1. United States
2. N.C.
3. Letter

Stop the escalation with Iran and push for a real negotiated settlement. Trump just announced what he's calling "Economic D-Day" — threatening to financially punish any country that does business with Iran. That's not a peace strategy. That's a megalomaniac tightening a vice and hoping the other side breaks before more people die. This conflict has been stop-and-start for 178 days. A deal was reportedly "imminent" just weeks ago. Now talks are dead, and instead of diplomacy, we're getting Truth Social posts written in all caps. Jared Kushner told Fox News on Monday the Iranians wanted to "finish the deal" — Trump contradicted him the very next day. That's not leadership. That's chaos dressed up as strength. The path to preventing Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon runs through a durable agreement, not through economic warfare that punishes civilian populations and drags in third-party nations. Demand that this administration return to the negotiating table before the next escalation makes that impossible.