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Sanctions are now being prepared by a U.S. Senator (along with sanction threats from POTUS) for the wildfires that have breached the U.S.. DHS Secretary Mullin doubles down on Trump’s intention for states to comply with the admin’s election integrity efforts. Eight candidates now vie to replace Graham Platner in the Maine Democrat Primary.

• U.S. Sanction Action Looms Over Canadian Wildfires

• DHS Sec. Pledges ‘Maximum Pressure’ Campaign For Election Integrity

• Race To Replace Platner Heats Up In Maine Democrat Primary

U.S. Sanction Action Looms Over Canadian Wildfires

The Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and U.S. Capitol on Friday July 17th, 2026. (J. Scott Applewhite - AP)

_{By: Atlas}

Smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires blanketed much of the eastern United States this week, pushing air quality in Detroit, Chicago, and Washington to among the worst readings of any major cities in the world and prompting warnings for millions of Americans to stay indoors. The haze also brought a political response. An Ohio senator said he would introduce legislation to sanction Canada, and President Trump threatened to fold the cost of the pollution into the tariffs Ottawa already pays.

By Friday, more than a dozen states sat under air quality alerts, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre counted roughly 900 active fires with about 750 out of control, and the two governments were trading blame over who was responsible and what should be done.

The Sanctions Bill

Senator Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio and a close Trump ally, announced Thursday that he would introduce a bill next week to sanction Canada and the Canadian officials he holds responsible. "I'll be introducing a bill next week to sanction Canada and the responsible Canadian government officials for this atrocity," he wrote on X.

His office argued that Canada's government had failed to invest in wildfire prevention, citing forest thinning, fuel reduction, prescribed burns, and stronger enforcement against arson. An early version of the measure, called the CANADA FIRE Act, would declare a national emergency over the smoke and direct the president to determine whether Canadian wildfires had harmed U.S. air quality, then sanction those found responsible by freezing assets and imposing financial restrictions.

The bill would also revoke visas for anyone sanctioned under it and express the sense of Congress that Secretary of State Marco Rubio should declare certain Canadian officials "persona non grata," a status that would strip them of diplomatic welcome, until the president certifies that air quality in affected U.S. communities has stayed below an unhealthy threshold for 90 consecutive days after the smoke clears. The measure includes waivers and exceptions for diplomacy, safety, and national security.

Its prospects are uncertain. Democrats hold enough seats in the Senate to block the bill through a filibuster, and the causes of the fires are not as simple as the legislation's framing suggests.

Trump's Tariff Threat

Trump escalated the pressure Friday, threatening new tariffs on Canada and accusing its government of "willful negligence." Writing on Truth Social, he said the United States was "holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein," and that the country was "being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air."

He said he would call Prime Minister Mark Carney to ask what Canada intended to do, called the cost to the United States "incalculable," and argued that the price of the pollution "must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying." Trump did not specify a rate, though Representative John James of Michigan and Moreno have pushed a 25 percent fee on imports, with James suggesting the revenue could seed a victim compensation fund and pay for cleanup. "Michigan is not Canada's ashtray," James wrote.

Four Michigan Republicans, James, Jack Bergman, John Moolenaar, and Lisa McClain, had earlier sent Carney a pointed letter, their third such appeal in three years. "This is the third consecutive year we have had to write to Canadian officials about a crisis that Canada has the tools to prevent and has chosen not to," they wrote, warning that if Canada would not manage its forests, the United States would "look elsewhere, and act on our own," including exploring "direct involvement in cross-border fuel reduction and firefighting capacity." Other Michigan Republicans floated their own measures, from delaying the opening of the new Gordie Howe Bridge to demanding regular briefings for U.S. agencies.

Canada Pushes Back

Canadian officials rejected the accusation of neglect and pointed to a long record of cross-border cooperation. Emergency Management Minister Eleanor Olszewski noted that Canada and the United States have a long history of fighting wildfires together, and said Canada had invested $12 billion in forest sustainability and fire prevention since 2020.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford was sharper. He announced the province would spend 650 million Canadian dollars, about 465 million U.S. dollars, on five helicopters and six water bombers, the largest such purchase in its history, and told U.S. critics to send help rather than complaints. "We have done the exact same thing for our American friends, and that's what you're supposed to do," he said, citing Canadian aid during California's 2025 wildfires and Hurricane Helene in the Carolinas and Georgia. Ontario has deployed 150 fire crews and more than 80 aircraft, with most of its fires concentrated in the remote, sparsely populated northwest, reachable only by air.

Carney, for his part, largely brushed off the criticism, framing wildfires as a shared problem tied to a warming planet. "Fighting climate change is the responsibility of all countries, including the United States," he told reporters in London, Ontario, a pointed reference to Washington's rollback of climate and clean energy policies. Notably, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, struck a cooperative tone at odds with the lawmakers, praising "outstanding cooperation" between the two governments monitoring the fires in real time.

What's Driving the Fires

The dispute reflects a genuine divide over cause. Republican critics attribute the fires primarily to inadequate forest management, arguing that thinning, controlled burns, and debris clearing could prevent much of the damage. Climate and public health experts point instead to conditions they link to a warming climate, chiefly a record-breaking North American heat wave that dried out forests and set the stage for lightning-sparked blazes.

An analysis by Climate Central found that on July 13, when the cluster of Ontario and Minnesota fires responsible for most of the haze began, temperatures in the province ran more than 25 degrees Fahrenheit above average, conditions its chief meteorologist said would have been virtually impossible without climate change. Researchers note the pattern is shifting eastward, putting eastern Canada at greater risk than its historical norm. Most experts describe forest management and climate as compounding factors rather than competing explanations: better management can reduce risk, but hotter, drier weather makes explosive fire growth more likely regardless.

The United States is having its own heavy fire year, with about 1.5 million hectares burned so far in 2026, well above recent averages. Canada's season, by contrast, has been less severe than the catastrophic 2023 year, when 17.6 million hectares burned, though this year's roughly 4.6 million hectares have still driven smoke across the border.

The health stakes are real. Fine particulate matter in wildfire smoke can trigger asthma, heart attacks, and breathing problems, poses heightened risks to children, older adults, and people with existing conditions, and has been linked in studies to tens of thousands of premature deaths each year in the United States. Hospitals in Michigan reported treating children, dialysis patients, and older residents for the effects of smoke that, as the Michigan lawmakers put it, "did not originate anywhere near them." As of Friday, winds were expected to begin clearing skies over the weekend, though forecasters cautioned the smoke could keep returning until the fires themselves are out.

Good morning everyone,

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Graham Platner stepped down from his bid for the U.S. senate race in Maine following a series of sexual assault and rape allegations. Trump fired the remaining members of the US election commission. Trump stated his refusal to sign a housing bill into law (it will become law anyways) over his protest on the ‘SAVE’ Act not passing.

• Platner Steps Down From U.S. Senate Race In Maine

• Trump Fires Two Remaining U.S. Election Commission Members

• Symbolic Protest Given By The President Over ‘SAVE’ Act Not Passing

Platner Steps Down From U.S. Senate Race In Maine

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner stood together during a "Fighting Oligarchy" tour stop on May 24, 2026, in Orono, Maine. (Joe Raedle - Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

Graham Platner filed the paperwork Friday afternoon to formally withdraw from Maine's U.S. Senate race, closing out an insurgent campaign that collapsed under a rape allegation he denies. His exit hands Maine Democrats a scramble to name a replacement capable of unseating Republican Senator Susan Collins, in a contest that could decide control of the chamber.

The Maine secretary of state's office confirmed it had received his written notice, and the state Democratic Party announced it would hold a nominating convention on July 25 to pick a successor. Because Platner withdrew before the July 13 deadline, his name will not appear on the November 3 ballot and the party may replace him, with the new nominee due by July 27.

The Withdrawal

Platner posted the withdrawal letter on social media after submitting it to the state's Division of Elections. "I write to formally withdraw my candidacy for United States Senate," it began. He touted the 156,084 Mainers who backed him in the June 9 primary, writing that they had voted for "a new kind of politics" that is "representative of people down here in the real world, not billionaires, oligarchs, or the political establishment."

He framed the exit as an act meant to preserve the movement rather than an admission of anything. "My name may have been on the ballot, but that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine," he wrote, adding that he sought "to further the movement we have built together and the future we believe in." The letter closed with an expletive aimed at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a call for "Free Palestine," and "Up the Hearts," a nod to Portland's professional soccer club.

The formal filing came two days after Platner announced he was suspending campaign operations, and three days before the deadline that would have locked his name onto the ballot and blocked any replacement. His initial decision to wait until Monday had irritated Maine Democrats, some of whom saw it as an attempt to influence who would succeed him. A spokesperson did not say why he moved earlier.

How the Campaign Unraveled

Platner, a 41-year-old Marine combat veteran and oyster farmer, built an outsider campaign that drew large crowds and strong fundraising, powered in part by an early endorsement from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. He steamrolled Governor Janet Mills, the establishment favorite, who suspended her own bid in April after trailing him badly, and he won the June primary with more than 70 percent of the vote.

The collapse came this week. Politico reported that Jenny Racicot, a 41-year-old Maine resident who said she dated Platner on and off for more than two years, alleged he entered her home uninvited and intoxicated in 2021 and forced her to have sex over her repeated objections. She told CNN that "by dictionary definition" he had raped her, and said she had not filed a police report. Platner called the allegation "categorically" false and suggested it was politically motivated and timed to the ballot deadline.

A second allegation followed. In a report by The Washington Post, a former girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, accused Platner of removing condoms during sex without her consent. Fifield had earlier told The New York Times of physical mistreatment during their relationship. Platner's campaign called her account "categorically false and politically motivated," pointing to her prior work for the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The allegations were the latest in a run of controversies that had trailed Platner through the primary, including inflammatory posts on a since-deleted Reddit account, sexually explicit messages sent to women while he was married, and a chest tattoo resembling a Nazi SS symbol that he said he got while drinking with fellow Marines in Croatia in 2007 and later covered up. He repeatedly denied the accusations of violence and, in his primary victory speech, cast himself as a changed man.

The Democratic Exodus

What ended the campaign was not the reporting alone but the speed with which his own coalition abandoned him. After the rape allegation surfaced, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, called the claims "incredibly disturbing" and said the committee would not spend in Maine if Platner stayed on the ballot. Senate Majority PAC said it would redirect resources away from the race.

The progressives who had lifted him followed. Sanders said he had spoken with Platner and recommended he step aside. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Ruben Gallego, and Representative Ro Khanna, all of whom had campaigned with or endorsed him, rescinded their support. In his announcement video, Platner argued that the establishment was using the allegations "as an excuse to take away all the things that we need to run a campaign," warning he would lose access to fundraising and voter data. "For the movement to continue, it can't be me," he said.

What Comes Next

Maine Democrats now face a compressed timeline to field a candidate against Collins, who was first elected in 1996 and is seeking a sixth term. Party Chairman Charlie Dingman said delegates representing all 16 counties, 601 in total, would choose someone with "the energy, ideas and popular support" to win. Candidates must gather at least 500 signatures and submit a statement of their vision.

A crowded field has already formed. It includes three Democrats who lost last month's gubernatorial primary, former Maine Center for Disease Control director Nirav Shah, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, and former state Senate President Troy Jackson, along with Maine Beer Company co-founder Dan Kleban, former congressional candidate Jordan Wood, and social worker Paige Loud. State Representative Valli Geiger has expressed interest without formally announcing.

The stakes reach well beyond Maine. Republicans hold the Senate 53-47, and with Vice President JD Vance's tie-breaking vote, Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take the majority. Maine, where Collins is viewed as among the most vulnerable Republican incumbents, sits near the center of that math. Collins has outperformed her polling before, defeating Democrat Sara Gideon by nine points in 2020 after surveys suggested she was headed for defeat. Whoever the party selects on July 25 will inherit both an energized base and a race upended just months before Election Day.

Good morning everyone,

Happy 250th! Let’s dive in!

Gavin Newsom’s DOJ investigation took a turn this week as it was revealed that a Newsom insider was wearing a wire as early as of June 2024. A socialist candidate in Colorado defeated a 15 year incumbent in a democratic primary. Speaker Johnson sent colleagues home early after a failure to move forward for the yearly NDAA bill (defense spending).

• CA Gov Faces New Challenges In DOJ Investigation

• Socialist Defeats 15 Term Incumbent In Colorado Dem. Primary

• Infighting Over NDAA Bill Causes Early Recess For House Of Representatives

CA Gov Faces New Challenges In DOJ Investigation

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (Carlin Stiehl - Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

FBI Wire and a Widening Federal Probe Reach Newsom's Inner Circle

The federal corruption investigation that has crept toward California Governor Gavin Newsom took a sharp turn this week, when the attorney for his former chief of staff revealed that a longtime Democratic operative had secretly worn an FBI wire inside the governor's orbit. The disclosure put fresh weight behind a probe Newsom has cast as political payback, and it complicated the picture considerably.

The operative, Alexis Podesta, began recording conversations for the FBI as early as June 2024, according to McGregor Scott, the attorney for former Newsom chief of staff Dana Williamson and himself a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California. "Alexis wore a wire, and Dana did not," Scott said. Podesta has not been charged with a crime.

The Case That Started It

The investigation traces back to Williamson, who ran Newsom's office starting in late 2022 and was long known as the governor's enforcer. In November 2025, the Justice Department announced her indictment and arrest on charges including conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, filing a false tax return, and lying to the FBI. She pleaded guilty in May, and her sentencing is pending.

Prosecutors laid out a scheme centered on a dormant campaign account tied to Xavier Becerra, the former Health and Human Services secretary and now a Democratic frontrunner for California governor. Roughly $225,000 was drained from the account and dressed up as consulting fees meant to benefit Sean McCluskie, Becerra's former chief of staff. Court filings say the money moved from Becerra committees to Podesta's firm, often in $10,000 monthly installments, then through a company controlled by another lobbyist before reaching its destination. Two others, McCluskie and lobbyist Greg Campbell, have also pleaded guilty to related federal charges.

Podesta, 45, inherited much of Williamson's consulting business when Williamson joined the administration, including work on Becerra's campaigns. She has said she did not know the payments were improper. Court records identified her as a co-conspirator, and her attorney, Bill Portanova, confirmed her cooperation with investigators.

A Wire and a Broad Net

The wire helps explain something that had puzzled Sacramento for months. Last fall, the FBI sent letters to numerous Capitol insiders and lobbyists notifying them that their phone calls had been intercepted during the investigation, including some who appeared to have no link to Williamson at all.

Republican Assemblyman Josh Hoover of Folsom was among the recipients, despite never having spoken with either Williamson or Podesta. "A lot of people received letters essentially informing us that there were certain periods of time where the FBI was given access to follow phone calls," Hoover said, describing a probe that seemed to cast "a pretty broad net across the Capitol community." One recipient, according to a source familiar with the matter, was baffled at having gotten a letter without ever meeting Williamson.

One recorded exchange has surfaced in detail. Williamson and Podesta discussed, over text and on a June 2024 call, how to handle a Public Records Act request tied to California's litigation against the video game company Activision Blizzard, with Williamson allegedly sharing confidential state information.

Podesta has drawn her own scrutiny beyond the federal case. California's Fair Political Practices Commission has opened multiple matters involving her, including one tied to a Becerra committee and another alleging she failed to disclose more than $1 million in lobbying income. She remains on the board of the State Compensation Insurance Fund, a Newsom appointment that pays close to $61,000 a year.

Newsom, His Wife, and the Money

In June, Newsom announced that he, his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and members of his inner circle were under federal investigation. He framed it squarely as retaliation by President Trump ahead of a possible 2028 presidential run.

"Donald Trump isn't just coming after me because of my mean tweets," Newsom said. "He's coming after me because I am considering running for president." He added that to reach him, Trump was "coming after my wife," and said agents had been knocking on the doors of family friends and former employees, demanding records and, in his words, abusing the grand jury process. Siebel Newsom said the couple would "continue to speak truth to power," and separately accused Trump of having "no boundaries."

The scrutiny of Siebel Newsom centers on the money flowing through her organizations. She is a documentary filmmaker whose nonprofit, the Representation Project, advocates for gender equity and pays her for-profit company, Girls Club Entertainment, for the films. She also founded the California Partners Project, which works closely with the governor's office and has received nearly $5.1 million in so-called behested payments since 2020. Newsom has disclosed soliciting $4.3 million for the group since that year.

Behested payments, donations made at an official's urging, are legal in California when reported within 30 days, and politicians of both parties have used them, from Jerry Brown to Arnold Schwarzenegger. But they have long struck critics as unseemly. The system drew heightened attention in 2020 when payments solicited by Newsom ballooned to an unprecedented $226 million to fund the state's pandemic response. In November 2025, the FPPC fined Newsom $13,000 for failing to timely disclose more than $14.3 million in behested payments between 2019 and 2024, classifying the lapse as negligent rather than willful.

Two Readings of the Same Facts

How much of this ties back to Newsom himself remains unresolved, and the governor's office has worked to wall off the wire revelation from the separate inquiries into the couple. "There is no evidence that the alleged use of a wire on one of the FBI's informants is in any way connected to the governor," spokeswoman Tara Gallegos said, noting the charges against Williamson concerned conduct predating her time in the administration. Gallegos has also called the Justice Department's effort a "lawless fishing expedition."

Scott, Williamson's attorney, said his client declined to cooperate precisely because she had no information about the governor. Sources familiar with the matter say two separate investigations originated in the U.S. attorney's office in Sacramento last year, spurred by whistleblower reports concerning Siebel Newsom's taxes and Williamson. The Williamson case itself began in 2022, under the Biden administration.

Even some observers sympathetic to Newsom concede the arrangements invite examination. Los Angeles Times columnist Anita Chabria noted that behested payments, while legal, have long been seen as unsavory, since a behest is by definition a command or strong suggestion. Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig, writing in New York Magazine, argued that Trump has earned his status as a permanent suspect in any case touching a disfavored Democrat, but concluded that here, the interconnected organizations and solicited contributions were legitimate fodder for scrutiny, and that neither Newsom nor his wife appeared to be victims.

For now, the facts sit in contested territory. Federal agents are examining the governor, his staff, and his wife's finances; Newsom has turned the investigation into a fundraising rallying cry and a centerpiece of his feud with Trump; and the outcome, whenever it arrives, stands to either wound or bolster his national ambitions. Newsom has said he will release his recent tax returns but has not said when.

Good morning everyone,

Only 1 more newsletter before we celebrate 250 years of America! Let’s get into it!

The Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling that disallows ‘Temporary Protected Status’ to hundreds of thousands of migrants claiming asylum. President Trump has announced that he will tariff countries who levy a digital services tax against the United States. The U.S. military responded with a retaliatory strike against Iran for a drone strike against a ship in the Strait of Hormuz

• Supreme Court Rules Against ‘Temporary Protected Status’, Paves Way For Deportation Of 350,000 People

• Trump: 100% Tariff On Countries Levying Digital Services Tax

• U.S. Military Delivers Retaliatory Strike Against Iran

Supreme Court Rules Against ‘Temporary Protected Status’, Paves Way For Deportation Of 350,000 People

Supreme Court Building (Saul Loeb - AFP via Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can strip Temporary Protected Status from Haitian and Syrian nationals, a 6-3 decision that removes a legal shield from hundreds of thousands of immigrants and clears a path to their deportation as early as this year.

The ruling turned on a narrow question of whether federal courts can second-guess the Homeland Security secretary's call to end the protections. The majority said they cannot, and in doing so reversed lower-court orders that had kept the program intact for both countries while the litigation played out.

What the Court Decided

Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority, anchoring the decision in the text of the law that created the program. The Immigration and Nationality Act bars judicial review of any determination by the secretary regarding the designation, termination, or extension of a country's status, and Alito described that language as clear and very broad.

He reasoned that the word "determination" covers both a single decision and the chain of steps leading to it. That reading, he wrote, means courts cannot review the challengers' claims, including the argument that then-Secretary Kristi Noem failed to properly consult the State Department about conditions in Syria and Haiti before acting.

The plaintiffs had tried to carve out room for review by distinguishing between the substance of Noem's decision and the procedures she followed to reach it. Alito rejected the distinction, writing that the judicial-review bar expressly restricts review and that subsidiary steps are no more reviewable than the final action itself.

Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurrence arguing the courts lacked power to weigh even the constitutional claim, adding that noncitizens cannot sue the federal government over the guarantee of equal treatment, which he said binds only the states.

The Discrimination Claim

A central thread in the Haitian case was the contention that the termination was driven by racial animus rather than an honest assessment of country conditions. The challengers pointed to remarks by President Trump and Noem to make that case.

The majority allowed that constitutional claims of that sort remain open to review, but concluded this one would likely fail. Alito wrote that none of the cited statements were overtly racial and that, in substance, they expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral grounds.

He also noted what he called an irony in the plaintiffs' own briefing: by arguing that the administration opposes the TPS program across the board and has ended every designation that came up for renewal, they supplied a race-neutral explanation that undercut their discrimination theory.

The statements at issue were blunt. The challengers cited Trump's description of Haiti as a "shithole country," his claim during the 2024 campaign that Haitians in Ohio were eating pets, and his assertion that immigrants were "poisoning the blood" of the country. Alito acknowledged the heated language but said political discourse had shifted toward terms that would once have scandalized the public.

The Dissent

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, read the law differently. She argued the review bar applies only to the secretary's determinations about designating or terminating a country's status, not to the procedural steps required beforehand.

Under that reading, courts retain the authority to examine whether Noem consulted other agencies about country conditions, which the plaintiffs said she did not. Kagan stressed that the challengers were not asking the justices to overrule the underlying judgment on Haiti and Syria, only to let them remain in the country while their claims proceed.

She was sharper on the race question. The evidence, she wrote, was plain to see, and the president's statements fairly shout in their racial undertones that race entered into his resolve to remove Haitians. She added that the remarks were so repellent the majority declined to reproduce them in print.

Kagan closed by warning that the beneficiaries faced devastating and life-threatening injury if removed, and said they should not be put on the next plane.

Background and Reach

Congress created Temporary Protected Status in 1990 to let the government shield foreign nationals who cannot safely return home because of armed conflict, natural disaster, or other extraordinary conditions. Recipients can live and work in the United States legally for the duration of a designation.

Haiti was first designated in 2010, after an earthquake killed more than 300,000 people. Syria followed in 2012 amid the crackdown by Bashar al-Assad's government. Both designations were extended repeatedly until the current administration moved to end them, with Noem citing improved conditions in Syria and concluding that no extraordinary conditions barred Haitians from returning safely.

The immediate effect falls on roughly 350,000 Haitians and about 6,000 Syrians. The implications run wider. More than 1.3 million people from over a dozen countries hold TPS, and legal experts said the ruling will make it considerably harder to challenge future terminations in court. The decision sends the consolidated cases, Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot, back to the lower courts for further proceedings.

The administration cast the outcome as a vindication. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson called it a tremendous win and said the court had affirmed that protected status is, by definition, temporary. DHS general counsel James Percival said the decision was a win for the rule of law, arguing that many designations had become a de facto amnesty.

Opponents pushed back hard. New York Attorney General Letitia James called the ruling a betrayal of the country's values, noting that TPS holders have built families, careers, and businesses over years in the United States. Advocacy groups described the practical fallout as a tragedy for each person now exposed to removal, and said the next steps would unfold country by country as the remaining court challenges are sorted out. The justices had previously cleared the administration to end TPS for some 600,000 Venezuelans.

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Let’s hope for peace! Let’s jump in!

Outgoing DNI leader released information that the U.S. funded biolabs in Ukraine. A finalized Memorandum of Understanding has now been agreed to between Iran and the U.S. A federal judge is preventing Ken Paxton (Texas AG) from suing a left leaning democrat political organization.

• Outgoing D.N.I Leader Reveals U.S. Funded Biolabs In Ukraine

• Iran Peace Deal Comes Together

• Federal Judge Blocks Texas A.G. From ActBlue Lawsuit

Outgoing D.N.I Leader Reveals U.S. Funded Biolabs In Ukraine

Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (AP)

_{By: Atlas}

Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released declassified material on Friday that her office says documents longstanding U.S. government funding for more than 120 biological laboratories in over 30 countries, including Ukraine, framing the disclosure as evidence of a program that officials hid from the public.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the records, the product of months spent combing through intelligence holdings, show that many of the labs have conducted research on hazardous and highly contagious pathogens, in some cases involving gain-of-function work, with little oversight. Gabbard accused past officials, naming Dr. Anthony Fauci and members of the Biden administration's national security team, of having "lied to the American people about the existence of U.S.-funded and supported biolabs," and of threatening those who tried to expose them.

The release lands days before Gabbard leaves her post, and it reopens a fight over a set of facts that are partly settled and partly disputed. That U.S. funding helped run labs abroad, including in Ukraine, is not in question. The characterization Gabbard attached to it, that the labs were secret and concealed, is what drew immediate and heavy pushback.

What the records describe

According to the disclosure, more than 40 of the labs are in Ukraine, where facilities handled Soviet-era pathogens. The documents list agents studied at various sites, among them anthrax, tularemia, tuberculosis, MERS, SARS, Marburg, Ebola, Lassa, and the plague.

The slides, declassified in late April and released Friday, describe facilities supported under the Defense Department's Cooperative Threat Reduction program, a post-Cold War effort launched in the 1990s to secure pathogens and weapons material left behind by the Soviet Union. In Ukraine, by the Pentagon's own fact sheets, the program has operated since 2005 and invested roughly $200 million to upgrade Ukrainian-run public-health and veterinary labs. One newly declassified slide reflects an earlier intelligence assessment that a veterinary lab in Kharkiv likely held dangerous pathogens and was vulnerable to Russian seizure or damage.

ODNI said Gabbard had directed the intelligence community to step up collection on the labs, and that early reporting was surfacing clinical trials at some sites that raised what it called ethical, financial, and security concerns. No countries other than Ukraine were named in the released documents.

A program that has been public for years

Much of what the disclosure describes has been on the record for some time. The program in question, sometimes known by the names of its original sponsors as Nunn-Lugar, has been the subject of published Pentagon fact sheets, and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv described the cooperation in 2020. The United States is a signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention of 1975.

The work also surfaced publicly at the start of Russia's invasion. In March 2022, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told a Senate committee that Ukraine had "biological research facilities" and that Washington was concerned Russian forces might seek to seize them. Other administration officials moved to dismiss broader claims the following day. In 2023, the State Department accused Moscow of escalating disinformation about biological weapons to deflect from its invasion and erode support for Ukraine.

A wave of criticism

Gabbard's framing met sharp resistance from biosecurity specialists and lawmakers, who said it gave fresh life to a narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin used to help justify the invasion.

Josh Segal, a biological weapons expert who has served on U.S. arms control delegations, said he was confused as to why the office would revive what he called a misleading narrative the intelligence community had long understood to be a Russian trope, one the first Trump administration had worked to knock down. The labs, he said, were never secret and do no questionable work, and the cooperation began as a publicized effort to convert former Soviet facilities, with Russian participation continuing until about a decade ago. The same program, he noted, destroyed 12 tons of weaponized anthrax that the Soviets had abandoned in the Aral Sea.

Rep. Mike Levin, a California Democrat, called the disclosure recycled Kremlin propaganda, noting that facility lists had been posted publicly by the State Department and the embassy in Kyiv and that the first Trump administration had funded the same research. Critics outside government echoed the point, with one Economist editor describing the release as a conspiracy theory masquerading as intelligence. The pushback was not limited to Gabbard's opponents; the pro-Trump activist Laura Loomer faulted members of her own side for embracing the claims, arguing that Russia was exploiting the moment. Supporters, including some members of Congress, praised the release as an act of transparency.

Timing and a transition at ODNI

Gabbard tied the disclosure to Executive Order 14292, which Trump signed on May 25, 2025, to end federal funding of gain-of-function research abroad, particularly in countries such as China where the administration argued oversight was lacking. The release came a day after Sen. Rand Paul circulated documents of his own alleging that Fauci had leaned on intelligence ties to shape the debate over COVID-19's origins, and an ODNI official has said Gabbard is working to release records on the pandemic's origins before she leaves.

That departure is near. Gabbard, who has said she is stepping down to help her husband through treatment for a rare cancer, is set to leave the office later this month. Trump has named Jay Clayton, currently the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, as his choice to lead the intelligence community, with a Senate confirmation hearing scheduled for June 17. The leadership handoff has been complicated by a separate fight over surveillance authorities, leaving the office in transition as its final declassifications land.

Good morning everyone,

It’s been a busy week. Let’s dive in!

Trump is now encouraging the acting director of ODNI to cut a large portion of the agency’s workforce. The U.S. Senate has just passed a $70 billion dollar funding bill for immigration agencies. Trump has now nominated Deputy AG Todd Blanche to replace his former boss.

• ODNI Head Pulte Encouraged By Trump To Cut Staff

• Senate Passes $70 Billion Dollar Bill For I.C.E. & Border Patrol

• Todd Blanche Nominated for Attorney General

ODNI Head Pulte Encouraged By Trump To Cut Staff

Bill Pulte, Federal Housing Finance Agency director, speaking on CNBC on Jan. 8 2026 (CNBC)

President Donald Trump said Friday he has directed incoming acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte to begin firing large numbers of employees at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as part of a broader shake-up of the U.S. intelligence community, escalating an already contentious appointment into a full restructuring fight just days into Pulte's tenure.

In a Wall Street Journal interview published Friday, Trump said he had told Pulte privately that ODNI is "unnecessary and/or too big" and asked him to "start the process" of personnel cuts. "I'd like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn't be there," the president said, directing Pulte to focus on holdovers from the Biden and Obama administrations.

Pressed on the topic later in the day on Air Force One as he flew to Wisconsin for an agriculture event, Trump reiterated the position more bluntly. "I wouldn't mind. [The size of the office has been] way too high for way too long. Yeah, I wouldn't mind," he told reporters. "He'll do a very good job. He'll watch it closely, but Bill Pulte is very good, he's very talented."

Pulte, who continues to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency and serve as chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, takes over as acting DNI when Tulsi Gabbard's resignation becomes effective June 30. He has no prior background in intelligence work.

The "Less Shackled" Argument and the 210-Day Window

Trump framed Pulte's acting status as an asset rather than a limitation. "You're less shackled," the president told the Journal. "It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time." He suggested the temporary tenure was well-suited to the cuts he was demanding. "Frankly, it might be good for him to shake it up before people come," he said. "Because, if he reduced the size, in conjunction with me, and in conjunction with possibly the person coming in, he can do a lot of the hard work and we wouldn't have to saddle somebody that goes in."

Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, Pulte's acting tenure is capped at 210 days from the start of the vacancy. Trump compared the approach to Education Secretary Linda McMahon's efforts to shrink the Department of Education, suggesting an even more aggressive outcome was on the table for ODNI. "We've made the Department of Education much smaller, and likewise, this should be much smaller," Trump said. "And this should maybe even be terminated, and we'll make that decision."

The director of national intelligence formally oversees 18 federal intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. The office's authority to direct personnel actions at those individual agencies — as distinct from inside ODNI itself — is limited.

The Senate Backlash and the FISA Vote

The fallout reached Capitol Hill before the day was over. Early Friday morning, the Senate blocked a procedural motion to open debate on a three-year extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the warrantless surveillance authority that authorizes the collection of foreign-target communications and is set to expire at 11:59 p.m. on June 12. The motion failed 52-47, with seven Republicans joining 45 Democrats in opposition. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to vote in favor.

The seven Republicans who voted to block the measure were Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt of Missouri, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Rick Scott of Florida, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.

Democrats explicitly attributed the failed vote to Pulte's appointment. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he and Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton had reached a "compromise" on the extension before Trump's pick, but that the "complete irresponsibility of putting forward" Pulte had changed the calculus. Warner questioned the wisdom of handing Pulte "the keys to the 18 intelligence agencies."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was more blunt, calling Pulte "a hack who does Trump's bidding, no matter how egregious that bidding might be." Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon framed the bipartisan vote as a broader civil-liberties stand against warrantless surveillance of Americans' communications.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune acknowledged that the Pulte appointment's timing "arguably wasn't the best" but said it should not derail a national security renewal. He indicated the Senate would try again next week, though any new motion will need 60 votes to advance.

The ODNI Workforce and Gabbard's Cuts

The office Pulte is being asked to shrink has already undergone substantial cuts. When Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, ODNI had approximately 1,800 employees. Gabbard, who described the office as "bloated and inefficient" upon arrival, executed her own restructuring under an "ODNI 2.0" initiative announced in August. The administration said at the time that the office's annual budget would be reduced by more than $700 million.

Estimates of the workforce reduction under Gabbard vary; the administration has cited a roughly 40 percent cut, while other accounts have put the figure closer to 30 percent. Several longstanding ODNI products and offices were consolidated or discontinued in the process, including the quadrennial "Global Trends" strategic forecast, which had been published since 1997.

Critics of ODNI inside the administration have argued the office was a duplicative layer that should have been cut more aggressively from the start. "The whole thing was a post-9/11 mistake," one former Trump administration official said. "It was supposed to be very small and elite, and now has 1,800 employees who just duplicate what other agencies do." A second former official cited "a large number of leaks over the past few months" out of ODNI and said that if Pulte's mandate is to "plug the leaks and scale back ODNI while maintaining the fusion of intelligence across agencies, Pulte might do just fine."

The 2020 Election Files and the Permanent Replacement

Trump also indicated he wants Pulte to continue Gabbard's declassification work, particularly regarding the 2020 election. Asked by the Journal what specific material he hoped to see released, Trump said, "I would say everything — he should look at everything and make a determination." Speaking with reporters Thursday, he said Pulte's tenure may yield revelations: "You may find out some things about the rigged elections."

On the question of who will eventually fill the role on a permanent basis, Trump has been clear that Pulte is not the answer. "It's an acting position. It's not permanent. I don't think he'd want to be permanent," he said Thursday. Asked Friday on Air Force One about potential nominees, Trump said he had "five interviews" underway with "very respected people" but declined to name them.

There is recent precedent for using the acting DNI position as a vehicle for restructuring before a Senate-confirmed director arrives. During Trump's first term, Ric Grenell served as acting DNI from February to May 2020 before being replaced by John Ratcliffe, who now leads the CIA and has emerged as the president's principal intelligence interlocutor on the Iran war. Whether Pulte's mandate produces a comparable institutional reset, or unravels further on Capitol Hill, will become clearer as the FISA fight resumes next week.

Good morning everyone,

It’s been a busy week in D.C. Let’s jump in!

Trump stated in his latest Truth Social post that a deal is being decided on for the Iran war. Former AG Pam Bondi faced congressional heat during her testimony regarding the Epstein files release. Treasury Secretary Bessent stated to the press that the U.S. seized roughly $1 billion worth of crypto from Iran.

• ‘Final Determination’ Being Made For Iran Deal

• Former AG Bondi Draws Heat From Dem’s During Epstein Files Testimony

• Bessent Claims $1 Billion In Crypto Seized From Iran

‘Final Determination’ Being Made For Iran Deal

President Trump (Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

President Donald Trump met with senior national security officials in the White House Situation Room on Friday to make what he had described in advance as a "final determination" on the framework deal with Iran. After roughly two hours of deliberations, the meeting ended without a decision, a senior administration official said.

The session followed a Thursday announcement by U.S. and Iranian negotiators that they had reached a tentative memorandum of understanding, pending approval by Trump and Iran's leadership, that would extend the existing ceasefire by 60 days and open formal talks on the future of Iran's nuclear program. Vice President JD Vance, speaking Thursday, said the two sides were "going back and forth on a couple of language points," including "the question of enrichment," and described the gap as narrow but not yet closed.

A White House official, speaking after the Situation Room meeting, said Trump "will only make a deal that is good for America and satisfies his red lines" and reiterated that "Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon." The official offered no further details and did not address the question of when a final decision would be made.

The Five Conditions

In a Truth Social post earlier in the day, Trump laid out the conditions he said any deal would need to satisfy. Iran would have to agree to never develop a nuclear weapon. The Strait of Hormuz would be reopened in both directions "for unrestricted shipping traffic," with no tolls. Any mines remaining in the waterway would have to be removed or destroyed. The U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports — which has redirected 115 ships since it began in mid-April, according to a Friday update from U.S. Central Command — would be lifted in parallel.

The fifth and most contentious condition concerned Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Trump said the material — which he has previously described as "nuclear dust" — "will be unearthed by the United States" in coordination with the Iranian government and the International Atomic Energy Agency, then destroyed. The proposed memorandum, according to a U.S. official briefed on its contents, would require Iran to remove all mines from the strait within 30 days and would gradually lift the blockade in parallel with the reopening of the waterway.

Trump also signaled that the financial side of the proposed package would not move quickly. "No money will be exchanged, until further notice," he wrote. "Other items, of far less importance, have been agreed to. I will be meeting now, in the Situation Room, to make a final determination."

The International Atomic Energy Agency assesses that Iran holds 440.9 kilograms — about 972 pounds — of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity, a short technical step from weapons-grade. The stockpile is believed to be buried under three nuclear sites that were badly damaged in the opening U.S. and Israeli strikes on February 28.

Iranian Pushback

Tehran's public response sat in clear tension with Trump's framing. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told state media that the agreement "has not been finalized yet" and said Iranian officials were "focused on the end of war and are not discussing the details of the nuclear plan at this point." Baghaei separately rejected the prescriptive tone of Trump's post, saying the Islamic Republic "said goodbye to the language of 'must' 47 years ago."

The country's chief negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, posted on X that Iran has "no trust in guarantees or words" and only judges by actions. "No step will be taken before the other side acts," Qalibaf wrote. "We do not gain concessions through talks, but through missiles; in negotiations, we merely make them understand this. The winner of any agreement is the one who, from the day after it, is better prepared for war."

Iran's Fars news agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was more pointed. It described Trump's account of the framework as a "mixture of truth and lies," citing informed sources who said no provision to destroy Iran's nuclear material appeared in the text and that the toll-free reopening of the strait was not in the agreement either. Tasnim, another Iranian outlet, reported that the memorandum text "is not finalized yet" and that Western media accounts of an imminent deal were "not precise."

The Money Question

A central piece of the gap appears to be financial. Iranian sources cited by Fars said Tehran is demanding "the immediate release of $12 billion in frozen Iranian assets" before it moves to the next phase of negotiations. Ebrahim Azizi, who chairs the Iranian parliament's national security commission, posted publicly that Iran "sets the terms: cash for cash, credit for credit, nothing for nothing."

Trump's post made clear that no funds would be released at the outset of any agreement. Under the proposed framework, the United States would relax sanctions in stages, allowing Iran to sell more of its oil during the 60-day window, with broader sanctions relief and the release of frozen funds to be negotiated separately.

The two sides also continue to disagree on who would manage the Strait of Hormuz once it reopens. Baghaei said Iran and Oman, which lie on opposite sides of the waterway, would handle transit "based on their own national interests and the interests of the international community." Trump on Wednesday warned Oman not to enter into a shared-management agreement with Iran or the U.S. would "have to blow them up." Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he had spoken with his Omani counterpart Friday and had expressed solidarity "in the face of any threat."

The War Backdrop

The diplomacy is taking place against renewed exchanges of fire between the two sides. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Thursday it had targeted a U.S. air base in Kuwait that it described as "the source" of recent U.S. strikes on the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas. U.S. Central Command called the attack an "egregious ceasefire violation." Iran's state television said 24 vessels had transited the strait in the past 24 hours but warned that "ships from hostile countries face a severe response."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking at a security summit in Singapore, said the United States retained the option to resume strikes against Iran if the talks collapsed. "Our stockpiles are more than suited for that, both there and around the globe, because of how we balance exquisite and more plentiful munitions," Hegseth said. "So we're in a very good place." For its part, the IRGC has warned that any return to full-scale war would spread "far beyond the region" and produce "crushing blows" against U.S. forces, Israel, and Gulf states.

Good morning everyone,

It’s been a wild week on Capitol Hill. Let’s dive in!

The head of DNI resigned following cancer diagnosis of her husband. Trump convened with senior military leaders to assess new strike options towards Iran. The DNC has belatedly released their ‘autopsy’ report of the 2024 election loss

• DNI Head Tulsi Gabbard Resigns

• Trump Considers New Iran Strikes

• DNC Releases ‘Autopsy’ Of 2024 Election

DNI Head Tulsi Gabbard Resigns

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testifies during a Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington, D.C., on March 18, 2026. (Win McNamee - Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard submitted her resignation to President Donald Trump on Friday, citing her husband's recent diagnosis with a rare form of bone cancer. Her last day in office will be June 30.

Gabbard told Trump of her decision in an Oval Office meeting Friday afternoon and posted her resignation letter to X shortly after. "My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer," she wrote. "He faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months. At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle."

Gabbard and her husband, Abraham Williams, have been married for eleven years. She thanked Trump for "the trust you placed in me and for the opportunity to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the last year and a half."

Trump accepted the resignation in a post on Truth Social. "Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her," he wrote, wishing Williams a "speedy recovery." Principal Deputy Director Aaron Lukas, a former CIA officer who served on the National Security Council during Trump's first term, will serve as acting director.

Gabbard is the fourth Cabinet-level official to depart the second Trump administration this year — and all four have been women. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was removed in late March, Attorney General Pam Bondi in April, and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer also in April.

Friction Over Iran

While Gabbard framed the move as a personal decision, she had been at odds with the White House for months over the war with Iran. The conflict, which began on February 28, has divided the administration and prompted earlier exits from senior officials who shared Gabbard's longtime skepticism of foreign military intervention.

In testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee in March, Gabbard repeatedly declined to characterize Iran's nuclear program as an imminent threat. She told lawmakers that determining imminence was the president's call rather than the intelligence community's, and her written remarks said there had been no effort by Iran to rebuild its nuclear capability after earlier U.S. strikes. Trump publicly rebuked her, saying he did not care what she said.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that Gabbard had been forced out and that the White House had been "unhappy with her for quite some time." White House spokesman Davis Ingle said her departure was driven by her husband's diagnosis. In March, Trump told reporters Gabbard was "softer" than he was on Iran's nuclear ambitions, and in April Reuters reported she could lose her position in a broader cabinet shakeup.

Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center under Gabbard, resigned in March over the Iran strikes, saying Iran "posed no imminent threat to our nation." Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, who served as deputy director of national intelligence for policy and capabilities, stepped down days before Gabbard's resignation, also over Iran. The FBI has since opened an investigation into Kent over alleged improper sharing of classified information.

By the spring, Gabbard had been visibly absent from major White House national security deliberations — including the Iran war, the operation that deposed former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and Cuba policy — with Trump instead leaning heavily on CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

A Year and a Half at ODNI

Gabbard's eighteen months running the office that oversees the country's 18 intelligence agencies were unusually combative. She arrived without a traditional intelligence background, and she used the post to advance Trump priorities that previous DNIs had kept at arm's length.

Her office cut its workforce by 40 percent and claimed roughly $700 million in annual savings. She dismantled diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and stood up what she called a Weaponization Working Group to investigate alleged political abuses inside the intelligence community. She revoked the security clearances of 37 current and former intelligence officials, including former CIA Director John Brennan.

She oversaw the declassification of more than 500,000 pages of historical records, including files related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. She also released a memo accusing Obama-era intelligence officials of a "treasonous conspiracy" to manufacture intelligence about the 2016 election. The memo focused on the absence of any indication Russia had directly altered vote totals — a finding consistent with prior intelligence community and Senate conclusions, neither of which had asserted that votes were changed.

She also appeared in person at an FBI search of an election center in Fulton County, Georgia, even though her office is responsible for foreign intelligence rather than domestic election matters. While on scene she called Trump and put him on speakerphone so the president could speak with agents at the location.

Last week, the CIA reclaimed roughly 40 boxes of sensitive documents from the ODNI, including materials related to the Kennedy assassination and the MKUltra program. Some lawmakers described the move as a "raid"; Gabbard's office disputed that characterization.

Reaction and a Possible Replacement

Reaction on Capitol Hill split along familiar lines. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the role itself had become politicized and that "this position now more than ever needs to be an independent, experienced intelligence professional." Sen. Adam Schiff of California was sharper, writing that "Tulsi Gabbard's only positive contribution to our nation's national security is her resignation."

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, an Arkansas Republican, praised Gabbard's "critical support" in pushing for the declassification of materials related to the Trump-Russia investigation. "She leaves a strong legacy behind at ODNI," he said. Some Republican senators have publicly floated Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York as a possible permanent successor.

Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who served in Iraq from 2004 to 2005, was a surprising pick when Trump tapped her for the job. She ran for president in 2020 on a progressive, anti-interventionist platform, left the Democratic Party in 2022, and endorsed Trump in 2024 before joining the Republican Party. She was the first Hindu member of Congress and the first American Samoan elected to the House.

Whoever succeeds her at ODNI will inherit the office at a sensitive moment, with the U.S. still engaged in Iran and the White House reportedly considering additional military action. Lukas, the acting director, will lead the office in the interim.

Good morning everyone,

It’s been an eventful week in D.C. and beyond. Let’s get into it!

Trump and Xi strike multiple small deals while Trump visited Beijing. CIA Director Ratcliffe visited Havana to extend an olive branch to the Cuban government, but that aid comes with strings attached. U.S. Senators voted to withhold their pay during future government shutdowns.

• Trump-Xi Strike Up Quiet Wins In Beijing

• CIA Director Visits Havana To Offer Aid (With Strings Attached)

• Senators Vote To Withhold Pay During Gov. Shutdowns

Trump-Xi Strike Up Quiet Wins In Beijing

_{By: Atlas}

President Donald Trump flew back to Washington on Friday after a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping that produced a handful of trade commitments, a new dialogue framework, and almost no concrete movement on the issues that have defined the relationship between the world's two largest economies.

The trip — Trump's first to China since 2017 — featured a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, a tour of the Temple of Heaven, a state banquet, and a Friday visit to the Zhongnanhai Garden compound. Unlike the 2017 visit, the two sides did not release a joint public statement, an agreed summary of the meetings, or a fact sheet listing deliverables.

"Hopefully our relationship with China will be stronger and better than ever before!" Trump wrote on Truth Social after taking off. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning, in her own post on X, called the visit "a new beginning."

The two leaders agreed to meet again three more times this year: a state visit in Washington, the G20 summit, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

A Boeing Order and Two New Boards

The most tangible commercial outcome was a Chinese commitment to buy 200 Boeing aircraft. Trump said on Air Force One that the order could grow to 750 planes — paired with 450 General Electric engines — if the first tranche goes well.

The two governments also agreed to establish a "Board of Trade" and a "Board of Investment" to manage bilateral purchases and provide a standing channel for handling disputes. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said officials on both sides were still working out the details, and roughly $30 billion in non-sensitive goods has been identified for the initial scope.

Trump said additional deals were in place for "billions of dollars" of soybeans and other farm goods. No precise figures were released, and U.S. soybean futures fell to their lowest level in more than two weeks on Friday after the summit closed without specific contracts.

The current trade truce, struck at the Busan summit last October, was not extended. It is due to expire later this year. Trump told reporters that the two leaders did not discuss a reduction in tariffs.

Several harder items moved little. There was no announced easing of Chinese export controls on rare-earth minerals and no major summit-level agreement on advanced semiconductor sales, even with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang in the delegation. Apple's Tim Cook, Tesla's Elon Musk, Boeing's Kelly Ortberg and roughly a dozen other corporate executives accompanied Trump.

Taiwan Dominated the Talks

Xi opened the summit with a pointed warning on Taiwan. Mishandling the issue, he told Trump, could push the relationship into a "dangerous place," and the two countries "will have clashes and even conflicts" if it is not handled "properly." A Chinese readout called Taiwan "the most important issue in China-U.S. relations."

Trump said nothing about Taiwan publicly during the trip. On Air Force One on the return flight, he confirmed that Xi had directly asked him whether the United States would defend the island in the event of a Chinese attack. "I said I don't talk about that," Trump told reporters. The response is consistent with Washington's longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity.

Trump also signaled he was rethinking a major arms sale to Taipei. The administration authorized an $11 billion weapons package in December, and lawmakers approved a separate $14 billion package in January that cannot proceed until Trump formally sends it to Congress. "I may do it, I may not do it," he said.

In an interview with Fox News, Trump went further, urging both sides to lower the temperature. "Taiwan would be very smart to cool it a little bit. China would be very smart to cool it a little bit. They ought to both cool it," he said. "The last thing we need right now is a war that's 9,500 miles away."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said separately that U.S. policy on Taiwan remained unchanged. Chinese state media made no mention of Trump's Taiwan comments.

Iran Left Ambiguous

The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has dominated Washington's foreign policy since late February, and Trump went into Beijing seeking Chinese help to wind it down. He left with broad words and little in writing.

"We feel very similar," Trump said as he met with Xi on Friday. "We want that to end. We don't want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the straits open." Xi said nothing publicly on the topic.

A separate statement from China's foreign ministry said the conflict "should never have happened, has no reason to continue" and offered to help the parties find peace, but stopped short of any concrete commitment.

Trump told reporters that Xi privately offered to help find an end to the war and promised not to supply military equipment to Tehran. The Chinese side has not confirmed either point. Trump also said Xi expressed interest in buying U.S. oil, which would reduce Beijing's reliance on Iranian crude.

He suggested he was considering lifting sanctions on Chinese refineries that have continued to buy Iranian oil — a step that would roll back one of the few concrete penalties Washington has imposed on Beijing over the war.

A New "Strategic Stability" Framework

Beijing left the summit with a narrative win. Chinese officials announced that the two leaders had agreed to a vision of "a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability," intended to shape ties through the rest of Trump's term and built around cooperation, bounded competition, and managed differences.

"We must make it work and never mess it up," Xi told Trump.

Trump did not push back publicly on the framing. He raised the case of imprisoned Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai, 78, who was sentenced earlier this year to 20 years under the national security law. "I did bring it up. It's a tougher one," Trump said. There was no result.

Beijing's terms were on display in the choreography as well. Xi promised to send rose seeds to plant at the White House and recalled the hospitality Trump showed him at Mar-a-Lago in 2017. Trump, for his part, stayed unusually on script, reading a prepared toast at the state banquet and avoiding off-the-cuff remarks for most of the two days.

Good morning everyone,

It’s been a huge week for mid term news. Let’s dig in!

The Virginia Supreme Court has just voided a Democrat effort to eliminate most Republican congressional representation. Yesterday, Trump took to Truth Social to tout that a ceasefire took place between Ukraine and Russia, with extended talks taking place for a total end of the war. The Trump administration has released the first batch of classified UFO files to the public.

• Virginia Supreme Court Strikes Down Redistricting Effort

• Trump Announces 3 Day Ceasefire Deal Between Ukraine & Russia

• Department Of War Releases First Tranche Of UFO Files

Virginia Supreme Court Strikes Down Redistricting Effort

Voters leaving a rally that favors a block on the Virginia redistricting effort, April 11, 2026 (Ken Cedeno - Reuters)

_{By: Atlas}

The Supreme Court of Virginia struck down the state's new congressional map Friday in a 4-3 decision, throwing out the results of a voter referendum that had narrowly passed three weeks earlier and restoring the 6-5 districts that have been in place since 2022.

The map at the center of the case would have given Democrats a 10-1 edge in the state's House delegation. Voters approved the underlying constitutional amendment 51.7 percent to 48.3 percent on April 21. Friday's ruling renders that vote a dead letter.

Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, writing for the majority, said the General Assembly had submitted the amendment to voters "in an unprecedented manner" and that the procedural defect "irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void."

Trump posted his reaction on Truth Social within minutes. "Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia," he wrote. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the ruling overturned "the will of more than three million voters" and that Democrats were "exploring all options" to reverse it. Late Friday, the Commonwealth and Democratic legislative leaders filed notice of an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The procedural fight

The case never turned on the shape of the districts. It turned on a single question: when does an "election" begin in Virginia?

State law requires that a constitutional amendment pass the General Assembly twice, in separate sessions, with an intervening state election in between. The point is to give voters a chance to weigh in on which lawmakers cast the second vote.

Democrats first passed the redistricting amendment on October 31, 2025, four days before the November 4 election. By that date, more than 1.3 million ballots had already been cast through Virginia's early-voting period — roughly 40 percent of the eventual total. Democrats then expanded their majorities in November, passed the amendment a second time in January, and scheduled the referendum for April.

Republicans sued, arguing the early voting meant the first legislative vote had come during the election rather than before it. Thomas R. McCarthy, who argued for the GOP plaintiffs, told the justices flatly: "None of these voters had any idea this was coming. And that's not how the process is supposed to work."

The majority agreed. "The General Assembly passed the proposed constitutional amendment for the first time well after voters had begun casting ballots during the 2025 general election," Kelsey wrote.

Chief Justice Cleo Powell, joined by Justices Thomas Mann and Junius Fulton III, dissented. She wrote that the majority's reading conflicted with how Virginia and federal law define an election. "The majority's definition creates an infinite voting loop that appears to have no established beginning, only a definitive end: Election Day."

The majority also flagged what it called a striking partisan asymmetry. Under the rejected map, 47 percent of Virginians who voted for major-party congressional candidates in 2024 would have been represented by 9 percent of the delegation. The other 51 percent would have controlled 91 percent.

The map and the money

The districts Democrats drew would have anchored five seats in Northern Virginia, redrawn four more across Richmond, Southside, and Hampton Roads to dilute Republican blocs, and stitched Charlottesville, Blacksburg, and Harrisonburg together into a single college-town district to offset surrounding Republican voters.

The campaign that led to the April vote was the most expensive ballot fight in Virginia history. Combined spending topped $93 million. The Republican National Committee, which led the legal challenge, said Democratic-aligned groups alone spent more than $66 million.

"Democrats just learned that when you try to rig elections, you lose," RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said.

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, who had defended the amendment, said the court "contorted the plain language of the Constitution and Code of Virginia to give it a meaning that was never intended." Sen. Tim Kaine called the ruling "a sad day" and tied it to last week's U.S. Supreme Court decision narrowing the Voting Rights Act. Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who had championed the amendment, said her focus would now be on turnout in November.

The federal appeal

Democrats face long odds at the U.S. Supreme Court. The Virginia ruling rests on Virginia's constitution, and the federal high court generally avoids second-guessing state courts on questions of state law. In 2023, the justices declined a similar request from North Carolina Republicans trying to overturn a state Supreme Court decision against their map.

Chief Justice John Roberts handles emergency petitions out of the Fourth Circuit and will get the filing first. Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan, posting on X, said he was "skeptical" the court would intervene.

Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia Center for Politics said Democrats may have moved too late. Had they started the process earlier, the procedural challenge might never have stuck. "Whatever odds you would have given to Republicans winning the House yesterday, I think you would raise them today," he said.

Even a losing appeal carries political value for Democrats. It lets them point at the conservative federal majority — already a target after the Voting Rights Act ruling — as the proximate cause of their setback.

The national board

Virginia is the latest move in a redistricting fight that has run all year. Trump pushed Texas Republicans to redraw their map last summer, targeting five Democratic incumbents. California Democrats answered with a voter-approved redraw aimed at five Republicans. Utah's Supreme Court imposed a map favoring Democrats. Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Tennessee have all enacted Republican-leaning lines.

Last week's Voting Rights Act ruling, Louisiana v. Callais, opened a second front. Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina are all moving on new maps, with several states pushing back primary dates to make room. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a map Thursday eliminating the Memphis seat held by Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen and creating nine Republican-leaning districts.

If Friday's ruling holds and those Southern redraws finish on schedule, Republicans could net somewhere around 10 additional House seats relative to where the cycle began. The GOP can afford to lose two net seats in November and keep the majority.

Marcia S. Price, the Democratic state delegate who carried much of the redistricting fight in Richmond, was blunt about what comes next: "You lick your wounds, get back up and keep fighting."

The court has not yet issued its mandate. Democrats have asked for a pause while the federal appeal moves. Filing for Virginia's August 4 primary is already open. Absent a reversal, the November 3 ballot will be drawn on the same lines voters have used since 2022.

Good morning everyone,

A huge week on the Hill. Let’s find out why!

The Supreme Court delivered a major decision this week that allows states to redistrict ahead of midterms. The President has decided to pull 5,000 troops from Germany following a widening rift with Chancellor Merz. Trump has now raised tariffs on E.U. vehicles again to 25% in ongoing trade disputes.

• SCOTUS Overrules Voting Rights Act

• The Pentagon Announces 5,000 U.S. Troops To Withdraw From Germany

• Trump Escalates Tariffs On E.U. Vehicles

SCOTUS Overrules Voting Rights Act

Protestors outside the SCOTUS building on October 2025 (AP)

_{By: Atlas}

The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down Louisiana's congressional map and sharply curtailed the reach of Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, ruling 6-3 that the state's second majority-Black district amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and resetting the legal framework that has governed minority voting rights cases for nearly four decades.

The decision in Louisiana v. Callais — written by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — reverberated through Washington and state capitals within hours of its release. The Florida Legislature voted along party lines that same afternoon to adopt a new congressional map projected to flip as many as four Democratic seats. Republican lawmakers in Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, and Missouri publicly called for new maps. Estimates from both parties suggest the ruling could produce a net swing of as many as 12 to 19 House seats toward Republicans across the South over the next two election cycles.

"The Constitution almost never permits the Federal Government or a State to discriminate on the basis of race," Alito wrote, holding that Louisiana's use of race in drawing its second majority-Black district was not justified by a "compelling interest" and therefore violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for herself and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent, called the decision "this latest chapter in the majority's now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act." She forewent the customary "respectfully" before "I dissent."

The legal reset

The ruling does more than dispose of one Louisiana map. It substantially rewrites the legal architecture that has governed Section 2 redistricting cases since Thornburg v. Gingles in 1986.

Three changes are central. First, plaintiffs alleging vote dilution can no longer submit "illustrative" or "demonstration" maps that maximize the number of majority-minority districts; alternative maps must comply with all of a state's race-neutral districting criteria, including its partisan goals. Second, plaintiffs must now disentangle race from partisanship when proving racial bloc voting — showing different voting patterns between Black and white voters is no longer sufficient if the divergence tracks party preference. Third, the "totality of circumstances" analysis at the heart of Gingles must now focus on present-day intentional racial discrimination rather than on historical patterns or generalized "societal effects."

Alito argued in the majority opinion that Gingles itself had been wrongly reasoned. "Gingles was decided at a time when this Court often paid insufficient attention to the language of statutory provisions, and Justice Brennan's opinion for the Court followed this pattern," he wrote.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which as amended by Congress in 1982 explicitly states that "nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population," now reaches, in effect, only intentional racial discrimination — a standard the Supreme Court had previously articulated in Mobile v. Bolden in 1980 before Congress responded with the 1982 amendments.

Kagan, in her dissent, argued that the majority's framework rendered Section 2 "all but a dead letter." She wrote that plaintiffs alleging vote dilution would now find it "nearly impossible" to succeed in court and warned of "grave" consequences. "A minority community that is cohesive in its geography and politics alike, and that faces continued adversity from racial division, is split — 'cracked' is the usual term — so that it loses all its electoral influence," she wrote.

Immediate political fallout

The ruling came down as the redistricting wars that have consumed the past year of American politics were already running hot. President Donald Trump's mid-decade redistricting push began last summer, when he persuaded Texas Republicans to redraw their map to target five Democratic incumbents. California voters then approved a counter-map projected to net Democrats five seats. Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio have since redrawn maps in favor of Republicans. Last week, Virginia voters approved a redistricting amendment that, if it survives court challenges, could shift the state's House delegation from a 6-5 Democratic split toward a 10-1 Democratic advantage.

Within hours of Wednesday's ruling, Florida's Republican-controlled legislature approved a new map drawn by Governor Ron DeSantis aimed at flipping the seats of Democratic Representatives Kathy Castor, Darren Soto, Jared Moskowitz, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Senator Marsha Blackburn, who is running for governor of Tennessee, called on the state legislature to convene a special session to redraw Tennessee's 7-2 Republican map into an 8-1 split by eliminating the majority-Black Memphis district held by Representative Steve Cohen. Senator Tommy Tuberville called publicly for Alabama Republicans to vacate the federal court order locking in the state's current map. Representative Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican running for governor, urged a redraw of the majority-Black Sixth District.

The principal hurdle is timing. Several Southern states have primaries scheduled for May or have already begun mailing absentee ballots. Louisiana — the state at the center of the case — has a primary on May 16, with early voting beginning Saturday. Candidates have been campaigning for months under the now-invalidated lines. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters Wednesday that lawmakers had not decided whether to attempt a fresh map in time for November. "We have, as you know, a primary coming up in about two weeks," Johnson said. "So we'll see if the state legislature deems it appropriate to go in and draw new maps."

Danielle Lang, vice president for voting rights at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said immediate redistricting would be "enormously disruptive and chaotic." Most analysts expect the more consequential changes to play out ahead of 2028 rather than November 2026.

The case below

The case had a long and unusually tangled procedural history. After the 2020 census, Louisiana initially adopted a six-seat congressional map with one majority-Black district, producing a 5-1 Republican advantage. A federal judge, applying Gingles, ordered the state to add a second majority-Black district. The legislature complied in 2024, drawing a new district running along the Mississippi River north of Baton Rouge. White voters then sued, arguing the redrawn map was itself a racial gerrymander.

The case reached the Supreme Court once before in 2024, when the justices sent it back to Louisiana. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court subsequently struck down the redrawn map as racially gerrymandered, setting up Wednesday's ruling. Janai Nelson, president of the Legal Defense Fund, who argued the case before the Supreme Court on behalf of Black voters, called the decision "a day of infamy for the court" and "a day of devastation for our democracy."

The Trump administration sided with the white voters who challenged the map. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, called it "perhaps one of the most important developments in decades in Voting Rights Act jurisprudence." Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the court had "ended Louisiana's long-running nightmare of federal courts coercing the state to draw a racially discriminatory map."

Civil rights organizations responded sharply. The NAACP described the ruling as "a direct attack on Black voters" and "a betrayal." Martin Luther King III, whose father led the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march that helped produce the Voting Rights Act, called the decision "not simply a legal setback, but a moral indictment that reflects a continued retreat from the promise of equal justice."

What changes, and what does not

The ruling does not formally overturn the Voting Rights Act, and several of its bedrock prohibitions remain in force. Literacy tests, poll taxes, property qualifications, and overt voter intimidation remain unlawful under federal statute. The Fifteenth Amendment's ban on intentional racial discrimination in voting is undisturbed.

What changes is the practical reach of Section 2 as a tool for forcing states to draw majority-minority districts. Under the new framework, plaintiffs face significantly higher evidentiary burdens at every stage of a vote-dilution case. Race-conscious remedies survive only where plaintiffs can show present-day intentional discrimination by the state, controlling for partisan affiliation, and where any alternative map satisfies all of the state's other districting criteria.

Senator Cory Booker called the ruling "another evisceration of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act." Senator Raphael Warnock described it as "yet another assault on voting rights from the same Supreme Court that hobbled the Voting Rights Act in Shelby v. Holder" — a reference to the 2013 decision that struck down the act's preclearance formula. Senator Josh Hawley said the ruling reinforced what he called "the right and appropriate" rule that states "cannot draw districts on the basis of race unless there is the tightest of connections to the harms identified by the Voting Rights Act."

Whether and how quickly Republican-led states actually redraw their maps will determine the immediate impact on the November midterms, which Republicans are entering with a 217-212 House majority, one independent, and five vacancies. The longer-term impact — on the 2028 election, on state legislative maps, and on local redistricting across the South — is likely to be far broader. As Brennan Center redistricting expert Kareem Crayton put it Wednesday, "The court has just added more chaos to a system that's already chaotic."

The ruling adds another redistricting front to a year that has already been defined by them. The 2026 election will now be fought, in significant measure, over maps that did not yet exist at the start of the week.

Good morning everyone,

It’s never a slow week in D.C.! Let’s get into it!

Secretary of State Marco Rubio met wit the EU Trade Commissioner to sign a landmark agreement on minerals, lessening U.S. reliance on China. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has taken Marijuana from Schedule I To Schedule III. The firing squad option at the federal level is now on option for federal cases

• U.S. Signs Critical Mineral Partnership With The E.U.

• DOJ Reclassifies Medical Marijuana At The State Level

• Trump Brings Back Firing Squad Option For Federal Cases

U.S. Signs Critical Mineral Partnership With The E.U.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R) and European Union Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic sign a memorandum of understanding in Washington on April 24, 2026. (Annabelle Gordon - AFP via Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and European Union Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič signed a memorandum of understanding on Friday establishing a formal U.S.-EU strategic partnership on critical minerals, the most substantive coordinated push yet by the two sides to reduce Chinese leverage over the materials that drive semiconductors, electric vehicles, and modern weapons systems.

The signing took place in the Treaty Room at the State Department in Washington and was paired with a separate action plan released by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Rubio did not name China in his remarks, but the context was unmistakable.

"The over-concentration of these resources, the fact that they're dominated by one or two places, is an unacceptable risk," Rubio said before the signing. "We need diversity in our supply chains, diversity in the places we get critical minerals."

Šefčovič said the agreement "formalizes our partnership across the entire value chain, from exploration and extraction to processing, refining, recycling and recovery," and told reporters he hoped pilot projects testing a price floor mechanism could begin before the end of the year.

What the deal actually does

The memorandum itself is a framework, not a binding trade agreement. The accompanying action plan, released by Trade Representative Jamieson Greer's office after a separate meeting with Šefčovič, lays out the concrete workstreams the two sides will pursue.

Chief among them is a joint exploration of reference-price mechanisms — including border-adjusted price floors, price-gap subsidies, offtake agreements, and standards-based markets — that would keep Chinese producers from undercutting Western output by dumping cheap material into the global market. The plan frames that work as a response to what the two sides describe as "pervasive non-market policies and practices" that have left market-oriented economies exposed to "economic coercion."

The agreement also commits Washington and Brussels to examine coordinated standards on mining, processing, recycling, and trade; technical and regulatory cooperation; joint investment promotion and screening; stockpile coordination; and rapid-response protocols for supply disruptions. USTR described the plan as the primary mechanism "to coordinate trade policies and measures on critical minerals supply chains with a view to concluding a binding plurilateral agreement on trade."

That last point matters. The United States wants to build a broader preferential trade bloc on critical minerals with allied economies, an idea Vice President JD Vance first floated publicly in February. Washington has already signed similar action plans with Japan and Mexico and has a parallel supply framework with Australia.

Why the urgency

The pact lands against a backdrop Brussels officials describe as economic security, not just trade policy. Šefčovič said the bloc is approaching the issue with the same framing it has applied to energy since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"For us, it's really a matter of economic security. It's a matter of overcoming dependencies," he said. "We know how dependencies could be expensive, and we have a huge price tag for being dependent on the sources of our fossil fuels. We simply want to learn from that experience and have a much more diversified portfolio of suppliers."

The numbers underlying that push are stark. China controls roughly 90 percent of global processing, smelting, and separation capacity for critical minerals, along with the production of the magnetic materials that end up in electric motors, wind turbines, and precision-guided munitions. Beijing has repeatedly used that leverage — curbing exports, suppressing prices, and slowing shipments — to weigh on rival economies during periods of geopolitical friction.

Rubio leaned on the combined heft of the two blocs in making the case for coordination. "If you look at the buying power and the economic productivity power of the combination of the United States and the European Union, it's extraordinary," he said. "We are, combined, the largest customers and users of the world."

Šefčovič dismissed the question of Chinese retaliation, framing the risk of doing nothing as the greater one. "Critical minerals," he said, "are the core of every industry shaping the future."

A rare moment of U.S.-EU alignment under Trump

The optics are notable. The Trump administration has publicly berated Brussels with regularity on trade and has built warmer ties with European right-wing populist leaders than with the Commission. Friday's signing was a rare embrace of the EU as an institutional partner and an acknowledgment that the critical minerals problem is too large for any single country to solve alone.

"It's a very concrete delivery on a very important basis we built over the last year," Šefčovič said during the ceremony, referring to a broader U.S.-EU understanding reached over the prior 12 months. He added that the "real test will be the execution of this project. How can we transform these agreements which we are signing into concrete, tangible projects to deliver for our business operators?"

President Donald Trump said in November 2025 that the United States would end its reliance on China for rare earths within 18 months under an emergency program. Progress since then has included private-sector movement: USA Rare Earth said on April 9 it was considering building a magnet plant in southern France after taking a 12.5 percent stake in French processor Carester.

Steel talks and the wider trade agenda

Friday's signing was not the only transatlantic item on Šefčovič's Washington schedule. The trade commissioner met separately with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and said the two sides agreed to "accelerate" technical-level work on steel.

The EU has been pressing Washington for relief from the 50 percent U.S. tariff on steel and aluminum imports that has hit European manufacturers since Trump's return to office. Last summer's broader transatlantic trade deal capped U.S. tariffs on most EU goods at 15 percent but did not cover steel and aluminum.

Brussels recently doubled its own tariffs on foreign steel to shield its producers from cheap Chinese exports, and Šefčovič said he wants to align European and American approaches toward third-country suppliers as a next step. "As a next step, we want to launch work with the U.S. on steel ring-fencing, aligning our approaches towards third countries," he said, describing the goal as building a "defensive mechanism against subsidised steel, against global overcapacities."

Šefčovič said those conversations were "going in a positive direction" but acknowledged that "we still have some issues with the remaining products which are listed" and called for "positive traction" before the next round of meetings.

What comes next

The most immediate deliverable from Friday's signing is the pilot-project phase that Šefčovič flagged. If those pilots run successfully before year-end and the two sides demonstrate the price-floor mechanism can work in practice, the framework becomes the template for the broader plurilateral agreement the Trump administration has been pitching to Western allies.

That broader bloc is the long-term ambition. Japan, Mexico, and Australia are already inside similar U.S.-led frameworks, and additional partners are likely to be brought in as the architecture is formalized. The mineral supply problem is structural, and neither side treated Friday's memorandum as a solution in itself — only as the point at which the structural response begins to take shape.

For now, the signing puts two of the world's largest economies on the record committing to coordinate on an issue that until recently had been handled largely through separate national industrial strategies. Whether that coordination produces the kind of supply-chain diversification both sides say they need will depend on how quickly the pilots move from paper to operation, and on whether Brussels and Washington can hold a common line when Beijing responds.

Good morning everyone,

It’s been a historic week on Middle Eastern affairs. Let’s jump in!

President Trump followed the Iranian Foreign Minister’s announcement of the Strait of Hormuz opening with several posts alluding to victory in Iran. DOJ launches criminal investigation into now resigned congressman Eric Swalwell. The United States has extended an oil waver for countries like India to buy Russian oil without running afoul of the U.S.

• Trump Takes Victory Lap Over Hormuz Opening

• DOJ Begins Criminal Investigation On Former House Rep Eric Swalwell

• U.S. Renews Oil Waiver Relating To Russian Oil Sanctions

Trump Takes Victory Lap Over Hormuz Opening

President Donald Trump after landing in Phoenix (Reuters)

_{By: Atlas}

President Donald Trump announced Friday that Iran had conceded to nearly all American demands to dismantle its nuclear program, setting the stage for a weekend round of talks that he said should move quickly toward a final accord.

In a string of social media posts and interviews, Trump said Washington would cooperate with Tehran at what he described as a "leisurely pace" to retrieve the stockpile of highly enriched uranium buried beneath last year's B-2 strike sites. He added that no American ground forces would be required for the operation, and that Iran would receive no compensation in exchange for what he characterized as an unlimited halt to all nuclear activities.

The announcement coincided with Tehran's declaration that the Strait of Hormuz would reopen to commercial traffic. Trump claimed Iran had further committed to never again closing the waterway, through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil and natural gas passed before the war began February 28.

Nuclear material recovery takes center stage

The centerpiece of Trump's announced framework is the removal of roughly 940 pounds of highly enriched uranium, at levels close to weapons grade, that the International Atomic Energy Agency estimates remain buried under the debris of last year's combined U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign.

Trump said American crews would enter alongside Iranian personnel with heavy excavation equipment to unearth the material and transport it to the United States. He told CBS News the project would not require U.S. ground personnel in any combat role.

Iranian negotiators have previously floated a different approach, offering to dilute or otherwise render the material unusable inside the country, paired with a moratorium on further high-level enrichment lasting three to five years. Trump rejected any time-limited arrangement outright, telling Bloomberg, "No years, unlimited," in response to Vice President JD Vance's earlier proposal of a 20-year ceiling on Iranian enrichment.

Outstanding American demands that Iran curtail its ballistic missile program and sever support for regional proxy forces were not addressed in Friday's announcements by either capital.

Tehran pushes back on scope of agreement

Iranian officials were publicly dismissive of Trump's characterization of the talks. A Foreign Ministry statement carried by state broadcaster IRIB cautioned the public against being misled by American rhetoric and said no new agreement had been reached.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi framed the strait's reopening in far narrower terms, saying transit would be permitted only along an Iran-approved corridor and only through the expiration of the current two-week ceasefire, which runs until April 22. He tied the decision to a separate 10-day ceasefire brokered between Israel and Lebanon earlier in the week, a condition Tehran had pressed for before offering concessions.

A spokesman for President Masoud Pezeshkian dismissed Trump's public posture as an attempt to strip Iranians of pride in what he called the country's defensive achievements.

Trump also denied reporting that Washington would release $20 million in frozen Iranian assets in return for the uranium stockpile, telling Reuters no money was changing hands. Iran, for its part, continues to demand full sanctions relief and restitution for war damages.

Markets fall but shipping remains wary

News of the reopening pushed Brent crude down more than 10 percent in futures trading, settling under $89 per barrel. Asian energy shortages and elevated fuel prices in several regions had followed Tehran's February clampdown on the waterway.

Actual shipping traffic lagged behind the announcement. Maritime tracking services reported no meaningful increase in transits through the strait in the hours after Iran's declaration. Roughly 832 tankers and cargo vessels remain stranded in or near the chokepoint, according to maritime intelligence firm Windward.

Brett Erickson, managing principal at Obsidian Risk Advisors, said the practical gap between diplomatic statements and resumed commerce would be significant. He noted that the strait normally handles more than 100 vessel crossings per day, a volume no single designated corridor with Iranian authorization requirements can match. Captains and shipping companies, he said, weigh crew safety above any diplomatic announcement.

BIMCO, the international shipping association, declined to endorse the reopening. Its chief safety and security officer, Jakob Larsen, said the strait could not yet be declared safe for transit.

Blockade continues as Europe positions for a maritime role

Even as Tehran reopened the strait, Trump said the U.S. Navy would keep its blockade of Iranian ports in place until a final agreement is signed. Defense officials said 19 ships had been turned back since the blockade took effect Monday.

Trump again aimed sharp criticism at European allies for declining to join the military campaign last month, writing that NATO had offered assistance only after the Hormuz situation eased. He said he had told the alliance to stay away.

At a coalition meeting in Paris, President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni welcomed the opening while pressing for a durable framework to guarantee freedom of navigation. Starmer said any proposal must be both lasting and workable. Merz offered European mine-clearance vessels, noting the continent's expertise in that area, though he said a legal basis for such a mission would be required.

A diplomat familiar with the Paris talks said Trump's announcements blindsided European participants, who were meeting on the strait when the president's claims began circulating. Military chiefs from non-belligerent states are expected to convene next week at the British command headquarters in Northwood to weigh their potential role in escorting commercial traffic once the war formally ends.

The next round of U.S.-Iranian negotiations is expected in Islamabad, though Trump said Friday he had not yet chosen a U.S. delegation leader. The initial round, held last weekend, was led by Vance with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner also at the table.

Good morning everyone,

It definitely hasn’t been a slow week. Let’s get into it!

Vice President Vance is making all the stops to ensure no war breaks out between the U.S. and Iran. The U.S. government is planning on a mandatory military draft rule to be on the books by the end of this year. Representative Swalwell is facing a large amount of heat for sexual allegations as his bid for the governor bid shakes up.

• VP Vance Sues For Iranian Peace

• Gov. Plans To Automatically Register Men For Military Draft By End Of 2026

• California Race Faces Shakeup

VP Vance Sues For Iranian Peace

Vice President JD Vance on Friday, April 10, 2026,(AP)

_{By: Atlas}

Vice President JD Vance boarded Air Force Two on Friday morning bound for Islamabad, where he will lead the American delegation in the first face-to-face negotiations between the United States and Iran since the war broke out on February 28. He told reporters before departing that he expected the talks to be "positive" — but offered a warning alongside the optimism.

"If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we're certainly willing to extend the open hand," Vance said. "If they're going to try to play us, then they're going to find that the negotiating team is not that receptive."

He will be joined by President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff. On the Iranian side, the delegation will be led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and parliamentary Speaker Mohammed Bager Qalibaf. Pakistan, which brokered the two-week ceasefire that made the talks possible, is hosting the negotiations and said Friday it would issue visas on arrival to journalists covering the event.

The Saturday talks carry enormous weight. The ceasefire, agreed to on April 7 just 90 minutes before Trump's deadline to escalate strikes against Iranian civilian infrastructure, has already begun to wobble. Disagreements over the Strait of Hormuz and Israel's continued strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon have emerged as immediate sticking points, and the publicly stated positions of Washington and Tehran remain far apart on the issues that matter most.

Why Iran Wanted Vance

Tehran's remaining leadership quietly sought Vance's involvement in the negotiations, according to multiple sources familiar with the diplomatic back-channel. Iranian officials view the vice president as the most anti-war figure in Trump's inner circle and believe he is the most likely senior American to pursue a deal in genuine good faith.

That perception tracks with Vance's political brand. He was among the most vocal skeptics of foreign military intervention before joining the ticket, and his reputation as a restraint-minded voice has followed him into office. Sources said Qalibaf, the Iranian parliamentary speaker, was among those who advocated for Vance to take a leading role. Some White House officials had themselves identified Qalibaf as a pragmatic counterpart who might be amenable to compromise.

The White House pushed back on the characterization. One official called it "laughable" to suggest Iran had a preference for Vance and denied anyone in his orbit was thinking about the political implications of the talks. But a separate White House official acknowledged that the Iranians had in fact indicated they wanted Vance involved, without offering a reason.

Vance himself was measured when asked about it. "I don't know that," he said Wednesday while traveling in Hungary. "I would be surprised if that was true."

Pressed on his role more broadly, he was self-deprecating. "I mean, you know, my key role was I sat on the phone a lot," he said. "I answered a lot of phone calls. I made a lot of phone calls."

The Sticking Points

The two-week ceasefire was supposed to create space for exactly these kinds of talks. But the pause has been anything but clean.

Iran's 10-point proposal — which Trump described as a "workable basis" for negotiations — includes demands that the United States guarantee non-aggression, accept Iran's continued uranium enrichment, lift all sanctions, withdraw combat forces from the region, and cease hostilities on all fronts, including against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran's Supreme National Security Council characterized the ceasefire itself as "an undeniable, historic, and crushing defeat" for the United States.

Washington's position is considerably narrower. The administration has said further uranium enrichment is a non-starter. And Vance said this week that the United States never agreed to extend the ceasefire to cover Israeli operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon — directly contradicting Iran's interpretation of the deal.

"We never made that promise," Vance told reporters Wednesday. "We never indicated that was going to be the case."

That disagreement has already produced consequences. Iranian state media reported that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps closed the Strait of Hormuz again in response to continued Israeli strikes in Lebanon. The White House called those reports false and "completely unacceptable." Trump warned Iran on Thursday against charging tolls on ships attempting to pass through the waterway, which remains effectively shut despite the ceasefire.

The Broader Picture

The war has left the Middle East destabilized and alliances frayed. Iran's military infrastructure sits in ruins and its missile arsenal is broadly depleted, but the country has found unexpected leverage through its effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint for roughly one-fifth of the world's oil. The threat alone has been enough to keep most commercial shipping away.

Oil prices have surged since the war began. Brent crude rose from roughly $70 per barrel in late February to over $119 at its peak. U.S. gas prices have climbed to about $4.15 a gallon, up from just under $3 before the conflict. Consumer prices rose 3.3 percent in March from a year earlier, the sharpest annual increase since May 2024.

The humanitarian costs extend well beyond economics. In Lebanon, the war between Israel and Hezbollah — which Iran insists should be covered by any ceasefire — has displaced more than a million people and killed nearly 1,900. The conflict has also strained NATO, with Trump deriding allies as "cowards" and slamming the alliance as "a paper tiger" after member nations declined to assist in operations against Iran.

Trump has conceded privately in recent conversations with advisers that the Strait of Hormuz is unlikely to fully reopen soon, according to a senior White House official, though he posted publicly on Thursday that oil would be flowing again quickly.

The Political Calculus

Vance arrives in Islamabad as an early frontrunner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, and the outcome of these talks could shape his political trajectory. A successful negotiation would bolster his credentials as a statesman capable of ending an unpopular war. A failure — or a drawn-out process that keeps gas prices elevated and the conflict unresolved heading into November's midterms — could tie him more firmly to a war that polling shows most Americans believe went too far.

"If this peace negotiation goes well and the result is one that's popular, it could help Vance's image," said Stephen Wertheim, a historian and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment. "But I think there's also some danger for Vance that he becomes more the face of the war."

The White House has been eager to position Vance as a central figure in the diplomatic effort. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that Vance has "played a very significant and a key role in this since the very beginning." The mood inside the administration, however, is one of skepticism about whether Tehran is prepared to make the concessions Washington considers essential — particularly on enrichment and the Strait.

The talks begin Saturday. The ceasefire expires in roughly 10 days. What happens in Islamabad this weekend will determine whether those 10 days lead to something durable or simply set the clock for another round of threats and deadlines.

Good morning everyone,

It’s been a wild week! Let’s get into it!

Multiple U.S. aircraft have been shot over Iranian airspace. Trump has fired Pam Bondi from her position as Attorney General. Vice President Vance has taken on the role of ‘Fraud Czar’ and is leading the prosecution of embezzlement (especially blue states in the crosshairs).

• Multiple U.S. Planes Shot Down Over Iran

• Trump Fires Bondi From AG Position

• VP Vance To Focus Fraud Investigations On ‘Blue States’

Multiple U.S. Planes Shot Down Over Iran

F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft (Centcom Public Affairs)

_{By: Atlas}

The air war over Iran entered a different phase on April 3 when U.S. aircraft were shot down during combat operations, producing the first confirmed American fixed-wing losses to enemy fire in the conflict. Until then, officials had publicly described Iranian air defenses as heavily degraded and had pointed to the scale of U.S. and Israeli strike operations as evidence that the battlefield was increasingly permissive. The events of that day showed otherwise.

The central incident involved an F-15E Strike Eagle, a two-seat aircraft used for deep strike missions. U.S. officials said the jet was brought down over Iran, with its crew ejecting. One crew member was recovered, while a search continued for the second. At the same time, a separate U.S. aircraft also went down in the broader theater. Officials identified that second aircraft as an A-10 attack plane, whose pilot ejected and was later rescued.

Those two aircraft losses were not the only damage reported that day. Two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters involved in the recovery effort were also hit by Iranian fire, though both made it back. Taken together, the incidents marked the most serious setback for American air operations since the war began in late February.

The military significance was immediate. American aircraft had been flying sustained combat sorties over Iran for weeks. The loss of multiple aircraft in a single day suggested that whatever damage had been done to Iran’s defenses, its forces still retained the ability to engage U.S. aircraft in meaningful ways.

What happened over Iran

The F-15E incident became the focus of the day because of where it happened and because one of the two aircrew remained unaccounted for. Officials said the aircraft was shot down over Iranian territory, making it the first known U.S. fighter lost inside Iran since the start of the war. President Donald Trump was briefed, and administration officials confirmed that a recovery mission was underway. Publicly, however, the Pentagon was initially limited in what it would say.

Iranian state-linked media moved quickly to publish images they said showed the wreckage. Early Iranian reports described the aircraft as an F-35, but that account did not hold up under subsequent scrutiny. Analysts examining the images said the visible tail-fin sections and ejection-seat components were more consistent with an F-15E Strike Eagle. That matched the description later given by U.S. officials.

The Strike Eagle carries two crew members, unlike the single-seat A-10 involved in the separate incident. Officials said one member of the F-15E crew was rescued, but the status of the second remained unclear for hours and then into the next day. Reporting indicated that congressional aides were told the Defense Department did not know the person’s whereabouts, which in operational terms meant the possibility of evasion, injury, or capture could not be ruled out.

The second aircraft loss was reported in a separate incident involving an A-10. Officials said the pilot ejected and was recovered. Accounts differed on whether the aircraft crashed directly in Kuwaiti airspace or after sustaining damage elsewhere in the theater, but the core fact was consistent across reporting: the aircraft was hit, the pilot got out, and the pilot was rescued.

For the U.S. military, the F-15E mattered most not because the aircraft itself was uniquely irreplaceable, but because the missing crew member turned a shoot-down into a personnel recovery crisis inside hostile territory. That shifted the operational burden almost immediately from strike execution to locating and extracting an aircrew member before Iranian forces could do the same.

The rescue effort and the danger around it

Combat search-and-rescue missions are among the most difficult operations air forces carry out. They require aircraft to slow down, loiter, communicate, and sometimes descend inside airspace where the threat has already proven real. That is what happened after the F-15E went down. Rescue aircraft were dispatched, including helicopters, and the effort itself came under fire.

Two Black Hawk helicopters involved in the operation were struck by Iranian fire, according to U.S. officials. Both aircraft returned safely, but injuries were reported among the personnel on board. That detail mattered because it showed the recovery mission was not a routine pickup at the edge of the battlespace. It was taking place in an environment where Iranian forces were still able to contest the airspace and engage American aircraft after the initial shoot-down.

Iranian media and officials compounded the pressure by publicizing the incident and encouraging civilians to help locate the downed Americans. Some reports described television anchors and officials calling on Iranians to find the surviving crew, while state-linked outlets circulated images and location claims online. That added a political layer to what was already a military race. The longer the missing crew member remained unaccounted for, the more likely the episode would become a broader diplomatic and strategic problem.

The search also undercut the administration’s broader public narrative. Only days earlier, the president had described Iran’s anti-aircraft and radar systems as effectively destroyed. Yet here were U.S. aircraft being hit, rescue helicopters taking fire, and American personnel possibly on the ground inside Iran. The battlefield described in official rhetoric did not fully match the one American forces were navigating in real time.

What the losses changed

These incidents did not reverse the broader military balance, but they did clarify the kind of war the United States was actually fighting. For years, American aircraft have mostly operated against adversaries without advanced integrated air defenses. Iran, even after weeks of bombardment, remained a state actor with enough surviving capability to impose costs. That was the main military lesson of April 3.

Retired U.S. air officers noted that the rarity of American shoot-downs in recent decades says as much about the opponents the United States has faced as it does about the invulnerability of U.S. airpower. In wars against insurgents or militias, aircraft losses to enemy air defense are uncommon because the enemy lacks the systems. In a war against a state still able to field missiles, guns, radar, and dispersed defensive positions, losses are a normal risk even for a far stronger air force.

That is why the downing of the F-15E and the loss of the A-10 carried weight beyond the day’s tactical events. They showed that Iran still had enough air-defense capacity to reach American aircraft, and that those hits could force the United States into even riskier operations to recover aircrews. One shoot-down became several damaged aircraft, multiple rescue flights, and a second crisis layered on top of the first.

There was also a strategic consequence. Once a U.S. aircraft is downed and an American service member is missing inside enemy territory, the conflict takes on a different political character. Public debate shifts from whether the campaign is succeeding in aggregate to whether the administration can explain how a supposedly suppressed adversary was still capable of bringing down aircraft and threatening rescue teams. That question became unavoidable after April 3.

In the narrower military sense, the day established three facts. An F-15E was shot down over Iran. A separate U.S. aircraft also went down, and its pilot was rescued. Two rescue helicopters were hit while trying to recover a missing aircrew member. Those are concrete battlefield developments, and they indicate that the air war remained contested despite repeated claims that Iran no longer had the means to fight effectively in the skies.

Good morning everyone,

It’s been a wild week in D.C! Let’s go!

The Senate has passed a bill that funds most parts of DHS, but the bill hangs in the fate of the House. White House officials are now debating an additional deployment of 10,000 combat troops in support of Operation Fury. A Florida Congressional Representative has been found guilty of 25 separate ethics violations.

• Senate Votes Unanimously In Favor Of DHS Funding Bill, Reaches Impasse At The House Of Representatives

• White House Mulls Additional Deployment 10,000 Troops To Middle East

• Florida Congressional Rep Found Guilty Of 25 Ethics Violations

Senate Votes Unanimously In Favor Of DHS Funding Bill, Reaches Impasse At The House Of Representatives

ICE agents hand out water bottles in TSA lines at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, on Thursday. (Mark Felix - Bloomberg - Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

The Senate voted unanimously early Friday morning to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, ending a 42-day standoff that left TSA agents working without pay and turned airport security lines into hours-long ordeals across the country. The deal covers the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Administration, and U.S. Customs — but not Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Border Patrol.

The bill died on arrival in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters his chamber would not take up the Senate measure and would instead pursue a 60-day stopgap that fully funds every DHS component, including the immigration enforcement agencies the Senate left out.

"It is unconscionable to me that the Democrats would force some sort of negotiation at three o'clock in the morning and try to foist this upon the American people and then get on their jets and go home for their holiday — and pretend and think that we're going to go along with that," Johnson said. He added that he did not believe every Senate Republican had even read the bill before it passed by voice vote.

The result: 42 days into the shutdown, with TSA workers missing their second consecutive paycheck, neither chamber has produced legislation the other will accept. Congress left for a two-week Easter and Passover recess with no resolution in sight.

What the Senate Bill Does and Doesn't Fund

The package funds the bulk of DHS operations for the remainder of the fiscal year. TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency all receive their appropriations. U.S. Customs operations are funded. Border Patrol is not.

ICE — the agency at the center of the political fight — gets nothing in the bill. Senate Majority Leader John Thune acknowledged that outcome was less than what Republicans had sought. "We've been trying for weeks to fund the whole thing," he told reporters. "In the end, this is what they were willing to agree to. But again, it's different that it has zero reforms in it. They got no reforms on DHS."

The bill includes $20 million for body cameras for immigration officers but does not require agents to wear them. It does not bar ICE agents from wearing face masks during operations, a change Democrats had pushed for. It does not require judicial warrants before agents enter private homes — another Democratic demand. In short, the bill contains no new restrictions on immigration enforcement.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the deal could have been reached weeks ago and declared that Democrats had "held the line" to prevent a "blank check" for what he called "lawless" immigration operations. He pledged the party would keep fighting to ensure enforcement agencies "do not get more funding without serious reform."

The Fight Behind the Shutdown

The funding impasse traces back to early February, when Congress failed to pass a DHS spending bill before the deadline. Democrats held up the legislation after federal immigration officers fatally shot two U.S. citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — during enforcement operations in Minnesota in January. The shootings prompted Democrats to demand structural changes to how ICE and Border Patrol conduct operations.

Their asks included mandatory body cameras, a ban on face masks during raids, prohibitions on enforcement near schools and churches, and a requirement that judges — not just agency supervisors — sign warrants before agents search homes or private spaces. New Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, confirmed by the Senate earlier this week, had indicated openness to considering the judicial warrant requirement.

Republicans resisted attaching enforcement restrictions to a spending bill, arguing the conditions would hamstring the agencies responsible for carrying out Trump's immigration agenda. The GOP had already secured $75 billion in additional ICE funding through last year's reconciliation bill, meaning immigration enforcement officers continued to be paid throughout the shutdown even as TSA agents and other DHS employees went without.

Seven previous attempts to pass a DHS funding bill failed before the eighth succeeded early Friday.

Airport Chaos and the TSA Crisis

The most visible consequence of the shutdown has been the breakdown at America's airports. Nearly 500 TSA transportation security officers have quit since the shutdown began. On a single day last week, more than 3,120 officers called out sick — an 11 percent no-show rate nationwide. Individual airports reported callout rates exceeding 40 percent.

Passengers at some of the country's busiest hubs faced wait times of four hours or more. George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston recorded some of the worst delays, where even former Attorney General Bill Barr was photographed waiting among thousands of stranded travelers. A top TSA official testified to Congress that the agency was experiencing the longest wait times in its 25-year history and warned that smaller airports could be forced to close if the impasse continued.

Some TSA agents resorted to selling their blood plasma and sleeping in their cars to get by. Melissa Gates, a traveler at Houston's airport, told reporters she had waited more than two and a half hours without reaching the security checkpoint and missed her flight to Baton Rouge. "I should have just driven, right?" she said. "Five hours would have been hilarious next to this."

Trump deployed ICE agents to airports earlier this week to help backfill missing TSA staff. On Thursday, he announced he would sign an executive order directing Homeland Security Secretary Mullin to pay TSA agents immediately using emergency authority and funds from last year's tax bill. "Because the Democrats have recklessly created a true National Crisis, I am using my authorities under the Law to protect our Great Country," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

House Republicans Push for Full Funding

Johnson rejected the Senate bill outright and said the House would move "as soon as possible" on a 60-day continuing resolution that funds the entirety of DHS, including ICE and Border Patrol. He said Trump had expressed support for the approach.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas called the Senate deal "absolutely offensive" to his constituents in Border Patrol who have been working without pay. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado told Senate schedulers on social media to "book a return flight for your boss." Conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus have also rejected the Senate measure, insisting on full immigration enforcement funding.

But the 60-day stopgap faces its own problems. Senate Democrats have already signaled it would not pass the upper chamber. Schumer's office said the proposal would simply delay the same fight by two months without addressing the underlying disputes over enforcement policy.

The standoff leaves Congress in a familiar stalemate. The Senate passed a bill the House will not take up. The House is proposing a bill the Senate will not pass. TSA workers may receive emergency pay through executive action, but the broader question of DHS funding — and the immigration enforcement restrictions Democrats are seeking — remains unresolved heading into a two-week recess.

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the union was grateful TSA workers would be paid but urged Congress to stay in session. He called for a deal "that funds DHS, pays all DHS workers, and keeps these vital agencies running."

That deal, for now, does not exist.

Good morning everyone,

A wild week at home and abroad. Let’s dig in!

The War Department has now authorized thousands of additional troops to the Middle East amid the ongoing Operation Fury. Former FBI Director James Comey has been subpoenaed for his alleged role in the 2017 investigation into Trump. Medicaid administrator Dr.Oz sets fresh targets over Medicaid fraud in Florida.

• War Department Authorizes Thousands More For Middle East Deployment

• Former FBI Director Comey Subpoenaed For Federal Investigation

• Dr. Oz Targets Medicaid Fraud In Florida

War Department Authorizes Thousands More For Middle East Deployment

The amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4) transits the East Sea on March 8, 2016 during Exercise Ssang Yong 2016 (MCSN Craig Z. Rodarte - U.S. Navy)

_{By: Atlas}

The United States military is sending thousands of additional Marines and sailors to the Middle East, three U.S. officials confirmed Friday, as the war against Iran reached its three-week mark and the Trump administration weighs its next moves — including the possibility of ground operations to secure the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's enriched uranium stockpile.

The latest deployment centers on the USS Boxer, a San Diego-based amphibious assault ship, along with its 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and accompanying warships. One official said the troops were departing the West Coast approximately three weeks ahead of schedule. The expeditionary unit carries roughly 2,500 Marines.

The USS Boxer deployment is the second such dispatch in days. A separate Marine Expeditionary Unit, built around the Japan-based USS Tripoli, was already en route to the region and was reported crossing the Strait of Malacca near Singapore on Wednesday, with arrival in Middle Eastern waters expected by the end of the month. Together, the two deployments would bring two full Marine Expeditionary Units to the theater.

Those forces will add to the 50,000 U.S. troops already in the region. The officials who confirmed the deployments spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss future operations publicly. The White House referred questions to the Pentagon, which did not immediately respond.

Trump, asked Thursday whether he was putting troops anywhere, said he was not — but added that if he were, he would not announce it to reporters.

What the Troops Could Be Used For

No decision has been made to put U.S. troops inside Iran, two of the officials said. But the Marine Expeditionary Units are versatile formations. They can launch airstrikes from the ships using aircraft on board, or they can deploy Marines on land. Officials said the buildup is designed to expand the capacity for potential future operations, without committing to a specific course of action.

Options under consideration, as reported separately, include securing the Strait of Hormuz — potentially by placing U.S. forces along Iran's shoreline — and sending ground forces to Kharg Island, the hub through which roughly 90 percent of Iran's crude oil exports pass. The Trump administration struck Kharg Island's military infrastructure earlier this month while deliberately sparing its oil facilities, with Trump warning that restraint could be reversed if Iran refused to reopen the strait.

In a Friday interview on Fox News, Trump said he needed "numbers" to reopen the Strait and called on allied nations to send warships. He added that he was getting "very close" to meeting U.S. objectives in the war.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has declined to preview what options the administration was prepared to exercise, telling reporters the administration would not telegraph "what we're willing to do or how far we're willing to go." He has said the president "gets to control the throttle."

The Uranium Question

Alongside the Strait of Hormuz, the fate of Iran's enriched uranium stockpile has emerged as the other central unresolved question of the war. Iran is estimated to hold approximately 970 pounds of near-bomb-grade enriched uranium — enough material to potentially build as many as 10 nuclear weapons, should the regime decide to weaponize it.

Much of that material is believed to be buried under rubble at Iran's Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan facilities, which were struck in U.S. bombings last June. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said this week in Washington that the assumption is the uranium has not been moved. "The impression we have is that it hasn't been moved," Grossi said, adding that the bulk is likely beneath rubble at the Isfahan facility with lesser amounts at Natanz and Fordow.

Nuclear experts say actually securing or destroying the material cannot be done without putting U.S. troops on the ground in Iran — a significant escalation that carries both military and political risk. Richard Goldberg, who served as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the National Security Council during Trump's first term, said the mission is doable if air superiority is established, but added that it would be far more complex than other recent operations. The likely need to remove rubble to reach the uranium canisters would require heavy construction equipment on site.

Sen. Rick Scott, a Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, acknowledged the difficulty plainly. "No one has given me a briefing on how you would do it without boots on the ground," he said. "It doesn't mean you can't. But no one's ever briefed me about it."

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat on the same committee, went further. "Some of the objectives that he continues to espouse simply cannot be achieved without a physical presence there — securing the uranium cannot be done without a physical presence," he said.

The Cost and the Patriot Problem

The scope of the buildup is reflected in the Pentagon's funding request. A U.S. official told Reuters the Pentagon has asked the White House to seek more than $200 billion from Congress to fund the conflict — a figure that reflects the sustained scale of the operation.

One pressure point that has drawn less public attention is the strain the war has placed on Patriot air defense missile stocks in Europe. U.S. defense officials said a sizable number of Patriot interceptor missiles have been moved from Europe toward the Middle East as Washington has diverted resources to the Iran campaign. Two Patriot missile systems were sent from Ramstein Air Base in Germany to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey after three Iranian ballistic missiles were fired over Turkish airspace since the war began. A second Patriot system was positioned in southeastern Turkey's Malatya province, where a NATO radar station is based.

One official described the situation as "pretty concerning," saying Patriot stocks in Europe are "absolutely" dwindling. Part of the problem, officials noted, is that U.S. and allied forces are using Patriots against low-cost Iranian Shahed drones — threats that don't warrant that level of munitions but are consuming them at a rapid pace. Patriot missiles are expensive and not quickly replaceable, and every one used in the Middle East is one that can't respond to Russia if Moscow were to decide to act.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week warned publicly that Kyiv would "definitely" face Patriot shortages as a result. He told the BBC that the U.S. produces 60 to 65 Patriot missiles per month, approximately 700 to 800 per year, and noted that 803 were used on the first day of the war in the Middle East alone. The Foreign Policy Research Institute estimated that the U.S. used around 325 Patriots in the first 96 hours, with the total used by Washington and its Gulf partners reaching approximately 943 in that period.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, asked to address the shortage concerns, said in a statement that "the U.S. military has more than enough munitions, ammo, and weapons stockpiles to achieve the goals of Operation Epic Fury laid out by President Trump — and beyond."

Public Support and Political Risk

A Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed Thursday found that 65 percent of Americans believe Trump will order troops into a large-scale ground war in Iran. Just 7 percent of respondents said they supported that outcome.

Trump ran in 2024 on a platform that explicitly included keeping the U.S. out of new Middle East conflicts. His decision to launch Operation Epic Fury on February 28 has strained that commitment, and the prospect of ground troops entering Iran — even for a limited, time-defined mission — would carry significant political risk ahead of November's midterm elections. The war already polls poorly, and deployments of the scale now being reported would extend the conflict in ways the administration has publicly declined to forecast.

The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, which has been at sea for more than nine months, is heading to Souda Bay in Crete for repairs following a laundry room fire. The Navy is sending the USS George H.W. Bush to replace it in the theater.

Good morning everyone,

We’re barreling towards the Middle East Endgame (hopefully). Let’s dive in!

Sec.Def. Hegseth orders 2,500 marines in support of Operation Fury. The Trump admin is being sued after SNAP recipients complain over restricted purchases on sugar heavy food and drinks. Trump is suspending the Jones Act that prohibits foreign ships traveling within the U.S. in order to bring down oil prices.

• U.S. To Deploy 2,500 Marines To The Middle East

• SNAP Recipients Sue Federal Government Over Restrictions On Sugar

• Trump Suspends Jones Act In Attempt To Lower Oil Prices

U.S. To Deploy 2,500 Marines To The Middle East

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. March 3, 2026. (Kevin Dietsch - Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed off on the deployment March 13 after U.S. Central Command put in the request. Roughly 2,500 Marines are heading to the Middle East, along with the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli, a vessel based in Japan that, along with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit it carries, had been running operations in the western Pacific when the orders came down. 

Getting there will take time. The transit from the Pacific to waters near Iran runs somewhere between 12 and 16 days. Some Marine units were already in the region and already part of operations before this deployment was approved. 

The Force 

Marine Expeditionary Units are configured around roughly 2,200 Marines and sailors. They exist to give commanders reach; the ability to put capable forces ashore quickly, reinforce an embassy under threat, pull civilians out of a deteriorating situation, or respond to whatever comes up in an environment where the situation changes faster than planning allows. They embark on Navy 

ships specifically because the ship is the staging ground, not a destination. 

Reporting varied somewhat on the overall size of what CENTCOM requested. The 2,500 figure attached to the 31st MEU got the most traction, though some accounts, accounting for a full amphibious ready group across multiple ships, put the total closer to 5,000 Marines and sailors. The difference comes down to how broadly you define the task force. 

Pentagon officials stated plainly that the deployment does not mean a ground invasion of Iran is being planned. 

The Situation They're Entering 

Operation Epic Fury, the name assigned to the Iran campaign, already has more than 50,000 American troops committed to it across the broader region. The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is operating in the area. Multiple destroyers are already on station. The USS Tripoli, once it arrives, becomes the second-largest American vessel in those waters. 

This conflict has produced casualties. At least 13 U.S. service members have been killed and around 140 wounded. American and Israeli forces have been hitting Iranian missile facilities and naval assets. Iran has responded by going after commercial shipping and energy infrastructure in and around the Persian Gulf. 

Iran's attacks on Gulf shipping haven't been sporadic. They've been sustained, targeting commercial vessels and the energy infrastructure that regional economies depend on. The pattern has been consistent enough that it's no longer treated as a provocation, but a condition of the

operating environment, one that American naval forces are now working around as a matter of routine. 

The MEU deployment fits into a posture that has been building incrementally since the conflict started. First came the carrier strike group. Then the destroyers. Now an amphibious assault ship with Marines embarked. Each addition has followed Iranian action that either expanded the scope of the conflict or demonstrated a capability the existing force wasn't positioned to answer cleanly. The 31st MEU's redeployment from the Pacific follows the same logic: not a dramatic reversal of strategy, but another layer added to a force that has been growing steadily since Operation Epic Fury began. 

Hormuz 

The Strait of Hormuz is narrow, and a significant share of the world's oil moves through it. Iran has been trying to make that movement as difficult as possible, including by using mines, anti-ship weapons, and naval harassment of commercial vessels. Keeping the strait open is something U.S. officials have stated as a concrete objective of the campaign. Hegseth said the American public should not worry about Iran's ability to threaten global energy flows. 

Marines on amphibious ships give commanders something they don't have with carriers and destroyers alone. The coastline, the islands, the shallow-water geography of the Gulf is where an expeditionary unit becomes relevant in ways that air power and surface combatants aren't always suited to address on their own. 

Two Weeks Out 

The USS Tripoli hasn't arrived yet. When it does, what the 31st MEU actually gets used for will depend on conditions that don't exist yet or haven't been made public. Officials have stuck to deterrence and flexibility as the stated rationale; language that is accurate as far as it goes and doesn't commit to much beyond that. 

What a Marine expeditionary unit represents, though, is a specific kind of optionality. Putting one inside a conflict zone means certain things become possible that weren't before. Whether any of those possibilities become operations is a separate question, and not one anyone in Washington is answering right now. 

The 31st MEU is also the kind of unit that draws attention precisely because of what it implies. Carriers project air power. Destroyers control surface and subsurface space. An amphibious assault ship with a Marine expeditionary unit onboard implies the possibility of boots on something: a coastline, an island, a port. Whether that implication reflects intent or simply reflects prudent preparation for a conflict that has already proven unpredictable is not something U.S. officials have addressed with any specificity.

Good morning everyone,

Not a slow week in D.C.. Let’s jump in!

DHS funding is still at a standstill (nearly a month of shutdown) despite a change in leadership. Trump states that he must be involved in the process for the next Iranian leader. Bondi is now facing a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee to answer for any potential wrongdoings regarding the Epstein investigation and file release.

• Democrats Remain Unchanged On DHS Funding Despite Noem Ouster

• Trump: I Have To Be Involved In Picking Iran’s Next Leader

• A.G. Bondi Faces Federal Subpoena Over Epstein

Democrats Remain Unchanged On DHS Funding Despite Noem Ouster

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (AP)

_{By: Atlas}

The Department of Homeland Security entered its fourth week without full funding on Thursday as congressional Democrats blocked a Republican-backed bill to reopen the agency for the third consecutive time, signaling that the firing of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was not the concession the party needed to end the standoff.

The DHS has been operating in a partial shutdown since February 14, when stopgap funding expired. Agencies deemed essential — including the Transportation Security Administration, FEMA, and the Secret Service — have continued operating with employees working without pay. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has furloughed a portion of its staff, leaving less than half of its workforce on the job at a time when Republicans say threat levels at home are elevated.

The Votes and the Math

The House passed a bill to fund DHS through September 30 on Thursday in a 221 to 209 vote. Only four Democrats crossed party lines to support it: Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, and Don Davis of North Carolina. That number was down from the seven Democratic votes the measure drew when it first passed the House in January — a data point Republicans pointed to as evidence the party's position was hardening rather than softening.

The real obstacle, as it has been throughout the standoff, is the Senate. A procedural vote to advance the bill failed 51 to 45, falling well short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman was the only Democrat to break ranks in the upper chamber.

The bill itself was not without Democratic fingerprints. It contained provisions Democrats had previously demanded, including a body-worn camera mandate for ICE agents, $20 million for camera procurement, and new required training on public engagement and de-escalation. Democratic leaders have since moved the goalposts, however, insisting those measures are insufficient.

The Noem Factor — and Why It Didn't Move the Needle

President Trump removed Kristi Noem as DHS secretary on Thursday, nominating Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin as her replacement. Republicans had anticipated that the move — given Noem had been a flash point for Democratic criticism — might help break the logjam.

It did not.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York rejected the premise that Noem's departure changed the terms of the dispute. "It's not like Kristi Noem was the one who was involved in negotiating anything," Jeffries told reporters. "She was a corrupt lackey. So we were dealing with the White House before, and we're going to continue to deal with the White House at this point."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stated plainly that the change in leadership at DHS did not satisfy Democratic demands. "The rot runs deep," Schumer said. "If the president wants accountability, he must do more than fire one official — he must end the violence and rein in ICE." Schumer added that he intends to block Mullin's confirmation unless policy reforms are in place first.

Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who said funding negotiations are being driven out of the White House rather than at DHS, was similarly unmoved. "I think we're better off without her, but she wasn't running the department," Murphy said of Noem. "Stephen Miller runs that department and will continue to run the department so I don't really think much will change."

The Democratic Demand

The core Democratic position is that any DHS funding bill must include structural changes to how Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection operate in the field. The shutdown began following the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — by federal immigration agents during operations in Minneapolis. Democrats walked away from a deal that had previously been gaining bipartisan support in the aftermath of those deaths.

"I want to see what the guardrails are before I vote on this funding," said Rep. Lou Correa of California. "I don't want us to have masked individuals in my community. I want to see body cameras. I want you to identify yourself when you're making an arrest."

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democratic appropriator, dismissed the Republican push as "political theater" and "a cynical attempt to extract more funding for lawless agencies." She indicated Democrats were prepared to fund every DHS component except ICE and CBP until reforms were enacted.

The Consequences Accumulating

Republicans argue the shutdown's costs are extending well beyond the immigration debate. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota pointed out that the 50,000 TSA agents working without full pay will again pass through airports as Democratic lawmakers head home for a congressional recess — the same airports where, in 2025, TSA agents seized nearly 11,500 dangerous or prohibited items, including 6,669 firearms and 2,190 drug seizures.

The operational strain is real. The TSA has had to work 42.8 percent of the current fiscal year on furlough status. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which Republicans say has cancelled vulnerability checks on certain infrastructure as a result of the shutdown, is running with a diminished workforce.

Separately, $625 million in pre-allocated federal security grants for FIFA World Cup host cities — including MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which is scheduled to host eight matches including the July 19 final — has not been distributed. FEMA was in the final stages of reviewing applications when the shutdown began. Miami's host committee COO told a House Homeland Security Committee hearing that the "drop-dead date" for receiving its expected $70 million grant was within 30 days, warning that delay "could be catastrophic for our planning and coordination."

Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming added a harder-edged dimension to the security argument, noting that a lone-wolf shooting at an Austin, Texas establishment over the weekend killed three Americans. The shooter was reportedly wearing clothing referencing Iran. "Now that America has struck Iran, the number one threat to our homeland is the threat of terrorism," Barrasso said. "The warning lights are flashing red."

Mullin, who said he would meet with Schumer and attempt to earn Democratic support during his Senate confirmation process, indicated flexibility in tone but not on the substance of enforcement. "If they have real concerns, I'm going to listen to it. I'm going to see if it's practical," Mullin said. "But nothing's going to prevent me from doing my job. I'm going to enforce the policies and the laws that Congress has passed."

With the House heading into recess and the Senate unable to advance legislation, the shutdown is guaranteed to extend at least another several weeks — and the two sides remain as far apart as they were when the funding lapsed three weeks ago.

Good morning everyone,

Maybe Cuba becomes our 51st State. Let’s find out why!

President Trump hinted at the possibility of Cuba coming into possession of the United States. Former President Bill Clinton gave testimony to the House Oversight Committee yesterday and emphatically stated that he did nothing wrong in relation to Epstein. AI Company Anthropic has refused to grant the Pentagon unfettered access to the use of their AI, and is now getting blacklisted from all federal agency work going forward.

• Trump Floats Possibility Of “Friendly Takeover Of Cuba”

• Former President Bill Clinton: “I Did Nothing Wrong” Relating To Epstein

• Anthropic Refuses Pentagon Demands For AI Usage, Gets Blacklisted From All Federal Agencies As A Result

Trump Floats Possibility Of “Friendly Takeover Of Cuba”

US President Donald Trump (Yuri Gripas - Abaca - Bloomberg)

_{By: Atlas}

Trump Floats 'Friendly Takeover' of Cuba as Economic Pressure on Havana Intensifies

President Donald Trump raised the possibility of a peaceful American takeover of Cuba on Friday, making his most direct public statement yet about how he envisions the island's future as his administration tightens its grip on the Cuban economy.

Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One for a trip to Texas, Trump said the Cuban government was already in talks with Washington at a senior level — and that those talks could lead somewhere significant.

"The Cuban government is talking with us. They're in a big deal of trouble, as you know. They have no money, they have no anything right now. But they're talking with us, and maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba," Trump said. "We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba."

He did not define what he meant by a "friendly takeover" and the White House did not respond to requests for further clarification. Trump added that Cuba is "a failed nation" and that its government "wants our help," and pointed to the large Cuban exile community in the United States as a constituency that stood to benefit from whatever comes next.

"We have people living here that want to go back to Cuba, and they're very happy with what's going on," Trump said.

The State of Cuba's Economy

The backdrop for Trump's remarks is a Cuban economy under severe strain. The island has been going through its worst economic crisis in decades — one that has accelerated sharply over the past several months. Cuba depended heavily on oil from Venezuela, but those shipments stopped after Trump administration forces removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power on January 3. Mexico ended its oil shipments as well after Trump signed an executive order in late January threatening tariffs against any country supplying oil to Cuba, directly or indirectly.

The result has been crippling. Severe fuel shortages have triggered widespread blackouts, disrupted transportation, and left the country struggling to meet basic needs. The United Nations has warned of the potential for an imminent humanitarian collapse if fuel supplies are not restored. Reports have indicated that Cuba may have as few as six to seven weeks of fuel reserves remaining.

Trump, speaking Friday, summarized the situation in blunt terms: "They have no money, they have no oil, they have no food. And it's really right now a nation in deep trouble."

The U.S. has maintained a trade embargo on Cuba since 1962, the year after a failed CIA-sponsored invasion at the Bay of Pigs. That embargo remains in place.

Rubio's Role and the Talks Underway

Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio — a Cuban American who has been openly hawkish on Havana throughout his career — is handling negotiations with Cuban leaders at a "very high level." Earlier this month, Rubio was reported to have been holding talks with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the 41-year-old grandson of former Cuban President Raúl Castro and grand-nephew of Fidel Castro. Rubio met with Rodríguez Castro again on the sidelines of this week's Caribbean Community conference in St. Kitts and Nevis, according to published reports.

Cuba's government confirmed it has been in communication with U.S. officials but pushed back on the characterization that it was engaged in any high-level talks. Cuba's deputy foreign minister, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, posted on Friday — and then deleted — a statement insisting that the U.S. fuel embargo remained "in full force" and that nothing announced in recent days changed that reality.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has previously said his government was willing to engage with Washington, but only from a position of equality and with full respect for Cuba's sovereignty and self-determination.

Rubio had already made the administration's goals clear. During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in late January, he was asked whether he would commit to not seeking regime change in Cuba. He declined.

"Regime change? Oh, no. I think we would love to see the regime there change," Rubio said. "That doesn't mean we are going to make a change, but we would love to see a change. There's no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime."

He also cited the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which requires a democratic transition in Cuba before any U.S. president can normalize relations. "It was codified in law, and it requires regime change in order for us to lift the embargo," Rubio said.

The Speedboat Incident and Rising Tensions

Trump's comments on Friday came two days after a deadly incident off Cuba's northern coast. A Florida-registered speedboat carrying 10 armed Cuban nationals from the United States entered Cuban waters and opened fire on a Cuban patrol. Cuban border guards responded, killing four of those aboard and wounding six others. One Cuban official was also injured.

Cuba's government described the group as attempting "an infiltration for terrorist purposes." Rubio denied that any U.S. government personnel were involved and said the Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard were investigating what happened.

The incident added a sharp new layer of tension to an already volatile situation. It came in the same week the U.S. Treasury Department announced it would allow the resale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba — but only to benefit Cuba's private sector, with no transactions permitted involving the Cuban government, its military, or intelligence services. Cuba's deputy foreign minister argued the measure changed nothing of substance, given that the broader embargo remained intact.

More than 40 U.S. civil society organizations sent a letter to Congress on Friday calling on legislators to push the administration to reverse what they characterized as an aggressive posture toward Cuba. The letter, signed by groups including the Alliance of Baptists, ActionAid USA, and the Presbyterian Church, argued that policies designed to cut off the island's oil supply amounted to collective punishment and a violation of international humanitarian law.

A panel of United Nations human rights experts reached a similar conclusion earlier this month, characterizing the fuel blockade as "an extreme form of unilateral economic coercion" that exceeded any legitimate security rationale.

Context and What Comes Next

Trump's Friday remarks fit into a broader pattern of statements about expanding American influence in the Western Hemisphere. Since returning to the White House, he has proposed to "own" Gaza, spoken about controlling parts of Greenland where U.S. military bases are located, and touted the capture of Maduro as a success at his State of the Union address earlier this week — where he also announced that more than 80 million barrels of Venezuelan oil had been transferred into U.S. government possession.

Cuba has occupied a central place in that broader vision. Since the January raid in Venezuela, Trump has publicly speculated about whether Havana's government is nearing collapse, and his administration has progressively tightened the screws — including through the January executive order on tariffs, the fuel blockade, and $6 million in humanitarian aid channeled through the Catholic Church rather than the Cuban government.

Pedro Freyre, a prominent figure in the Cuban exile community and a lawyer who works with companies seeking to operate on the island, said Trump's language pointed toward an economic arrangement rather than a political one — potentially similar to the deal struck with Venezuela, where existing regime figures could remain in place under new economic terms.

William LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University, suggested the administration was focused on bringing the Cuban exile community along with any shift in policy, noting that the U.S. chargé d'affaires in Havana had recently traveled to Miami and Madrid — cities with large Cuban diaspora populations — rather than focusing primarily on direct engagement with the Cuban government.

Trump gave no timeline for what he envisions. "We've had a lot of years of dealing with Cuba," he said Friday. "I've been hearing about Cuba since I'm a little boy, but they're in big trouble, and something very well could happen — something positive."