Talk of the Town
(WASHINGTON) — Virginia Democrats are asking the United States Supreme Court to override a decision by the state’s highest court last week that struck down a voter-approved redistricting ballot measure ahead of the midterm elections.
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(WASHINGTON) — An 11th hour plea from the prime minister of Pakistan appears to have swayed both President Donald Trump and the Iranian regime to agree to a two-week ceasefire deal in exchange for temporarily opening the Strait of Hormuz, at least temporarily staving off Trump’s promise to bomb Iran back to the “stone ages.”
With just hours to go until Trump’s 8 p.m. ET Tuesday deadline, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif — one of the key mediators attempting to the end the conflict — issued a public call to Trump, urging him to allow more time for negotiations.
“Diplomatic efforts for peaceful settlement of the ongoing war in the Middle East are progressing steadily, strongly and powerfully with the potential to lead to substantive results in near future,” Sharif said. “To allow diplomacy to run its course, I earnestly request President Trump to extend the deadline for two weeks.”
Sharif also implored Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz as a “goodwill gesture.”
Just after 6:30 p.m. ET, Trump posted on his social media platform that he would suspend military attacks.
“Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two week,” he wrote.
“We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate,” Trump continued, referring to an Iranian counterproposal transmitted to negotiators after rejecting plans for a longer ceasefire on Monday. “Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two-week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated.”
Within the hour, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council claimed that the U.S. agreed to its plan which includes numerous concessions.
In a lengthy statement on Iranian state media, the council said the U.S. “committed in principle to non-aggression, continued Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz, acceptance of enrichment, lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions.”
Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi, meanwhile, said Iran would agree to a ceasefire if attacks against it are halted. He also said passage through the Strait of Hormuz would be allowed during the two-week period if coordinated with Iran’s armed forces.
The White House did not respond to specific questions Tuesday evening on whether the U.S. agreed to Iran’s 10-point plan — which includes lifting all primary and secondary sanctions and withdrawing combat troops from the region — or what it made of Iran saying the Strait of Hormuz would open with coordination from Iran’s military.
In response, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement:
“President Trump’s words speak for themselves: this is a workable basis to negotiate, and those negotiations will continue. The truth is that President Trump and our powerful military got Iran to agree to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiations will continue.”
Despite Trump calling Iran’s counterproposal a “workable basis” for negotiations, it contains many terms the U.S. and the president himself have long rejected and was previously described by administration officials as “maximalist.”
After the two-week ceasefire was announced, mediators began making arrangements to hold the first round of talks following the implementation of the ceasefire on Friday in Islamabad, but the White House said late Tuesday that it had not yet committed to any plans.
Before Sharif’s proposal was made public, two U.S. officials cautioned that although talks showed signs of progress, the Trump administration and Iranian regime still appeared to be far apart on core issues, expressing doubt that a broad deal could be reached on such a tight timeline.
One U.S. official also said the dynamic proposed by Sharif mirrored confidence-building measures under discussion behind closed doors, but up until the president and Iranian authorities accepted the terms, it was unclear whether both sides could be brought on board.
Fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz is a top priority for U.S. officials, who indicated that any agreement with Iran would have to lead to near-immediate progress on that front.
Asked about the state of negotiations with Iran on Tuesday morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he hoped “to have more news” later in the day and called Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz “a big problem for the world.”
“The whole world’s been impacted unfortunately because Iran is violating every law known by striking commercial vessels in the Straits of Hormuz,” he said. “I mean this is a regime that doesn’t believe in laws, rules or anything like that — it’s a State Sponsor of Terrorism, so it’s not surprising that they’re now conducting terrorist activity against commercial vessels.”
Iran sees the strait as equally important and has signaled publicly and in private negotiations that it is highly reluctant to agree to any terms that would see it losing leverage over the waterway.
Iran’s counterproposal issued Monday stipulated that the country would fully open the Strait of Hormuz but set the rules for passage through the waterway and extract a toll of $2 million per vessel, a situation the Trump administration has repeatedly said would be untenable.
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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Monday issued an administrative stay of a lower court order that had rolled back access to mifepristone nationwide.
The move preserves access to the abortion pill without the need for an in-person doctor’s visit.
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(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans unveiled a bill on Monday that would provide $400 million for President Trump’s White House ballroom project, arguing that such a space is needed following the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, revealing their plans hours before the Department of Justice filed a scathing response to a judge’s injunction on the project.
Senior leadership of the Justice Department overnight filed a motion demanding U.S. District Judge Richard Leon dissolve the injunction he put in place in March, a ruling that said Trump couldn’t build the planned ballroom without authorization from Congress.
In an extraordinary filing, parts of which echo President Donald Trump’s social media post style, the DOJ officials repeatedly accuse the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit of suffering from “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME” and describes Leon’s injunction as “intolerable,” “unsustainable” and “indefensible.” It also makes a side reference to former President “Barack Hussein Obama,” using his full name in the way Trump often does.
That filing was submitted to the court hours after Republicans proposed a bill that would provide $400 million in funding for the facility, which they officials have said would feature a newly built ballroom along with military and secret service security infrastructure beneath it.
Trump has said repeatedly that the ballroom would be privately funded.
Both the court filing and the proposed legislation used Saturday’s incident, during which a suspect allegedly rushed through security at the Washington Hilton during an event where Trump was present, as part of their rationale. The suspect, Cole Allen, was charged on Monday with the attempted assassination of the president. Allen did not enter a plea during a court appearance.
“I am convinced if there had been a presidential ballroom adjacent to the White House the guy never would have gotten in,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is sponsoring the legislation, said in reference to the alleged perpetrator.
Graham said it would be “insane” to hold the dinner in the Hilton in the future.
“Anybody who suggests that we have an event like this in the times in which we live in a facility like Hilton, that’s crazy,” he said. “We are going to have to accommodate the times in which we live.”
The motion was filed following a warning from the leader of DOJ’s Civil Division, Brett Shumate, to plaintiffs in a letter that was posted on Sunday on social media by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
ABC News asked Blanche on Sunday during a news conference about some of DOJ’s statements in the letter — specifically their determination that the Washington Hilton was a “demonstrably unsafe” site for the president and his Cabinet and whether that was evaluated prior to Saturday’s dinner.
“When he says demonstrably, it’s demonstrated by what happened on Saturday night,” Blanche responded. “So it doesn’t mean that the Secret Service were –would ever let the president go into to an unsafe environment. I know that the director of the Secret Service will be focused on making sure that we always keep him safe. And by the way, as we said before, and as anybody that was in that room knows we were safe. We were safe.”
Blanche on Sunday said that “law enforcement did not fail,” with hundreds of armed agents between the alleged would-be assassin and the president, but the overnight filing included an assertion on its fourth page that the suspect “came horrifically close.”
In their motion to the court, however, the DOJ’s top officials argued that a secure space for the president to attend large gatherings in Washington “currently does not exist” and — even though the proposed ballroom plan schedule has said it would not be completed until at least 2028 — current national security issues require it to continue construction “immediately.”
The ballroom, according to the senators who are proposing additional funding, could be a secure facility where events like Saturday’s gala could take place in the future. Graham said it would ultimately be up to the White House Correspondents’ Association whether they’d want to use the ballroom for the event, but their bill aims to give them the choice about whether to do so.
“We are going to build this facility, and I would suggest to the next president don’t go to the Hilton don’t do an event at the Hilton or any other facility outside the White House given the times in which we live,” Graham said. “The problem is you don’t have a choice. We are going to give people that choice.”
The senators are proposing to offset the cost of the ballroom by using customs fees. Their proposal follows months of assertions by Trump that the ballroom — a proposed 89,000-square-foot expansion of the White House — would be funded “at no charge to the taxpayer.” The initial proposal for the ballroom placed construction costs at an estimated $200 million, according to the White House.
Sen. Katie Britt, R-Al., said on Sunday that the ballroom was about protecting future presidents, not just Trump, since it isn’t expected to be completed until near the end of his term.
“This isn’t even about him. This will not be done until the end of his term. This is about future presidents,” Britt said. “This isa bout our nation having a place to gather where the president of the united states of America can be a part of it. This is about presidents both now and in the future.”
The funding bill would require 60 votes to pass a bill to fund the ballroom in the Senate. It seems unlikely Democrats would furnish those votes, but Graham said he’d like to put the bill up for a vote to put everyone on the record.
-ABC News’ Steven Portnoy and Katherine Faulders contributed to this report.
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