When the Channels Close: Iran Walks Away and Widens the War

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(Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP via Getty Images) /

The deal, such as it was, is off. Iran has stopped talking. And it has begun to organize instead. On Monday, after Israel’s strikes on Beirut, Tehran pulled the plug on the back-channel diplomacy that mediators had been quietly stitching together for weeks — the fragile architecture meant to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and walk everyone back toward formal talks. The Iranian negotiating team is suspending, in the words of the government-linked Tasnim News Agency, “discussions and exchanges of texts through intermediaries.” The reason given: the ceasefire, they say, has been violated on all fronts, including Lebanon, which was

The Question Jill’s Interview Raises — and Doesn’t Answer

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(Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images)

Nearly two years on, the debate that broke a presidency is being told again — this time by the woman who stood closest to it. In a new CBS interview, former first lady Jill Biden has offered an account that lands with a different weight than anything said in the immediate aftermath of that June night in 2024. She was not, she says, embarrassed. She was not disappointed. She was afraid. “I wasn’t horrified, I was frightened,” she said. “I had never, ever seen Joe like that before or since. I don’t know what happened. As I watched it, I

The 60-Day Gamble: Diplomacy in the Shadow of the Strait

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(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

A diplomatic breakthrough, cautious and unfinished, may be taking shape between Washington and Tehran. American and Iranian negotiators have agreed in principle to a sixty-day memorandum of understanding — a framework that would extend the ceasefire and open formal talks on Iran’s nuclear program. The terms, largely settled as of Tuesday, await final approval from both governments. President Trump has not yet signed off; Iran has not confirmed its acceptance. The president, one official said, wants a few days to think it over. That restraint is telling. This is a man who generally does not pause for reflection on the

Newsom Wants Taxpayers to Fund His Portrait While Californians Can’t Afford Rent

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(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants $33,000 in taxpayer money for an official portrait of himself — and the timing could hardly be worse. The request appears quietly in his proposed 2026–27 budget under a line item labeled “Governor’s Portrait,” covering the traditional painting destined to hang in the State Capitol alongside California’s past governors. It is a longstanding Sacramento tradition. It is also, in this particular moment, a gift to his critics. State officials have spent months warning of serious long-term budget pressures. Californians face some of the highest housing costs in the nation, gas prices that remain stubbornly elevated,

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