Trump Says Pressure on Iran Is RisingPresident Trump and his top national security team used a Monday press conference to put Iran on notice again, which is Washington’s favorite hobby when the calendar starts getting dramatic. According to the remarks quoted in the report, Trump said Iran faced a deadline to make a deal and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, or risk what he called complete demolition. Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe stood beside him as the administration framed the moment as both a military update and a warning. The message was simple enough. The United States says it is willing to keep escalating, and it wants Tehran to believe the clock is real, not just another piece of government theater with better lighting.Rescue Mission Becomes the SellThe briefing also leaned hard on a rescue story from the weekend, after an F-15 Strike Eagle crew was shot down over Iran and then recovered in what officials called a successful search and rescue operation. Hegseth praised the mission as proof of American skill, speed, and courage, and he credited the airmen’s faith and fighting spirit. He said one pilot, after nearly 50…

Moon Flyby Begins Artemis II has reached the main event of its flight: a close pass around the Moon that began around 2:45 p.m. ET and will last just over six hours. During that stretch, the crew is turning its windows toward the far side of the lunar surface and sending back views that no human crew has ever seen in quite this way. NASA is calling it a landmark, which is fair enough. When a machine and four astronauts are this far from home, the agency does not need to oversell the drama. The Moon handles that part just fine. What The Crew Can See The difference between Apollo and Artemis is not subtle. Apollo missions stayed much closer to the Moon, while Artemis II is flying between 4,000 and 6,000 miles away, giving the astronauts a full look at the far side under sunlight. That matters for science, but it also matters because human beings still like to stare out a window and feel small in the best possible way. The crew will spend the flyby photographing the surface and making direct observations, which is still a better research method than asking a committee to guess what happened…