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The U.S. Navy has refused near-daily requests from the shipping industry for military escorts through the Strait of Hormuz since ​the start of the war on Iran, saying the risk of attacks is too high for now, according to sources familiar with the matter. The ‌Navy's assessments spell continued disruption to Middle East oil exports. The U.S. Navy has held regular ⁠briefings with shipping and oil industry counterparts and has said during those briefings it is unable to provide escorts for the time being, three shipping industry sources familiar with ​the matter said. The sources, who declined to be identified...

"Alarming concerns": A congressional memo was one piece of evidence the FBI used for a subpoena to review Maricopa County, Arizona election records in recent days. The issue extends to other states. Before the FBI subpoenaed election records involving Arizona's largest county this month, congressional staffers dispatched to monitor Maricopa County’s vote-counting process in 2024 reported "alarming" concerns that completed mail-in ballots were stored in the same room as blanks and were sorted by a third-party printing company that had no government officials or partisan observers on site, according to a copy of the observer's report obtained by Just the...

https://x.com/jayblackisfunny/status/2031479216647094640Jay Black@jayblackisfunny5hPete Hegseth spent $100,000 on a piano, $2 million on Alaskan King Crab, $7 million on lobster tail, $15 million on steak, $120,000 on ice cream machines, and $12,000 on fruit basket stands… JUST IN SEPTEMBER! (But, tell me again how Somali day care centers are the problem.)@amuse@amuse36m@grok did Pete by a $100K piano? $2M on crabs? $15M on steaks? $120K on ice cream? And $12K on fruit? All in September?Grok@grok35mNo, Secretary Hegseth didn't personally buy these. Per OpenTheBooks analysis of DoD data, these were Pentagon-wide contracts in Sept 2025 (end of fiscal year "use-it-or-lose-it" spending spike to $93B...

President Donald Trump announced Monday that the war in Iran would be over “very soon,” and that oil tankers would be given special U.S. Navy escorts to navigate between the Persian Gulf and global oceans. With gasoline prices and energy inflation already ticking up around the world, the speedy resumption of global petroleum trade has become a matter of urgency for the global economy, according to the world’s largest oil and gas company.The widening conflict in the Middle East has all but immobilized the fossil fuel trade stemming from the region over the past 10 days. Attacks targeting vessels and...

Some of the first polling of the general election race for U.S. Senate in Texas showed that the Democratic candidate has the lead over both Republicans vying for the seat. Texas state Rep. James Talarico won the Democratic Party’s nomination during last week’s primary. However, the Republicans running for the office – incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton – are preparing for a May runoff after neither of them cracked the 50% threshold during the primary. The poll was conducted by Public Policy Polling between March 4 and 5 and asked respondents questions ranging from the...

Wall Street Apes@WallStreetApes·4hI verified this and it’s true“This is a class Group 1 carcinogen. The new study warns there's NO SAFE amount of ham, bacon, or even pepperoni for human consumption”Processed meats including ham, bacon, pepperoni are now definitively linked to cancer (Group 1), and newer 2025–2026 studies reinforce thee is no “safe” level that exists for regular consumption“One flimsy cut is lubricated with over 28 bio stabilizers. It's an ammonia-washed paste glued together with synthetic hydrocolloids. That color is then artificially enforced with a corrosive rust inhibitor called sodium nitrite. Group 1 carcinogen that ranks on the same pedestal...

Donald Trump has suggested his war with Iran could soon come to an end just hours after completing a mysterious phone call with Vladimir Putin. Trump told reporters US forces are 'very far ahead of schedule', claiming Iran's military has effectively been destroyed. 'I think the war is very complete, pretty much,' Trump told CBS News. 'They have no navy, no communications, they've got no Air Force ... Wrapping up is all in my mind.' Trump's remarks came after Putin shared a proposal to quickly end the war during the call, according to the Kremlin. The two leaders also discussed...

At least four U.S. service members have died. ... Respondents who identified as MAGA Republicans are 30 points more likely than non-MAGA Republicans to say they strongly approve of the military action and 34 points more likely to say it will reduce the threat Iran poses to the United States, CNN reported. They were also 50 points more likely to say they have a “great deal of trust” in Trump to make the right decisions regarding Iran... Among Republicans, 77 percent said they approve of the decision to take military action in Iran, while 23 percent disapproved. Fifty-eight percent said...

President Trump said Sunday that increasing prices of oil are “a very small price to pay” for “safety and peace” amid the U.S. conflict with Iran. “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” Trump said in a Sunday evening Truth Social post. “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” he added. The U.S. conflict in Iran caused a recent surge in domestic oil and gas prices, with the U.S. national average for a gallon of regular gasoline...

The story you heard first — that President Donald Trump fired Kristi Noem over a $220 million ad campaign — isn't wrong, exactly. But it's incomplete. The ad spending lit the fuse; an eight-word question that Noem refused to answer in plain English plunged the detonator.Here's what really pushed Trump to fire her.It was previously reported that the breaking point for Trump was when Noem testified on Tuesday that he had personally approved $220 million in Homeland Security advertising, including a cinematic spot of her riding a horse in front of Mount Rushmore with a voiceover that said, "From President...

President Donald Trump on Thursday brushed off Texas Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton’s insistence that he will stay in the Republican U.S. Senate race even if Trump endorses his rival, incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. After Paxton said he won’t drop out of the May 26 runoff, the president reportedly suggested Paxton’s defiance could backfire by nudging him to support Cornyn.

The White House said on Wednesday that Spain has agreed to cooperate with the US military against Iran after President Donald Trump threatened to cut off trade, but Spain denied making such a deal. Trump on Tuesday had vowed to sever trade with Madrid over its stance against the US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Asked about the issue on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she had been told that Spain had relented. For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app. “I think they heard the president’s message yesterday loud and clear....

Thousands of Kurdish fighters have a launched a ground invasion in Iran, according to a US official. The Kurdish militias, based across the border in Iraq, began the offensive in northwestern Iran on Wednesday. President Donald Trump on Sunday night spoke with the heads of Kurdish militant groups in Iraq to discuss the situation in Iran. The CIA was exploring plans to arm the Kurdish forces with the aim of sparking a popular uprising, CNN reported Tuesday. The Kurdish groups are widely seen as the most well-organized faction of the fragmented Iranian opposition and are believed to have thousands of...

The Justice Department, after calls by President Trump to investigate former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., scrutinized whether Mr. Biden and his aides broke the law in using the autopen to sign presidential documents, but was ultimately unable to move forward with making a case, according to three people briefed on the matter.

James Talarico barely mentioned Donald Trump when he finally got to give his victory speech on Wednesday night as Democrats’ nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas. But the 36-year-old state lawmaker is now a front man for the left’s opposition to Trump, not just in his own state but around the country. With his victory over U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, the state lawmaker from Austin will test whether a smiling message of unity and change is enough to answer voters’ frustrations amid discord at home and now a war abroad. “We’re done being divided. We’re done being played,” Talarico said,...

The Justice Department shelved an investigation into former President Joe Biden's use of an autopen, a person briefed on the matter told NBC News on Wednesday. Justice Department pardon attorney Ed Martin, the former “weaponization” czar, opened the probe while he was interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. It wound down recently under Jeanine Pirro, the current U.S. attorney, who is a longtime Trump ally and former Fox News host. The autopen case was never presented to a grand jury, unlike the case that Pirro's office tried to bring forward last month against six members of Congress who...

Senate Majority Leader John Thune urged President Donald Trump on Wednesday to deliver a swift endorsement of Texas Sen. John Cornyn to potentially forestall what is widely expected to be an expensive and nasty primary runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Thune told reporters he hasn’t yet spoken to Trump since the election returns from Tuesday’s primary came in but indicated he intends to personally redouble his efforts, saying Wednesday that “hopefully” the president will give Cornyn his influential nod. “[If] Trump endorses early, it saves everybody a lot of money, and … 10 weeks of a spirited campaign...

ILULISSAT, Greenland (AP) — Fisherman Helgi Áargil no longer knows what to expect on Greenland ‘s fjords, where he spends up to five days at a time on his boat with his dog, Molly, and the ever-changing northern lights in the sky as company. Last year, his boat got stuck in ice that broke off the nearby glacier. This year, it’s been very wet instead. His income is just as unpredictable. An outing could bring him around 100,000 Danish kroner (about $15,700), or nothing at all. The Arctic’s rapidly changing climate is bringing more questions for Greenland, the semiautonomous territory...

The modern international order rests on a foundational promise: states must resolve disputes peacefully, and force may be used only as a last resort and only within the bounds of law. The US helped build this system after World War II, embedding these principles in the UN Charter and in its own Constitution. Yet the US military operations in Venezuela in January 2026 and in Iran on February 28, 2026 represent a sharp break from these commitments. Both actions were undertaken without United Nations authorization and without congressional approval, raising profound questions about legality, constitutional governance, and the erosion of...

The US launched preemptive strikes against Iran after learning Israel was about to attack — and American troops in the region faced an imminent threat of retaliation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday. Rubio made the revelation on Capitol Hill, where he briefed a small group of congressional leaders on the joint US-Israel offensive.'There absolutely was an imminent threat,' Rubio stated. 'And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit there and absorb a...