BLUSTER BOMBS: Announcing further strikes on Iranian targets near the Strait of Hormuz, President Trump on his Truth Social threatened: “If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!”

  He’s made big threats before, declared victory before, and Iran is still in business, still in the fight. 

  Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps said in statements that it had responded to US strikes launching missiles against an American military base in Jordan and military equipment warehouses in Iraq.

   Iran said the US strikes had it a wedding, killing four people and wounding 53.

The spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry said on social media that, “Iran will respond to these savage crimes with firmness.”

  US Central Command said it had struck Iranian air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets and facilities, mine laying capabilities and communications sites.

CHAIN OF COMMAND: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week “redlined” the promotion of six Army officers to the rank of two-star general, forcing their retirement. This came just days after Hegseth blocked promotions of four Army officers to one-star rank.

  Hegseth’s gutting of senior leadership is what contributed to the resignation of the Secretary of the Army. The defense secretary has not explained the firings and passovers that cause officers to resign, but there’s a political odor to this.

  The NY Times reports that while the US is at war with Iran and tensions are heating all over the world, Hegseth has fired or blocked the promotions of more than 80 generals and admirals, a purge of about 10 percent of the military’s top officers. 

MAIL FRAUD: A federal whistleblower  warned Congress that a rushed and insufficiently tested Postal Service system could prevent thousands of Americans from receiving mail ballots this fall if courts approve President Trump’s restrictions for the midterm elections.

  Trump has repeatedly made the unsupported claim that voting by mail is rife with fraud.

  Connecticut Democratic. Sen. Richard Blumenthal says the Postal Service has adopted a “zero-percent failure policy” under which an entire batch of potentially thousands of ballots would be rejected if a single barcode sampled by a postal employee could not be scanned or matched with information submitted through a new online portal. 

  A federal judge has blocked Trump’s order restricting mail voting but the administration and the postal service are preparing to act if the block is lifted. Under the administration and postal service plan, state and local election officials would have to upload lists of voters to an online Postal Service portal and employees would refuse to deliver a ballot to anyone not on those lists.

DEADLOCK: The jury in the Lindsay Clancy child murder case reported that they are deadlocked but the judge sent them back to keep deliberating. Clancy admits that she strangled ger three children back in 2023 but her defense claims she did it because of postpartum psychosis.

  Complicating the question for the jury is five possible verdicts from guilty of first degree murder to not guilty by reason of insanity.

CHANGE OF HEART: British right wing rabble rouser Milo Yiannopoulos has had a change of heart about his support for Donald Trump and his deportation campaign after being deported himself. Yiannopoulos called the experience “humiliating,” “disorienting” and “physically degrading” in an interview with fellow Brit Piers Morgan.

  The former editor of the right wing Breitbart News was deported for overstaying his visa. He said, “I didn’t really understand the physical reality of how institutionalized the brutality is in America.”

  Back in 2025 Yiannopoulos said in a social media post that, “There is one concrete thing we must insist on this administration delivering. “We have got to deport millions and millions and millions of people. Without that, nothing else matters.”

 But there’s nothing like being deported yourself. Yiannopoulos told Morgan that he is “very ashamed” for having supported Trump. “I think maybe, in the past, I’ve been a little bit blase when people talked about their trauma,” he said. “But I get it now, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

INFINITE SCROLL: 

— The Justice Department sued the public schools in Kansas City, Kansas yesterday, accusing the district of facilitating the “secret transition” of students’ gender without the  knowledge or consent of their parents. It is the first such lawsuit.

  Harmeet Dhillon, the firebrand assistant attorney general for civil rights, said in a statement that, “The department will not tolerate school districts playing fast and loose with federal law in the service of radical gender ideology.” You know it’s political when they refer to “gender ideology.”

  Dhillon has been a driver of the administration’s fight with elite universities over diversity, equity programs and alleged antisemitism. 

THE OBIT PAGE: Novelist, poet, and environmentalist Wendell Berry died at home in Port Royal, Kentucky at age 92.

  An English professor at New York University by the time he was 28, berry left the big city and its literary life to return to the Kentucky land where seven generations of his family had spent their lives. His obituary on the NPR website says, “He spent his life farming his land for food and for prose.”

THE SPIN RACK: Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey at age 80 fended off a primary challenge by a much younger candidate to win his party’s nomination for a third term. Markey will be … or could be … 87 at the end the next Senate term. — Apple’s new CEO John Ternus will get an annual pay package of $58 million.

BELOW THE FOLD: Two women in San Francisco have established a startup for teaching rich tech bros how to dress for dates. One tip; Don’t wear the Patagonia Fleece vest you wear to the office.