We start today with some good news, for a change. The first is time-sensitive, so check it out now -- a livestream of workers removing Donald Trump's name from the outside wall of what will once again be known as simply The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts. As of this writing, the scaffolding has been set up, but nobody's on top of it and Trump's name still appears. By judicial order, Trump's name must be removed today, so take a look, maybe you'll get to see them prying letters off the building! They've already removed the odious new name from their website, but removing it from the building will be more satisfying to see.

The second piece of good news is more momentous. Are you sitting down? For once, Donald Trump apparently was not lying about a deal to end his Iran war of choice being finalized. No, really! CNN recently tallied it up and found that, previous to the last few days, Trump had lied about it a whopping 38 times, so it is definitely shocking that this time around the blind pig actually found an acorn!

We supposed we shouldn't be so snarky about something as serious as the end of a war, but after 38 times, we had to express our amazement (and frustration) somehow.

As of this writing, there has been no confirmation of what is included in the temporary "Memorandum Of Understanding" that the two countries have agreed to, which reportedly may be signed Sunday in Geneva, Switzerland. Trump won't be there to sign, because he will be too busy celebrating his 80th birthday by watching people beat each other silly on the White House lawn. Instead, JD Vance will represent the United States.

The New York Times is reporting what is known about the contents of the deal so far (this is from "three officials" but has not been confirmed officially):

• A 60-day period will start where the war will stop on all fronts, including Lebanon.
• During this period, negotiations will take place on Iran's nuclear program.
• "It is unclear what would happen after the 60 days if a comprehensive deal is not reached."
• The Strait of Hormuz will open to shipping traffic.
• The United States will end its blockade on Iran's ports.
• The future management of the Strait will be discussed during the 60-day period. Iran may have worked out a deal with Oman to somehow charge fees or tolls to ships transiting the Strait, but the United States is insisting that they remain international waters freely open to all. This is what the negotiations will be about.
• Also to be negotiated during the 60-day period is the lifting of sanctions on Iran and possibly unfreezing its funds held by banks around the world.
• Iran will recommit not to develop or acquire nuclear weapons, but the status of the half-ton of highly enriched uranium it currently possesses and the future of its nuclear program (further enrichment) will not be covered by the initial agreement.

Let's take that last one first, because it is the one that Donald Trump is going to brag about the most, by misrepresenting its importance. A lot depends on the actual wording in the agreement, of course, but Trump is doubtlessly going to try to frame this as some monumental achievement that he has wrested from the Iranians -- something brand new that his war has forced the Iranians to agree to. Perhaps the wording in the agreement will sound something like this: "Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons."

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? A solid promise that Iran won't ever have a nuclear weapon. But it won't be new at all. That wording was taken directly from the deal that Barack Obama struck with Iran over a decade ago. See for yourself -- it is on page three, in the preamble to the agreement, listed as item (iii). And please note that it says "reaffirms," because Iran has made similar promises for the past 50 years. In other words, it is nothing new at all.

Iran's position (or posturing) on the issue has remained consistent. The country joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty back when the Shah was still in charge, which means (according to them) they have the absolute right to develop nuclear power -- including enriching uranium to fuel reactors. They swear that they've never had a program to develop nuclear weapons at all, so what's the big deal?

The reason that their promises are somewhat less than believable (to be polite) is that uranium only needs to be enriched to a very low level (less than 5 percent) to be used as fuel in nuclear reactors. If you want to build a nuclear bomb, though, it needs to be enriched to a level of 90-plus percent. That half-ton of uranium gas (what Trump idiotically refers to as "nuclear dust") that is currently buried under a whole bunch of rubble in Iran has been enriched to 60 percent -- only one technical step away from reaching bomb-grade strength. And there is no valid reason to enrich it to this level except to create a weapon.

Trump will, as mentioned, try to boast that whatever language winds up being in the M.O.U. will somehow be a brand-new concession from Iran, but in reality it will just be the same old promise that they've been making all along.

The most interesting thing to see, whenever the actual text of the M.O.U. is made public, is how Republicans here at home will react to it -- especially the hawkish ones. Because you'll note that a whole bunch of Trump's initial war goals are not even mentioned in what has leaked out so far. No mention of regime change, no mention of missiles (or drones), no mention of Iran's support for its proxies (such as Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis), and even the securing of the half-ton of highly-enriched uranium will only be listed as "to be negotiated later." That doesn't seem strong enough for the GOP hawks to start celebrating, to put it mildly.

A quick review is in order here. When Trump first took office in his first term, all of the following was true:

• Iran had no highly-enriched uranium at all.
• International atomic energy inspectors were vigilantly monitoring their nuclear program to verify that they didn't enrich any uranium above 5 percent.
• They had agreed not to do so until, at the earliest, 2030.
• There was no agreement covering their missile program or their support for their proxies in the region.
• The Strait of Hormuz was peaceful and open to all shipping, with no fees or tolls, since Iran respected that they were international waters.
• And (go read that excerpt once again) Iran had sworn never to develop or acquire a nuclear weapon.

If Trump had done nothing at all -- if he had just left the status quo antebellum alone -- all of that would still be true today, and there would be no reason for any new agreement with the country. Or any war, for that matter.

Instead, Trump ripped up the deal Obama had painstakingly worked out with them and replaced it with... absolutely nothing. Trump (and the GOP hawks) insisted that the Obama deal somehow "guaranteed a path to a nuclear weapon" to Iran, because it only stretched to 2030 -- why, after that point, they might start up their nuclear weapons program again! Gasp!

Seriously, that was the big boogeyman the hawks warned about. Sometime in the 2030s, Iran might do bad things. But by ripping up the deal and putting nothing in its place, what happened was Iran shrugged its shoulders and started enriching like crazy, over a decade earlier than they would have been able to. They kicked all the international inspectors out of their country and created that half-ton stockpile of 60-percent enriched uranium -- a stockpile that did not exist when Trump ripped up the agreement.

All of that is what Trump's new deal with Iran should be measured against, not merely "the way things were before this war started."

Trump will be hard-pressed, during the 60-day negotiation period, to get right back to where everything started. Any deal he cuts will be measured against the terms of Obama's Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action -- the deal that Trump singlehandedly and unilaterally ripped up. And it is looking like the only notable change that Trump will manage to achieve will be pushing the deadline out further -- since 2030 is now only five years away (instead of the 15 years it was when the J.C.P.O.A. was agreed to). Everything else will be pretty close to what's in Obama's deal.

Oh -- except for the Strait of Hormuz, of course. Because now Iran knows full well the power of shutting the Strait down -- how they can hold the world's economy hostage with some very low-cost and low-level weapons. That's a new development.

What's really going to make all the GOP hawks' heads explode, however, is how much money Trump is going to have to hand over to Iran to seal this deal. Up until now, Trump (and the entire GOP) have been excoriating Obama for releasing $1.7 billion in funds to Iran when the J.C.P.O.A. was agreed upon. Google "pallets full of cash" if you're unaware of the political hay Trump and his ilk have made over this. What they never mention is that that money was Iran's money. The United States was about to lose a case in the World Court because it had frozen funds way back when the Iranian revolution first happened. The money -- plus interest -- would have been awarded to Iran (since it was their money to begin with). So Obama agreed to unfreeze the funds and send the money to Iran.

Iran is now arguing that they deserve some sort of reparations for this war. They've got a good case, since the whole war began because Israeli intelligence had discovered that there was going to be a meeting of Iran's top leadership above ground. Israel's Netanyahu told Trump that Israel was going to bomb this meeting whether the U.S. participated or not, and that as a result Iran would quite likely retaliate against U.S. forces in the region. So Trump decided not to wait and then have to retaliate, and he gave the green light for the U.S. military to join the bombing from the very start.

There was no provocation from Iran. There was no military threat to either Israel or the United States when the bombs began falling and the missiles began flying. There was no imminent threat at all -- which means that this entire war was completely unprovoked, by international law. Which could mean Iran is entitled to war reparations, to rebuild what has been destroyed by the war.

Two things have been reportedly been under discussion between Trump and the Iranians on this front. The first is to unfreeze $24 billion in Iranian funds that have been locked up in banks outside of Iran (by economic sanctions). And the second is what is being called an "investment fund" to be paid to the Iranians to provide the money to rebuild their country.

The Iranians have been demanding half of that $24 billion be released to them immediately, once the M.O.U. is signed. Then the other half would be contingent on them making good on their promises to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and other milestones they'd have to meet. And they've been talking about a $300 billion reconstruction fund from America.

This will (to use a wartime metaphor) cause the Republican hawks to go ballistic, if any of it happens. So far, the reporting on the M.O.U. both sides have apparently agreed to does not mention unfreezing any funds immediately, after the agreement is signed. But sooner or later these details are going to have to be addressed.

Let's do some basic math, shall we? $12 billion -- half of the money Iran wants unfrozen -- is seven times the money Obama had to release to Iran when he signed his agreement. The full $24 billion is 14 times the $1.7 billion that Obama sent to Iran. And the $300 billion reconstruction fund would be a whopping 176 times as big as all those "pallets full of cash" the Republicans like to sneer about.

So while Trump and the Iranians cutting a deal for an extended ceasefire for 60 days (while a more-permanent peace deal is negotiated) is indeed good news, when you get right down to it this is nothing more than a return to where the entire world would have been if Trump had just kept the J.C.P.O.A. in force in the first place. None of this was necessary. None of it needed to happen. And no, Trump is not some sort of master dealmaker by getting the Iranians to swear they won't ever have a nuclear weapon, because they've been saying that for half a century now.

As usual, there were plenty of other things happening in the world of politics this week, but ending a war was so important that we find we just don't have room for them. So we'll have to leave it at that, without our usual round-up of the rest of the political landscape.

 

First, we have an Honorable Mention, for whatever group decided to protest the I.P.O. of SpaceX by erecting a huge inflatable statue of Elon Musk's bare chest and head in Times Square yesterday. The monstrous statue had a message written on Musk's chest, which read: "SPACEX'S GROK MAKES AI CHILD PORN," just to remind everyone why Musk is such a detestable figure. 'Nuff said....

And a general Honorable Mention goes out to all the progressive Democrats who managed to win primaries this week. All progressive candidates running everywhere didn't win -- it's a mixed record -- but it is still progress to be celebrated.

And a very special Honorable Mention award this week goes to whomever had the bright idea to create a political statement on the National Mall by artfully spreading around some weed killer or other herbicide on the grass just beyond the Reflecting Pool.

There aren't any great photos of it yet (some of the grass was effectively killed, other spots not so much), but the brown areas consist of the message: "86 47" in giant numerals. This, you will recall, is the same message that James Comey is now being prosecuted for (he saw the same thing on a beach, made of seashells, took a photo, and posted it online).

So far, whomever pulled this prank seems to have gotten away with it. Nobody has any clue who did it. It is guerrilla protest art, plain and simple. And it was accomplished without causing any lasting damage to anything (the grass will eventually grow back or even be replaced, if Trump gets too annoyed by it).

There are basically two ways to spell out messages using a grassy field as a medium, we should mention. You can either artfully spread some weedkiller around or artfully spread some fertilizer around (which causes the message to appear in a darker green than the surrounding grass). Either way, it's a creative way to communicate!

We have long been a fan of protest art, and we have to admit seeing this message made us smile. Not only does it make a political statement about Donald Trump, it also makes a political statement about the persecution of James Comey at the same time -- by using only four numerals to do so. Which, you have to admit, is pretty succinct as political messages go.

But our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week is Nithya Raman, who is a candidate for mayor of Los Angeles. Because California counts their votes at a snail's pace, when the primary was held, a total whack job of a Republican (Spencer Pratt) seemed to be in second place in the primary -- which would have moved him on to the general election ballot. But as the vote-counting continued, the "red mirage" effect dissipated, and Raman passed him in the count to wind up in the number-two slot (behind the current mayor, Karen Bass). This means the November contest will be a Democrat-versus-Democrat affair (because of California's "top-two jungle primary" system).

Raman is an impressive candidate, but she really gets the MIDOTW award for making so many Republican heads explode in rage. They had all been convinced (by Fox News and the rest of the rightwing media echo chamber) that Pratt was incredibly popular in Los Angeles. He wasn't. It was a total mirage. Los Angeles is about as blue a city as you can imagine.

The Republicans all exploded in a fury of conspiracy theories after Raman pulled ahead of Pratt, of course, from Donald Trump on down. Because according to them, any time a Democrat wins any election anywhere, it is solid proof that the election was somehow "rigged." Even if no such proof actually exists.

So for causing all this rightwing angst, we have to award the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week to Nithya Raman this week, for booting a Republican nutjob off the November ballot. Well done!

[Congratulate Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman on her official contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]

 

We have two awards to hand out here. The first is a (Dis-)Honorable Mention, to all the House Democrats who are putting the cart way out in front of the horse.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is trying to get his party on board with an effort to plan out what they'll do next year, if Democrats win a majority in the chamber. This is an inside-baseball sort of thing, because it is all about what bill will be introduced as "H.R. 1" -- the very first bill introduced by the new Democratic majority.

Traditionally, this first-filed bill is used to showcase the highest-priority issue of the party who controls the House. For instance, in the current Congress, H.R. 1 was the "Big Beautiful Bill" tax cut for rich folks.

So Jeffries is trying to get Democrats to all get behind an effort to make the next H.R. 1 focus solely on affordability issues. But he's getting some pushback from other Democrats who want to see other issues highlighted.

Without getting into the details of this spat, it is worth pointing out two very large things. First: outside of Washington, nobody cares what number each bill gets. Nobody. The symbolism is completely pointless and meaningless -- the only thing voters want to see is whether it gets passed and whether it actually gets signed into law or not.

Second: Democrats have to win before any of this is even relevant. So please, let's not collapse into an intraparty fight that distracts from the effort to actually win the majority back. Keep your eyes on the ball, guys (sigh).

But our real Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week goes to the Democrats in the New York state legislature, because apparently none of them got the: "For the love of all that is holy, can we PLEASE stop doing stupid shit like this!?!" memo, on fighting pointless and inane culture-war fights.

This one is so bad that we find (much to our embarrassment) that we agree with Fox News on the issue. Here's the basic story:

Fox News host Maria Bartiromo railed at New York Democrats for recently passing a bill that removes the legal terms "mother" and "father" from state family laws, swapping them with gender-neutral phrases like "gestating parent" and "non-gestating parent."

Seriously? Democrats are still prioritizing such idiocy? Even though they know full well how it just hands their political opponents a giant club to beat them with during campaign season?

We had thought that the Democratic Party as a whole had woken up ("woke" pun fully intended, there) to the damage this sort of thing does to them with regular voters -- especially independents who might consider voting for them. But apparently, at least in New York state, we were wrong about that.

Spending time on passing such inane and easily-mocked bills is not helpful right now. It just isn't. For every person out there who is somehow offended that an official document or law uses the term "mother" and "father," there are thousands upon thousands of people who react: "Seriously? You have got to be kidding me!"

So, yeah, let's all please wake up. And put the "peak woke" era behind us, so the Democratic Party has a chance, heading forward. Which is why every Democrat who voted for this measure in the New York state legislature deserves a Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award for doing so. You're just making things a whole lot worse, folks.

[You'll have to dig out which Democrats voted for this on your own, if you'd like to let them know what you think of their actions, so here are the official state assembly and the official state senate contact information pages you'll need.]

 

Volume 845 (6/12/26)

Another mixed bag this week. The first two are designed to highlight the complaints that will inevitably be coming from some Republicans, once the deal's details are revealed. Which Trump fully deserves, at this point. The rest of them focus on inflation and a few other things at the end. Enjoy!

 

   How many billions?

Rub this one in, because it's so much fun to watch Republicans fight amongst themselves. And use the same language they've always used about Obama, while you're at it.

"So exactly how much money is Donald Trump just going to hand to Iran to get his deal? How many billions of dollars? Twelve billion? Twenty-four billion? Three hundred billion?!? Republicans have denounced Barack Obama for giving the Iranians $1.7 billion for over ten years now, so it's fair to ask how they're going to react to Trump handing Iran multiple times that amount of money to rebuild their country. This is supposed to be Mr. Art Of The Deal? Really? Because to me it looks like he is getting taken to the cleaners by Iran."

 

   What exactly is different?

Another drum worth beating.

"So please explain to me -- in detail, mind you -- exactly what is different in the deal Trump is negotiating from the deal Barack Obama successfully negotiated with them? Remember that? The deal Trump unilaterally tore up? Because from where I sit, it sure looks like Trump is working very hard to get the Iranians to agree to exactly the same thing that they had already agreed to, over a decade ago. Americans paid how many billions of dollars in sky-high gas prices to wind up exactly where we would have been if Trump had just done nothing? How does that even make sense?"

 

   4.2 percent

Hit this one hard, because it is the strongest argument Democrats have to make in the midterms.

"When Donald Trump took office for the second time, Joe Biden had successfully gotten inflation back down again. The first full month Trump was in office, inflation was at 2.8 percent. Last month, it spiked up to 4.2 percent, which comes as no surprise to any American consumer. In fact, what's surprising is that that number isn't even higher, because that's what American families have been feeling for over the past year now. Every trip to the grocery store proves it. How high is inflation going to go before the voters decide the country needs a change?"

 

   I love the inflation

This one is already being put up on billboards across America, and every single Democrat running for office should immediately begin featuring it in their ads.

"Did you hear Donald Trump's reaction to the news that inflation is now up to 4.2 percent? He said, and I quote: 'I love the inflation.' No, really! That's how little Trump cares for you and what your family is going through. To Trump, the affordability crisis is a 'hoax,' and people should all be happy with the way he is ruining the American economy. So just remember, when you go to vote in November, Donald Trump loves the fact that inflation is now over four percent."

 

   Is it "Day One" yet?

A question worth reminding people about.

"Trump said, when he was campaigning, over and over and over again, that he was going to bring prices down -- on everything -- on 'Day One.' Remember that? He even worked it into his own slogan, by promising to 'make America affordable again.' So how's that working out for you? Everything Trump has done, from his tariffs and stupid trade wars with the rest of the planet to his pointless war of choice in Iran have all driven prices up, not down. Trump just has no clue what he's been doing to American family budgets across the land. And he doesn't care one bit. So I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that Trump's 'Day One' is just never going to arrive."

 

   A New York City welcome

This was just priceless.

"Did you see Donald Trump get thunderously booed when he attended Game 3 of the NBA finals? Back in his old hometown, he got an earful from New Yorkers, and then he couldn't even manage to stay awake for the whole game. The entire thing was just an embarrassment for him, really. I mean, what kind of reaction did he really expect from a New York crowd?"

 

   Pond scum

And finally, just because.

"Donald Trump promised that his makeover of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool would fix all the problems forever -- even though he could never even bother to remember what the name of it was. He kept calling it the 'reflecting pond,' which just shows his own ignorance off in a big way. But maybe it's the right word to use, because now the algae problem seems to have returned. Yep, despite Trump's promise to fix everything forever, the result is that pond scum is growing once again. I can't think of a more fitting comment on Trump than that, really."

-- Chris Weigant

 

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground