islamic writings and a suicide note inside the vehicle where the gunmen’s bodies were found.

HUMAN INTELLIGENCE: The jury in Tesla billionaire Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and chief executive, Sam Altman, took only two hours to rule that Musk had waited too long to sue, missing the deadline.

  Musk in 2015 co-founded the artificial intelligence company OpenAI with Altman as a nonprofit and accused the artificial intelligence giant of “stealing a charity” by converting it to a profit-making business.

CRIME PAYS: The Justice Department announced that it established a $1.776 billion fund with a symbolic figure to compensate people who claim to have been victims of “lawfare,” political prosecution by the Biden administration. January 6^th rioters could be included.

  This came after President Trump withdrew his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for the leak of his tax returns revealing that for years he paid no federal taxes.

  “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” said Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general who used to be Trump’s personal defense lawyer. 

  A group of five people to be appointed by the attorney general will oversee awards out of the fund.

INFINITE SCROLL:

— In what is considered to be a major breach of decorum and ethics, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth campaigned yesterday for Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL challenging Rep. Thomas Massie in today’s Kentucky Republican primary.

  Hegseth said, “Too often Thomas Massie has acted like his job is to stand apart from the movement that President Trump leads instead of strengthening it.” 

  Massie became a designated enemy of Donald Trump after voting against his tax legislation, the war in Iran, and agitating for release of the files on sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Trump has called Massie a “major sleazebag,” a “moron,” and the “Worst Republican Congressman in History.” 

— The President declared on his Truth Social feed that Maryland “sent out 500,000 Illegal Mail In Ballots, and they got caught!” and said he would order the Justice Department to investigate. He claimed, “many of these Ballots went to Democrats, so any Republican running in Maryland doesn’t have a chance!”

  Maryland’s Board of Election said they received 500,000 requests for mail ballots and that some ballots for the wrong political party were sent to voters. Trump has campaigned against voting by mail, which he claims is rife with fraud.

— The Brookings Institution says it believes that about 100,000 children have been separated from immigrant parents who have been detained or deported. Brookings says it believes that the numbers are bigger than government figures because detainees often do not report that they have children left behind.

— The teenager in the Oval Office yesterday put up 61 social media posts between 9am and 10:25pm.

THE OBIT PAGE: Former Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Furman, whose racist past was used by the defense to punch a major hole in the 1995 murder case against retired football star OJ Simpson, died in Idaho at age 74.

  Simpson was infamously found not guilty of the horrific stabbing murder of his estranged wife Nicole and a friend, Ron Goldman. Furman was to be a star witness who could testify about responding to domestic violence calls at Nicole’s home in years before the murders. 

  But Furman ended up on trial himself. One witness used to discredit the detective testified that he had heard Furman say that if it were up to him, Black people “would be gathered together and burned.” 

  In the end, the only person convicted in the Simpson case was Furman, who pleaded “no contest” to perjury.

THE SPIN RACK:  A many as 29,000 people are under evacuation orders as a brushfire moves through the hills in Simi Valley, outside Los Angeles. — Long Island Railroad workers reached a deal to end their strike. Partial service resumes at noon, full service at 4pm. — The bodies of all the divers who died deep in an underwater cave in the Maldives have been recovered. Four of the five were found in the third chamber furthest from the entrance, 164 feet down. — ICE officer Christian Castro is charged in Minnesota with four counts of assault for firing his gun through the front door of a home, wounding a Venezuelan man. — A woman from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania last month found a 3.09 carat white diamond at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. People roam the park every day looking for diamonds and Keshia Smith stumbled on a big one.  

BELOW THE FOLD: The National Portrait Gallery has restored mention of Donald Trump’s two impeachments next to his picture because he was impeached … twice … so far.