I just had two emailers in a row who I had back and forths with about the comparison between the Iran War and the Suez Crisis of 1956. And at the end of each exchange they said, hey, looking forward to the live podcast in Austin next week! (Who knows? Maybe Austin is a big Suez Crisis town.) More important, it reminded me that we’ve secured additional space and now have small additional number of tickets for next Wednesday. So if you’re in Austin or near enough that it’s convenient to get there, come see us in Austin next Wednesday night, April 8. Click here for tickets.

Kate and Josh talk Pam Bondi’s ouster, Trump’s Iran stemwinder and the birthright citizenship oral arguments.

Many of the smaller businesses that took a hit from Trump’s tariffs are not, court filings suggest, set up to collect a refund, and they may never be, Layla A. Jones reports.

We discussed a wild few weeks on Capitol Hill yesterday, including a comical series of maneuvers by Senate and House Republicans, each of whom are now swallowing legislation they pledged to oppose, and a seeming attempt by Republican leadership to get Trump off their backs when it comes to the SAVE Act. Watch here.

In the before times, when a president wanted to make a change at the top of a department, he had a talk with that person or have an intermediary do so and explain it was time for a change. The secretary was allowed to make the decision on their own, even if it was usually known that it wasn’t really their choice. I was thinking about that this week as Pam Bondi’s ouster speedran from hint to certainty in … what? 24 hours? Why doesn’t she just step down on her own, I thought? But I quickly realized why, just on the basis of thinking about the pattern and about Trump. If Trump is getting ready to fire you and you quit, I strongly suspect this would enrage him. He’d see it as a major and perhaps unforgivable act of defiance. Trump gets to fire you. Period. I think he would see anything else the way others might see a subordinate announcing and claiming credit for a project the executive felt he owned.

Iran said today that after the war with the U.S. and Israel concludes that it will “oversee” transit through the Strait of Hormuz. It says it will do so in some kind of common arrangement with Oman. (Oman is the country on the other side of narrowest point of the Strait.) This was mixed with statements that this does not mean ships will be blocked. Basically Iran and Oman will try to make it a better cargo experience for everyone. The Times reports that Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs says that this oversight “will naturally not mean restrictions; rather, they are intended to facilitate and ensure safe passage and to provide better services to ships passing through this route.”

In less than a week, the TPM team is heading down to Austin to hang with our Texas readers and friends at the Observer. If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, now is the time!

Remember, Inside members get free access to all events. And as Prime member, you get 33% off your tickets. Forgot or didn’t receive the discount code? Just email Joe Ragazzo at joe@talkingpointsmemo.com

As a reminder, the night will begin with a conversation between TPM founder and editor-in-chief Josh Marshall and Texas Observer’s politics editor, Justin Miller. They’ll be talking the Sen. John Cornyn vs. AG Ken Paxton runoff and the Trump endorsement that wasn’t; whether James Talarico can become the first Democratic senator in Texas in more than 30 years; and the state of the redistricting wars.

Then, D.C. reporter Kate Riga and Josh will record a live episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast featuring Kate Riga. After the pod, there will be an audience Q&A and then we’ll wrap up the night in the bar.

We’re excited to see you there!

News is breaking now that Trump has fired Pam Bondi from her job as attorney general. Some reports suggest he may replace her with EPA head Lee Zeldin.

But Fox News reports that she’s actually been out of the job for the better part of a day now:

Bondi met with Trump in the Oval Office Wednesday night ahead of his speech to the nation on the war in Iran, where she reportedly was informed of her ouster, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. 

One of those sources said that by the time Trump took his place behind the podium for the address, Bondi already lost her job and was on her way back to Florida.

Todd Blanche is now running DOJ as acting attorney general, NBC reports.

Airports in chaos, Senate Republicans caving to Senate Democrats, House Republicans caving to Senate Republicans, a huge bill for Iran, the sweeping, voter-suppressing SAVE Act: there’s a lot that Congress is (in theory) handling right now with (in practice) limited success. TPM reporter Emine Yücel and I will try to make sense of it all at noon. Watch here.

There were two revealing moments during Donald Trump’s speech to the nation last night on the war in Iran, and another in a luncheon speech he gave earlier that day. The first was his threat to bomb Iranians “back to the Stone Age where they belong.” Trump was echoing, whether consciously or not, a comment that Air Force General Curtis LeMay had made in a 1965 book. LeMay advised that if North Vietnam didn’t bow to American aims in South Vietnam, the United States “should bomb them back to the Stone Age.”