Trump Rejects Iran Offer, Signs Bill Ending 76-Day Shutdown

The Iran file moved on three tracks at once. Donald Trump rejected Iran's peace proposal and signalled, per Axios reporting cited in regional roundups, that the US naval blockade of Iranian ports will hold until Tehran agrees a nuclear deal. CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper was scheduled to brief Trump on Thursday on new military options; Trump told reporters he was thinking about striking Iran briefly with the intent to "advance the negotiating process." The administration also announced a new "Maritime Freedom Construct" — a State-Department-CENTCOM coalition designed to restore safe Strait of Hormuz transit, provide real-time information, and coordinate vessel transit. Brent crude reached $126 per barrel during the session, its highest since 2022. The Pentagon's earlier $25 billion Operation Epic Fury cost figure expanded in significance: UN OCHA chief Tom Fletcher said in a press briefing that US war spending on Iran had already exceeded the UN's entire 2026 humanitarian appeal of $23 billion, which could support 87 million people; he tied the Iran war to a doubling of fuel prices, a 20-percent rise in food costs, and worsening hunger globally, with half a million Somali children at risk of severe acute malnutrition. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach told a House Appropriations subcommittee that the $1.5 trillion defence budget — formulated before the war — was insufficient to replace the aircraft destroyed or damaged in Epic Fury and called for supplemental funding from Congress. US Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Kane told a Senate hearing Russia was providing assistance to Iran in its confrontation with the US, declining to provide specific details.

The day's domestic file produced a long-awaited resolution. Trump signed the bipartisan Department of Homeland Security funding bill — passed by voice vote in the House — ending a 76-day partial shutdown that had halted non-emergency Coast Guard operations and left nearly 10,000 civilian employees without full paychecks. The bill funds Coast Guard, TSA, FEMA and Secret Service through September 30 but pointedly excludes Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, leaving immigration-enforcement funding to a separate reconciliation track. Speaker Mike Johnson quashed an E15-ethanol farm-bill rebellion to pass a budget blueprint for a second reconciliation bill on a 215-211-1 vote, after the ethanol provision was decoupled with a promise of an up-or-down vote later; the reconciliation bill aims to fund immigration enforcement and resolve the still-incomplete DHS funding picture. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry suspended the state's House elections days before early voting was set to begin, citing an electoral emergency after the prior day's Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais; absentee ballots had already been mailed.

The Justice Department reframed the southern border with an indictment. The DOJ unsealed a New York indictment of Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya and nine other current and former Mexican officials for conspiring with the Sinaloa Cartel to import narcotics into the United States in exchange for political support and bribes; the indictment alleges cartel operatives helped secure Rocha Moya's 2021 election by kidnapping and threatening opponents. The CCTV footage of the White House Correspondents' Association dinner shooting was released by US Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, who said the release showed "no evidence the shooting was the result of friendly fire"; Trump told reporters: "It wasn't friendly fire. It wasn't us." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a Senate Armed Services Committee follow-on hearing, argued the April 7 Iran ceasefire pauses the 60-day War Powers Resolution clock; Sen. Tim Kaine disputed the interpretation on constitutional grounds, and Sen. Jack Reed criticised the Pentagon's silence on the Minab school strike.

The economic ledger added political pressure. A Brookings Institution analysis found that Republican congressional districts' constituents drive 26 percent more miles on average than Democratic ones, making them more vulnerable to gasoline-price-driven political fallout from the Iran war and Hormuz disruption; Democrats were already framing the price increases as a 2026 midterm campaign theme. Rising gas prices in five Great Lakes states had broken $4 a gallon the previous day; the national average remained at its highest since July 2022. Volkswagen and other automakers' first-quarter prints were watched on Wall Street as a leading indicator for the second-quarter US auto sector; the European Central Bank's same-day hold at 2 percent and the Federal Reserve's record four-dissent hold at 3.5-3.75 percent the day before kept rate-path uncertainty at the centre of equity-market positioning.

Around the country, the day's other moving parts:

- Fentanyl overdose deaths in the US and Canada have fallen nearly 40 percent since mid-2023, with new evidence pointing to Chinese crackdowns on precursor-chemical exports as a key driver — a finding that opens an unusual axis of US-China cooperation amid the broader strategic rivalry. - Anthropic's Mythos AI system, capable of autonomously identifying and exploiting software vulnerabilities across critical infrastructure, raised alarms among global financial leaders at the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings; OpenAI and Google were reported to be developing similar capabilities. The Atlantic Council convened a closed session at the same meeting to discuss AI's transformative geopolitical impact. - The Israeli navy's interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters off Crete drew immediate State Department attention; the arrest of 15 French nationals, including Paris councillor Raphaëlle Primet, opened a new transatlantic friction file even as Israeli forces killed at least 28 in southern Lebanon — the highest single-day toll under the April 16 ceasefire. - Trump gave his assent to Ali al-Zaidi as the presumptive incoming Iraqi prime minister, after the Coordination Framework's lengthy nomination dispute; Trump's earlier opposition had sunk Maliki's candidacy.