Politics

U.S.-Iran ceasefire: What we know

Published

5 months ago

April 8, 2026

Apr. 8, 2026, 6:06 PM EDT

When President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran shortly before his own deadline for Tehran to comply with U.S. demands or be wiped off the Earthhe didn’t simply say hostilities had halted.

He said the United States had favorably received a 10-point proposal from Iran and billed the two weeks not as a temporary end to fighting, but a chance to simply formalize a deal the countries had been negotiating since before the U.S. and Israel attacked at the end of February.

“Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday night.

Since then, the two sides seem to have agreed on very littleincluding whether the war has actually been paused. Iran has alleged it has faced attacks even after the ceasefire was announced; the U.S. military ha said it was not them.

That 10-point plan — the one Trump called “a workable basis on which to negotiate” Tuesday night — was dismissed Wednesday by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt as “fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely discarded,” saying the president literally threw it in the garbage.

In fact, after thousands of deaths, more than a month of regional instability and a hit to the global economy, it’s unclear how much of what’s on the table even differs from the lead-up to the war.

Here’s a closer look at some of the points of contention that could determine whether the ceasefire holds:

The Strait of Hormuz

Trump called the ceasefire contingent on Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow trade route at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which about 20% of the global oil and gas supply passes. He even floated the strange possibility of Washington and Tehran jointly collecting tolls on tankers that use the lane.

Iran said it would only reopen the strait once a series of conditions were met, including some that may be beyond Trump’s control, such as whether Israel withdraws from Lebanon.

Control of the strait is arguably Iran’s greatest strategic advantage. After it was attacked, Iran effectively closed the tightly curved passage by striking ships that tried to sail past, sending the price of oil and other goods skyrocketing. Trump’s threat to destroy an entire civilization was meant to force Tehran to allow tankers to once again pass through, even though he has insisted over the course of the conflict that he would leave other nations to cope with the closure since the U.S. sources relatively little energy from that route.

Nuclear enrichment

The U.S. has demanded Iran completely stop its uranium enrichment, and of the shifting reasons the Trump administration has provided for why it went to war alongside Israel, this one eventually became the most consistent.

Before the war, Iran was working toward enriching its nuclear fuel to the point that it could be considered weapons-grade, well beyond the level agreed upon by several countries in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement during his first term in 2018, calling it a bad deal. Tehran responded by ramping up enrichment despite international pressure to stop.

In its ceasefire proposal, Iran emphasized its right to enrichment. Without a return to something like the 2015 arrangement, this could be the single biggest sticking point.

Sanctions

Iran has been burdened with its own economic crisis even before the war started. Iran’s national currency, the rial, fell to a record low in December, leading shopkeepers in Tehran to take to the streets in protest. U.S. sanctionson Iran, some of which have existed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, have further strained an already struggling economy. Iran has called on the U.S. to lift primary and secondary sanctionswhich not only directly affected Iran, but also prevent third parties from conducting trade with the country.

The most crippling U.S. sanctions are on Iranian oil.

“We are, and will be, talking Tariff and Sanctions relief with Iran,” Trump said Wednesday.

Lebanon

Iran has demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region, an unlikely scenario considering the positive relationship between the U.S. and Gulf Arab countries that host its military bases. More immediately pressing is the issue of Lebanon.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who has emerged as a the primary diplomatic intermediary in the war, said all parties agreed to “an immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.” Israel and the U.S disagreed.

Lebanon was dragged into the war after the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah mounted an attack against Israel in retaliation for assassination of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Not even 24 hours after the ceasefire was announced, Israel struck central Beirut in what Israel called the largest coordinated military strike in the war, with more than 100 Hezbollah targets hit within 10 minutes in Beirut, southern Lebanon and other areas.

Israel’s attack on Lebanon could jeopardize the fragile agreement, with Iran threatening to pull back. Following the attack, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said, “The U.S. must choose — ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both. The world sees the massacres in Lebanon,” adding that “the ball is in the U.S. court.”

What’s next?

Sharif proposed direct talks between the U.S. and Iran on Friday in Islamabad. Leavitt said Wednesday that Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, will represent the U.S. in negotiations, though Trump said it was possible Vance would not attend due to security concerns.

In the meantime, Sharif asked all warring countries to adhere to the ceasefire amid reports of attacks in the region. While Israel has continued to bombard Lebanon, countries such as Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait said they have continued to intercept missiles and drones coming from Iran.

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.

Politics

Texas Republicans denounce GOP statewide candidate over xenophobic post

Published

16 hours ago

September 13, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Prominent Texas Republicans are denouncing Bo French, a Republican nominee to join the state’s railroad commission, after he made a xenophobic post describing a group of Asian American students attending a University of Texas football game as a “problem.”

French posted a photo on X of UT students celebrating in the crowd and wrote: “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

Sen. John Cornyn immediately condemned the post as racist and called on other Republican officials to speak out.

“This is the Republican nominee for statewide office,” Cornyn wrote on X. “Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized. This is how great political parties self-destruct. Sad.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also rejected French’s message in a statement shared with Blue Light News, saying the picture instead showed Texans united behind their college football team, which had just defeated top-ranked Ohio State.

“That is not my message,” Abbott said. “A selective picture of Longhorn fans celebrating our biggest home victory-ever-actually shows a way that Texans unite. We all support our college football teams.”

“The way we win the state is the same way we win football games,” Abbott added. “We unite under the brand of Texas.”

Abbott also defended Texas’ hard-line immigration policies, saying unity “doesn’t mean that Texas cannot also lead in having the toughest immigration laws of any state in America and freezing H1B visas at our universities.”

Several Republican members of the Texas House also joined in the backlash. State Rep. Lacey Hull urged French to remove the post, writing: “This post breaks my heart. I see college kids cheering on their football team. I see Texans.”

State Rep. Jared Patterson called the post “racist” and said it demeaned students because of their race or ethnicity.

“There is absolutely nothing Christian or conservative about looking at a crowd of young Texans at a college football game, seeing the color of their skin, and declaring that they are a ‘problem,’” Patterson wrote on X. “These are 20-year-old kids cheering for their university — not political props and not targets for racial attacks.”

Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows similarly wrote that opposing immigration policy does not justify “demeaning people because of their race or ethnicity,” adding that French’s post has “crossed the line” and should be deleted. State Rep. Jeff Leach offered a more succinct request: “Delete this, Bo.”

But French also drew support from some Republicans who attacked Cornyn for condemning him. Former Texas GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi accused Cornyn and other Republicans of mortgaging “our children’s future for government handouts and cheap labor,” while state Rep. Andy Hopper called Cornyn a “smug globalist” who had brought the policies at issue to Texas.

French has repeatedly engaged in inflammatory rhetoric. Earlier this year, he suggested Republicans should fear Islam and advocated for deporting 100 million people.

Representatives for French and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Politics

Obama calls for Dems to focus on AI

Published

22 hours ago

September 13, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Former President Barack Obama is urging Democrats — including 2028 presidential candidates and congressional leaders — to more aggressively focus on a comprehensive AI agenda, warning in a closed-door fundraiser that the technology is at an inflection point.

“This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous,” Obama said at the fundraiser Thursday, according to a partial transcript of his remarks provided by his office. “If we do get on top of it, I do think it’s beneficial.”

Speaking alongside House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan, Obama said he is neither a “doomer” nor an “accelerationist.” His remarks come amid increasing alarm over the technology’s advance, with executives at two of the country’s leading AI labs joining Elon Musk in calling for slowing its development, following months and years of cries from within the industry for government to act.

Obama said AI development would be “one of my central agendas” if he were running for president, throwing down a gauntlet as the shadow 2028 Democratic primary debate responded to the AI leaders’ calls.

“I would have a very clear plan, and I would talk about this, and I would say, here’s our plan for safety, here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this,” Obama said, according to excerpts of his remarks shared with Blue Light News by his office and first reportedby The New York Times.

Among the top concerns, Obama said: “I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways and understanding what does it mean if there’s going to be job displacement. Where is that going to hit? How are we going to respond? Are there going to be limits to the amount of displacement that can take place? What is that going to mean for our social safety net? If it turns out that you’ve got a lot more people who can’t find full-time work because they’ve been rendered redundant, how are we going to respond?”

He also called for Congress to take action, telling Jeffries that Democrats should “put together a framework for a very public conversation” centered on the biggest issues.

Obama’s remarks mark a larger shift for both himself and the Democratic Party writ large: He governed as a tech-friendly Democrat, who broke POTUS tech barriers by having a laptop and iPad while in office and whose 2011 town hall at Facebook headquarters was widely seen as typifying the administration’s friendliness with Silicon Valley.

The Obama era was also known for Washington’s failure to confront the growing monopolization of power in the tech industry, most famously in the Federal Trade Commission’s 2013 decision not to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google. (The first Trump Justice Department later filed such a suit seven years later.)

Already on Sunday, at least two potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates addressed the issue of slowing the pace of cutting-edge AI development, or otherwise keeping their products from launching pandemics or cyberattacks.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Democrats need to “address it head on.”

“There needs to be safeguards. There need to be rules. There need to be limits. There needs to be a kill switch on rogue AI,” Buttigieg said, criticizing congressional Republicans and the White House for not moving quicker to rein in AI development.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has gone from courting AI investment to pumping the brakes on data center development, posted to X Sunday that it’s “long past time for our federal government to step up, take this seriously, and put up some guardrails — both here at home and on the global stage.”

The calls for “some guardrails” are still much milder than the proposals coming from the far left of the Democratic caucus, including the proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) to pause the development of advanced AI models and permanently ban “artificial superintelligence.” And Obama’s remarks underscore the leadership vacuum in a Democratic Party that remains in the wilderness after brutal 2024 losses and continues to struggle to unify around a policy agenda.

In a portion of his remarks, Obama acknowledged the lack of high-level leadership on the AI issue, saying that “part of the job for us is to give people a reason to believe again in the idea of the democratic project, the American project, the economy that works for everyone, opportunity for every kid, to reassure people that if we work together, we can deliver those things. That’s hard to do without somebody in the White House to lead the charge, but I do think that people are ready for that message.”

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has dismissed any worries about AI posing an existential threat, telling reporters last week that he’s mainly worried about beating China to dominate the technology.

Obama compared AI to other “dangerous technologies like nuclear power,” but added that it did not have the same “natural” and “physical constraints” on it that is not “under state control.”

In Congress, House and Senate lawmakers have sought to advance legislation to slow down or impose limits on AI development, so far without success. One key Senate proposal, led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, faces an uncertain future because of differences over how to impose a legal duty on Silicon Valley companies that would hold them liable for harms their models cause. Another contentious issue is whether the legislation should preempt state from imposing their own AI laws.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday morning he would support talks with tech leaders on AI but insisted that developers — not Congress — are primarily responsible for ensuring their products are safe.

As lawmakers campaign in their districts ahead of the midterm elections, they are fighting to own the messaging as voters sour on data centers and the impact of AI systems on jobs and education, among other key areas.

Politics

GOP anxiety grows over North Carolina Senate race

Published

2 days ago

September 12, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

DALLAS — Republicans are increasingly worried that North Carolina’s Senate race is slipping out of contention.

For months, they had argued that a post-Labor Day infusion of cash could jolt new energy into the largely stagnant but critical Senate race. But as Republican nominee Michael Whatley struggles to meaningfully close the gap against Democrat Roy Cooper in the polls, some in the party fear they’re running out of time.

Republicans’ concerns were apparent in side conversations, closed-door meetings and even on-stage speeches at their splashy midterm convention in Dallas.

Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, a former National Republican Senatorial Committee chair, told Blue Light News that North Carolina was “probably one of the hardest” states on the map.

“You’re running against an existing governor,” Scott said of Cooper. “So that makes it harder in an open seat.”

One person, granted anonymity to discuss a private lunch they attended with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the Senate Leadership Fund on the second day of the convention, similarly described the North Carolina race as “tough.” The lunch was focused on the party’s battleground Senate map, and Thune zeroed in on Alaska, Maine and Michigan as top targets.

“North Carolina and Georgia are seen by most as off the map at this point, and with Michigan and New Hampshire becoming real flip opportunities as we get closer to November, it’s becoming even more challenging to justify spending in North Carolina and Georgia,” said one GOP pollster who was in Dallas for the convention and, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Public polling has consistently shown Cooper ahead, including a survey released Thursday that found the Democrat leading Whatley by 11 points among likely voters.

Even President Donald Trump appeared to acknowledge the challenge: “Now in North Carolina, you have a little more difficult case, because people don’t quite get it, but they’re going to find out,” he said during his speech on the first night of the convention, while reiterating his support for Whatley, his former handpicked Republican National Committee chair.

The White House later announced that he will travel to Gastonia, North Carolina, for a campaign rally with Whatley next week. “The president’s first visit in the coming week is going to be helpful,” said a person close to the Whatley campaign. “Roy Cooper has maxed out his support and can’t grow anymore. But voters in NC, especially on the right, tune in late and break late. The Trump visit will be a good motivator for our voters.”

North Carolina’s Senate contest has been one of the more subdued races of the cycle, especially for a perennial battleground that could play a pivotal role in determining control of the upper chamber. That could change as more money pours in during the final stretch — and if Whatley can pick up more steam.

“Some in D.C. — [Republicans] and [Democrats] — have viewed North Carolina as typically a slam dunk for Republicans,” Doug Heye, a longtime GOP strategist who is from North Carolina. “But that just isn’t true, as tight presidential and senatorial margins have shown us time and again.”

SLF, the top Senate super PAC, has pledged an initial $71 million in North Carolina through Election Day, including an initial $17 million summer advertising campaign supporting Whatley. No Going Back PAC, which is affiliated with the president’s MAGA Inc. super PAC, dropped roughly $5 million into North Carolina earlier this week. But in a state that has some of the country’s most expensive media markets, both parties may ultimately need to spend substantially more.

Whatley was at the Dallas convention, where he attended an event hosted jointly by SLF and the NRSC discussing the battleground map. He also had a speaking slot.

Whatley told Blue Light News that he was confident his campaign was “going to have the resources that we need to get our message out and talk to the voters about the issues that they care about.” Asked about the prospect of an influx of support from MAGA Inc., Whatley said he would “wait and see how that entire universe is going to come.”

But some Republicans are questioning whether additional money is enough to change the race’s trajectory at this point.

“There is still time, but even with at least $100 million, [Whatley] would need a campaign team capable of turning that money into actual points,” said one North Carolina-based Republican operative.

And Whatley could run up against the overall difficult environment for the GOP, as the party needs to shore up Republicans in other expensive states — like Texas — that historically have not needed attention.

“We can’t allocate a limited amount of resources and energy to 10 Senate races and expect to do well. We should be over-indexing where we think we have an edge,” the GOP pollster told Blue Light News in Dallas.

The NRSC isn’t worried about Whatley’s current standing.

“Summer polling has flattered North Carolina Senate Democratic candidates before only to be proven wrong in November,” Bernadette Breslin, NRSC national press secretary, said in a statement. In 2020, polling at this point in the cycle showed GOP Sen. Thom Tillis trailing Cal Cunningham, the Democrat, before Tillis ultimately won by roughly two percentage points. Cunningham was also caught in a late-cycle scandal.

Democrats haven’t won a Senate race or carried North Carolina at the presidential level since 2008, though they’ve come close a few times. But it’s undeniable that Republicans’ struggle to address high costs of living — voters’ top concern heading into November — and Trump’s sagging approval ratings are putting Democrats in a strong position, both in North Carolina and other key battleground states.

“When you look at Republicans who won close races in the past, the setting and political environment aren’t the same,” said a national GOP operative who was also in Dallas for the convention.

“Sen. Tillis was elected in 2014, a wave year for Republicans,” the operative said. “Tillis won reelection in 2020 with Trump at the top of the ticket, and his opponent had a huge scandal. 2022 was an open seat [and] Ted Budd was a congressman. Dems gave up on the seat and didn’t put the money needed into the race to win.”

For their part, North Carolina Democrats aren’t relying on Cooper’s current wide polling advantage to hold. The Cooper campaign noted that the former governor’s lead is already narrowing.

The political dynamics of the state also make Democrats uneasy: North Carolina has backed the Republican presidential nominee in each of the last four elections, and Whatley could still benefit from an enormous influx of outside spending.

“A Democrat has not won statewide federal office here in nearly two decades — and Whatley’s elite D.C. connections mean Republicans are going to spend whatever it takes to keep this seat,” Jeff Allen, Cooper’s North Carolina campaign manager, said in a statement. “North Carolina is a 50-50 state and this will be a margin-of-error race, which is why we’re building a campaign to earn every vote and make sure North Carolinians know that Roy Cooper will fight for them, while Michael Whatley will continue to enrich himself at their expense.”

Still, for Republicans, the challenge goes beyond money. Motivating lower-propensity Republican voters — who are loyal to Trump but who may otherwise ignore a midterm election — is central to the party’s strategy. It was an overarching goal of the midterm convention as GOP lawmakers and Trump officials repeatedly warned of a democratic socialist takeover and focused on bread-and-butter issues for their base.

Paul Shumaker, a longtime North Carolina GOP operative and top consultant for Tillis, said Whatley is running up against two key hurdles that threaten to dog Republicans this cycle: GOP voters’ low enthusiasm and Trump’s sinking standing with unaffiliated voters.

“The President is underwater with unaffiliated voters, and Michael Whatley has to win a majority of those unaffiliated who turn out this election year,” said Shumaker, who is unaffiliated in the race. “Given North Carolina’s registration number and the fact that there is little to no crossover voting between the two major parties, fixing both problems is the only path to victory.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.