Steve

I think my physical, digital and biological selves have just fused. Nope, I still can't remember why I walked into the room.

[Kim Iversen 🇺🇸 @KimIversenShow]

The Russians obviously took him out but the U.S. doesn’t want to wage war with Russia so they’re claiming it was a “sudden illness”. This cover up reaction by the U.S. tells us everything. We clearly don’t feel capable to take on Russia or another power militarily. Tables have turned. Every U.S. leader advocating for war should be worried for their lives. The US has been assassinating leaders with impunity because no one wanted to take the U.S. on. Now tables seem turned. We may see an increase in assassinations and honestly….what would we even do about it besides cover it up each time?

[Steve @spacecowbos]

@Mercado_Ingles Did they think about Mexican cheerleaders distracting them?

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

In 1884, Ulysses S. Grant was dying of throat cancer and was dead broke.

His money was wiped out by a swindler who stole his fortune.

Desperate to leave something for his wife, he agreed to write his Civil War memoirs and was close to signing a contract for a meager 10% royalty.

Mark Twain stepped in, called the deal robbery and offered Grant 70% of the profits through his own publishing company.

Grant raced death to finish the book, completing it just days before he died in July 1885.

It became one of the greatest memoirs ever written.

The royalties left his widow nearly half a million dollars, about $16 million today, and the book has never gone out of print.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 Trump has reportedly made the concession that unlocks the deal: Iran's uranium can stay in Iran.

-Per Axios, Trump agreed that one option for resolving the enriched uranium standoff is down-blending the stockpile inside Iran under UN inspector supervision

-That's a major softening from his public demand that the uranium be "DESTROYED" or handed over to the U.S.

-Any nuclear steps only happen under a second, more detailed deal, with the MOU laying out the framework

-The agreed text reopens Hormuz immediately without tolls, restores pre-war shipping within 30 days, lifts the U.S. blockade, and extends the ceasefire 60 days, including Lebanon

-The deal, brokered by Qatar and Pakistan, would be called the Islamabad agreement, with a possible Vance signing ceremony in Geneva

-Mojtaba Khamenei's final sign-off is the last missing piece, and Netanyahu was reportedly left completely in the dark, calling around Washington for information

Source: Axios / Writer: Daniel

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

I didn’t realize this would be posted, but I’m glad it was. Two hours before I gave my speech honoring the brave sailors on the USS Liberty, I met with about a dozen of them in my office and asked how I could best represent them and those who had perished.

[ThePatrioticBlonde™🇺🇸 @ImBreckWorsham]

Excuse me?

[Steve @spacecowbos]

@RepThomasMassie @marklevinshow @FmrRepMTG According to an article or interview I can't remember, it was the CIA that put the USS Liberty in the danger zone just 13 miles off Egypt with no warship escort even though the Liberty made the request. It's sinking was supposed to be a false flag against Egypt. Wicked!

[Steve @spacecowbos]

@its_The_Dr A source of much frustration. When you think it's finally connected, it's not

[Sam Parker 🇺🇸🧯 @BasedSamParker]

DID MASSIE GET 2020'D? Massie increased his turnout by 19% over 2024. Gallrein increased the opposition turnout by 357%! Today's turnout DOUBLED 2024's in the highest overall vote total in Kentucky history. Was this really driven by "get out the vote" $millions? Suspicious?

[YOWSA! @_Yowsa_]

Wonder Woman chasing a car on a skateboard is everything I love about cheesy tv shows. Plus, it's Lynda Carter as #WonderWoman. 😍

[Steve @spacecowbos]

@SirBylHolte

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

After CBS embarrassed Karen Bass by fact-checking her debate lies about the Palisades Fire, they clearly got the call. CBS filmed with me on my burned out lot for over an hour, and they turned it over to Karen Bass’ PR team to edit it into a comical 5 minute hit piece with clips from the Hills. They can’t beat my ideas, they can’t beat me in the debates, so they gotta try to turn my campaign into a sideshow. People are done with these skeezy political tricks, and I’m done with CBS. They’ll never get a word from me for my next 8 years as mayor. Adios! What outlet should I have in their absence?

[Truthstream Media @truthstreamnews]

So is everyone just supposed to act like the climate change and resource scarcity narratives are true while hundreds of data centers are being built?

[Steve @spacecowbos]

@its_The_Dr 1948's Smith-Mundt law against propaganda within the US was repealed in 2012. Watch the "news" with a skeptical eye!

[Ella Boo Bella @SummerShaddows]

@WallStreetApes @HillsOutBack This was the best take of the entire thing IMHO.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue.

On April 21st, the left screen moved first.

I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug.

At 19:54 GMT on April 21st, someone placed 4,260 sell orders on Brent crude futures. They did this during post-settlement. The window after the market closes when daily volume is typically in the dozens. Sometimes single digits. Sometimes I watch the screen and nothing happens for forty minutes and I think about whether my daughter is happy.

On April 21st, someone placed $430 million in directional bets in 120 seconds during that window. One hundred and twenty seconds. I timed it on my watch because the system clock rounds to the nearest minute and I have found, in nineteen years, that precision matters to no one but me.

At 20:10 GMT, the President posted on Truth Social that he was extending the Iran ceasefire.

Brent dropped from $100.91 to $96.83.

I flagged the trade. I flag a lot of trades. I want to tell you what happens to my flags.

My flags go into a system called TRACE. Trade Review and Compliance Evaluation. I did not name it. The system generates a report. The report goes to a committee. The committee has a name I am not allowed to share but I can tell you it meets quarterly and the conference room has a credenza with bottled water that is sparkling because someone once put still water in the room and a managing director sent an email about it that was longer than most of my surveillance reports.

The committee reviews my flags. The committee has reviewed all of my flags. Here is the complete record of actions taken on my flags in 2026:

Reviewed.

That's it. "Reviewed" is a status. In compliance, a status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

Let me show you my flags.

March 9th. Someone bet millions on oil falling at 18:29 GMT. Forty-seven minutes later, a CBS reporter posted that the President said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil dropped 25%. Forty-seven minutes. I flagged it.

March 23rd. Someone sold 5,100 lots of Brent and WTI crude futures between 10:49 and 10:50 GMT. Fourteen minutes later, the President posted on Truth Social about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil dropped 11%. Over 13,000 contracts traded in sixty seconds after the post. Fourteen minutes. I flagged it.

April 7th. Someone established a $950 million short position in oil futures at 19:45 GMT. Three hours later, the President declared a two-week ceasefire. Nine hundred and fifty million dollars. I flagged it.

April 17th. Someone placed $760 million in bearish bets twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister confirmed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Seven hundred and sixty million. I flagged it.

April 21st. The $430 million. Fifteen minutes. I flagged it.

That is $2.1 billion in directional oil bets in April alone. Every one of them landed on the correct side of a presidential announcement. Every one of them was placed in a window so narrow you could measure it in bathroom breaks. I flagged every single one.

The CFTC chair told a Congressional committee that his organization has "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading. I wrote that quote on a Post-it note and stuck it to my right monitor. The one that shows the investigation queue. The investigation queue has not moved since March.

Zero tolerance. Zero staff. Zero budget. Zero prosecutions under the STOCK Act since it was signed in 2012.

Fourteen years. The law has existed for fourteen years and has been enforced zero times. In compliance, we call that a compliance rate of one hundred percent. No cases filed means no cases lost. You cannot fail an audit you never conduct. We call that excellence.

Last month the White House sent an internal email to staff. I was not on the distribution list but I have read reporting on it and I need you to sit with what I am about to say. The email instructed White House staff not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets.

The White House had to send a memo telling its own employees not to insider-trade.

I want you to read that sentence again. Not because the instruction was unclear. Because the instruction was necessary. Because someone in the building looked at the same pattern I have been flagging for months on my three monitors and decided the appropriate response was an email.

The President's son sits on the advisory board of Kalshi. He is an investor in Polymarket. Both are prediction markets. Both saw accounts created days before U.S. military action.

One account. I cannot stop thinking about this account. It was called "Burdensome-Mix." It was created in December. On January 2nd, it placed $32,500 on Venezuela's president being removed from power. On January 3rd, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces. Burdensome-Mix collected $436,000. Then it changed its username. Then it disappeared.

One account is a coincidence. But there were six.

Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February. All bet on U.S. strikes on Iran by the 28th. When the President confirmed the strikes, the six accounts collected $1.2 million between them. Five of the six never placed another bet. The sixth went on to correctly predict the ceasefire date and made another $163,000.

My surveillance system logged all of this. My system logs everything. My system does not have opinions and neither do I. I generate reports. The reports go to committees. The committees meet quarterly. Between meetings, the windows get shorter and the bets get larger.

March 9th: 47 minutes. March 23rd: 14 minutes. April 17th: 20 minutes. April 21st: 15 minutes.

The window is compressing. In March, you had time to make coffee between the trade and the announcement. By April, you had time to send a text. By summer, at this rate, the trade and the announcement will be the same event.

The spokesman said any implication that administration officials are engaged in insider trading is "baseless and irresponsible reporting."

Then the White House sent the email again.

I have been in compliance for nineteen years. I have seen insider trading run out of strip mall offices by men who could not spell "derivative." I have seen pump-and-dump schemes coordinated over WhatsApp by people who used their real names. I have seen a man try to manipulate soybean futures from a Panera Bread.

I have never seen $2.1 billion in perfectly timed trades across five presidential announcements in a single month go uninvestigated.

But I have also never seen a compliance system work this beautifully. Every trade flagged. Every report filed. Every committee briefed. Every quarterly meeting attended. Bottled water: sparkling. Minutes: distributed.

Zero prosecutions.

As long as the flags go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

I am meeting expectations. The system is meeting expectations. The $2.1 billion is meeting expectations. The fourteen-year-old law with zero prosecutions is meeting expectations.

The left screen moves. The middle screen moves. The right screen stays perfectly, immaculately still.

In my field, we call this price discovery.

[Steve @spacecowbos]

@its_The_Dr Jaws. That was a rough one.

[𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕻𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕤 @SprinterPress]

Israel is preparing to attack Iran within the next few hours

This was reported by one of Israel's most famous journalists, Amir Tsarfati, who also reported that US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee was ordered to return to Washington urgently.

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

POTUS is laying out two courses of action—a negotiated settlement, or a major escalation.

There is a third option, and he should take it: recognize there is no way to force a positive outcome and simply leave.

The region is not ours to fix. President Reagan chose this path in Lebanon in ‘84, withdrawing U.S. forces after the Beirut barracks bombing once it became clear the mission’s stabilization goals could not be met, effectively ending direct American military involvement and avoiding a deeper quagmire and long-term entrenchment in the region.

A negotiated settlement is unlikely to work or be taken seriously by the Iranians unless we make concessions on the enrichment issue. As we saw yesterday in the SOH, the IRGC is empowered to act without the consent of the civilian leadership, so it’s likely they won’t honor any deal reached.

A major escalation will lead to a very destructive outcome for Iran, the region, and eventually the U.S. If POTUS chooses brute force and targets civilian infrastructure, we will create another generation of radicalized Iranians who will rally around the regime and escalate the war by any means possible.

If POTUS opts to strike the civilian infrastructure, declare victory, and then leave, we will only further erode our standing in the world, the petrodollar, and eventually our status as the world’s reserve currency holder. We need to get out now.

Don’t double down on failure. Avoid the sunken cost trap, leave now, and put America’s interests first.

[Mike Bales 🫡🇺🇸 @MikeBales]

I'm letting in the duck…