President Donald Trump said Monday that newly planned talks with Tehran are the “last chance” for Iran to forge a deal and avoid an escalation of U.S. strikes on the country. Trump, speaking at the Oval Office, said he expects negotiations that will reopen the Strait of Hormuz and create a pathway for Iran to address United States’ concerns about it’s nuclear program will begin in the next day or two.

Meanwhile, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has issued a formal order terminating President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” to compensate his political allies. The move follows weeks of negotiations with two Republican senators who were blocking his nomination for the permanent job.

The order leaves in place a declaration — rejected by a judge as improper self-dealing — giving Trump and his family retroactive immunity for any tax audits.

Immigration remains a stronger issue for Trump than the economy or Iran, according to a new AP-NORC poll, even after three people were killed in encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month.

Here is the latest:

Trump says he looks forward to meeting DC’s new mayor

Trump said he’d welcome meeting with Janeese Lewis George, likely the next mayor of Washington, D.C., after he wrongly referred to her as a communist.

Lewis George is a self-described democratic socialist and a member of the D.C. Council who won the Democratic mayoral primary in June. In the overwhelmingly Democratic city, she is likely to take the top spot in November’s general election. She would succeed moderate Muriel Bowser, who decided to step down after three terms.

“I have not met her yet. I look forward to meeting her,” Trump said of Lewis George.

Trump says oil companies Chevron and Exxon Mobil made ‘too much money’

The U.S. president said major oil companies are earning excessive profits because of high oil prices.

“They made too much money, too much money, “ Trump said. “They ought to give some of that back to the public, and they better cut the retail price.”

Trump said he’s not happy with profits reported by Chevron and Exxon Mobil, even though the higher margins reflected energy prices that had increased after Trump launched a war with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed to oil and natural gas tankers.

Trump’s predecessor in the White House, Democrat Joe Biden, also attacked oil companies for their profits when inflation was a major problem with voters.

Trump says he doesn’t know what was agreed to on to advance Blanche’s nomination

The president said, “I understand there’s been a sign off” but that “I don’t know what they agreed” to.

“I think Todd Blanche agreed to reconfirm things that he’s already said. And what he said was OK,” Trump added.

Two Republican Senators who had blocked the confirmation of Blanche, the acting attorney general, to lead the Justice Department said they’d reached an agreement to end the impasse.

Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis said they struck a deal to formally rescind the $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that could have been used to compensate Trump supporters who overran the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Despite saying he didn’t know the details of the deal to advance Blanche’s nomination, Trump defended the fund, saying his supporters had been “treated very unfairly.”

Trump defends his exemption from IRS audits because government was ‘weaponized’ against him

The U.S. president defended an agreement to exempt him, his sons and his business from tax audits.

The IRS had until Trump audited presidents since 1977, but the administration struck a deal to avoid audits of Trump as part of what was an initial agreement to end a lawsuit over the leaking of his tax records.

Trump said that before he ran for president in 2016 that an IRS audit of him had been settled. He said the audit was then reopened and he used it during the campaign a decade ago to justify not releasing his tax returns as other candidates have done.

“They went after me illegally and they did a lot of bad things to me like they did to other people,” Trump said. “It was weaponized against me.”

Trump says he’s leaving the Rep. Max Miller situation to the families involved

A day after telling reporters that he’d look into the allegations against the Ohio congressman, Trump said he’ll let the families “figure that out.”

“It’s a very sad thing,” Trump told reporters Monday in the Oval Office. “I know Max. He’s a good person.”

Miller is accused of domestic violence by his former wife, Emily Moreno, the daughter of Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno, who is close to Trump. Miller denies the allegations.

The senator said Sunday that his former son-in-law should not serve in Congress.

“You know, those families, I know they’re working on it. It’s a very sad thing,” Trump said. “Especially when you know somebody so well to be going through that. But it’s accusations, and I’m going to let them figure that out.”

Trump says new talks are ‘last chance’ for Iran to forge deal and avoid escalation of US strikes

President Donald Trump said Monday that newly planned talks with Tehran are the “last chance” for Iran to forge a deal and avoid an escalation of U.S. strikes on the country.

Trump, speaking at the Oval Office, said he expects negotiations that will reopen the Strait of Hormuz and create a pathway for Iran to address United States’ concerns about it’s nuclear program will begin in the next day or two.

The Republican president says, “The first phase is the opening of the straits. The second phase will be the denuclearization.” Trump says that ”will take a little while.”

While Trump has reveled in the U.S. military decimating layers of Tehran’s leadership and devastating its air force and navy, Iran is betting it can outlast Trump as he faces diminished stockpiles of munitions and the difficulty of executing a war that is unpopular with the American electorate ahead of November’s midterm election.

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Trump signs executive order on military spouses

The order creates the “Presidential Military Spouse Commission” to address issues facing troops and their families. Jennifer Hegseth, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s wife, will lead it, Trump said.

The president said the new commission would “develop suggestions to address particular challenges in housing, employment, health care, education, child childcare and just about everything else you can think of.”

Many of the issues have been tackled in various forms by multiple administrations.

Jennifer Hegseth’s role mirrors that of other defense secretary spouses who have advocated for families while their husbands ran the Pentagon. Charlene Austin, Lloyd Austin’s wife, sat on the advisory boards for the Purdue Military Family Research Institute, and Military Child Education Coalition.

Trump calls Iran ‘unbelievably duplicitous’ with regard to peace talks

Trump is venting about the status of peace talks with Iran.

He criticized Iran's leadership for claiming that its meetings with Oman on Monday were focused solely on establishing a temporary route for safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

The president previously said he held off on a massive weekend strike against Iran because there was another framework for a ceasefire and the full reopening of the strait to oil and natural gas tankers.

“Iranian Leadership is unbelievably duplicitous!” Trump posted on social media Monday. “They ask for a meeting, some would say “beg,” talks begin, with more scheduled in the immediate future, and they say, openly and proudly, that they’re not having any discussions, that nothing is being talked about, and they’re only dealing with ‘Oman.’”

Trump said whether “Iran wants to admit it or not, we are, in fact, talking” about preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Breakneck pace in immigration courts is driving up deportation orders

The Trump administration is packing immigration courtrooms with speedier hearings to clear a decades-long backlog in asylum claims. New data shows a historic rise in missed court dates and immediate deportation orders as judges struggle to keep up the pace.

Hundreds of immigrants’ cases a day are being assigned to individual judges as the number of “mega” master hearings significantly increase. More than 1,300 were held in June alone, a nearly threefold jump from the previous June, according to Mobile Pathways, a nonprofit that tracks immigration court data.

The data also shows that courts have severely cut preparation time in complex immigration proceedings, so people are missing hearings and being told they’ve abandoned their asylum claims at unprecedented rates.

Those who favor limiting immigration see this as a course-correction for a longstanding problem. But the nonprofit’s chief operating officer says cases are being closed without being heard.

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GOP holdouts say they will vote to advance Blanche’s nomination for attorney general

Two Republican senators who threatened to block acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s bid to lead the Justice Department said Monday that they will vote to advance his nomination, ending an impasse over plans to create a fund to compensate the president’s allies.

The statement from Republican Sen. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis came after Blanche issued an order late Sunday formally rescinding the $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate people who believe they were unfairly prosecuted by the Justice Department.

Cornyn and Tillis had said they would not support Blanche’s nomination without written confirmation that the fund is dead.

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Trump stands to profit off US policy announcements by selling fast access to his social media posts

The president knows the world hangs on his every word. Now he wants you to pay for it.

Trump’s Truth Social business began selling sneak peeks of his social media posts on Saturday, offering early access to market-moving news to Wall Street traders willing to pay up. The move raises the prospect of big profits for Trump’s company, and big questions about insider trading and using public office for private gain.

Similar fast-speed feeds are sold by other social media firms and media providers, but Truth Social doesn’t just distribute the news, it makes it as Trump announces changes on everything from war to central bank leadership to tariffs.

“If this was the CEO of a public company, this would be jail time,” said Irene Aldridge, head of Able Alpha Trading.

Initial sales details may be disclosed when Truth Social’s parent company announces quarterly earnings.

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Democrats’ future is at stake as El-Sayed and Stevens make final push in Michigan

Tuesday’s Senate primary in Michigan between congresswoman Haley Stevens and public health official Abdul El-Sayed is one of the clearest tests yet of where Democratic voters want their party to go.

El-Sayed is a progressive backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders who’s run against much of the Democratic establishment. Stevens is backed by Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and has made electability and experience central to her case.

The winner faces Republican Mike Rogers in November for an open seat Democrats likely need to hold to take control of the Senate next year.

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Trump decries negative public polling and claims he’s never been more popular

The U.S. president said on social media that independent surveys showing low approval ratings are false — denying a clear trend of lower support for Trump because of inflation and the Iran war, among other issues.

“My REAL Polling Numbers, not those made up by the Fake News Media, are the best they have ever been,” Trump asserted, providing no data to back up his claim.

The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that just 33% of U.S. adults approve of Trump. That survey from late July also showed a drop since the start of Trump’s second term in adults who “strongly approve” of him.

Contrary to the evidence of multiple surveys, Trump said his popularity is based on his income tax cuts, his job numbers, his efforts to secure the U.S. border with Mexico and his use of American military force in Venezuela and Iran.

Trump going to Los Angeles on Tuesday and speak in Las Vegas on Wednesday

The White House said the president will go to California and Nevada to talk up the economy and border security and slam Democrats ahead of the November elections.

Trump on Tuesday will attend a Republican National Committee dinner at the Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles.

On Wednesday, the president is slated to talk about the economy at Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas.

Falling oil prices help calm Wall Street’s inflation worries, while chip stocks get back to sinking

Oil prices are easing and helping to calm Wall Street’s worries that inflation could potentially get even worse. That has U.S. stock indexes rising early Monday, but several major chip stocks are falling again including Micron and AMD.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 625 points, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.2%. The price of a barrel of Brent crude fell 5.1% to $83.42 after Trump said over the weekend he would hold off on ordering new strikes against Iran at the urging of allies in the region. Treasury yields fell.

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Trump overhaul could gut Head Start preschool quality standards

The Trump administration is planning a dramatic overhaul of Head Start that would gut its quality standards, two people familiar with the deliberations said.

Head Start, established in the 1960s to help fight poverty, has long been considered by experts to be a gold standard for early education. It has more than 100 pages of regulations that cover everything from child-to-teacher ratios and child health screenings to family engagement.

The Republicans would replace these with around a dozen pages of rules that leave most specifics to state and local law, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is not yet public and they feared reprisal.

The draft rules would require more documentation from homeless or unemployed parents, and an early version would have barred even the U.S. citizen children of parents who are in the United States illegally.

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US dollar weakens sharply against Japanese yen after Trump intervenes in market

The U.S. dollar weakened sharply against the Japanese yen on Monday after Trump and Japan’s finance minister confirmed that both sides had intervened in markets.

The yen’s prolonged weakness against the dollar has been a source of frustration for Tokyo. Since Japan imports so much of what it consumes, a weak currency pushes prices higher. High oil prices have amplified pressure on Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to do more to address the rising cost of living.

Normally, foreign exchange markets determine the relative values of currencies, and officials usually stay mum on any interventions, but Trump confirmed it on Sunday.

A weaker dollar makes U.S.-made goods more competitive. Analysts are describing the intervention as a “low-cost” way for Washington to pay a favor to a key U.S. ally.

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Blanche order keeps Trump’s ‘self-dealing’ immunity for any past tax audits

The document released by Blanche on Sunday night keeps a provision of the IRS settlement that provided broad tax-audit immunity for Trump and family, while limiting its scope.

It clarifies that the immunity “applies by its terms only retroactively” to claims open at the time of the settlement, and does not protect the president from examination of future tax filings.

On Friday, Trump’s attorneys notified a court they would appeal a judge’s scathing ruling that characterized the settlement of the president’s lawsuit against the IRS as an improper exercise in self-dealing.

The judge said that because Trump manipulated the court system by suing an agency he controls, the government cannot claim in official proceedings that the agreement resulted from a legitimate legal process.

Trump says talks on Iran war will begin on Monday after he holds off on ‘massive’ strikes

Trump said new talks to wind down the war in Iran and revive traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will start Monday afternoon, after announcing he is holding off on new massive strikes he had threatened to unleash on the country. Iranian state media, however, quoted the country’s foreign ministry as saying Tehran was not currently holding negotiations with the United States.

Israel struck the Gaza Strip again over the weekend, after the U.S. and Hamas said a deal was reached for the militant group to disarm, a potential step toward ending the war in Gaza that depends on Israel stopping its attacks. The Israeli military said the strikes targeted militant operatives.

Hospitals in Gaza said at least 17 people were killed, including children. A strike on one residential apartment killed three family members including a 4-year-old child, according to Nasser hospital, where the bodies arrived.

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Why immigration remains strong for Trump among Republicans, according to a new AP-NORC poll

Immigration remains a stronger issue for Trump than the economy or Iran, according to a new AP-NORC poll, even after three people were killed in encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in July.

Trump is not getting a glowing endorsement on his immigration approach from Americans overall, the new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found: Only 39% of U.S. adults approve of his performance on immigration, a decline from 49% at the beginning of his second term.

Despite that, about 8 in 10 Republicans continue to approve of how Trump is handling immigration. That’s a slight decline from the beginning of Trump’s second term, when about 9 in 10 Republicans approved, but his support within his base has been mostly stable despite a chaotic year of immigration enforcement actions.

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Iran déjà vu: Trump once again threatens massive escalation against Tehran only to walk back

Trump has played this hand before during the 5-month-old Iran war.

It starts with a grim warning to Tehran that he’s on the cusp of ordering U.S. forces to “obliterate” its power plants or seize key parts of its oil industry if its leaders don’t quickly agree to U.S. terms to end the war. It ends with him edging away with a last-minute declaration, sometimes at the behest of Gulf allies, that he’s going to give diplomacy more time.

The hardball strategy aims to create movement in negotiation through pressure and chaos. But the tactic is facing a challenge with an Iranian theocracy that believes it holds a higher threshold for strategic pain than Washington.

The latest episode began on Friday when Trump grimly declared that he was “losing faith” in negotiations with Iran and warned that the U.S. military “ will be hitting them very hard.”

But by late Saturday night, Trump declared on social media that there were signs of progress on reaching an agreement and so he was calling off a plan to carry out new, massive strikes for the time being.

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Blanche rescinds fund for Trump allies after GOP senators threaten to block his attorney general bid

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche finally put it in writing, issuing a formal order late Sunday terminating Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” to compensate his political allies. The move follows weeks of negotiations with two Republican senators who were blocking his nomination for the permanent job.

A spokeswoman for Texas Sen. John Cornyn confirmed the deal, which comes ahead of a Tuesday confirmation vote for Blanche’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The other GOP senator, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, did not have immediate comment.

Blanche said at a June hearing that the Justice Department would not move forward with the fund to compensate those who believe they were unfairly prosecuted, as he faced bipartisan outrage over the possibility that violent rioters who attacked police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, could be considered for payments. But Cornyn and Tillis, both members of the Judiciary panel, have said they wanted to see the promise in writing before they endorsed Blanche’s nomination — especially as Trump continued to express support for the idea.

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