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THE BIG PICTURE
The Iran ceasefire is on the edge of collapse as Trump publicly brags about seizing an Iranian ship while his own White House convenes emergency crisis talks about a midterm wipeout — and his approval rating hits a new low. Meanwhile, his Cabinet is hemorrhaging women: Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is out over a bodyguard sex scandal, making her the third female Cabinet member forced out in seven weeks.
Also: Kash Patel is suing The Atlantic for $250 million over a story alleging he drinks too much — and managed to contradict himself in the process.
And in the one piece of news that might actually make you smile today: The Onion is taking over Infowars.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
1. The Iran Ceasefire Is Unraveling in Real Time
The 10-day ceasefire is set to expire, and Trump is personally torching the peace process. After publicly bragging about seizing an Iranian cargo ship, Iran refused to join the next round of talks (The New Republic), while Trump simultaneously threatened to "knock out" Iranian infrastructure (Huffington Post News) and told a reporter he's willing to meet with Iran's leaders if a deal is reached (Huffington Post News). The Strait of Hormuz standoff is sending oil prices up more than 5% (AP Politics), and at least 3,375 people have been killed in Iran since the war began (AP Politics).
The strategic incoherence is drawing notice even from Trump's own former officials. John Bolton — not exactly a peace activist — told HuffPost that Trump's behavior is giving Iran "enormous leverage" because the Iranians can "smell panic" coming from the White House (Huffington Post News). And in a genuinely damning twist, analysts note that the deal Trump is now moving toward — sanctions relief for a moratorium on nuclear enrichment — is functionally identical to the Obama-era nuclear agreement Trump spent years denouncing (Huffington Post News).
Senator Elizabeth Warren has formally requested an insider-trading investigation of Pete Hegseth, asking whether the defense secretary profited from advance knowledge of the war's timing (The New Republic). Oh, and Trump still wants to give himself the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration, traditionally awarded to combat veterans (The Daily Beast).
2. The White House Is in Full Panic Mode Over the Midterms
That strategic chaos isn't happening in a vacuum — it's feeding directly into the White House's growing panic about what comes next domestically. Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has summoned Republican consultants from across the country for emergency crisis talks as the party stares down what insiders are calling a potential midterm wipeout (The Daily Beast). The proximate trigger: Trump's approval rating on the economy has hit what CNN's Harry Enten is calling its "worst position ever" — record lows on the No. 1 issue facing Americans, worse than any comparable point in a modern presidency (The Daily Beast).
Republicans in Congress are privately "freaking out" about Trump going off-script, with top party officials exasperated that he keeps undercutting whatever they claim as wins (The Daily Beast). The House GOP caucus has also descended into open civil war, with members now targeting each other for expulsion (The New Republic). On the Democratic side, January 6 committee member Elaine Luria — who lost her Virginia seat for standing up to Trump — has secured key endorsements in a comeback race and says "the wind is on our back" (The Guardian US).
3. The Cabinet Is Losing Women at a Remarkable Rate
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned Monday over a bodyguard sex scandal, making her the third female Cabinet member forced out in the last seven weeks (The Daily Beast). AP confirmed she faces multiple allegations of abusing her position, including the alleged affair with a subordinate and drinking on the job (AP Politics). She was, notably, one of the few Cabinet picks who had actual credibility with organized labor — her departure leaves workers with one less nominal ally in an administration systematically dismantling worker protections.
4. Kash Patel Is Suing The Atlantic and Losing the Argument in Court
The institutional erosion isn't limited to the Cabinet. FBI Director Kash Patel filed a $250 million lawsuit against The Atlantic over its story reporting allegations of his excessive drinking and unexplained absences (AP Politics). The magazine is standing behind its reporting. The problem for Patel: he appears to be contradicting himself in his own legal filings (The Daily Beast). Sources close to the situation told The New Republic that Patel is "rightly paranoid" he could lose his job at any moment — which raises the obvious question of whether this lawsuit is about his reputation or about staying employed (The New Republic). Using the courts to punish reporters covering a sitting FBI director is not a press freedom footnote — it is the story.
5. The Tariff Refund Portal Opens — a Quiet Admission of Defeat
Meanwhile, the administration's signature economic policy is quietly coming apart. The Trump administration quietly launched an online portal Monday for businesses to begin claiming refunds on more than $166 billion in tariffs — months after the Supreme Court ruled Trump had no legal authority to impose them (The Guardian US). This is a significant development that is getting less attention than it deserves: the administration is now operationally acknowledging that its signature economic policy was unconstitutional. The refund system's rollout coincides with Trump publicly contradicting his own Energy Secretary over when gas prices might come down (The Daily Beast) — a signal that economic messaging has completely broken down inside the White House.
6. The Onion Is Taking Over Infowars — and It's as Good as It Sounds
In a deal that is both legally complicated and cosmically satisfying, The Onion has reached an agreement to take control of “Infowars” — pending approval from a Texas judge (NPR). If it goes through, Alex Jones loses his platform, and The Onion turns it into a parody of everything it once was: a machine for mocking conspiracy culture and advocating for gun control.
The deal was brokered through a Texas state receiver managing Free Speech Systems (Infowars' parent company, which is not itself in bankruptcy). The Onion will pay $81,000 a month to license the Infowars domain and brand while Jones's appeal plays out and a full sale can be completed. The families of Sandy Hook victims — who won a nearly $1.3 billion judgment against Jones for spreading lies about their children's deaths — are among the most eager to see it happen. Their attorney called it the transformation of "the machinery of lies that Jones built" into "a force for social good."
Jones, for his part, is threatening lawsuits and — in what may be the most on-brand response imaginable — urging his followers to immediately buy limited-edition Infowars merch before it's gone forever.
The Onion has already published a satirical statement from the fictional CEO of its parent company, Global Tetrahedron, welcoming followers to a future of "free radical misinformation" and "sentences so poorly thought out they are unhealthy even to view." He signs off: "Nothing can stop us now that we're in charge of a website."
THIS WEEK’S QUESTION
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Late last year, a Klimt sold for the highest price ever paid for modern art at auction.
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Now, the S&P, teetering on all time highs, just posted its worst quarter since 2022, oil was up 94% (briefly), and Moody's puts recession odds at 48.6%.
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THINGS TO WATCH
Trump's self-contradiction loop is accelerating. In the last 24 hours alone, he contradicted his Energy Secretary on gas prices, contradicted his Iran war posture multiple times in a single morning, and reportedly raged at poll numbers he insisted were "rigged." The question is no longer whether the White House is dysfunctional — it is whether the dysfunction itself becomes the policy. Watch for whether congressional Republicans start breaking publicly — that's the tell that the dysfunction has crossed a threshold they can no longer manage.
The denaturalization apparatus is being quietly assembled. The Trump administration has secretly created a "denaturalization" team inside USCIS (The New Republic), while ICE arrested the wife of an active-duty Army sergeant at an immigration appointment (The Guardian US). These are not isolated incidents — they are infrastructure being built for something larger. The next indicator is whether the Army sergeant case produces any political pushback from within the military — if it doesn't, the administration will know it can go further.
The corruption-foreign policy nexus is becoming undeniable. The UAE is seeking a U.S. financial backstop as the Iran war continues (Huffington Post News) — while simultaneously investing in Trump family ventures, and the administration appears open to providing that bailout (The New Republic). The Hegseth insider trading inquiry and the $63 million in missing Trump library "settlement" funds (The New Republic) fit the same pattern: this administration is monetizing war. The thing to watch is whether any Republican senator on the Armed Services or Foreign Relations committees asks about the UAE investment publicly. If no one does, that tells you everything about where oversight stands.
Book bans have hit record levels and are becoming more organized. The ALA's new report shows that efforts to remove titles are increasingly coordinated and politically driven (AP Politics) — a creeping censorship infrastructure that rarely gets the front-page treatment it deserves. Watch your own school board calendar. The coordination the ALA identified means local votes are no longer just local.
👀 KEPT OUT OF YOUR FEED
What the algorithm buried:
Jon Stewart thinks Trump may have done his own research before signing that psychedelics order.
Jimmy Kimmel has one question about whether MAGA would finally wake up if Trump gives himself the Medal of Honor.
John Oliver just laid out exactly why Trump's "air of invincibility" is gone — and the possum analogy alone is worth the click.
Seth Meyers just called bulls**t on Trump's Iran lie — and the "Vegas" detail is chef's kiss.
Nancy Sinatra had just four words for Trump after he hijacked her father's legacy on Truth Social.
73% of Americans are worried about money — and they're blaming Trump's America for killing the American dream.
California just caught Amazon red-handed colluding with other companies to jack up your prices — and there's a smiley face in the emails.
A man with a prior weapons conviction killed eight children in Louisiana — and the law let him keep his guns.
Trump accidentally let slip what he actually thinks of his own voters — and it's not pretty.
Lori Chavez-DeRemer is out — but not before taxpayers footed the bill for a strip club trip on her way out the door.
Trump insiders are privately sounding the alarm about the 79-year-old's erratic Iran comments — and it's reportedly blowing up his own negotiations.
NOTICE POLLING
Yesterday we asked, why do you think the mas shooting in Louisiana barely made headlines?
4% said: “Iran and Trump chaos drowned it out”
12% said: “The media has normalized gun violence”
84% said: "Both, it’s a systemic failure"
“Trump dominates the news, because he encourages non stop unrest, and the media loves him for it. We have had so many murders in this country that it is no longer news. Sadly we have lost our moral compass. When you elect a president who is a criminal the consequences are very severe.”
- mskish44
“Both, plus the gvt will do nothing to prevent these kind of things from happening. I'm saddened to think that it might take the people of Congress having their children shot up for them to decide to enact some form of gun control. Shootings under Clinton went way down because congress under Bush had let his policy expire. Stupid, stupid people.”
- twoasps“Not only trump is imploding but but he is taking many things with him including unbiased free press. He wants to dominate the news to manipulate and live rent free in our minds. Maybe he is”
- callajr.jc
“Most don’t care about people of color. ”
- bonam6
“Until we the People regain control of our democracy and grasp that modern weaponry that citizens are entitled to own as something more deadly than muskets, no sustaining, significant change in America's attitude about guns will change. Simply put, guns are of greater value than our children.”
- xochitlramirez
“There is finite space for news. When fearless leader captures the vast majority it leaves little space for the rest.”
- jmacs53
“People are already traumatized by this administration and they cannot properly grieve the tragedy because they are on overload every day. The trauma, chaos, and fear this administration delivers every day to the average person is debilitating.We need an administration change.”
- v38235829
Until next time,
