THE WAR ROOM: The US and Iran traded attacks in the past day shaking the ceasefire once again. The US hit  radar and command sites in southern Iran and Iran struck an American military base in Kuwait.

  The US said it had retaliated for Iran shooting down an American drone. The Pentagon has lost as many as two-dozen multi-million dollar Predator and Reaper drones during the war.

  President Trump is reported to have toughened the terms he is demanding in an agreement to extend the ceasefire and lay the ground for talks to end the conflict. The deal had previously been described as close to complete.

  Trump posted at 1 am that; “Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us.” 

IN THE CROSSHAIRS: The number of dead in US strikes on suspected drug boats hit 202 over the weekend. The Pentagon said three more people were killed in a strike in the eastern Pacific against a boat that was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations.”

  The legally questionable strikes have been carried out in relative secrecy. While it is the US military destroying them, the boats in international waters manned by civilians have not been involved in direct attacks on US territory. Their destruction is a possible violation of military law, if not US civilian law.

THE DIRT: News broke over the weekend that Graham Platner, the oyster farmer running as a Democrat for Senator from Maine, once had a blowup in his marriage in which he was caught sending sexual messages to a half-dozen women.

  The Marine veteran also used to sport a Nazi skull and crossbones tattoo on his chest. Platner’s candidacy is testing the limits of the character in Democrat ranks. 

PARDON HER: Tina Peters, the former Republican elections clerk in Grand Junction who was sentenced to nine years in prison for tampering with voting machines in an attempt to show that the 2020 vote was rigged against Donald Trump, is set for release today after her sentence was commuted by Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.

  President Trump had campaigned for Peters’ release and Polis says Peters was harshly punished more for her beliefs than for any actual damage to the voting process. 

  Peters is not sorry. “I have always said I will never back down, I will never give up, and I will never give in,” she said in a May 22 social media post. “I will keep speaking the truth.”

INFINITE SCROLL: 

— President Trump called for cancellation of a concert series celebrating the country’s 250th birthday this summer after most of the musicians pulled out. “We should have a giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY, for 250,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social, “instead of having overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring, and yet who do nothing but complain.”

  Some of the musicians who bowed out said they had not known there would be a political component to the series.

  Trump wrote, “I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!” 

  Speaking of dead. One act booked for the concert series is Milli Vanilli, the duo notoriously caught in 1989 lip synching words sung by singers who could actually sing. Not only that, but one of the original pair who couldn’t sing died of a drug and alcohol overdose. There’s something about booking Milli Vanilla that’s appropriate for Trump.

— Evidently Abraham Lincoln needed a DronePort for national security in a White House ballroom President Trump says the US has been lacking for generations.

  In his online food fight with the federal judge blocking the ballroom’s construction, Trump posted that; “The DronePort at the White House Ballroom will be, perhaps, the most sophisticated anywhere in the World! It will safeguard our Nation’s Capital, Washington, D.C., long into the future.”

  So now the ballroom that Trump originally said was for dining and dancing would be an integral part of defending the nation’s capital. Trump wrote, “With the advent of highly sophisticated, and powerful, modern day weaponry, we can no longer defend Washington, DC, with rifles and pistols, alone.” No, we are going to defend it with a strategic ballroom.

— As many as 10,000 lawyers have left the government in President Trump’s gutting of federal agencies, leaving many of them understaffed for legal expertise, according to an analysis by The NY Times. Roughly one in five lawyers who worked in the government at the end of 2024 had left by March of this year, according to the Times analysis.

  Trump posted on his Truth Social that, “The people that are leaving are Radical Left Deep State Lunatics, who are destroying our Country, and Weaponizing Government.”

HOOP DREAMS: The San Antonio Spurs beat the Oklahoma Thunder 111-103 Saturday to meet the New York Knicks for the NBA championship. Game one is on Wednesday night in San Antonio. 

THE SPIN RACK: Clashes with police continue outside Delaney Hall, an ICE facility in Newark that protesters says has inhumane conditions for immigrant detainees. — Frankie Valli, the falsetto voice of the 1960s rock group the Four Seasons, cancelled the remainder of the band’s 2026 tour, citing health concerns. He’s 92 and The Four Seasons had their first hits with “Sherry” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry” in 1962. 

BELOW THE FOLD: “Obsession,” a horror movie made and directed by 26-year-old YouTuber Curry Barker for roughly $750,000, so far has made almost $150 million.