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'Sounds a Lot Like a Nuclear Threat': Trump Floats 'Ultimate Alternative' If Iran Talks Collapse
Trump claimed on social media that a diplomatic agreement would be signed on Sunday, but Iran's Foreign Ministry pushed back on that timeline.
Jun 13, 2026
President Donald Trump claimed Saturday that the US and Iran are on track to sign a diplomatic agreement this weekend, but added that "we have the ultimate alternative" if the process doesn't "work out."
"The 'ultimate alternative' sounds a lot like a nuclear threat," Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, wrote in response to the president's Truth Social post. "Not the first time Trump has hinted at it."
The agreement Trump referenced is believed to be "memorandum of understanding" that's expected be fleshed out in "technical talks" that could begin next week, according to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who is mediating the negotiations.
"We are closer to a peace deal than ever before," Sharif wrote on social media, echoing Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who said on Friday that "the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding has never been closer."
"Pending its finalization, the media should refrain from entering speculation about its content," Araghchi added. "In line with our responsible and transparent approach, all details will be shared with the public in due course."
On Saturday, a spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry cast doubt on the timeline put forth by Trump and Sharif.
"We will have to wait and see about the exact date of the signing of the memorandum of understanding, although it will not be tomorrow,” said Esmaeil Baqaei, as reported by Iranian state media. “The possibility of this happening in the coming days cannot be ruled out. However, due to the hesitation of the other side, we must be cautious in making any comments about this process.”
In his Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump declared that the Strait of Hormuz will be "OPEN TO ALL" immediately after the deal is signed—a condition that Iran has not confirmed.
"We look forward to working with Iran, and the entire Middle East, long into the future," Trump added. "Hopefully, this process will all work out quickly, easily, and smoothly. If it doesn’t, we have the ultimate alternative, hopefully never to be used again!"
Trump has repeatedly issued genocidal threats against Iran since launching the illegal war in late February, openly declaring his intention to target Iran's civilian infrastructure and wipe out its "whole civilization." Experts say such threats, even if they aren't acted on, constitute war crimes under international law.
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Alarm Grows Over Vought Plan to Give Trump Cronies Control of Federal Grant Money
"The test will be a simple one: Are you sufficiently loyal to the president? If the answer is no, it will result in the denial of lifesaving disaster relief, funding for research into cures, the closure of Head Start offices, and more."
Jun 13, 2026
A Trump White House plan to give political appointees more power over federal grant money has sparked alarm among scientists, public health organizations, environmental groups, and others who fear that the proposal amounts to an attempt to subordinate critical funds to the whims of the president and his far-right allies.
More than 300 organizations signed a joint letter on Friday calling on White House budget director Russell Vought, the proposed rule's architect, to extend the public comment period that's set to end on July 13, warning that the "scope and impact of [the Office of Management and Budget's] rule is vast."
"The rule will impact the entirety of government grant-making across the United States," the groups warned. "OMB itself says the revisions suggested would relate to over $179 billion of funds to small entities."
Politico, which exclusively obtained the letter, noted that the "proposed rule has already garnered over 15,000 public comments, with many expressing alarm that the changes could undermine research across fields."
Under Vought's rule, federal agencies would be required to perform "pre-issuance reviews" of federal grants—funds appropriated by Congress—to ensure their distribution is consistent with "applicable law, federal agency priorities, and the national interest."
The rule lays out a number of standards that political appointees at federal agencies must screen for when deciding whether an organization can receive federal grant dollars. For instance, the rule would prohibit the distribution of federal grants to organizations that "promote anti-American values" or support "ideologies that deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans."
The New York Times reported that the consequences of Vought's rule "could fall hardest on health and science, a field in which [President Donald Trump] has pursued some of the steepest cuts in his second term."
"In exchange for federal assistance, researchers would face limits on the subjects that they can explore, the foreign labs with which they may collaborate and even the conferences at which they can appear," the Times noted. "Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, the chief executive of the American Public Health Association, a professional organization and advocacy group, said the policy could 'devastate innovation, science, and research' in the United States."
"This is an executive power grab that would hand presidential political appointees unchecked control over more than a trillion dollars that Congress appropriated in the interests of all Americans."
Earlier this month, Lawyers for Good Government and the Environmental Protection Network said that "if finalized, the rule would put senior political appointees in charge of approving and canceling individual grants, while stripping recipients of due process rights" while attaching "ideological conditions to nearly every federal dollar, raising First Amendment and equal-protection concerns."
The two organizations published a fact sheet warning that the proposed rule has the potential to halt billions of dollars in funding that communities across the US depend on for "health, public education, scientific research, public safety, and economic development projects."
“This is an executive power grab that would hand presidential political appointees unchecked control over more than a trillion dollars that Congress appropriated in the interests of all Americans,” said Jillian Blanchard, senior vice president for climate change and environmental justice at Lawyers for Good Government. “Conditioning funding for critical programs on ideology and viewpoint discrimination, while erasing basic due-process protections, violates freedoms of speech, equal protection, and eviscerates Congress’ power of the purse.”
Democratic lawmakers have also sounded the alarm about Vought's proposal. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Thursday that she has given her Republican colleagues two opportunities to denounce Vought's rule—and they declined both times.
"Vought continues to attempt to steal from communities across the country. Now, he is trying to set a new political test on grants for a wide swath of the federal government," said DeLauro. "The test will be a simple one: Are you sufficiently loyal to the president? If the answer is no, it will result in the denial of lifesaving disaster relief, funding for research into cures, the closure of Head Start offices, and more. If you are not loyal enough, if you speak out against this administration, the president and his cronies will take away resources Congress provided."
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Why Won't the Cowardly, Corrupt Democratic Leadership Act to Impeach Trump?
Small wonder that the huge number of Americans who despise Trump also do not trust the Democratic Party, which the media describes month-after-month as being in disarray.
Jun 13, 2026
In my past two columns, I made the case for the Democratic Party to take the lead in pushing for President Donald Trump’s Impeachment. The majority of people favor firing Trump, and the massive number of blatant, impeachable acts by the lawless, corrupt, violent, unstable, dangerous Tyrant Trump increases by the day. If it helps the passive Democratic Party leadership, constitutional law specialists agree that were the Founding Fathers (who signed the Declaration of Independence and crafted the Constitution against would-be monarchs) here today, not one would oppose Impeachment.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the party’s leaders in the House and Senate respectively, know all the ways Trump is wrecking America. They know that the Democrats in the House and Senate overwhelmingly want to impeach Trump. So, what’s the problem with these two men, and their weak Democratic National Committee?
Why do they constantly whine, “Now is not the Time,” “We don’t have the votes,” “Wait until after the midterm elections,” which they know Trump has his Trumpsters working overtime to disrupt? These are not the real reasons; they are pretexts. Trump, the burgeoning arsonist of our Republic and the Constitution for which it stands, should not be given one day more without being confronted by a fast-rising national impeachment movement. Along with a growing majority of Americans, the powerful New York City Bar Task Force declared in a March 9, 2026 report that Trump should be immediately impeached. (See report: “The Crisis Deepens: Congress Must Act Now to Address Escalating Abuses of Executive Power”). This from a bar dominated by corporate lawyers, no less.
Why then is the party leadership so cowardly and corrupt?
The bright light comes from insurgent Democrats from Texas to Maine who are coming to Congress to join the progressive core there and may challenge the leadership posts of Jeffries and Schumer in January 2027.
1. They are antidemocratic CONTROL FREAKS quite comfortable contracting out their campaigns to corporate-conflicted, incompetent consultants. This is a long-building drive of political immolation. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said, "The Democratic Party. It’s Dead,” after the 2000 election in a Washington Post op-ed.
These control freaks have excluded the input and voter turnout proposals of progressive citizen groups and progressive labor unions, which could have shown them how to landslide the worst GOP ever in election after election. (See the August 27, 2024, letter to Liz Shuler and winningamerica.net).
2. By definition, control freaks do not like electoral mandates from the public. These Democrats want to win elections THEIR WAY—raise lots of money, including from corporate PACs and Wall Street; run on a very few issues distinguishing them from the Republicans; and declare they are NOT Trump the vengeful, wild outlaw. People want candidates who are fighters, specifically for their rights and interests, not slick politicians giving them double talk.
Imagine if Democratic candidates pushed for “Medicare for All” instead of inadequate Obamacare or fought for an adequate living wage instead of not even raising the federal minimum wage when the Dems controlled both houses of Congress and had a Democratic president?
3. The Articles of Impeachment (H.Res.1155) introduced by Representative John Larson (D-Conn.)—viewed hostilely by Jeffries—offer a mechanism to check Trump’s unbridled destruction of our democracy and “kitchen-table” necessities. Impeachment shines a spotlight on a host of reform agendas that the ossified Democratic leadership does not want to address, unlike restive younger Democratic candidates, some of whom are winning upset primaries. For example, Trump is starting his own wars, without the authority of Congress—a prime impeachable offense. However, American Israel Public Affairs Committee; the Israeli-government-can-do-no-wrong lobby embedded in the party; and the giant weapons manufacturers like Boeing, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin support Trump’s war-making abuses. While pocketing campaign donations from these lobbies, the Democratic Party has no interest in Mr. Larson’s Article of Impeachment regarding Trump unconstitutionally initiating war as a belligerent or co-belligerent against Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Nigeria, and Gaza without constitutionally required congressional authorization.
A similar aversion extends to the “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” clause of the Constitution. This would open up a can of worms for The Democrats because Democratic presidents have failed to faithfully execute the law by ignoring waves of corporate crime, hundreds of billions of dollars in commercial billing fraud, including on Medicare and Medicaid; refusing to push for adequate corporate enforcement budgets; bankrolling huge corporate welfare schemes and allowing the tax code to be turned into Swiss cheese riddled with loopholes for the rich and powerful; and supporting the construction of nuclear power plants that are targets for terrorists, hazardous, and extremely costly compared with renewable wind, solar, and geothermal energy.
The Democratic leadership doesn’t want the November election to be about the concentration of power abuses by plutocrats who have been inflicting so many injustices, crimes, and anxieties on the American people, reducing their livelihoods and public services.
They have not publicly adopted a comprehensive corporate crime reduction agenda for Congress to address, leaving a bill by Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) in isolation (see Corporate Crime Reporter). With then Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the Democratic leadership rejected legislation favored by the majority of congressional Democrats, led by Rep. John Larson, to raise Social Security benefits, frozen since 1971, by increasing Social Security taxes on higher-income people.
The Dems do not even take a loud, consistent campaign stand against Trump’s crazed tax exemptions for big corporations—many of which pay little or no income taxes on their immense profits. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP): “The automaker Tesla reported zero federal income tax paid on almost $5.7 billion of US income in 2025. Southwest Airlines avoided all federal income tax on $561 million of income last year; its competitor United Airlines achieved the same zero-tax result on almost $4.3 billion of U.S. income. The entertainment company Live Nation Entertainment paid zero federal income tax on $98 million of U.S. income. [and] Yum! Brands, the parent company of the fast-food chains KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, paid no federal income tax on over $1 billion of U.S. pretax profits last year." (See: "88 Corporations, $105 Billion in Profits, Zero Federal Income Tax").
Small wonder that the huge number of Americans who despise Trump also do not trust the Democratic Party, which the media describes month-after-month as being in disarray. Repeatedly, people ask “What does the Democratic Party stand for?” The party does not respond with a coherent COMPACT FOR AMERICA. The Democratic Party is led by political cowards which IS why it is in disarray.
The bright light comes from insurgent Democrats from Texas to Maine who are coming to Congress to join the progressive core there and may challenge the leadership posts of Jeffries and Schumer in January 2027.
More immediate is how feeble the Democrats are in opposing Trump’s intricate campaign to overturn election results. Trump has already said there should not be elections in November. He has spoken about invoking the Insurrection Act to unleash the police and the “Injustice Department” against state election officials, seizing ballots, obstructing mail-in ballots, sending intimidating police to the polls or election certification sites.
In April, Politico published SEVEN very useful, practical ways to keep the November elections free and fair. Best advice for active voters and state officials I’ve seen. (“The Clock Is Ticking to Secure the Midterms—Here’s What the Experts Say,” Politico Magazine, April 20, 2026). Stealing elections has to be done locally, where you are! Stand up to stop cold gangster Trump from committing his greatest impeachable crime this year. Don’t wait for the Democratic Party to show you the way.
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What the Knicks Can Teach Us About Surviving Unprecedented Times
On Wednesday night, the Knicks embodied hope as remaining present. Hope as remaining committed. Hope as continuing to work when you are 29 points down and the other side is telling you they're in your head.
Jun 13, 2026
I was one of millions of people who died multiple times during Wednesday night's NBA Finals game. And I was among the millions who were reborn, multiple times, during that same game.
Much has been written about the power of sports, and I may not be adding anything new to the conversation. That's all right. Sometimes it is enough to join the chorus in effervescent awe. But like millions of others, I cannot help finding deep metaphor in being part of the Knicks family during these times of horror.
Wednesday's game broke records, first in the wrong direction. Shockingly early in the night, the Knicks fell behind by 29 points, on their way to the largest deficit ever overcome in NBA Finals history. They were down 27 at halftime; until this series, no team had rallied from more than 24 points in a Finals game, a mark set by the 2008 Celtics against the Lakers. The Spurs were shooting the lights out of Madison Square Garden, and their superstar seemed unstoppable. At one point, after absorbing a hard foul, he rose from the floor, pointed to his temple, and taunted: I'm in your head.
In my head, I felt nothing but devastation.
Fromm was right that art captures human experience better than abstraction ever could, and the art of basketball, through the brilliance of these Knicks, captures hope better than any essay I could write, including this one.
There is so much to be devastated about in this world. President Donald Trump is making a mockery of our dream of a democracy and of our collective efforts to build a more just world, taking our taxpayer money to wage a war (which he calls flippantly an excursion) on Iran that includes attacks on civilian infrastructure. He has torn into the White House itself, a building whose restrained architecture once symbolized a leadership that refused the grandiosity of false emperors. And this Sunday, on his 80th birthday, he is converting its South Lawn into a $60 million carnival of toxic masculinity: a cage-fighting spectacle staged to soothe an unbelievably fragile ego, men bashing into one another beneath the windows of the people's house.
This is only scratching the surface. If the Spurs were truly in our heads, the heads of so many of us in the United States and around the world, they would find us grappling to locate our way back to hope during this time of polycrises.
And yet, somehow, that is exactly what is happening. It has nothing to do with chest-thumping enactments of domination. Nor does it have anything to do with positive thinking, manifestation, or any other individualizing nonsense. The Knicks, friends, are showing us something about how communities find their way out of despair, and maybe even out of fascism.
The long arc toward justice is indeed long. It can look devastating. Unprecedented. It can break new records in how low it sinks. There might be a step toward the championship, and then suddenly the gap grows wider than it has ever been.
But Jalen Brunson and his teammates did not simply believe. They did not repeat mantras. They did not lash out with aggression because they were threatened and humiliated. They kept working. Possession by possession. A 13-0 run to claw the lead under 20. Brunson answering basket after basket, he would finish with 36 points, while OG Anunoby added 33 of his own.
Mariame Kaba, the brilliant abolitionist organizer and author, teaches us that hope is a discipline. Not a feeling that visits us when conditions improve, but a practice we commit to precisely when they don't. Half a century earlier, the critical psychologist Erich Fromm arrived at the same insight in The Revolution of Hope, distinguishing real hope from both passive optimism and desperate waiting. For Fromm, hope is active or it is nothing, a readiness to move toward what does not yet exist. He also warned that our language for experiences like hope has been flattened into "worn-out coins," and that art often captures what essays cannot.
On Wednesday night, the Knicks embodied what Kaba and Fromm theorized. Hope as remaining present. Hope as remaining committed. Hope as continuing to work when you are 29 points down and the other side is telling you they're in your head. That is hope. That is also how change happens.
Some fans at Madison Square Garden walked out early during those moments of deep devastation. I don't judge them, they weren't wrong about how bad it looked. They were only wrong about what it meant to stay. They read the score as the ending rather than the middle, and walking to the subway they missed witnessing one of the greatest moments in NBA history. So many around us conclude that the score of our democracy is final. Despair is a premature exit from a game that is still being played.
And, the lessons do not stop here. That winning basket, with 1.2 seconds left, was not a triumphant swish. Brunson's three-pointer missed. The game was won because Anunoby crashed the boards anyway and, unthinkably, miraculously, gloriously, tipped the miss in with one hand. The decisive act of the greatest comeback in Finals history was someone showing up for a shot that failed. If you want a single image of disciplined hope, there it is: The work continues even when the shot doesn't make it, especially when the shot doesn't make it.
I would be remiss as a critical psychologist if I did not name a very important irony playing out before us as well. The Spurs' young superstar is a French immigrant, beloved and celebrated by a state whose government has made the persecution of immigrants and white supremacy its signature project. None of this is his fault, he is 22 years old and magnificent at his craft, and he deserves none of our resentment. The contradiction belongs to Texas, and to a country that cheers immigrant excellence in its arenas while caging immigrant families at its borders.
So this is my invitation. This Saturday night, while the machinery of spectacle prepares the White House lawn for Sunday's celebration of brute force, watch the Knicks instead. Watch a group of people who were further down than anyone has ever been, who did not posture and did not quit, attempt to finish what they started, one win from the franchise's first championship since 1973. Fromm was right that art captures human experience better than abstraction ever could, and the art of basketball, through the brilliance of these Knicks, captures hope better than any essay I could write, including this one.
We need to understand how change happens in devastating times. We need to understand how we, too, can participate in revolutionary care. Not by thumping our chests when we are up. Not by throwing in the towel when we break records in our losses. But by continuing to show up. By the discipline of persisting, not out of naïve faith, but out of practice.
The game isn't over. Find your team, and keep making your way toward the basket. And, when it is time to celebrate, get in community and dance under those famous orange and blue skies!
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