Trump Lashes Out at Critics of His Iran Deal

Trump held a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House today.
Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Happy Thursday! President Trump is facing harsh criticism over his initial agreement to end the war with Iran, including some stinging rebukes from fellow Republicans. Here's what you should know tonight.

Trump Lashes Out at Critics of His Iran Deal, Including Some in the GOP

President Trump lashed out Thursday morning over the widespread and withering criticism of his deal to end the Iran war, much of it coming from his own party.

Trump signed the negotiated 14-point "memorandum of understanding" with Iran on Wednesday while at a dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron at Versailles, a setting that some have suggested is freighted with historic irony, given that it was also where Germany officially surrendered in 1919 to end World War I.

Critics have lambasted Trump's agreement with Iran as an American surrender, a humiliation for Trump and "the worst foreign policy blunder in decades."

Trump pushed back in an early morning social media post as he returned from the G7 summit in France. "These fools, who think I haven't been tough enough on Iran, when the Stock Market Just Hit A RECORD HIGH, and Oil prices are 'tumbling' down, are either jealous, bad people, or stupid," he wrote.

That did not stop the GOP critics of the deal, many of whom focused on the plan to establish a $300 billion redevelopment fund for Iran, which U.S. officials insist won't involve U.S. funds.

"History demonstrates that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is an exceptionally bad idea, and I think unfortunately the president is receiving some really bad advice on this deal," GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said.

Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also came out against Trump's deal.

"I am concerned that the memorandum of understanding negotiates away the victories of Operation Epic Fury in ways that are completely out of step with the President's goals," Wicker said in a statement Thursday. "Specifically, the $300 billion fund for the reconstruction and economic development of Iran - though not funded by U.S. taxpayers - would make Iran's payoff under President Obama's 2015 deal look like a pittance by comparison."

Wicker added that he opposes lifting sanctions on Iran or unfreezing Iranian funds in exchange for only an agreement to continue negotiations for 60 days and believes it would be an error to require Israel to stand down in its fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Wicker's comments came a day after Sen. Bill Cassidy pilloried Trump over the deal, writing on social media that Ronald Reagan "is rolling over in his grave." Cassidy, who lost his primary election after being targeted by Trump, has become more outspoken in criticizing the president since his defeat.

"Iran's nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future," Cassidy wrote in a Wednesday post on X. "Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal. Before the war, the strait was open, Iran was being crushed by sanctions, and 13 service members were still alive. Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped. This is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades."

Trump himself provided additional fuel for his critics during a Wednesday news conference at the G7 summit. While he claimed that the deal with Iran "achieves everything we set out to accomplish - everything and much more" by reopening the Strait of Hormuz and preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, Trump acknowledged to reporters that the agreement does not end Iran's ballistic missile capability.

He also indicated that he agreed to the deal out of concern that continuing the conflict would have damaged the economy. "I didn't want to see economic catastrophe," Trump said. "If you kept this going, that could have happened. But all I know is every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship."

He added that he did not want to be remembered like Herbert Hoover, who presided over the beginning of the Great Depression. "Rather than possibly going into a depression, rather than having your favorite president be Herbert Hoover - that was always the one I didn't want to be," Trump said.

One House Republican reportedly told Politico that economic fears had driven Trump's decision. "The president didn't mean to, but he effectively acknowledged he lost the war. It's no longer worth the economic price. This is the way out, as ugly as it is," the unnamed Republican said.

The bottom line: The deal Trump signed will lead to 60 days of negotiations toward a "final" agreement, and the thorniest issues have yet to be hashed out. In the meantime, many lawmakers and analysts say that Iran hasn't had to concede much so far but is getting considerable benefits from Trump's agreement.

Average Gas Price Drops Below $4 for First Time Since March

The average price of a gallon of gas in the United States has fallen below $4 for the first time since March 30, according to AAA, after the U.S. and Iran signed a preliminary agreement to end their war.

Gas prices have fallen for nearly four straight weeks, just in time for the summer driving season. The average price of gas had climbed from $2.98 a gallon before the war started to as high as $4.56, driven by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which carried around 25% of the world's seaborne oil trade before the war.

President Trump hailed the falling gas prices at the G7 summit in France on Wednesday, telling reporters that "we're hitting in the threes now for gasoline, and that'll come down a lot lower."

It's not clear, though, how quickly oil and gas prices may fall. Analyst Matt Wright of Kpler, a trade analytics company based in Brussels, wrote in a recent blog post that the number of tankers entering the Persian Gulf could rise to 12 a day - around half of pre-war levels - in 30 days. Oil and gas companies are expected to act with caution due to the lingering uncertainty over the agreement, suggesting that prices may fall slowly in the coming months.

Quote of the Day

"I don't know whether it's the ballroom, but it sounds like the ballroom."

− Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, in a NOTUS article citing records that show that "the White House Office of Management and Budget last week quietly apportioned $352 million from Trump's tax cuts law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, for 'White House Security Measures.'"

NOTUS's Igor Bobic and Anna Kramer report that it's not clear what that "security" funding is for, but many lawmakers suspect that the money is for President Trump's new White House ballroom.

Bobic and Kramer write that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Republicans' 2025 tax law, "states that the funding can only be used for 'United States Secret Service resources, including personnel, training facilities, programming, and technology,' as well as other personnel costs."

Trump and his administration have insisted that the ballroom will be built with private donations, but The Washington Post reported this week that the cost of the project has climbed to $600 million, with more than half of that coming from public funds.

"The president said that it was all going to be paid for with private money," GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Thursday, according to the Associated Press. "And that's what the country expects."

But Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, said Trump can't be trusted. "After repeatedly telling the American people that zero taxpayer dollars would be spent on his gold-plated ballroom boondoggle, now Trump appears to be using a smoke and mirrors tactic," Merkley reportedly said in a statement.

Trump Admin Abandons Plan to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System

The U.S. National Science Foundation announced Thursday that it has halted plans to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a 25-year effort to monitor ocean conditions in key locations off the coast of North America.

The project, which began in 2016 and includes more than 900 scientific instruments suspended at various depths and locations in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, cost $368 million to install and roughly $48 million a year to operate. Scientists have been using data generated by the project to study vital large-scale dynamics of the Earth, including global climate change, coastal flooding and the operation of what's called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, a massive system of ocean currents that affects the climate on both sides of the Atlantic.

The NSF said in May that it planned to end the project early and remove all instruments from the ocean, a process that has already begun and was expected to take more than a year to complete. A spokesperson said at the time that - get ready for it - the decision aligns with a "wider strategy to have a nimbler approach to prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its portfolio of research infrastructure."

The announcement came soon after President Trump fired all 22 members of the National Science Board, which sets policy and priorities for the NSF. The White House gave no explanation for the firing, but according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: "The apparent rationale for dismissing the entire National Science Board is the triple-threat of issues that irritate the president and are the focus of many of his executive orders - namely, climate science, vaccine policy, and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts."

Critics push back: Scientists criticized the NSF's decision to end the project, and some lawmakers have said they oppose the move. On Wednesday, the Senate passed a measure that would preserve the monitoring system, though it's not clear how the legislation would fare in the House.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who co-sponsored the measure along with Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, noted that the monitoring system is helping scientists understand El Niño, the powerful climate pattern currently affecting the Pacific Ocean.

"This is all happening at a time when everybody's talking about El Niño and what that is going to bring in terms of the potential for extreme weather events," Murkowski said. "This is not the time to be turning off one of our most valuable scientific assets."

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, said she was pleased that the administration reversed course.

"This pathetic scheme was illegal," Lofgren said in a statement Thursday. "My oversight team and I will be following closely what NSF does next. NSF's next steps must be nothing short of replacing any of the instruments that have already been removed and ceasing all activities to de-scale until legitimate expert advice has been sought."

NSF retreats: In a statement, the NSF said it "appreciates the concerns raised by the range of stakeholders that have informed us they rely on data from the Ocean Observatories Initiative. Effective immediately, NSF will not proceed with further removal or descoping of equipment from the remaining arrays and will continue operations including planned maintenance."

Noting that some scientific instruments had already been removed from the ocean, the agency said it is "developing plans to redeploy the equipment after servicing."

Poll of the Day: Healthcare Affordability

Fewer than half of all Americans report that they can consistently afford healthcare, according to new survey data published by Gallup Thursday.

Just 49% of U.S. adults were considered "cost secure" when it comes to healthcare in 2025, the lowest share since Gallup started tracking the issue in 2021. The percentage peaked in 2022, when 61% of respondents were classified as cost secure, but has fallen since. Between 2024 and 2025 alone, 2.8 million people fell out of the cost secure category.

Gallup says the data shows that the problem of healthcare affordability is only getting worse and is spreading to wealthier households.

"Although the percentage of U.S. adults classified as Cost Secure is greater among those with higher household income, substantial shares of middle-income ($48,000 to $119,999 annual income) and upper-middle-income ($120,000 to $179,999) households are not - and this share increased from 2024 to 2025," Gallup said. "Even among households earning six figures annually, affordability gaps appear. About a third of U.S. households with incomes between $120,000 and $179,999 per year are not Cost Secure, nor are one in five respondents living in households earning $180,000 or more."

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