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By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

(CNN) — Last week, President Donald Trump declared that the “ceasefire” with Iran was “OVER,” as US forces carried out consecutive nights of strikes against Iran.

Trump had originally announced the ceasefire in early April, just hours after threatening that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” After announcing it would last for two weeks, he went on to extend it. But in the weeks that followed, and even after the US and Iran signed a “memorandum of understanding” that kicked off a 60-day period of negotiations to end the war, the firing did not cease. As the US and Iran continued to exchange back-and-forth attacks, Trump insisted the ceasefire remained in effect — until he decided last week that whatever thread was holding the ceasefire together had finally snapped.

This much is clear: A “ceasefire,” at least lately, doesn’t necessarily constitute a ceasing of fire. Fighting between Israel and Iran’s ally Hezbollah continued in Lebanon despite US-brokered ceasefires between the Israeli and Lebanese governments, with the Norwegian Refugee Council reporting that nearly 600 people were killed in Lebanon in the weeks following the April ceasefire. And since Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan, endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, went into effect in October, Israel has continued to attack the territory almost daily, saying it is targeting Hamas: A tally by the Government Media Office in Gaza indicates that Israel has violated the ceasefire at least 3,689 times.

What, then, is a “ceasefire”? Though the concept is as old as war itself, the term was first recorded in the mid-19th century, appearing in a Scottish newspaper as a two-word military command to cease active hostilities. During the 20th century, it evolved into a one-word noun denoting a temporary suspension of hostilities — a condition of neither peace nor outright war.

When used by political leaders, as well as journalists reporting on their remarks, the word “ceasefire” suggests that the violence in a conflict has stopped, says Rachel Nelson, an analyst at the Middle East Policy Council. But she says that often doesn’t reflect what the combatants are still doing. “Really the question is whether these parties are actually honoring what they agreed to,” she adds.

Despite how straightforward it sounds, a “ceasefire” can encompass a range of conditions. The United Nations notes that there is no single, universally accepted definition of the term, leaving parties in armed conflicts to determine what it entails for their particular situations. The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy indicates that a ceasefire can be confined to a particular area where fighting has erupted or it can cover the entirety of the conflict region, though it notes that “it is usually implicit in such agreements that the cessation of firing is accompanied by no forward movement of positions or armament.”

This month also marks the 73rd anniversary of the Korean Armistice Agreement, which established a ceasefire between the militaries of the two Koreas and their respective allies until a final peace agreement between North and South Korea could be achieved. Nearly three-quarters of a century later, the ceasefire remains in place — even as both sides have exchanged cross-border gunfire over the years, and as a formal peace treaty remains elusiv

By Marshall Cohen, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration took an extraordinary step this week to escalate its nationwide efforts to prevent states from regulating prediction markets, where users can trade on real-world events like sports, politics and pop culture.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates prediction markets, directed Kalshi not to cancel pending sports trades in Michigan, in defiance of a court order from a state judge.

The rare CFTC order cited emergency powers that haven’t been invoked since President Jimmy Carter’s grain embargo against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Kalshi said it had already complied with the judge’s order, and the volume of unwound trades was relatively small – which means the legal standoff might be moot for now. But this maneuver was the CFTC’s most aggressive and surprising step yet in its efforts to stop states from reigning in prediction markets.

“This hasn’t happened in 46 years,” said Robert Schwartz, the agency’s former general counsel, of the CFTC using its emergency authorities. “And it’s an assertion of federal power in financial markets like we haven’t seen so far, by countermanding a court order.”

With the backing of President Donald Trump, the CFTC has embraced prediction markets, which have exploded in popularity this year. The CFTC’s move comes after it filed lawsuits against states that tried to regulate the companies, and withdrew Biden-era proposals to ban some types of trades.

Trump and his family have financial ties to the prediction market industry. And he has reshaped the CFTC by leaving his sole appointee, Michael Selig, at the helm of the five-member commission.

While Selig has largely been in lockstep with the industry, the unorthodox intervention in Michigan created some rare daylight between the two sides. It caught many in the industry off guard, rattled seasoned traders by creating uncertainty about pending trades and drew condemnation from Kalshi.

Kalshi’s head of enforcement, Bobby DeNault, said: “We are disappointed by this decision and believe it is unfair to Kalshi,” in an X post Tuesday night.

“We are being put in an impossible position, looking to follow state court orders that may contradict our federal regulatory obligations,” DeNault wrote.

A source familiar with the CFTC’s decision-making told CNN this was done to stop what it sees as a bad precedent from influencing ongoing lawsuits in other states. The source said, “this isn’t about Kalshi and it certainly wasn’t to help them,” adding that, “it makes their life harder, in this case.”

Separately, CNN reported Thursday that the CFTC is investigating a White House teleprompter operator for potential insider trading on markets about Trump’s speeches. The White House said the employee, Gabriel Perez, is cooperating with the CFTC and was placed on unpaid administrative leave.

CNN has a partnership with Kalshi and uses its data to cover major events. But CNN editorial