Arjuna

[Kareem Rifai 🌐 @KareemRifai]

This is an utterly insane story: 25,000 documents reviewed by WaPo indicate that throughout Tulsi's career, her political moves were controlled by her guru, cult leader Chris Butler.

This woman was leading the world's largest intelligence apparatus.
https://t.co/6Enu7JgMgR

[Alexander Baunov @baunov]

When it launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian regime broke its previous arrangement with society and replaced it with a new trade-off: most of you may live as if the war does not exist, but you may not oppose it. For those who accepted this unspoken bargain, the regime allowed a way of life not too far removed from the prewar norm.

Many accepted it — some out of necessity, others out of indifference. But by the spring of 2026, the regime had begun to violate this arrangement one step at a time. The result is growing anger. People did not agree to ignore the war only to become targets of repressions and bans themselves.

An English version of my recent piece https://t.co/EqZWk0vMEL

[Reuters @Reuters]

A Reuters investigation found a broader-than-previously known Trump administration effort to expand federal control over elections, using investigations, raids and demands for access to voting systems across at least eight states https://t.co/eRJ0BI83Wm @specialreports

[Pew Research Center @pewresearch]

When asked whether they have an overall favorable or unfavorable view of Russia, 83% of U.S. adults say the latter.

[The Economist @TheEconomist]

In recent years Israel’s conflicts have wreaked havoc and inflicted appalling suffering while sapping its own resources and damaging crucial alliances. This is not how Israeli leaders used to envisage warfare https://t.co/p0TbtXqfvj

[Max Granger @_maxgranger]

A group of Ecuadorian fishermen survived a US drone strike, were detained at gunpoint, phones wiped, ship blown up, disappeared to El Salvador, then released without charge.

“They knew we were fishermen. Even the Salvadorian authorities said things had been handled very badly.”

[Rob Lee @RALee85]

“Russia’s ailing economy has failed to recover even as rising oil prices during the war in the Middle East have boosted the Kremlin’s depleted coffers, according to Sweden’s military intelligence chief.

Thomas Nilsson, head of Sweden’s Military Intelligence and Security Service, told the FT that Russia would need prices for Urals crude, its main blend of oil, to remain above $100 a barrel for a year to close its budget deficit, and for significantly longer than that to smooth over its other economic problems…

Nilsson said…the Russian central bank was underestimating inflation, which it believed was closer to the 15 per cent key interest rate than the official 5.86 per cent.

Sweden agreed with the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, that Russia is understating its budget deficit by $30 bn, and had also noticed some financial indicators that could point to a future banking crisis, Nilsson added.” @ChristopherJM @maxseddon
https://t.co/CKiUwrzvBy

[Phil Magness @PhilWMagness]

https://t.co/NGh6EsJD7q

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

The Strait of Hormuz is not closed. It is sorted.

Iran has built a three-tier access system for the most important waterway on earth. Tier one: allies transit free. Malaysia cleared seven vessels through diplomacy at zero cost. India negotiated zero-fee passage. Pakistan secured clearance for 20 ships. Iraq transits without charge. These countries proved geopolitical alignment and the IRGC waved them through the Larak corridor without collecting a rial.

Tier two: compliant neutrals pay. At least two tankers, likely Chinese-linked, paid up to two million dollars each in yuan through Kunlun Bank intermediaries. COSCO container ships attempted the corridor, were turned back on first approach when documentation was incomplete, then succeeded days later with revised paperwork. These are the vessels that prove the system works. They submit IMO numbers, ownership chains, cargo manifests, and crew lists to the IRGC’s Hormozgan Command. They receive clearance codes. They are escorted by pilot boats through the five-nautical-mile channel between Qeshm and Larak. They pay in a currency that does not route through SWIFT. Every successful yuan transit is a live proof-of-concept for non-dollar energy settlement.

Tier three: adversaries are denied entirely. The committee plan bans American vessels, Israeli vessels, and vessels from any country participating in sanctions against Iran. These ships do not get vetting. They do not get codes. They do not get escorts. They get the AL SALMI, burning off Dubai, as illustration of what the corridor looks like without permission.

But the toll is not the real cost. War-risk insurance is. Premiums have surged from $40,000 per VLCC transit before the war to $600,000 to $1.2 million today, a 30-fold increase, now running five to ten percent of hull value. A VLCC carrying $50 million in crude oil can absorb a combined $3 million in toll and insurance as a fraction of cargo value. A container ship carrying $5 million in manufactured goods cannot. The insurance premium alone exceeds the profit margin on non-oil cargo. The strait has become an oil-only VIP lane. Crude flows selectively for those who can pay the combined cost. Everything else waits, reroutes around the Cape of Good Hope, or does not move at all.

And the US Navy is not inside the strait. The Abraham Lincoln strike group operates from standoff in the Arabian Sea. Three Littoral Combat Ships sit in the Persian Gulf. Marine expeditionary units are positioned for contingency. But zero American warships have transited the strait or escorted commercial traffic since the war began. The Navy told the shipping industry it has “no availability” for Hormuz escorts. The world’s most powerful fleet keeps respectful distance from a waterway controlled by a country whose navy is 92 percent destroyed because the mines, drones, and shore missiles that remain make close-in presence prohibitively risky.

The result is a geopolitical sorting algorithm operating at the molecular level. One hundred and eighty-one vessels transited in all of March. Pre-war traffic was 138 per day. Of those 181, roughly 70 percent were Iranian-affiliated. The remaining 30 percent were vetted allies or yuan-paying neutrals. The 20 percent of global oil that once flowed freely through this strait now flows selectively, conditionally, and in currencies chosen by Tehran.

Iran lost its air force. It lost its navy. It lost two thirds of its production capacity. It retained the only thing that matters: 39 kilometres of coastline on both sides of the narrowest point. The US Navy will not enter. Chinese tankers will. And the sorting algorithm processes another vessel, collects another yuan payment, and demonstrates once more that geography is the one military asset that cannot be degraded by precision strikes.

The strait is not closed. It is under new management.

https://t.co/dAOBBMrIOk

[Mike Bird @Birdyword]

I think the fact that military action and major announcements now seem to be coordinated around market open and close times is going to be one of the more fascinating and telling tidbits about this era/administration

[Dina Esfandiary @DEsfandiary]

‘Even if it ends tomorrow, the #Iran war has changed the #Gulf’. Our weekend essay with @ZiadMDaoud via @Bloomberg https://t.co/DP5cDqAhtz

[Molly Jong-Fast @MollyJongFast]

Some of the frivolous September purchases made under Secretary Pete Hegseth’s stewardship include a $98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home, $5.3 million for Apple devices such as the new iPad, and an astronomical amount of shellfish, including $2 million for Alaskan king crab and $6.9 million worth of lobster tail. (Lobster tail is apparently a favorite of Hegseth’s Pentagon—the department spent more than $7.4 million total on the luxury item in March, May, June, and October.)
In other pricey food purchases, the government decided to drop $15.1 million for ribeye steak (again, just in September), $124,000 for ice cream machines, and $139,224 on 272 orders of doughnuts.

[julie k. brown @jkbjournalist]

NEW: Prison guards discussed cover-up of Epstein's death https://t.co/nQZ3qN9UOE

[Duncan -🇬🇧🇪🇺🔶️ European #FBPE - Veteran @dunc_saboteur]

In case you missed it. @SkyNews interview with Former NATO Dep Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe didn't go the way they expected. #IranWar

[Shaun Walker @shaunwalker7]

I've been working on this for ages in various countries: the story of the intelligence buildup to Putin's 2022 invasion. How did the US and Britain find out so much, and why were Europe and Ukraine sceptical.

It's a long one:

https://t.co/VFqxQUPsKG

[Zaid Jilani @ZaidJilani]

The Trump drug policy is to murder random people on boats after accusing them of having drugs while pardoning actually convicted elite drug traffickers

[Dave Wasserman @Redistrict]

Between OH, KS, CA, VA and now this huge win in UT, Democrats have quietly strung together an impressive streak of victories over the past few weeks that have, surprisingly, pushed the mid-decade redistricting war closer to a draw.

[Bill DeMayo @BDeMayo]

@TheRickWilson Megyn R. Kelly seems to be the adopted name now

[Sarah Longwell @SarahLongwell25]

“Anyone who helps me try to steal an election gets a pardon” is perhaps the most corrupt thing to happen in American history.

That “conservatives” have simply accepted this as the price of admission is the greatest moral and intellectual humiliation.

[Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof]

Russia is currently between 20% and 30% Muslim, with fast-growing Muslim immigration from Central Asia, and an Islamist-lite satrapy in Kadyrov’s Chechnya that is empowered to kidnap people in Moscow. And yet here we have Putin’s envoy and Witkoff’s guest scaremongering to credulous Americans about the supposed Muslim peril in Europe.