Trump Summons Entire Cabinet as Iran Deal Crumbles in Front of Him

Donald Trump is preparing to meet several key administration officials at Camp David on Wednesday as Iranian peace talks fall apart.

The impromptu presidential retreat will include every Cabinet member, including outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

Inclement weather could alter the plans at the eleventh hour, however. Trump typically flies to the 125-acre Maryland compound via helicopter, but heavy rain battering Washington could challenge his route and ultimately change the meeting location.

Trump’s twelfth visit to the Catoctin Mountain park will focus on “recent successes of the administration including economy and small business wins, Task Force to Eliminate Fraud highlights, and foreign policy updates,” a White House official told the Post.

The crumbling prospect of peace with Iran, however, is expected to dominate the conversation.

The U.S. attacked Iranian boats and missile launch sites late Monday, according to U.S. Central Command, violating the ceasefire mere hours after Iranian officials arrived in Qatar for discussions to end the war. The boats were reportedly attempting to lay more mines along the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway between Iran and Oman.

Iranian state media confirmed that some of the attacks hit Bandar Abbas, an Iranian port city that is home to the country’s key naval and air bases. State media reported that explosions occurred in other cities, as well.

CENTCOM characterized the strikes in southern Iran as defensive, saying they were intended “to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.”

Shortly afterward, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei threatened American military bases in the Middle East, writing in Farsi on his official X account that “America will no longer have a safe haven for mischief and the establishment of military bases in the region.” Khamenei further vowed that the phrases “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” would remain the rallying cry of the Islamic community and “the oppressed of the world, especially the youth.”

New Jersey GOP Representative Tom Kean—who has been missing from Congress and his own neighborhood for nearly three months—is still finding time to make money trading stocks.

NOTUS reported on Tuesday that Kean submitted an electronic signature on Friday disclosing that he’d traded stocks personally in April—a move that would raise questions about insider trading even if anyone knew where he was. This is the second time Kean disclosed his trades even as he’s missed a whopping 90 House votes.

“Call me old-fashioned, but I think it should be a bigger story that a sitting Republican member of Congress is missing, nobody knows where he is, yet he’s somehow still insider trading,” political commentator Mike Nellis wrote on Tuesday.

Nearly five weeks ago, Kean told the public he was absent due to a “personal health matter,” and would return shortly. He did not elaborate on the health matter.

“You couldn’t make up a better avatar of the 119th Congress than a Congressman who misses all floor votes but still trades stocks,” political scientist Alex Garlick said.

Aside from the stock trading, Kean has also continued to send out newsletters, signed off on travel expenses to Las Vegas for staff, and himself used Amtrak and rideshare apps in San Francisco—far away from his home district, and well into his mysterious absence. Kean’s condition may very well be serious. But if he’s going to be sending newsletters, catching Ubers, and trading stocks, he’ll need a more detailed explanation for his sabbatical.

The Iran war continues to divide Donald Trump’s social media cultists.

After reports that the Trump administration was finally getting around to ending its incredibly expensive and pointless military campaign, Republican Senator Ted Cruz criticized the peacemaking on X.

“I am deeply concerned about what we are hearing about an Iran ‘deal,’” Cruz wrote Saturday. “If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime—still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America’—now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake.”

MAGA influencer Alex Bruesewitz jumped on Cruz for daring to question Dear Leader: “Cool, Ted. No one asked you, bro. Stop trying to undermine the President and his administration.”

“Hush, child,” Cruz replied. “The adults are talking. I’m not your ‘bro.’ And young political grifters pushing Iran appeasement are not remotely helping the President.”

Bruesewitz, a 29-year-old Trump adviser who helps the administration post memes on social media, was ready with a fittingly immature reply.

“Sorry you’re still salty that I prevented you from getting a picture with Nicki Minaj after you came running after her like a school girl,” he wrote. “You’re going to get wiped out in 2028, clown.”

Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo received similar treatment on Saturday after he mused that “the deal being floated with Iran seems straight out of the Wendy Sherman–Robert Malley–Ben Rhodes playbook: Pay the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] to build a [weapons of mass destruction] program and terrorize the world. Not remotely America First.”

This time, it was White House spokesman Steven Cheung who “clapped back,” or whatever.

“Mike Pompeo has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about,” Cheung said. “He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals. He’s not read into anything that’s happening, so how would he know.”

The fact that this is how the White House communications director speaks to people is both shocking and kind of funny. While Cruz’s and Pompeo’s neoconservative bloodlust is despicable, it’s hard to see Bruesewitz’s and Cheung’s ridiculous fealty to Trump as any better. Their insistence that Trump knows what he’s doing in Iran is also provably false. One supposes the silver lining here is that the MAGA coalition is sadder and more dysfunctional than ever.

Republican Representative Thomas Massie has vowed to go scorched earth on the Trump administration—by unveiling previously unmentioned names related to the Epstein files.

The rogue Kentucky lawmaker pointed fingers at Donald and Melania Trump during an interview with NBC News’s Meet the Press Sunday, claiming that the first lady is well aware that the Justice Department’s public rollout of its investigation into the pedophilic web is incomplete.

Acting Attorney General “Todd Blanche is violating the law; there’s still millions of files they haven’t released,” Massies said. “We know from talking to the victims’ lawyers that their own 302 forms haven’t been released. We know the files have been over-redacted.

“I have released at least three names of billionaires who are implicated in this. I don’t think it’s possible to get to convictions with Todd Blanche at the top, and with the FBI Director Kash Patel at the top, because they’ve effectively both perjured themselves by saying that there’s nobody else in the files.

“Even Melania doesn’t believe that: The first lady knows that Jeffrey Epstein didn’t act alone,” Massie said.

Last month, Melania delivered an oddly timed public address that surprised even the president. In a short speech, she denied having any sort of relationship with Epstein or his longtime girlfriend and criminal associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. She also criticized media coverage that tied the three of them together (despite their having been photographed together), and called on Congress to allow Epstein’s victims to testify.

Trump was reportedly not informed of what his wife would tell the public ahead of time, but said afterward that the content of Melania’s speech didn’t “bother” him and that she “had a right to talk about it.”

Massie underscored that the Epstein Files Transparency Act “is a law” that will force the files’ release “for years.”

“So, if we can’t get this attorney general and this FBI director to do the right thing, the next ones who take those seats are obligated by law to release the files that these individuals are not releasing now,” Massie concluded.

Massie—a longtime critic of the president—lost his primary race last week to a Trump-backed candidate. But even before the primary vote, Massie had become increasingly unbeholden to MAGA loyalties, voting (and speaking) his mind, much to the president’s chagrin.

A federal court in Alabama has struck down Republicans’ attempt to redraw the state’s congressional map, on the grounds that it intentionally discriminates against Black voters.

On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court ruled that the state could not switch to its 2023 congressional map, which had previously been blocked in court three years ago, even after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act earlier this month. That earlier map only had one majority-Black, Democratic-leaning district, as opposed to the current two.

“Ultimately, we cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination,” the judges said in their ruling. Two of the three judges were appointed by President Trump himself.

Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Alabama to redraw its maps, sending the redistricting process down to the lower court. Republicans will almost certainly appeal Tuesday’s ruling, sending it back up to the high court.

Alabama Republicans have ignored protests and even natural disasters in order to force through a new congressional map as primary elections draw near. Governor Kay Ivey last week delayed four of the state’s congressional primaries in anticipation of the new map. For now, though, three federal judges are blocking their attempt.

“There is no convincing evidence that it is necessary for us to allow Alabama to pivot to the 2023 Plan in the middle of an election, and substantial evidence that it is not,” the judges ruled.

This story has been updated.