Brian Erickson

rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic, comfy in knowledge that “at least” I know we’re on the titanic #endcitizensunited

[Marc E. Elias @marceelias]

🚨BREAKING: Newly obtained documents show a clear paper trail of Trump administration officials planning to share sensitive voter data with an outside political group trying to overturn elections, as part of a secret agreement. https://t.co/ehhCCzys1D

[Dobrila ☮️🌎☮️ @s_q5676k]

@thedaywar90 Circus continues. 👇

[Scott Dworkin @funder]

GAME CHANGER: Montana just found the "exit ramp" to kill Citizens United. They aren't waiting for the Supreme Court—they’re going around them. 74% of voters are on board and corporate lawyers are PANICKING. This is how we win. 🏔️💸 https://t.co/LnVMFzEkDw

[BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan]

BREAKING: trump is using tens of millions of dollars worth of foreign steel, from his friend in Luxembourg to build his gaudy ballroom, instead of AMERICAN Steel.

It was "donated," but in exchange for lower tariffs.

That's not America First, is it?
Seems corrupt to me.

[Brian Erickson @ericksobrian]

@RedfearnsTake @oldishbird1 @rachelvscott @KnittyMcPretty You might be a monster if…you’re advocating dropping nukes on Iran, to duplicate Hiroshima

[Brian Erickson @ericksobrian]

@CarolineKSutton @TimothyDSnyder Iran responds when they respond, and the Don is not getting what he needs from them right now…escalation necessary. Could be partly result of leadership being lost and part strategy; but one thing that is for sure, Iran will “win” if they bankrupt us and others, right?

[Carlos @Carlos980553196]

💀 The Trapped Animal
Let me tell you what happens when a narcissist with nuclear codes realizes he has lost.
He does not reflect. He does not adjust. He bites everyone within reach.
Before February 28th, Iran was sanctioned, isolated, and weak. The Strait was open. Oil flowed. The economy was functioning. The world was not perfect, but it was not on fire. Then Donald Trump, on impulse, without consulting allies, without a plan, without congressional authorization, assassinated a head of state and launched a war he was certain would be over in a week.
It was not over in a week. It is not over in a month. And now every number in his life is collapsing: 33% approval, the lowest of his presidency, only 29% support for the war, his own base abandoning him, 36 House Republicans already heading for the exits. He is the least popular wartime president in modern American history and the war is not even over.
And what is coming is the bill for everything he broke.
$5.2 trillion gone from the markets. Brent at $116. Consumer confidence below 2008. Bond market posting its worst outflows since the pandemic. Treasury auctions at their weakest demand since 2024. $52 billion fleeing Asia. Fertilizer chains broken. Famine approaching. Fourteen Americans dead. The Strait still closed. Iran still standing. And now he is willing to walk away with the Strait still shut, meaning the one stated reason for the war was a lie or a failure, and either way the dead are still dead and the money is still gone.
So what does a trapped animal do? He lashes out. Not at the enemy. At the friends.
This morning, from his phone, he told Britain to buy American oil and go fight for the Strait themselves. The Strait he closed. The crisis he created. He told them “the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore.” He threatened France because they would not let weapons fly over their territory for a war they were never consulted about. “The U.S.A. will REMEMBER,” he wrote, threatening the nation that gave America the Statue of Liberty.
He cannot beat Iran. So he beats up on NATO. He cannot reopen Hormuz. So he tells allies to “just TAKE IT,” something he could not do with three carrier strike groups in 28 days. He cannot lower gas prices. So he tries to sell American oil to the countries whose supply he cut off. The arsonist selling fire insurance.
And through all of it, while the world burns and the numbers collapse, his circle trades. Every fake peace announcement a buy signal. Every escalation a sell signal. The Financial Times documented it. Bloomberg confirmed it. A US Senator called it mind-blowing corruption. The war failed for America. It succeeded for the people close enough to the Situation Room to know what comes next.
That is what this is. A man who broke the world because he wanted to feel powerful, lost control of everything he touched, watched his numbers collapse, and is now thrashing at every ally within reach because he cannot admit what everyone else already knows: he got this catastrophically, irreversibly, historically wrong.
And the people who will pay for it, as always, are everyone except him.

[Marc E. Elias @marceelias]

The Republican Party is telling us, with brimming confidence and zero shame, that it intends to make it harder for its opponents to vote and easier to control the outcome of elections. They are prepared to use every tool available to stay in power. https://t.co/jAtLIeunRJ

[Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren]

Millions of dollars are missing.

ABC, Paramount, X, and Meta all settled lawsuits by promising to donate millions to Trump's library fund.

Now, his initial library fund is gone.

Is the money in Donald Trump's pocket? I'm pressing for answers.

[Boston Smalls @smalls2672]

Ret. Major Genetal reacts to Pete Hegseth

[Ammanichanda @Arkasiraee]

Let me explain educate you all what just happened,

5 minutes before the President announced a halt to attacks on Iran…

Someone placed a $1.5 BILLION bet on stocks going up and dumped $192 million in oil.5 minutes.

These trades were 4 to 6 times larger than anything else in the market at that time.

Whoever did this wasn’t guessing.

You don’t risk $1.5 billion on a hunch.

There was zero public indication this announcement was coming.

No leaks.

No press.

Nothing.

The only people who knew were in the room when the decision was made.

Someone in that room picked up a phone.

And within minutes, they made more money than most Americans will earn in a thousand lifetimes.

In a single trade.

On a war that cost you $4+ gas and $16 billion in tax dollars.

American citizens funded this war. Politicians are positioned to profit from it.

This is not the first time.

Major announcements have repeatedly been preceded by suspicious market moves tariff reversals, policy shifts, war decisions.

This may be one of the most blatant examples of potential insider advantage in modern American politics.

You would go to prison for trading on a tip from your cousin.

Yet billion-dollar trades happen minutes before decisions like this and no one asks questions.Nobody gets investigated.

Nobody gets charged.

By tomorrow, this will be buried under the next headline.

Just like last time.

And the time before that.

The game is rigged. The insiders pull the strings and win over and over.

And they’re not even trying to hide it anymore.

[Bark @barkmeta]

Let me explain what just happened 👇

5 minutes before the President announced a halt to attacks on Iran… someone placed a $1.5 BILLION bet on stocks going up and dumped $192 million in oil.

5 minutes…

These trades were 4 to 6 times larger than anything else in the entire market. Whoever did this wasn’t guessing. You don’t risk $1.5 billion on a hunch.

There was zero public indication this announcement was coming. No leaks. No press. Nothing. The only people who knew were in the room when the decision was made.

Someone in that room picked up a phone.
And within minutes they made more money than most Americans will earn in a thousand lifetimes. In a single trade. On a war that cost you $4+ a gallon gas and $16 billion in tax dollars.

American citizens funded this war. Politicians are profiting from it.

This is not the first time. Every major announcement from this administration has had massive suspicious trades right before it dropped. Tariff reversals. Policy shifts. War decisions.

This is the most blatant insider trading operation in the history of American politics. It’s not even close. And it’s happening over and over in broad daylight.

You would go to federal prison for trading on a tip from your cousin. These people are front running war decisions with billion dollar bets and nobody will ever ask a single question.

Nobody will be investigated. Nobody will be charged. By tomorrow this will be buried under the next satisfying headline. Just like last time. And the time before that.

The game is rigged. And they’re not even trying to hide it anymore…

[Devin Nunes' Cattle Dog 🇺🇦 🇪🇺🇺🇸🇨🇦 🇦🇺 @Kaos_Vs_Control]

Pete Hegseth: The problem with Iran is it spends money on weapons and missiles instead of improving life for their people.

Self awareness of a potato

[Jürgen Nauditt 🇩🇪🇺🇦 @jurgen_nauditt]

Trump declares almost 50% of Americans to be public enemy number one – right after Iran.

This is no longer politics; this is open civil war from the mouth of a president. Anyone who brands half of their own people – millions of ordinary Americans who simply vote differently – as the "greatest enemy" hasn't understood America; Trump hates it.

This rhetoric isn't "tough," it's treacherous. It destroys precisely what makes America strong: the idea that Americans, despite all their differences, are one nation.

Trump has just proven that he doesn't want to be president of all Americans – but merely the leader of a faction that considers the rest the enemy.

Insane. And extremely dangerous.

[The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline]

Blumenthal: "Renee Good after she was shot and killed…You were asked whether you believe the shooting was justified, and you replied, 'Absolutely. Do you regret that statement as well?"

Mullin: "It's very clear that an officer had to make a split decision in that case, who as a car was running towards him and did strike him."

Blumenthal: "You're saying you do not regret that statement?"

Mullin: "I'm saying the investigation is going on."

Blumenthal: "There is no investigation."

[Tommasina Says Join BlueSky 🦅💙🐈‍⬛ @TommasinaResist]

Hundreds of TSA agents have already quit as funding chaos continues. Congress could fix this today. Instead House Republicans are demanding billions more for ICE.
That’s their priority. Pay the workers protecting Americans.
#FundDHSFreezeICE
#USDemocracy #Voices4Victory

[Joyce Alene @JoyceWhiteVance]

The question is really very simple: Do you believe all eligible Americans have the right to vote or are you terrified of what those voters will do to you if they are able to exercise that right?

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

BREAKING: The world spent fifty years and hundreds of billions of dollars building Strategic Petroleum Reserves so that no geopolitical shock could starve civilization of energy.

Nobody built the equivalent for fertilizer.

That is the most expensive oversight in the history of modern statecraft, and you are about to pay for it at the grocery store.

The Strait of Hormuz does not merely carry 20% of global oil. UNCTAD estimates roughly one-third of all seaborne fertilizer trade passes through it. The Fertilizer Institute estimates that conflict-exposed exporters account for nearly 49% of global urea exports and nearly half of global sulfur trade.

Since February 28, daily ship transits have collapsed by 97%.

Here is what almost nobody understands about why this is not "just another commodity spike."

It was not the missiles that closed the strait. It was the insurance. Multiple P&I clubs cancelled war-risk extensions for the Gulf after 26 months of Red Sea losses had already depleted their Solvency II capital buffers. War-risk premiums surged from 0.25% to as high as 5% of hull value per transit. A urea cargo cannot absorb that. The economics of fertilizer shipping through Hormuz became impossible before a single mine needed to detonate.

The Trump administration announced a $20 billion sovereign-backed reinsurance facility with Chubb as lead underwriter. There is no confirmed public evidence that a single fertilizer vessel has used it. Insurance pays for financial loss. It does not intercept anti-ship missiles. Physical security remains the binding constraint, and the US Navy confirmed on March 12 it is "not ready" for commercial escorts.

Now here is the part that should terrify every allocator on Earth.

Agriculture runs on biological deadlines. Corn Belt farmers need nitrogen applied by mid-April. Indian Kharif season prep starts in May. Australian winter crop needs urea by June. These are not financial deadlines that reprice. They are photosynthetic deadlines that, once missed, produce irreversible yield loss. A diplomatic breakthrough on April 15 does not help a farmer who needed fertilizer on April 1.

And the yield math is nonlinear. Wall Street models fertilizer-to-output as proportional. It is not. The response is quadratic. In developed systems that over-apply nitrogen, a 15% reduction costs 2-5% of yield. In the Global South where farmers already under-apply, the same reduction pushes crops off a biophysical cliff. Sri Lanka proved this in 2021 when a sudden fertilizer ban collapsed rice production 40% in a single season and brought down the government.

The market is pricing a 45-day disruption. The insurance architecture says 120 days minimum. Even after a hypothetical ceasefire, Solvency II capital rebuild, reinsurance treaty renegotiation, and vessel re-underwriting take months. The Red Sea precedent: 26 months after Houthi attacks began, war-risk premiums never returned to pre-crisis levels.

Both sides are rejecting negotiations. Trump rebuffed ceasefire mediation March 14. Iran's foreign minister on March 15: "We never asked for a ceasefire."

Meanwhile: 51% of US corn areas in drought. El Nino favored by June at 62% probability. Skymet assigns 60% chance of below-normal Indian monsoon. Bangladesh has shut five of six urea factories. India formally asked China for urea on March 12. Egypt faces $28 billion in debt repayments while importing 12.7 million tonnes of wheat. WFP identifies 318 million people already at crisis-level hunger.

The world stockpiled oil but forgot to stockpile the molecules that produce half its food.

The clock is the position.

Full analysis in the link!

https://t.co/q6ZKYp0MCr

[Barbara M Straw @BarbaraMStraw]

@ElizLanders @reedgalen @POTUS