Monday Afternoon News Updates: Trump's Iran Deal Poison Pill — May 25, 2026

While the rest of the country paused to honor the fallen, Trump spent the morning attacking Democrats, trashing former presidents, and blowing up his own Iran negotiations

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks in the Memorial Amphitheater during a Memorial Day event at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, U.S., May 25, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Hi all, Ben here. It’s Monday, May 25, 2026. Memorial Day.

Before we get into today’s news, I want to start where we always should on a day like this. Memorial Day asks something simple of us: remember. Remember the service members who lost their lives, the families who carry that loss every day, and the responsibility we all share to never treat that sacrifice lightly. This shouldn’t be about left versus right or political divisions. Honoring those who gave their lives for this country should be something that brings us together.

Here are the stories we’re tracking:

• Trump posts a disgraceful Memorial Day message attacking Democrats

• Trump floods Truth Social with AI memes attacking Obama and Biden while demanding Arab nations join the Abraham Accords as a precondition for any Iran deal

• The fragile US-Iran framework, including a 60-day ceasefire and $12 billion in frozen asset releases, continues its collapse, with Iran declaring no deal is imminent

• Russia escalates dramatically, threatening to level Kyiv and ordering foreign nationals to evacuate

• Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick introduces legislation to shut down Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund

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Trump’s Disgraceful Memorial Day Meltdown

Trump’s Memorial Day message this morning read, in full: “Happy Memorial Day to all, including the Dumocrats, who disrespect our Military and all of the tremendous success that it has had over the last year. God Bless those that have made the ultimate sacrifice. I love you all! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

On the one day a year that is supposed to be free of partisan nonsense, the one day where we put aside everything else and simply honor the people who died in service to this country, Donald Trump used it as a vehicle to take a shot at the opposition party. And Fox News, performing its usual role as state regime media, read the message on air as though it were something normal. Just another presidential statement. No, I’m not at all surprised by any of this. But I do refuse to normalize a president speaking like this, especially on a day meant to honor the fallen — no matter how many times he does it. We can’t let ourselves get numb to this stuff.

Compare that to what former President Obama posted this morning. Obama wrote that Memorial Day asks us to pay tribute to the brave men and women who gave their lives for the country we love, that it’s a debt we can never fully repay but must never stop trying, and that he’ll always be grateful to fallen heroes and their families for showing us what it means to live for something greater than ourselves. That’s what a former president writes on Memorial Day.

Trump, meanwhile, followed up his “Dumocrats” post by reposting an image of himself, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth (a strange photo in which they all look either worried or half-asleep) with the caption “WE ARE IN GOOD HANDS.” Then came an AI-generated image of Biden and Obama captioned “THE 2 WORST PRESIDENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY.” Then a meme depicting Obama with a pallet of cash, falsely claiming Obama funded Iran and caused the current war. Then more posts attacking Democrats. Then posts attacking Republican senators and House members who’ve had the audacity to raise concerns about his Iran deal.

Let me take a moment to say what needs to be said. This is the same person who told us that the Congressional Medal of Honor is not as good as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, because Medal of Honor recipients are people who’ve been “hit so many times by bullets” or are “dead,” while the Medal of Freedom goes to “healthy, beautiful” people. This is the same person who, just five days ago, said about the 13 service members who died in his Iran war: “I get a kick when I look at somebody on television and they say, ‘he’s lost 13 people.’” And of course, this is the same person who said about John McCain, a man who spent over five years as a prisoner of war, tortured repeatedly, that he’s not a hero because he was captured, and that Trump prefers people who weren’t captured.

This Memorial Day, we remember:

• Maj. John A. Klinner

• Capt. Ariana G. Savino

• Tech. Sgt. Ashley B. Pruitt

• Capt. Seth R. Koval

• Capt. Curtis J. Angst

• Tech. Sgt. Tyler H. Simmons

• Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington

• Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert M. Marzan

• Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien

• Sgt. Declan J. Coady

• Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor

• Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens

• Capt. Cody A. Khork

These are the 13 Americans who lost their lives in Trump’s Iran war. They deserve to be named. They deserve to be remembered. They do not deserve to be the punchline of a post by the man who sent them there.

Trump Torches His Own Iran Deal

While Trump was busy posting memes, the framework for the Iran deal was falling apart in real time.

Here’s where things stood heading into the weekend. Negotiations had reportedly produced a rough framework: a 60-day ceasefire extension, Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days and clearing mines, the U.S. lifting its naval blockade, the U.S. releasing at least $12 billion in frozen Iranian assets currently held in Qatar (with the NY Times reporting that number was upwards of $25 billion) — Iran’s strict precondition — and Iran committing at a high level not to pursue nuclear weapons, but with any specifics of a nuclear deal being punted to a future date. It wasn’t a final deal, and it would have left the U.S. worse off than under Obama’a deal, but it was at least heading somewhere.

Then Trump blew it up.

During a Saturday conference call with Arab and Muslim nation leaders, Trump apparently blindsided everyone on the line by demanding they normalize relations with Israel as part of any Iran deal. Leaders from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Pakistan — none of which have formal diplomatic relations with Israel — reportedly sat in stunned silence. According to U.S. officials familiar with the call, one official said there was silence on the line, and Trump then joked asking if they were still there.

Then Trump escalated it further this morning by posting publicly that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan must sign the Abraham Accords. He said he was “mandatorily requesting” it, whatever that means, as a condition of any deal. Countries that refuse, he said, “should not be part of this Deal.”

Here’s the reality of why this is so reckless. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly and consistently said that any normalization with Israel requires an irreversible path toward a Palestinian state. Netanyahu’s government has flatly refused that. So Trump is now demanding that Arab nations do something their own populations support at roughly one to two percent approval, something that would likely topple the governments of the leaders he’s demanding this from, as a precondition for a deal that was already extraordinarily fragile. Trump is once again targeting our own allies in the region as his talks with our adversaries fall apart.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry responded by officially declaring that no Iranian nuclear commitments and no uranium handover exist or will exist in any draft agreement, calling reports to the contrary a “pure lie.” Iran then stated, through its foreign ministry, that it is not signing any agreement with the U.S., and through Tasnim News Agency, that it is now on the verge of canceling negotiations entirely.

A reminder: Obama negotiated a multilateral agreement with the entire world watching, kept Iran from getting nuclear weapons without firing a shot, and un-froze certain assets that already belonged to Iran as part of a verified compliance framework. Trump launched a war, lost control of the Strait of Hormuz, and is now reportedly willing to release billions back to Iran while getting far less in return. Yet, when Trump fails, he continues to blame Obama.

Russia Threatens to Level Kyiv

We must not lose sight of Ukraine amidst all the noise. Russia’s military is threatening to completely destroy Kyiv. The Russian Defense Ministry has ordered all diplomats and foreign nationals to leave the city, saying strikes will target “decision-making centers,” command posts, and Ukrainian drone production facilities. A prominent Russian military source said it should take about a month to make Kyiv uninhabitable.

This is the war Trump promised he’d end in 24 hours. The war he said he’d end before he even took office. Not only has he not ended it, but it has dramatically escalated on his watch, while he dismantled American support for Ukraine, signaled sympathy for Moscow, and undermined NATO at every turn.

Fitzpatrick Moves to Kill Trump’s Slush Fund

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) has introduced H.R. 8955, legislation to prohibit the use of federal funds for payments submitted to Trump’s so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund, the $1.776 billion slush fund Trump created to funnel money to political allies. Our own Scott MacFarlane cornered Fitzpatrick in the halls of Congress recently, and Fitzpatrick told him he’d work on killing it. Now, he’s followed through. That’s worth acknowledging.

That’s where things stand on this Memorial Day. We’re grateful to have you with us. Honor the fallen today. That’s what this day is for.

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