Blockaded: Strait of Hormuz. Not Blockaded: Congressional Exit for Swalwell and Gonzales. POTUS: I Was Supposed to Be Doc, Not Christ. Biden DOJ. Grocery ‘Marx Ups’ in NYC. More

The U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is in effect, with President Trump warning the Iranian leaders—whoever they might be—to shoo:

“We can’t let a country blackmail or extort the world, because that’s what they’re doing,” President Donald Trump told reporters outside the Oval Office after the blockade took effect at 10 a.m. ET.

Asked if the goal of the obstruction is to force Iran to reopen the strait or come to the negotiating table, Trump said, “Both of those things, certainly, and more.”

Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen celebrates what he considers the brilliance of the president’s latest move (“Trump Flips the Script in the Strait of Hormuz”):

The brilliance of this plan is hard to overstate: The blockade accomplishes virtually the same thing as would a military operation to seize Kharg Island (through which almost all of Iran’s oil passes) without the risks involved in deploying U.S. ground forces — effectively shutting down Iran’s oil exports and cutting off its energy revenue. That will place an economic stranglehold on Iran. The U.S. quarantine of Iran’s ports will cost Iran about $435 million a day in economic damage, according to an analysis by Miad Maleki, a former official with the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control….

Meanwhile, Trump is preparing for Phase II of his operation: a U.S.-led international escort mission. He is using the ceasefire to clear mines Iran laid (and then lost track of), allowing the U.S. Navy to establish a safe route through the waterway. Once this work is finished, Trump can give Iran’s leaders an ultimatum: If they do not reopen the strait to all shipping, then the U.S. will open it by military force — and allow passage of all commercial ships except those from Iran.

The Telegraph reports that a U.S.-sanctioned Chinese tanker has avoided the blockade, and two other sanctioned ships are transiting the pass through the Strait. It shouldn’t be a surprise that there will be a cat-and-mouse game in the Strait. Mark Toth and Jonathan Sweet propose in the New York Post that Hormuz blockade puts Iran’s military on the ropes.

Meanwhile, economist Larry Kudlow characterizes the current situation as “Trump Jiu-Jitsu Puts America in Control of Persian Gulf Oil Flow“:

According to sources, on-shore oil storage in Iran begins to top out in about 13 days. So that means the infrastructure shutting will cause permanent damage. Whether this economic obliteration will bring Iran back to the negotiating table remains to be seen.

There’s a couple of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps crazies that seem to be leaders right now, Mojtaba Vehedi, and Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf.

The big question is how long will it take to starve them out?

Fox columnist Liz Peek makes the, alas, entirely plausible argument that the American Left hates Trump so much that an American defeat in Iran might be welcome.

And Now A Message from La La Land: Two writers for Foreign Affairs say that Iran needs “incentives, not just pressure.” Pollyanna, call your office.

It is a sign of our times that at a crucial juncture in the Iran war, we’re focused on a picture of President Trump that, to the naked eye, depicts Trump as Christ.   

President Trump has responded that the offending picture was supposed to be of him as a doctor healing his people. Oh, good. Silly but hardly blasphemous, as several not ordinarily excitable writers (the Telegraph’s Charles Moore and George Weigel in the Washington Post) have unhesitatingly labeled the picture.

For good measure, President Trump lashed out at women’s sports protector Riley Gaines, a southern Protestant and supporter of Trump’s gender policies. Gaines had criticized the Christlike picture. President Trump’s doctor/Christ depiction controversy is adjacent to his lashing out at Pope Leo. Daniel McCarthy writes that “Trump’s spat with Pope Leo is a bad political bet as midterms loom.”

Not Able to Erect a Blockade. Reps. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and Tony Gonzales announced that they will resign from Congress after sexual misconduct allegations. Gonzales is accused of a sexual relationship with a staffer. With Swalwell, there are multiple accusations from multiple women. Turn About Is Fair Play: Guy Benson chronicles Swalwell’s righteous history:

In 2018, when his party was attempting to bring down Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, the opportunistic and preening California representative and would-be presidential aspirant loudly adopted the party line. “100% #BelieveSurvivors,” he tweeted.

Referring to accusers as “survivors” bakes in the assumption that they are telling the truth and have survived what they’ve alleged. For many, that’s a fair assumption; for others, it’s not. The notion that “all women,” or all “survivors,” must always be believed was, and still is, dangerously absurd. Serious accusations should be taken seriously, investigated, and tested by evidence. But ‘Me Too’ sloganeering and dogmas were eagerly embraced by Swalwell et al.

A Politico story says that the “whisper network” finally caught up with Swalwell. Does it matter that Eric Swalwell is married? What do you think? Swalwell’s exit from the California governor’s race shakes things up—I would have thought it marginally helped Dems by eliminating one from a crowded field that threatened to give the prize to one of the rare Republicans. But Dems are still scrambling.

Also unable to erect a barricade against defeat, Hungary’s Viktor Orban is the subject of Walter Russell Mead’s Wall Street Journal column. I don’t think Vice President Vance, who regarded Orban as a bulwark, if you’ll pardon the expression, against EU bureaucracy, will like Mead’s column. Mead writes that Orban was always a “better entertainer than builder.”

We Weren’t Imagining Things After All. The Biden DOJ was really, really doing this:

The Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden “withheld evidence” and approved “aggressive arrest tactics” when targeting pro-life defendants — and then slapped them with longer prison sentences than pro-abortion ones, according to an explosive internal review released Tuesday.

The DOJ revealed the stunning abuses in a nearly 900-page report after examining more than 700,000 records related to the Biden administration’s prosecutions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Grocery Store. The New York Post cover decries the “ridiculous Marx up” of New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani’s first free grocery store that will cost taxpayers a staggering $30 million.

“The Medical Establishment Is Tearing Itself Apart Over Youth Gender Surgeries” is the stunning headline on a Free Press story by Dr. Benjamin Ryan. Subtitle: “The American Medical Association said it supported restricting gender surgeries for minors. Then it said it didn’t. We still don’t know where it stands.” Meanwhile, in the same indispensable outlet, James Kirchick, historian of gay Washington, writes that a new “conversion therapy” is making gay kids trans.

“What is worse: murder or alleged racism?” Heather Mac Donald asks in the lead sentence of her new City Journal piece, “Illegal Immigrant Bludgeons Victim—Blame Trump.” Mac Donald describes a particularly brutal murder by a Haitian illegal alien. What happened next:

To the New York Times, the story and the scandal here is Trump’s Truth Social post, not the psychotic bludgeoning. Trump “has made disparaging comments about Haitian immigrants for years,” the paper informed its readers. The Times quickly introduces an immigrant rights activist to offer moral clarity.

“Guerline Jozef, the executive director of the immigrant rights nonprofit Haitian Bridge Alliance, said that the president’s comments were in line with his administration’s history of targeting Haitian people and spreading false narratives. ‘They don’t see the humanity of immigrants,’ she said.