Hey everyone. Welcome back, and happy Monday.
We start with the biggest story in the world this morning. After four months of war, the United States and Iran say they have a deal. But the deal doesn’t look that great when you get into the fine print. The President who sold this war as toughness is ending it by handing Tehran tens of billions of dollars and a promise that sounds like the one he tore up eight years ago.
We will also get into the FBI raiding a pro-democracy group, a White House plan to fast-track deportations, leaked Situation Room recordings, and the UFC fight on the South Lawn last night.
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Okay, let’s get to it.
1. Trump's Iran Deal Looks a Lot Like Obama's
On Sunday, the President announced on Truth Social that the deal with Iran is, in his words, “complete.” Iran’s government confirmed it, and so did the prime minister of Pakistan, who helped broker the talks. The signing is set for Friday in Switzerland.
Both sides agree on the basics. The United States lifts its naval blockade. Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz and clears the mines it laid there. The ceasefire holds. The markets liked it.
But here is the part that is less advertised. According to a draft reported by Reuters, the United States would waive oil sanctions, work toward lifting all American and U.N. sanctions, and release 25 billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets.
The administration is selling this as a triumph. Vice President Vance says it will transform the Middle East for 50 years. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went on Face the Nation and built his case around one promise, that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon.
The JCPOA brokered by Obama, the one President Trump pulled out of in 2018 and called the worst ever made, said the same thing. The nuclear details that matter, what happens to Iran’s enriched uranium and who inspects it, are not settled. Those details were kicked down the road.
Pete Hegseth gave an explanation of why things are different this time around:
Here’s what that strength bought us. The same nuclear promise Obama got, plus the sanctions relief, plus 25 billion dollars of Iran’s frozen money flowing back. And the New York Times is reporting the framework also clears the way for a 300 billion-dollar fund to rebuild Iran. The administration is quick to say that’s an international fund, not a check from us. But we’re still the country brokering 300 billion dollars to rebuild the place we were bombing six months ago. That’s the position of strength.
The two governments cannot even agree on what they agreed to. Iran says its frozen money unlocks now. The White House says not a dollar moves until Iran proves it is complying. Even Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the biggest Iran hawks, says he is worried Iran’s version does not match what our negotiators are claiming.
Let’s be clear about what this is. It’s the deal Trump called the worst in history, except now it costs more. And the biggest issue of them all - the nuclear question - remains unanswered. But we know how Trump will act: he’ll call it the greatest deal ever made and tell you he did what no one else could. I’m sure he’s already drafting a post in all caps about the Nobel Peace prize.
2. Federal Agents Raid a Voter Registration Group
On Thursday, federal agents searched the Cleveland office of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a progressive group that ran one of the largest voter registration drives in the state in 2024. The Justice Department calls it a fraud investigation. They seized computers and documents and questioned staff for hours. Then they fanned out across Ohio, knocking on the doors of employees and volunteers asking about alleged voter fraud.
To be fair, back in 2017 one of the groups paid canvassers pled guilty in a fraudulent registration scheme. But that was one canvasser, almost a decade ago, and the government has not said what they are alleging this time.
What we can see is the pattern. The FBI raided a Georgia elections office in February. Prosecutors are circling a race in California. Subpoenas have gone out in Minnesota and Wisconsin. All of it traces back to a President who insists, without evidence, that our elections are riddled with fraud.
You win elections by getting more people to vote for you, not by sending agents to the homes of the people signing them up. That should bother you no matter who you voted for.
3. The White House Weighed Suspending Habeas Corpus and a Conservative Lawyer Stopped It
A forthcoming book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan lays out two ideas the administration seriously weighed early on, and both push right up against the edge of what a President can do.
The first was suspending habeas corpus, the centuries-old right that forces the government to go before a judge and justify holding you. The plan was to suspend it for undocumented immigrants so deportations could speed up and judges could be cut out. As you can probably guess, the push was led by aide Stephen Miller.
It did not happen, but not because of a Democrat or a judge. It was Will Scharf, a conservative lawyer inside the White House who helped win the President’s immunity case at the Supreme Court. In a confidential memo, Scharf warned it would backfire in court, and reminded his colleagues that denying habeas corpus was one of the grievances that sparked the American Revolution. Some staff reportedly called the idea insane.
When that stalled, the administration looked at invoking the Insurrection Act to put military troops on American streets against immigration protesters. The Vice President pressed for it after unrest in Minnesota. Scharf pumped the brakes again.
These are not small ideas. Habeas corpus has been suspended just four times in our history, and the consensus is that only Congress can do it. The guardrails held. But they held because a couple of lawyers had the spine to say no, not because no one at the top wanted to try.
4. The Most Secure Room on Earth Just Sprang a Leak
The White House Situation Room is one of the most secure rooms on earth, and no audio from inside it has ever reached the press. Then came Haberman and Swan’s book, quoting those closed-door meetings word for word. It was so precise that White House officials grew suspicious. One told Axios yesterday: “We’re afraid some of our most sensitive conversations were being recorded. And we have no idea which ones.”
The authors say it came from more than a thousand interviews, not a hidden microphone, and the White House is not sure it believes them. But the administration has not disputed a single word the book puts in its officials’ mouths. So something got out of that room.
When it comes to classified material, you operate on one assumption: someone is always trying to listen. But the Situation Room is the exception. It’s the one place where you don’t have to wonder. That’s the entire reason it exists.
Maybe someone in the room was talking to a reporter. Maybe there was a microphone nobody caught. Either way, it’s one more example of just how incompetent this administration really is. This is a very serious national security threat. But above all else? It’s embarrassing. They can’t keep the most secure room in the country secure.
5. The Nation's Birthday, Behind a Paywall
UFC Freedom 250 was sold as a kickoff to the country’s 250th birthday, an event for all Americans. But the cageside seats were filled with the President’s own circle: Zuckerberg, Vance, Rubio, Patel, and David Ellison, the Trump ally who runs Paramount. His attendance was fitting, because a Paramount Plus subscription was the only way to tune in. The nation’s birthday, put behind a paywall.
Somehow, the event had “no political agenda”, at least according to UFC boss Dana White. Moments like this suggested otherwise:
The embarrassment on stage was not the night’s only insult to Americans. The whole spectacle turned the South Lawn into a hazard, and the constant flyover rehearsals kept shutting down the airspace. Flights were grounded for hours. A pilot landing at Reagan National even said the lights nearly blinded him.
And if you are hoping that was a one-time circus, the President is not. This morning Trump posted his plan for the actual Fourth of July, which he called “the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all”. He promised the largest fireworks show in history, more military flyovers, three hundred musicians playing his personal playlist, and a keynote speech from him.
I love the Fourth of July. Always have. It belongs to all of us. The backyard cookouts, the parades, the kids with sparklers who have no idea who’s in the White House and don’t need to. That’s the point. It’s the one day we celebrate that the country is bigger than any one person in it. But of course, Trump wants to put his name on it. We shouldn’t let him.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Large striped tarps are still covering the Kennedy Center’s exterior today, two days after crews pulled Donald Trump’s name off the front of the building. Workers took the metal letters down around 3 a.m. Saturday morning, to comply with a federal court order. The center has not explained why the tarps stayed up. Trump’s hand-picked board had voted in December to rename the venue the Trump-Kennedy Center. In May, US District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled the board lacked that authority, writing that “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.” An appeals court declined to pause the ruling, and the center missed the judge’s deadline before the letters finally came down.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called Donald Trump on Sunday to mark the president’s 80th birthday, praising him as a “bright, remarkable person and politician.” The Kremlin said Putin initiated the 55-minute call and offered the greeting in what a Kremlin aide described as an informal manner. Putin said he valued the understanding between the two men and floated raising US-Russia ties to a new level. The two last met in person in Alaska in August 2025, when they tried and failed to settle Russia’s war in Ukraine.
