US Forces Disable Ship That Violated Blockade in Strait of Hormuz

The ship had ignored our warnings and was subsequently disabled via a shot through the engine room. CENTCOM: American forces issued multiple warnings and informed the Iranian-flagged vessel it was in violation of the U.S. blockade. After Touska’s crew failed to comply with repeated warnings over a six-hour period, Spruance directed the vessel to evacuate its engine room. Spruance disabled Touska’s propulsion by firing several rounds from the destroyer’s 5-inch MK 45 Gun into Touska’s engine room. U.S. Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit later boarded the non-compliant vessel, which remains in U.S. custody (Centcom). Iran’s response, via the Financial Times: Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters vowed retaliation for the attack. “The US, the aggressor, violated the ceasefire and engaged in maritime piracy,” the military body said. “We warn that the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran will respond to this act of armed maritime piracy and retaliate soon” (Financial Times).

Trump Says Next Round of Iran Talks Are On

The scheduling of them has been tenuous and questions continue to swirl around whether or not those representing the regime have control over the various factions including, most notably, the IRGC. Wall Street Journal: Vice President JD Vance is expected to lead a new round of peace talks with Iran in Pakistan this week in a fresh effort to end the war, but there still appear to be significant gaps between both sides as the U.S. pushes Iran to lock up its nuclear program and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Vance is expected to arrive in Pakistan on Monday evening for talks with Iran on Tuesday, although Iran was still threatening on Sunday that it wouldn’t attend talks, saying Washington’s demands remain excessive. Pakistan helped broker a two-week cease-fire between the U.S. and Iran that expires on Tuesday night. Vance is to be joined by Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East peace envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, a White House official said (Wall Street Journal).

Iran Fires Shots at Ships in Strait of Hormuz; Trump: ‘A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement!’

President Trump’s summary of the latest: Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz — A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement! Many of them were aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom. That wasn’t nice, was it? My Representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan — They will be there tomorrow evening, for Negotiations. Iran recently announced that they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it (Truth). Axios: Iran said on Saturday that the Strait of Hormuz is again closed to traffic following threats of such action if the U.S. continued its blockade of the shipping channel. Why it matters: The closure could be a setback to efforts toward a new round of negotiations on a deal to end the war and will add pressure to an already tense situation between Iran and the U.S. Fars, Iran’s semi-official state news agency, first reported the closure, citing the ongoing blockade and quoting an Iranian official as saying that the U.S. “continue to engage in banditry and maritime piracy.” “As long as the United States does not agree to the complete freedom of navigation for vessels …. the situation in the Strait of Hormuz will remain tightly controlled and in its previous state,” the military official said, according to Fars (Axios).

GOP Looks to Move Forward on Reconciliation Bill to Fund ICE and Customs and Border Protection; A Narrow Path for Success

This as the longest partial government shutdown continues: 65 days and counting (Govt Shutdown). New York Post reports: Republicans on Capitol Hill are set to kick off the process for funding ICE and Customs and Border Protection this week, but several conservatives have made it clear they are going to make it as difficult as possible. Unlike with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, no tax cuts are included in the legislation to incentivize hardliners to get on board…. Reconciliation takes much longer than simply putting a continuing resolution on the floor in order to reopen a department or agency. Under reconciliation, both the House and Senate must pass a budget “instruction” resolution, designating committees to begin marking up budgets for certain agencies. Once those budgets are written, then the two chambers can pass the legislation by simple majority (New York Sun). The Trump administration has done workaround funding, but there is still an impact of the ongoing government shutdown: Department of Homeland Security officials are warning about a growing backlog of contracts, planning activities and more delays as a result of the two-month-long government shutdown. DHS officials, testifying before multiple committees on Thursday about fiscal 2027 budget requests, flagged the ongoing impacts of Congress failing to pass a 2026 budget for the department. The DHS-specific shutdown began Feb. 14 (Federal News).

A Unanimous Supreme Court Strikes a Blow to the Climate Lobby and Trial Lawyers

The decision will make it more difficult to take businesses to court that had contracts with the federal government. SCOTUS blog: The Supreme Court on Friday sent a lawsuit seeking to hold oil and gas companies liable for damage to the Louisiana coast back to the federal courts (SCOTUSblog). Wall Street Journal reports: The plaintiff bar took a big loss at the Supreme Court on Friday, which means a win for the economy and rule of law. In a unanimous decision (Chevron v. Plaquemines Parish), Justices made it harder to raid businesses by holding that federal contractors can’t be hauled into state courts for claims relating to their government work (Wall Street Journal). Justice Alito didn’t participate because he has stock in one of the companies involved in the dispute. At the center of the case was whether or not Chevron could move their case from state courts to federal courts via the “federal officer removal statute.” Justice Thomas, writing for the majority, said indeed they can:  Held: Chevron has plausibly alleged a close relationship between its challenged crude-oil production and the performance of its federal avgas refining duties—not a tenuous, remote, or peripheral one—and has therefore satisfied the “relating to” requirement of the federal officer removal statute (Supreme Court).

After Leak of 2022 Dobbs’ Decision, Liberal Justices Slow-Walked Release of Final Opinion

This as conservative justices faced threats on their lives. The Federalist reports: When the draft of the Supreme Court ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade leaked to the press, the conservative justices who signed on to the majority opinion suddenly wore bigger targets on their backs. The very real threat of assassination hung over them like a coming thunderstorm. And still their pro-abortion colleagues stalled the release of the official ruling for weeks, putting the justices’ lives at increased risk, as detailed in Mollie Hemingway’s new book on Justice Samuel Alito and reported Saturday by Fox News…. Kagan, an Obama nominee, made her opinion on the delay loudly clear, according to Hemingway’s book, as reported by Fox. “Hemingway wrote that Kagan, an Obama appointee, angrily confronted Breyer, a Clinton appointee, in May 2022 behind closed doors after at least one justice, Samuel Alito, had asked his liberal colleagues to speed up writing their dissent because of security threats,” Fox reported. “Breyer was most likely to agree to Alito’s request, Hemingway wrote.” Hemingway wrote that “Kagan remonstrated with Breyer not to accommodate the majority, screaming so loudly, observers noted, that the ‘wall was shaking,’” according to Fox. While pro-abortion zealots were calling for heads to roll, the court’s liberal minority did nothing to, as the left likes to say with empty virtue, “turn down the temperature” (Federalist). Latest from Mollie: Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution (Amazon).

Yale Admits They Have a Problem; Will They Do Something About It?

The New York Times reported on the crisis of trust in higher education last week: American colleges and universities bear significant responsibility for plunging public trust in higher education, a Yale University committee suggested in a report released on Wednesday (New York Times). But what next? Robbie George: The Yale report is excellent as far it goes–and that’s some distance. It acknowledges the ideological echo chamber problem–which is good! But the problem needs to be addressed, not merely acknowledged. A commitment is needed, and a plan (George). New York Sun: The Yale report arrives the same week that Representative Elise Stefanik published her own account of elite higher education’s unraveling, “Poisoned Ivies.” Ms. Stefanik’s story begins with the 2023 congressional hearing that led to the resignations of Harvard and Penn’s presidents and made her the face of the reckoning over campus antisemitism after October 7, 2023. But she traces the decline back further than the pitch of the first anti-Israel tent city. “The explosion of antisemitism on campus in the wake of October 7 was not a coincidence,” Ms. Stefanik writes. “It was the result of years of rot deep within our most prestigious institutions of higher learning. Our elite universities chose ideological fanaticism over intellectual diversity. They chose groupthink over independence. They chose spineless moral bankruptcy instead of strong, principled leadership.” Which brings us back to the Yale report. The authors close with a long list of recommendations, from implementing stronger free speech protections to lowering tuition costs. The first of the bunch strikes us as particularly important: “To take responsibility” — to “admit where we have been wrong and where we might improve.” For Yale’s leaders, picking up a copy of Ms. Stefanik’s book looks to us like a good place to start (New York Sun). Stefanik’s book: (Amazon).

Gavin Newsom’s PAC Spikes Sales of His Book With $1.5 Million Dollar Purchase

Accounting for 67,000 copies of the book—over 73 percent of the books sold. New York Times: In November, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California rolled out an intriguing offer to his formidable email list of supporters: Donate anything to his political group, and he would send them a copy of his forthcoming book: “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery.” “Make a contribution of ANY AMOUNT today and I will send you a copy,” he wrote. It turned out about 67,000 supporters did just that. The books those donors received account for roughly two-thirds of the print copies of the memoir that have been sold (New York Times). And, notably, the New York Times left the Newsom volume on the bestseller list. Free Beacon: The New York Times placed Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.) on its coveted Best Sellers list even as it acknowledged that Newsom used campaign-funded “bulk sales” to sell tens of thousands of copies of his memoir, Young Man in a Hurry. The Times has cited such sales to disqualify Republican politicians from its list (Free Beacon). The California governor may be a walking fraud, but the title is fitting: He really is in a hurry … to be president. Hopefully, the American people can see through the façade.

War Secretary Hegseth Vows to Defend Second Amendment

Hegseth sent a message to those attending the national meeting of the NRA in Houston (NRAAM). Hegseth: As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation’s independence, we’re called not just to honor America’s rich history, but to renew our commitment to the revolutionary principles upon which it stands. From the beginning, America’s greatness stemmed from a single radical idea forged in the blood of God-fearing patriots, that our rights are not granted by any government, any king or any tyrant. They are endowed by Almighty God. Chief among these God-given rights is our Second Amendment, the indispensable safeguard of our liberty as free citizens. This was not some random claim born out of abstract theory. The founders witnessed firsthand the British army’s march on Lexington and Concord with the explicit goal of seizing munitions and rendering the Massachusetts militia combat ineffective. This was a classic tyrants’ gambit, a pattern repeated throughout history by those who wish to crush the free exercise of our God-given rights…. It’s no accident that the Second Amendment directly follows the first. It is quite literally the firepower that upholds our cherished freedoms…. Just a few short years ago, we even had a sitting president stand before Congress and demand the disarming of law-abiding American citizens. I’ll make this one easy and clear, not under this administration and not from this war department. Those dark days are over. And that’s precisely why one of President Trump’s first acts upon entering office last year was to sign an executive order called Protecting Second Amendment Rights…. This country was born from a revolution of strong warriors willing to combat tyranny, and it will be preserved by that same unyielding ethos for every generation to come. Thank you. God bless you, and may God continue to bless our great republic (NRA).

Patriots Mark 251st Anniversary of ‘Shot Heard Round the World’; ‘Day 1 of the American Revolution’

This as the individual events as well as the dramatic sweep of history receive fresh appreciation as our nation approaches its 250^th celebration of independence. Monica Crowley (serving the Trump administration): 251 years ago today, the shot heard ‘round the world kicked off the Battles of Lexington and Concord – and lit the fuse of the American Revolution. Captain Parker’s words to his 77 Minutemen as they faced 700 British Redcoats at Lexington Green capture the American spirit: “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war let it begin here” (Crowley; US History). Massachusetts Live: History buffs, proud New Englanders, early birds and tourists bore witness to history Sunday as Colonial Militia gathered in the pre-dawn light on Buttrick Hillside and Old Manse Hill in Minute Man National Historic Park. The battle at Old North Bridge — often referred to as the spot where the “shot heard ‘round the world” launched the revolution — happened on April 19, 1775. Last year marked that battle’s 250th anniversary, to much fanfare. This year, the country celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence (Mass Live). Freedom 250: April 19, 1775. Day 1 of the American Revolution (Freedom 250).