The US negotiating position is so weak we've got the Energy secretary waving away Iranian attacks as "communication problems." Sad.

WTF! The two-week ceasefire plan includes allowing both Iran and Oman to charge fees on ships transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, a regional official said.-AP

Having Iran tax the strait of Hormuz would be an enormous strategic defeat for the USA and extra perilous for Iran’s neighbors. But it is also a staggering blow to Israel.

Chris Murphy: "He's not telling the truth. But if you accept even part of the Iranian statement, Donald Trump has agreed to give Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz. That is extraordinary and cataclysmic for the world."

JD Vance tries to call Trump live on stage at a rally for Viktor Orban in Hungary and he gets sent to voicemail twice.

I suspect that Trump's implied nuclear threat also dramatically increases the chances that another nuclear power, now on alert, launches an attack.

Grim possibility that Artemis II crew has view of Trump nuking Iran.

"The Possibility that Iraq Will Finish the Job at Khark Island," CIA memo for the Director of Central Intelligence, Aug 26, 1985. www.cia.gov/readingroom/...

The matter-of-fact way she asks what investors should do if Trump destroys Iran. Absolutely wild. "Let's talk about tonight, this deadline that President Trump has set 8 p.m., has threatened to destroy a civilization. How does an investor process that? Is it a bigger upside risk or downside risk?"

The late, great Bill Burr wrote an excellent piece about the nuclear "Football" just last year for Arms Control Today. nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/defaul...

every once in a while I find something so immediately relevant to my dissertation (around the politics of government data and data quality) that I metaphorically sprint to bookmark it that discovery has been via bluesky a non-zero number of times

Since the 1950s, US military personnel traveling with the President have carried a special case best known as the nuclear “Football,” which includes information on emergency procedures, nuclear war plans, and communications arrangements with DOD and key allies. nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-boo...

I guess we're just waiting around to see if this demented psychopath kills everyone: defector.com/i-guess-were...

I'm not sure how you can be against removing this man from office right now. What will it take? A nuke being dropped? It's too late then. The purpose of impeachment and the 25th Amendment is to prevent that type of thing from happening, not just to react to it.

This is a far simpler answer than people would like to believe. Trump issues the order via the National Military Command Center to the commander of Strategic Command, and then STRATCOM carries it out directly. There is no second vote, no veto, no check-and-balance.

Renowned Iranian composer, Ali Ghamsari and tar virtuoso, announced he will stay at the Damavand Combined Cycle Power Plant. His plan: Create music there as a symbolic effort to shield Iran's infrastructure from attack. @iranscreenshot

"A whole civilization will die tonight" is probably the most terrifying thing that a president has ever said.

1/4🧵 A brief summary of what the #Trump regime has achieved in its war with #Iran after 5 weeks: a) The Strait of Hormuz is closed. It was open before the war began. b) #China and #Russia observe that the #US has not adapted to drone warfare. ⤵️

I can think of 3-4 malls off the top of my head, in several states, that were dying off but seem to have found life with Latin, Asian, African immigrant shops and families.

Today, the Pentagon coms team forgot to censor the photographers at the White House... Pete Hegseth is going to be so pissed

That's... not a "No."

I don't think there is as much ambiguity about whether deliberate, announced strikes on power plants constitute war crimes as the Times as suggesting here.

In which the president gives the most cursed word jazz performance of all time.

Why not let an actual expert in drug policy and/or harm reduction write this rather than someone who evidently has no background or training in such things? www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/o...

My favorite Easter song. youtu.be/NKk3AV0_9rc?...

With the desert air strip used in the rescue being this close to Isfahan, seems likely JSOC repurposed the one they’d been planning on using for the highly enriched uranium raid if ordered. Safe to say these events drastically decrease the odds of the JSOC HEU mission taking place.

Holy shit this is really real. I had to check twice. The old Herald Trib too.

Thinking of moving to suburban Maryland just so I can call my bluegrass band the Cheverly Hillbillies.

Rachel Santarsiero on the chronology of disappearing data under the Trump administration that she has compiled for the National Security Archive www.youtube.com/shorts/su2Lj...

The National Security Archive is a nonprofit housed at GWU, not a govt agency. They FOIA for the public good, capturing an enormous amount of U.S. history. Their Chronology itemizes >100 disappearances, from shutting the Spanish WH website to purging Holocaust remembrances from DOD website. 😢

"The documents describe an extraordinary secret mission: In the autumn of 1994, the team of 31 Americans slipped quietly into a remote area of Kazakhstan to secure the 1,320 pounds of weapons-grade uranium and airlift it safely out of the country to the [US]." nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEB...

I'd much much much rather Trump spend his time on boondoggles like this or rehabbing the Kennedy Center or the East Wing rather than involve himself in the process of national security decision-making.

Perhaps the press corps should ask the president or one of his spokespeople whether he still feels such disdain for US soldiers who are captured by enemy forces. www.npr.org/sections/the...

Feels like an awkward detail here that the US has also not ratified the Law of the Sea. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/w...

It doesn't matter what the Founders intended for Guam, which they would've considered Spanish (if they'd heard of it). The Founders made the Constitution amendable in 1789, the US ratified 14A in 1868, Guam became a US territory in 1898, and the Guam Organic Act of 1950 made people there citizens.

“American officials should stop snorting cocaine between meetings.”

Someday we will look back and wonder why we ever wanted to create these pointless triptych-style image/videos. (From the New York Times front page today)

All but three (!) of the 1,651 refugees admitted into the United States in the three most recent months we have data are white South Africans. For comparison, in 2024, the U.S. admitted 100,060 refugees. It's an explicit white supremacist project. www.rpc.state.gov/documents/Re...

“To leave no loopholes Hitler exacted from all officers and men of the armed forces an oath of allegiance—not to Germany, not to the constitution, which he had violated by not calling for the election of Hindenburg’s successor, but to himself.” - Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 374.

gothic. epic.

Archive fellow Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi and Luca Trenta on"Khamenei's Killing and the Perilous Death of the Assassination Ban" www.justsecurity.org/135015/khame...

Unreasonably mad at whoever made it so none of my credit cards work at parking garages or DC Metro stations anymore.

right now the astronauts are calling houston because the computer on the spaceship is running two instances of microsoft outlook and they can't figure out why. nasa is about to remote into the computer

The @nsarchive.bsky.social has published a new document collection, "CIA Covert Operations: The Truman Years, 1946-1953," now available from ProQuest as part of the Digital National Security Archive.

Think of how bored he must be www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/u...

It is genuinely abhorrent that a major festival would choose to book a headliner who released "Heil Hitler" *less than a year ago*. The muted outcry to it is truly chilling, too. We are deep into an antisemitism crisis that too many people want to ignore or deny.

"Since taking office, Mr. Trump has dismissed or demoted more than 20 inspectors general, sharply undermining the ability of the offices to act as a check on misconduct." www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/u...

Sometimes it feels like the best use for AI will be to detect the use of AI.