Summary of an excellent talk Jon gave at a recent conference on AI and nuclear weapons at the Pope's summer residence at Castel Gandalfo.

Sen. Thune has made it clear he supports Trump. You cannot support the troops AND Trump’s illegal war in Iran. He is playing politics with the lives of patriotic men and women.

Trump’s Canada tariff leaves Maine Republicans scrambling for distance

Scenes from a personalist regime: We are punishing innocent Americans who live in states that did not vote for Trump

'The Trump regime's omni-directional malevolence (& incompetence) have rendered an indeterminately wide swath of the world unsafe for Americans'

Republicans want you to think they’re banning insider trading. They’re not.  Their bill leaves loopholes for politicians and the President while slipping in SAVE Act-style voter suppression.  If they were serious, they’d bring a clean stock trading ban to the floor.

Thank God Congress is looking out for what really matters. 🙏

I came for the illegal trans Somalis funding, but I’m really impressed that the shrimp treadmills still occupy a space in the conservative mythos after all these years

4/ bsky.app/profile/gild...

The C.D.C. “announced on Tuesday that it had confirmed more than 2,500 additional cases of cyclospora infections in the United States, making 2026 the worst year for the parasitic infection on record… The C.D.C. is investigating more than 7,400 additional cases that are not yet confirmed.”

Can't get numb to this: The United States is stuck in a war it started, cannot end, and may further escalate to no avail, having dismantled its diplomatic apparatus, depleted its military stockpile, and destroyed its credibility. A historic strategic mistake harming millions in many different ways.

He was impeached for being corrupt. His own office of lawyers resigned en masse because they thought he was a criminal. He was under federal indictment until Trump dropped the case. Did he think he could run for Senate and just…. Not have to talk about that stuff?

HEGSETH: President Trump deserves the kind of praise he should get for undertaking this effort REED: Excuse me. So he should be praised for starting a war without authority and creating a situation in which the world economy is suffering tremendously?

When I worked in WaPo Opinions in 2017-2018, senior editors specifically told junior editors not to factcheck Marc Thiessen and other MAGA columnists, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to publish anything by them at all, and “we need them for intellectual diversity.”

You might get sick of hearing this but if he keeps doing it I'm gonna keep saying it: this is an unconstitutional impoundment, violating both Congress' Article I spending authority and the 1974 Impoundment Control act, and immediately impeachable.

Yes, that is one of the big ironies of the whole birthright citizenship thing; the SAVE America Act and the SAVE Act before it, which Trump has also been supporting for years, explicitly says that a birth certificate is proof of citizenship when it comes to voter registration purposes.

The SAVE America Act mandates that all voters must bring to the polls specifically a photo ID which has proof of citizenship “on the front of the document.” So REAL IDs don’t count. If the ID does not precisely conform to that standard, you must also bring separate proof of citizenship.

Trump's stewardship of US foreign and trade policy has produced a world in which just about everybody, including major US allies, is persuaded that China is a preferable trading partner and ally to the United States, says the polling. Ed Luce explains what that means for America over the long term.

Yep. Let's keep hoping he declares victory and walks away.

Kuwait says Iran again attacked its power and desalination plants causing damage to the crucial facilities — the fourth consecutive ‌day of such strikes that caused fires at a number of critical sites. aje.news/gcmk7h?update=4793003

The only fresh data here — NYT polling on whether voters view the parties as too left/right — shows voters in battleground Senate states, which lean R+6 on average, say Dems are more left at 53%, and he hides in a footnote that 47% say Reps are too right. Hey that’s a 6-point gap! Coincidence? (no)

This is the first main part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act kicking in. The second part, restricting Medicaid, is timed to happen after the midterms.

"Josh Allen single-handedly keeps the Bills from becoming the Falcons." The Too Deep Zone is back, baby. too-deep-zone.ghost.io/the-skeptics...

N.b. this is not what Clausewitz said. Or meant. Or thought at all. I give up.

Just remember *most* of this is about the SPR. Commercial inventories are low versus recent history but not longer-term. Markets are *much* more sensitive to commercial inventories than SPR. BTW, SPR releases are about one-fifth (maybe less) impt to total demand than Chinese crude import declines.

Before "the Iranian attack on Friday that killed two U.S. soldiers and left one service member missing in Jordan, Iran carried out three other strikes ... [that] injured dozens of U.S. service members ... But the Pentagon did not disclose the earlier strikes, nor the casualties and damage."

“.. DeChambeau warned officials at The Open that he was ready to call President Trump ..” @telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk/golf/2026/07...

Social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate are expected in federal court this week, following an extradition request from the United Kingdom on charges of sexual offenses, including rape and sex trafficking. https://cnn.it/4wVHETO

"Mr. Lindell, who is registered in Texas, said he was not concerned that he was not yet registered in his home state..." www.nytimes.com/2026/07/18/u...

Privatizing military housing wasn’t the worst strategic mistake the military made during the GWOT era, but it is certainly one of them.

Trump says noncitizen voting is a widespread Democratic plot to influence elections. A Reuters data analysis reveals a far different picture: a small number of often inadvertent violations. Subscribe to The Daily Docket: reut.rs/3TttCKu

Andy Burnham will become the first UK prime minister who identifies as a Catholic, a landmark moment in the country’s religious and political history. www.cnn.com/2026/07/20/w...

Crude Oil has 43 days of supply left in the U.S. — the lowest inventory in 45 years @barchart.com ⛽️

Puerto Rico is finally getting natural gas from the U.S. mainland but this welcome development shouldn't have to depend on imperfect policy workarounds [Colin Grabow, @cato.org]

"Under the change, responsibility for investigating cases involving federal immigration officers would likely fall to Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of ICE, effectively leaving the agency to investigate itself, according to guidance circulated among F.B.I. and ICE agents."

ICYMI: An under-the-radar moment in Blanche’s confirmation hearing could have seismic ramifications for abortion access In response to a Q from Ted Cruz, Blanche signaled his openness to enforcing a 19th-c law that could ban abortion nationwide Abortion providers tell me they’re bracing for impact

Years of campaign-finance reforms curbed the power that the Republican and Democratic Parties have in elections, which has undermined the quality of candidates. A Supreme Court ruling on party spending offers new hope, @davidfrum.bsky.social argues.

Political science is moderately popular, maybe 8%, and the report goes out of its way to suggest political science courses have no place at a military school (inside baseball but many reports like this come from military history inclined retirees big mad the schools give jobs to pol-sci)

The report contends the academies are educating new officers to be 'philosophers and bureaucrats' but by the math the biggest change would be a radical reduction in the number of engineering and science grads in favor of military history and "leadership".

Another exclusive on election interference/Trumpian denier chaos efforts here in GA. Today at @americandoom.bsky.social, random complaints on Facebook are being used to launch official investigations by the MAGA-dominated State Election Board. www.american-doom.com/p/how-a-smal...

A lot of attention has gone to Kennedy making cyclosporiasis optional for FoodNet reporting. But cuts to state and local health departments -- and the loss of CDC expertise -- are a much bigger deal. My latest: www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Trump’s rhetoric is more dangerous than voting machine flaws, experts say

My take on why Fox is burying Trump’s election denial speech (no mentions in primetime last night either!) is in @brettlogiurato.bsky.social ‘s latest for @status.news www.status.news/p/fox-news-d...

(Gift Link) Great reporting by the NYTimes with receipts on 200+ cases DOJ has dropped/lost after initially alleging protestors forcibly impeded officers - using the law as a tool of suppression/intimidation. At some level, we knew this. The scope/detail makes the case for reform.

Trump's DOJ brings hundreds of cases against protesters accusing them of "assaulting ICE officers," and these cases turn out, almost uniformly, to be predicated on easily exposed lies. The fact that protesters and bystanders regularly record everything that happens on their smartphones

The rise of products such as Moonshot’s Kimi K3 raises concern about the tech boom’s staying power. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/what...

Far from absolving the Trump Admin, this is precisely the kind of thing they needed to anticipate - and didn't.

Iran’s top diplomat who negotiated a ceasefire with the Trump administration and lifted some sanctions on the Islamic Republic, was forced to flee the funeral after a mob pelted him with rocks amid death chants accusing him of being a “traitorous sellout.” www.cnn.com/2026/07/18/m...

States that don't comply with new Trump administration election security edicts and agree to use a federal database for identifying noncitizen voters will not receive federal reimbursement for elections, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced. www.usatoday.com/story/news/p... via @usatoday.com

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