THE NEW YORK TIMES' Tyler Pager, Farnaz Fassihi, Elian Peltier and Aaron Boxerman report:
Vice President JD Vance said on Sunday that 21 hours of peace talks in Pakistan, between the United States and Iran had failed to produce an agreement to end the war, leaving the question of what happens after the current two-week cease-fire up in the air.
“They have chosen not to accept our terms,” Mr. Vance said in a brief news conference in Islamabad, though he left open the possibility that terms could still be reached. “We leave here with a very simple proposal: a method of understanding that is our final and best offer,” he added. “We’ll see if the Iranians accept it.”
President Donald Trump was booed while entering a UFC event on Saturday night with his family walking behind him, just as news broke that negotiations between the United States and Iran had failed.
Vice President JD Vance announced the negotiations had stalled without reaching any agreement over the ongoing war during a speech in Islamabad, Pakistan, while Trump was walking next to Dana White at UFC 327 in Miami.
hile talks were taking place, Michael Crowley, Julian E. Barnes, Adam Rasgon and Tyler Pager report:
As high-level U.S. and Iranian officials met to negotiate an extended cease-fire, two American Navy destroyers entered the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday and destroyed an Iranian surveillance drone approaching one of the ships, according to multiple U.S. officials.
The operation was the beginning stage of an effort to clear mines from the strait and demonstrate to commercial tankers that the waterway could be transited safely.
The two Navy ships sailed from the Gulf of Oman before entering the Strait of Hormuz and then turning around, according to U.S. officials and others briefed on the operation. It is not clear exactly when the Iranian surveillance drone was destroyed. One person briefed on the operation said the drone was likely meant to signal a threat to the U.S. warships.
[. . .]
Iran strongly denied that the American warships had entered the critical international waterway on Saturday.
So maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. The administration lies repeatedly. They're estranged from the truth. For example, Julia Ornedo (THE DAILY BEAST) reports:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s chest-thumping claims about Iran’s losses don’t appear to line up with intelligence assessments.
Iran still has thousands of ballistic missiles that could be pulled out of hiding or dug up from underground storage sites, officials familiar with U.S. intelligence assessments revealed to The Wall Street Journal.
The report undercuts the self-proclaimed secretary of war’s claims that Iran’s missile program has been obliterated.
Hegseth is only one liar in the administration. Kristi Noem headed a whole department of liars when she was the Secretary of Homeland Security. And there's Doctor Oz. Ali Swenson (AP) reports:
President Donald Trump's administration this week acknowledged it made a significant error in figures it used to help justify a fraud probe into New York’s Medicaid program, a glaring mistake that undercuts a federal campaign to tackle waste, mostly in Democratic-led states.
The error, which the administration admitted first to The Associated Press, prompted health analysts to question how many of the Republican administration’s sweeping anti-fraud efforts around the country were based on faulty findings. One of a few mischaracterizations it made about New York's Medicaid program, it also reflected a common criticism that’s been made of Trump’s second administration — that it tends to attack first and confirm the facts later.
“These numbers could have been cleared up in a phone call, so it’s really slapdash,” said Fiscal Policy Institute senior health policy adviser Michael Kinnucan, whose recent analysis called attention to the Trump administration’s inaccurate claim.
The mistake appeared in comments made last month by Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in a social media video and in a letter to New York’s Democratic governor announcing the fraud investigation.
And you can't talk lies from the administration and leave out the Justice Dept, right? Daniel Hampton (RAW STORY) reports:
An eye-popping detail buried in a new Bloomberg report may explain why the Justice Department keeps getting caught making errors in federal court: Pam Bondi told her lawyers to treat the president as their client — and now they're afraid to push back on anything.
A February 2025 memo from Bondi directed DOJ attorneys to "vigorously" defend Trump's policies and referred to them as "his" counsel, according to a former Justice Department attorney who spoke anonymously to Bloomberg. The result, sources say, is a culture where lawyers are wary of pressing federal agencies about the accuracy of information they receive, because challenging it feels like challenging the boss.
The consequences are now playing out in courtrooms across the country.
In March, DOJ lawyers admitted to using incorrect information to defend migrant arrests in Manhattan, made inaccurate statements in a Rhode Island hearing about voter records, and missed a key deadline in Washington state due to unfamiliarity with local procedures.
Again, the entire administration lies. But it's the lies about the Iran war that really register as Americans suffer daily. Robert Reich notes:
Trump gas — like Trump shoes, Trump cologne, the Trump Bible, Trump shoes, Trump NFTs, Trump crypto, Trump resorts, Trump University, and everything else he’s tried to sell as a good deal — is turning out to be a ripoff.
The average cost of gas tracked by the AAA was $4.17 a gallon yesterday. The station at the end of my street is selling it for over $5 now. If you drive a Mini-Cooper, as I do, which demands premium grade, you’re shelling out over well over $6.
To put this in perspective, the average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. the day before Trump launched his war was $2.98. Between then and today, the U.S. has experienced the largest increase in gas prices in 60 years.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) denounced the Department of Defense’s (DoD) restrictions imposed on Stars and Stripes, the military’s editorially independent newspaper.
“DoD’s new policy threatens the credibility of Stars and Stripes, and the reliable flow of unbiased news to service members…We urge you to immediately rescind DoD’s new policy and restore editorial independence guaranteed by the First Amendment to Stars and Stripes,” wrote the senators.
In March, DoD issued a memo giving DoD political appointees more authority over Stars and Stripes, placing new restrictions on its reporters and the paper’s independent ombudsman, and limiting civilian editors from publishing wire service stories unless “approved by” a DoD political appointee, even for sports and coverage of war zone areas. DoD’s memo imposes new rules on Stars and Stripes, including calling for the reprint of DoD official statements in the paper, restricting journalists’ ability to conduct investigative journalism, and limiting access to DoD sources.
“These changes are in direct conflict with decades of Congressional reforms that addressed previous eras of censorship at the paper,” continued the senators.
DoD has attempted to place restrictions on dozens of media organizations across the political spectrum, and those policies were found unconstitutional for violating bedrock First Amendment protections and engaging in viewpoint discrimination.
Stars and Stripes has a decades-long history of independent journalism. DoD formally codified many of Congress’s recommendations to protect Stars and Stripes in 1994, including the appointment of a civilian editor in chief and the insulation of editorial decision-making from DoD officials.
“The mission of Stars and Stripes to provide ‘independent news and information to the U.S. military community’ is more important now than ever as tens of thousands of service members are deployed to the Middle East,” wrote the senators.
In times of war and limited access to media, Stars and Stripes is distributed freely to deployed troops, a service the senators called “a vital, independent link that keeps service members informed about the government and country for which they put their lives on the line.”
“DoD should immediately rescind restrictions on Stars and Stripes (and) restore the DoD policies that guaranteed the paper’s editorial independence to be governed by First Amendment principles,” concluded the senators.
The lawmakers asked DoD to explain, by April 22, 2026, the decision to limit Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence, which of Stars and Stripes’ past articles have violated DoD rules, and the extent of the involvement of DoD political appointees in editorial decision-making at the paper.
In January, DoD rescinded editorial protections that have stood for over 30 years. The senators spoke out in support of the newspaper and urged DoD to reverse course and instead protect its editorial independence in line with the First Amendment.
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