Niles_Standish

Sometimes technology, econ/finance, & entrepreneurship. Mostly concern about the harm Trump & his enablers are wreaking on 🇺🇸

[Senator John Cornyn @JohnCornyn]

Congress Must Investigate Trump’s Aid and Comfort to Putin https://t.co/zo3ntPFBBU

[Scott Stedman @ScottMStedman]

Unbelievable. At 9 PM on a Friday night, Trump just waived nearly every sanction the Lindsey Graham bill imposed on Russia. https://t.co/rnFwbQTbYO

[Sir William Browder KCMG @Billbrowder]

This is so interesting

[Mike Pence @Mike_Pence]

President Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Russian fuel amidst Putin’s ongoing and brutal attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine makes no sense and is a betrayal of the legacy and leadership of the late Senator Lindsey Graham.

While Ukraine fights for its survival, Putin’s war machine continues to prosecute his terrorist war on civilian populations and innocent Ukrainians are dying every day.

Now, Instead of implementing the tough sanctions Lindsey Graham fought to his last breath to enact, President Trump has announced the United States is lifting sanctions on Russian energy, fueling the Putin’s war machine.

As I saw firsthand in Ukraine last month, Putin is losing this war. Ukraine has fought the Russian military to a standstill and reinvented warfare with drones taking the fight into the heart of Russia.

America should not be throwing a lifeline to Putin’s war machine. Now is the time to stand strong against Russian aggression as we did during the first Trump administration.

Putin doesn’t want peace. Putin wants Ukraine. I have no doubt that if Putin overruns Ukraine, it will only be a matter of time until Russia’s military crosses a border that our troops will have to deal with him.

America is the Leader of the Free World. For our National Security, for the security of our Allies in Europe including Ukraine, President Trump should rescind this deal immediately and return to the strong policies of our four years in the White House; impose harsh sanctions on any nation purchasing Russian energy and work with our allies to ensure Ukraine has the military support it needs to repel and defeat this Russian invasion once and for all. Slava Ukraini🇺🇸🇺🇦

[Ashish K. Jha @ashishkjha]

Kevin co-chairs our scientific advisory board

Kevin is at @MIT and one of the smartest people in the world on issues of engineered pathogens

Kevin's tweets are worth your time

[Patrick Howley @HowleyReporter]

Simon has been found dead, reportedly from "suicide." RIP to Simon and to all whistleblowers who have died too young.

The truth about Lutnick will never die

[LongTime🤓FirstTime👨‍💻 @LongTimeHistory]

UPDATE—Mother of 17 year old boy who was beaten by ICE on way to enlist in Marines—has been deported.

Son says agents warned her to "be quiet" and "even offered us money" to not talk.

His mother bravely spoke out anyway.

She was then targeted for arrest—deported the same day.

[ProPublica @propublica]

New: In late 2024, FBI investigators had enough evidence to launch a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers, including Sen. Susan Collins. Then Trump was reelected and eviscerated the FBI and DOJ teams handling public corruption probes. https://t.co/oCahGd4lgY

[Sandi Bachom 📹 @sandibachom]

So a fake assassinated president is going to demolish a tribute to an assassinated president. Talk about stolen valor

[Niles_Standish @spoonie_loves]

25 years ago my friend Andrew died at the World Trade Center

Andrew had just graduated college and joined Cantor Fitzgerald

Wall St. jobs were hard to come by. I was so proud of him

I'll never forget Andrew. He had so much to offer.

#911Remembrance

[Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ @tribelaw]

Judge Luttig has again performed a great service to the United States Constitution and to our republic by unsparingly and with great care and learning spelling out the steps that the Trump Party — I will not dignify it by calling it the Republican Party — plans to take in making January 3, 2027 the next January 6, another Day That Will Live in Infamy; and by meticulously and realistically outlining what all elected representatives of the American People must do — starting now — if they wish to redeem themselves in the eyes of history and avoid becoming the grim executioners of our once-great experiment in government of the people, by the people, and for the people. — Laurence Tribe

https://t.co/9z5CeleVOo

[Linda Ragusa Bowers ☮️ @rlindalucia]

The American President just signed an Executive Order enabling ranchers to shoot and poison the very last wolves in America.
Wolves in America number around 0.5% of their original population, and they are of course vital to the health of landscapes.

[Michael MacKay @mhmck]

Witkoff and Kushner presented commemorative coins to terrorist leader Putin.

One side features a map showing all of North, Central and South America under U.S. political domination. It is an expansion of the "Technate of America" map presented by American fascists in the 1930s.

[Nicole Minét @mouvement33]

Bullshit. Someone is doing this to begin the process of deliberately destroying it beyond repair because Trump can't put his name on it. He's going to level it and say the previous administration didn't maintain it so he has to knock it down. Watch.

[Niles_Standish @spoonie_loves]

@RealJimChanos You're totally misreading this

[Don Winslow @donwinslow]

..

[Don Winslow @donwinslow]

Wake the fuck up America.

[Maine @TheMaineWonk]

Andrew Harnik just accepted an award at the White House Correspondents Dinner for this photograph which perfectly encapsulates the Trump presidency.

[Ilan Goldenberg @ilangoldenberg]

I’ve worked on Iran for nearly 20 years. Our options are never great, but I’ve never seen things this bad. For the first time in my career, I’m at a loss.

When this war began, I warned that Iran would likely emerge weakened but more aggressive and risk-tolerant—leaving the region trapped in a cycle of military clashes and chronic instability. That has happened. What I underestimated was the leverage Iran would gain through its stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz.

For a moment, the MOU offered a possible way out. It was deeply flawed, but better than the alternatives. Then vague terms and shoddy negotiating caused it to collapse: Iran believed it could retain some control over the Strait; Washington believed the Strait would reopen to international shipping.

But the fundamental problem wasn’t the negotiation. It was Trump’s catastrophic decision to go to war in the first place.

The result: higher oil prices, economic shocks, depleted US missile-defense stocks, immense regional damage and civilian suffering, alienated allies and very little achieved in return.

So what now?

We could pay Iran off through sanctions relief, oil exports and access to the international banking system. But after surviving forty days of war, Tehran is angry, distrustful and convinced it holds the stronger hand. Its price is so high – and so humiliating – that Trump will never accept it.

We could escalate militarily, which is what the US is doing. But bombing has not produced meaningful Iranian concessions, and Trump appears unwilling to bear the costs of the maximalist alternatives. More pressure means an expensive, dangerous and potentially endless war, with serious risks to US forces and the entire region as we tragically saw this weekend. And it has little chance of success.

Or we could encourage the Gulf states to negotiate a regional arrangement. That may ultimately be the most promising path, but the Gulf states are divided, this remains fundamentally a US-Iran conflict, and any agreement will require major American concessions while leaving Iran strategically stronger than it was before the war. So this isn’t very appealing and hard to get to as well.

The likeliest outcome is therefore that we are looking at a new normal: recurring US-Iran clashes, periodic American or Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, Iranian control over the SOH, higher oil prices and a larger, longer-lasting American military presence in the Middle East. But since the costs of all out escalation are too high both sides try to keep it from going there, though there is always a risk.

Iran’s leverage will eventually depreciate as countries build pipelines, diversify energy supplies and establish alternative trade routes. But that could take years.

Eventually, exhaustion may produce a deal. Iran may decide that controlling the Strait while living under blockade is unsustainable. Washington may accept that it must offer more. The Gulf states may finally unite around a workable diplomatic framework. But not soon.

Trump took a situation in which better options plainly existed, started an unnecessary war and produced a strategic disaster that will take years to unwind.
For now, we are all stuck with this mess.

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

BREAKING: Rep. Thomas Massie has introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, legislation that would give state attorneys general access to the Epstein files and authorize them to prosecute alleged Epstein associates under state law where applicable.