Uncertainty over the Iran stalemate has been the major news of the week, as we oscillate between suggestions that an agreement is imminent and reports that a resumption of hostilities is imminent. The first paragraph of today’s Bloomberg story reads: “President Donald Trump said an interim deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the conflict with Iran would be signed on Sunday, a claim contradicted by Iran as the two sides still differ over key points, including management of the waterway and payments to the Islamic Republic.” Earlier this week CNN published an analysis indicating that Trump had claimed an Iran deal was right around the corner at least 38 different times.

Yesterday the D.C. Circuit turned down the request for a stay of the recent order in Beatty v. Trump that Trump’s name be removed from the facade of the Kennedy Center. With yesterday being the deadline for compliance with the order, the Kennedy Center asserts that the name has been removed; however, in light of barricades and visual barriers that were hastily erected while the removal work was purportedly being performed, the public cannot tell at this point whether or not that is actually true.

Also yesterday, a federal judge in Massachusetts granted a request for a preliminary injunction in a case called National Parks Conservation Association vs. Department of the Interior. This case is an outgrowth of an executive order from March 2025 with the Orwellian name “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, and specifically the portion requiring the Secretary of the Interior to “take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people”.

In response to this executive order, the National Parks Service has removed a host of interpretive materials relating to such topics as climate change, civil rights, slavery, immigration, labor, women’s suffrage, and Indigenous communities. In granting the request for a preliminary injunction, the judge agreed that these actions were arbitrary and capricious, and likely in violation of three different relevant laws. As a result, the judge has given the administration 21 calendar days — a window that expires right before the 250th anniversary of the country — to reinstall all interpretive materials that had been removed under the executive order.

As the opinion in NPCA v. Interior puts it: “A unilateral, unreasoned, and lawless Executive Order of a President cannot be the sole justification for an agency’s actions, lest the country be prepared to entrust its future to the whims of a single individual.” But I also thought the following passage from the opinion was particularly eloquent:

“The great irony of this case is that Defendants, and the Executive Order they purport to faithfully execute, decry the existing interpretive materials at National Parks as a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” Yet, the Government’s actions do exactly what they profess to counteract, dismantling objective historic truths and permanently damaging public memory. Behind the incendiary rhetoric lies little substance, lacking even a remote amount of scientific rigor, facts, legal authority, or discernible reasoning. Our democracy and system of governance demand more from the Executive. Agencies must grapple with important facts and considerations, respect the limits of statutory authority, provide reasoned justifications for their actions, and, above all else, follow the law. That was not done here.”

In other judicial news, this week the Federal Circuit granted the administration’s request for a stay pending appeal of the CIT’s ruling in the Section 122 tariffs case, still styled Oregon v. Trump. This suggests that the Federal Circuit is not convinced of the validity of plaintiffs’ arguments that the preconditions to apply Section 122 cannot be met in a world without fixed exchange rates. The SCOTUS term is now down to its last two weeks but we’re still awaiting decisions in Cook, Slaughter, and Barbara as well as a potentially impactful election law case, Watson v. RNC.

There were some primaries this week, but nothing particularly interesting. For months it had been expected that last Tuesday’s Maine Democratic Senate primary would be a blockbuster, after mainstream party leaders had recruited 78-year-old Governor Janet Mills as an alternative to 41-year-old progressive Graham Platner, a veteran and oyster farmer with considerable personal baggage but a lot of momentum. However, Mills dropped out six weeks ago. The Platner-Collins matchup in the general will be one of this fall’s most interesting races.

Finally, this week Trump signed the Secure America Act, resolving the controversy over ICE and CBP funding that led to the government shutdown in April. This seemingly marks the first time that the budget reconciliation process has been used as an alternative to the usual appropriations process, which could have interesting long-term implications. The bill, which provides funding for these subagencies through the end of Trump’s term, passed 52-47 in the Senate (with Murkowski the only Republican defector) and 214-212 in the House.