Donald Trump said he may fold on his new deadline for tariff negotiations … again.

While sitting across the dinner table from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday evening, Trump was asked by a reporter whether the copy-paste “tariff letters” announcing the tariff rates for various countries were “final offers” or whether they were negotiable.

“More or less final offers,” Trump said. “We’re always subject to negotiate something that’s fair.”

“I would say the final—but if they call with a different offer and if I like it, we’ll do it,” he explained.

“Is the August 1 deadline firm now? Is that it?” the reporter pressed.

“No, I would say firm, but not a hundred percent firm,” Trump replied. “If they call up and say we’d like to do something a different way, we’re gonna be open to that. But essentially, that’s the way it is right now.”

Trump never seemed all that interested in committing to August 1. He dodged a question Sunday about extending the deadline, forcing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to step in and set one. The United States sent out a total of 14 letters Monday, announcing a tariff rate as high as 40 percent on Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia, and Myanmar. The stock market saw nearly one-percentage-point drops in the face of uncertainty.

In the Trump administration, it seems that a deal is not a deal, it’s a threatening letter, the terms of which are completely subject to change. Meanwhile, a deadline isn’t even a deadline, but an endless cycle of, in this case, nonexistent negotiations.

Stocks tumbled on Monday as Donald Trump unveiled new tariff rates for a number of countries, taking a few steps closer, once again, to the brink of a global trade war.

Trump in early April paused a number of hefty planned tariffs from going into effect for 90 days, promising to secure 90 trade deals in that time. The administration had only announced three deals with that deadline—this Wednesday—fast approaching, so Trump this week pushed the deadline to August 1. He also said his administration would announce a combination of tariff letters and trade agreements throughout the week.

Throughout Monday afternoon, the president took to Truth Social to share photos of 14 such letters on Truth Social—and they read not unlike Trump’s wild Truth Social posts. Countries such as Japan, South Korea, South Africa, and several smaller countries were told they will be hit with tariffs ranging from 25 to 40 percent, effective August 1.

“Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal,” stated the letters, which were all identical but for the addressees and rates (leading TNR’s Jason Linkins to dub them “the Lorem Ipsum Accords”). The U.S. trade deficit “is a major threat to our Economy and, indeed, our National Security!” they continue, and the tariffs, Trump warns, “may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your Country.”

The stock market didn’t take kindly to Trump reviving the prospect of trade war, as the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq fell 0.9, 0.8, and 0.9 percent, respectively.

Planned Parenthood is suing President Trump over a provision in his “big, beautiful bill” that effectively defunds the crucial service provider. 

“The prohibition specifically targets Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its member health care providers in order to punish them for lawful activity, namely advocating for and providing legal abortion access wholly outside the Medicaid program and without using any federal funds,” Planned Parenthood wrote in the lawsuit, which was filed in Boston federal court Monday. “Thus, this statute must be doing something more — and it is. The Defund Provision is a naked attempt to leverage the government’s spending power to attack and penalize Planned Parenthood and impermissibly single it out for unfavorable treatment.” 

The Trump administration is celebrating this defunding under the guise of stopping more abortions. But the true impact of the cuts will be more people losing basic health care like pregnancy tests, cancer screening, and contraception. Under the Hyde Amendment, health care providers, like Planned Parenthood, have been banned from using federal funds for abortion for more than 40 years.

“This case is about making sure that patients who use Medicaid as their insurance to get birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing and treatment can continue to do so at their local Planned Parenthood health center, and we will make that clear in court,” Alexis McGill Johnson, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.  

According to a report from The Daily Beast, Senator Ted Cruz was vacationing in Greece as tragedy struck his state. Over the July 4 weekend, flash flooding took the lives of at least 95 people in Texas, including 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, an all-girls camp along the banks of the Guadalupe River.

Cruz was sightseeing in Athens as first responders began launching search and rescue operations, The Daily Beast reports. The senator reportedly landed in Greece on Thursday, July 3; was spotted at the Parthenon on Saturday, July 5; and is believed to have not caught a plane to San Antonio, Texas, until Sunday.

Cruz was accompanied at the Parthenon by his family and a security guard, according to a reported eyewitness, who told The Daily Beast: “As he walked past us, I simply said, ‘20 kids dead in Texas and you take a vacation?’” The senator is said to have “sort of........

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