Mario Nawfal

🇺🇸 The Pentagon is screening troops by waist size before they can sit in the audience for Hegseth's big speech Commanders received emails today asking for nominees for the September 30 State of the Force address who pass the waist-to-height ratio, pass fitness tests, and show impeccable grooming with no exceptions. Winners also get to work out with the secretary. The audience this time will be junior officers and enlisted troops rather than the generals he summoned to Quantico last year for the no-more-beardos speech. A hand-picked room of the fittest people in uniform will make for good television, which is presumably the point after the 60 Minutes production. What it will not include is anyone who fired 30 Patriots over Jordan last week, sat on the Lincoln for 250 days without a port, or got moved into the overseas operations column. The CBO says half the interceptor inventory is gone and the Pentagon didn't answer its questions. The IG says the industrial base can't refill it. Thomas Massie just filed impeachment articles Tuesday. And here we have a casting call for a speech about warfighting, six months into a war with no real end in sight. Source: The Wall Street Journal / Writer: Daniel

🇮🇹🇪🇸 Italy brought back border checks with Spain in July, and it’s not ready to remove them yet... Rome has extended the checks for another 15 days. And the reason is getting more serious. Italy says there are still security risks, including fears that terrorists could try to enter the country. The checks first started on July 31 after a large number of migrants crossed from Morocco into Spain’s Ceuta enclave. 1.5 months after the initial surge, checks remain in place because Italy is worried about who slipped through... Source: Reuters / Writer: Daniyal

🇺🇸 Rates didn’t hike when inflation was worse. Now prices are easing... and suddenly a rate hike is on the table? CEA Chair Christopher Phelan called it out: “Inflation is coming down. The Fed didn’t choose to raise rates three months ago when inflation was higher. It doesn’t make sense to raise rates now.” Writer: Val t.co/UmmwIaZPb2

🇺🇸 U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker says Trump has a point about allies not always being there when America needed them but says the full story matters. Whitaker noted that NATO allies did fight alongside the U.S. during the Global War on Terror, including in Afghanistan and Iraq. “I think ultimately we need allies. The United States is stronger with allies than without allies.” A little more nuance than you usually hear in the NATO debate. Writer: Lynn t.co/IbhlnnF48u

🇺🇸 U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker says Europe spent decades letting its defenses hollow out while Americans picked up the tab. “The plumbers from my home state of Iowa were paying for European security, and that wasn’t fair.” Whitaker says Europe and Canada are finally stepping up in what some are calling “NATO 3.0” but still not nearly fast enough. The free ride, in Washington’s view, has officially run out. Writer: Lynn t.co/xCMuZVIXyS

🇷🇺🇺🇦 Zelensky told CBS News that Russia tried to hit his presidential plane with drones on back to back trips through Moldova. "𝘐𝘯 𝘔𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘰𝘷𝘢, 𝘮𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘫𝘦𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘔𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘰𝘷𝘢. 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦, 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘶, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦." This lines up with what already came out publicly. Zelensky's plane was preparing to leave Chisinau for Oslo on September 8 when Moldova detected a drone in its airspace and shut it down entirely, sending NATO jets scrambling over neighboring Romania. Norway's prime minister later revealed the aircraft came close to being hit during that takeoff. Moldova's own ambassador to the U.S. said flat out he does not believe a jet powered drone just wanders into the country's airspace by coincidence while the Ukrainian president's plane happens to be sitting on the tarmac. The Kremlin has denied any of it was real, with Peskov calling the whole threat "ephemeral." Source CBS News / Writer: Oliver t.co/IWKs8yKM5R

🇮🇶🇩🇪 Iraqi PM al-Zaidi is making a pretty bold pitch to German businesses. He says German companies are welcome in Iraq “even more” than Iraqi companies themselves. German companies probably couldn’t ask for a clearer invitation than that. Writer: Daniyal t.co/3AkqVYmJbk

🇺🇸🇮🇷 The Iran war’s real economic shock is only arriving now For months, the world had a cushion. Oil already at sea kept arriving. Countries drew down strategic reserves. Saudi Arabia still had its east-west pipeline feeding the Red Sea. Larry Johnson says those buffers are now disappearing. The oil that left before and during the brief lull has largely reached its destination. Strategic reserves have been drawn down. And the Saudi east-west pipeline, one of the most important routes bypassing Hormuz, is now offline after being attacked. That is why the fuel crisis can get worse even months after the initial fighting. Chevron CEO Mike Wirth is quoted in the discussion warning that many of the buffers that initially protected markets have now been exhausted. Diesel has meanwhile climbed above $6 a gallon, while Saudi Arabia is warning customers that shipments will be cut. And the next buffer is being pushed hard. U.S. refineries have reportedly operated above 95% utilization for 11 consecutive weeks, delaying maintenance to compensate for the global shortage, increasing the risk of breakdowns and unplanned outages. Johnson’s point is simple: the energy crisis did not disappear. It was simply traveling through the system. Now it is arriving. @NewsOnof

🇺🇸 The U.S. just admitted it ALREADY HAS WEAPONS IN ORBIT Air Force Secretary Troy Meink has publicly confirmed that the Space Force possesses “on-orbit space control weapons” capable of defending U.S. forces against hostile action. What exactly is up there? The Pentagon isn’t saying. Meink refused to reveal whether the systems are kinetic or non-kinetic, or even whether they have been tested. Possible capabilities range from jamming and lasers to systems capable of physically attacking other satellites, but experts stress that the disclosure is too vague to know which capabilities have actually been deployed. The space arms race was already happening. Washington just acknowledged that some of its pieces are already on the board. Source: Fox News / Writer: Oliver

🇺🇸 Terrifying close call in Fort Worth: Surveillance video captures the moment a speeding Chevy Camaro loses control and crashes straight through a family’s wooden backyard fence, narrowly missing three young children playing by the pool. A 2-year-old girl and her 5-year-old twin brothers were just feet away as the car smashed through the wooden posts and sent debris flying toward them. Miraculously, none of the kids were hit. Writer: Daniyal t.co/sSElOmgb5L

🇺🇸🇨🇳🇷🇺 America’s extraordinary military integration also creates a vulnerability: satellites connect almost everything. Communications. Surveillance. Navigation. Fleet coordination. “The idea is to basically disconnect those integrated capabilities.” An adversary wouldn’t necessarily need to destroy America’s forces. Disable a handful of critical satellites, create a temporary blind spot, and geographically isolated U.S. units suddenly become much harder to coordinate. That could create a window for operations against Taiwan, Japan or the Philippines before Washington fully understands what happened. The opening battle of a Pacific war might not be fought in the Pacific at all. @WeTheBrandon

🇫🇮🇪🇺 Finnish MEP Sebastian Tynkkynen is sounding the ALARM over what he calls a coordinated effort to expand Islamist influence across Europe... He claims the Muslim Brotherhood and several Islamist governments are pouring huge sums into mega-mosques and other religious infrastructure, as Europe’s Muslim population grows. Those are serious allegations... but what do you think? Writer: Lynn t.co/ezl8TZ4iJU

🇺🇸 Energy Secretary Chris Wright replies to Gavin Newsom after Newsom blamed the administration for California’s energy pain: “Almost everything Gavin Newsom says about energy is false.” Wright points to California’s electricity, gasoline and diesel prices, then says the state has “done everything wrong to make energy expensive.” In other words: in California the tinder was already stacked before anyone lit the match. Writer: Oliver

🇺🇸🇨🇳 The U.S. military has now publicly acknowledged deploying what it describes as space-control weapons in orbit. Brandon says America’s adversaries should take that capability seriously. But the bigger danger is what happens after the first satellite is destroyed. “You could, in the first half hour to an hour of a space war, see the unintended destruction of basically every satellite in orbit.” That is the nightmare of Kessler syndrome: debris from one destroyed satellite strikes others, generating more debris and potentially creating a cascading failure across orbit. A war in space might begin with precision weapons, but the debris doesn’t care who fired first. @WeTheBrandon

🇺🇸🇮🇷 The cheapest official estimate of what the Iran war has cost taxpayers and the most expensive one are nearly $70 billion apart, both from the same government. $33.4 billion through late June from the Pentagon's own watchdog. $37.5 billion from the Pentagon in July. $38 billion over 5 months in the accounting Congress just received. And U.S. officials told NBC the real figure is closer to $80 to $100 billion. Then come the costs nobody counted at all. $21.7 billion just to replace the bombs and missiles already fired, a bill that only starts arriving once the shooting stops, with interceptor stockpiles already low enough to worry the people counting them. Now the White House wants $87.6 billion from Congress to refill the shelves, and both parties are hesitating over a war most Americans already wanted finished. Source: Congressional Budget Office / Writer: Daniyal

🇺🇸🇸🇦🇾🇪 CENTCOM is reportedly proposing a regional mechanism to support Saudi Arabia against the Houthis. Brandon Weichert sees something larger taking shape. He believes Saudi Arabia’s entry into the conflict is pulling Washington and its regional partners into a more coordinated military architecture, potentially including Israeli intelligence support. And he expects American involvement to eventually go beyond coordination. “You are going to see, I think, long-range strategic bombing by the U.S. Air Force directed against the Houthis in Yemen.” If he's right, the Iran war is assembling another front. @WeTheBrandon

🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇷 Diesel hit $5.97 and two separate wars are pulling on the same barrel U.S. on-highway diesel sat between $3.50 and $3.75 for all of 2025. It's now at a record $5.97. Trump has recently blamed the surge largely on the Russia-Ukraine war, specifically Ukraine's strikes on Russian refineries. He told Zelensky to stop hitting Russian diesel infrastructure, arguing: “This isn’t done by the Middle East, this is done by what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine.” But the supply picture is broader than that. Two disruptions, unrelated to each other, both hitting middle distillates: Hormuz has taken 1.2 million barrels a day off line, and Russia's export ban another 0.8 million. Together roughly 8% of world diesel supply. Why this one hurts more than a gasoline spike: diesel is the fuel underneath everything else. Trucks, rail, ships, tractors, construction plant, backup generators, farm equipment. Nobody chooses to buy less of it. Freight has to move whatever it costs, so the price passes straight through into food, materials and every delivered good in the economy. Gasoline is a household expense. Diesel is an input cost for the entire supply chain. And it's the hardest barrel to replace. Refineries can't simply pivot their yield to make more of it, and the world's spare refining capacity is far tighter than its spare crude capacity. Extra crude doesn't fix a distillate shortage. Two wars nobody connected have found the same chokepoint. Source: EIA, Lipow Oil Associates, Reuters / Writer: Oliver

🇺🇸 The most pro-crypto Congress in history couldn't pass the Clarity Act. It needed 60 votes to clear its procedural hurdle. Zero Democrats voted to advance it, 4 Republicans crossed over to kill it too, and $300 million of longs vanished in 20 minutes as Bitcoin slid from just under $80,000. That bill was the one thing institutions were waiting on, splitting oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the CFTC. Senator Cynthia Lummis says if it dies in this Congress, the next realistic shot isn't until 2030. The November midterms leave almost no room to revive it. So crypto stays where it's been for years, run by enforcement actions and court rulings instead of a law. Source: CoinDesk / Writer: Daniyal

🇺🇸🇾🇪 America may be preparing to open another front against the Houthis. Trump has twice refused Saudi requests for direct U.S. military help against the Houthis. The important word is “yet.” The pieces for a wider war are now quietly falling into place. Saudi Arabia has moved from fence-sitting to fighting the Houthis. Egypt is publicly demanding the reopening of Bab el-Mandeb. Israel is reportedly providing Saudi Arabia with intelligence through CENTCOM. And U.S., Israeli and Arab military chiefs have now met privately to coordinate regional security. Meanwhile, something's happening much farther from Yemen: The U.S. Air Force is pushing to improve readiness across its B-52, B-1B and B-2 long-range bomber fleets. The unspoken contingency might be Yemen. The Navy would play a limited role in a major campaign against the Houthis, leaving long-range Air Force bombers to provide much of the firepower. Saudi pressure will eventually force the issue. Whether it takes 6 weeks or 6 months, the U.S. will eventually conduct long-range strategic bombing against Houthi targets. Trump has said no. Washington could be preparing for the day that answer changes. @WeTheBrandon

🇮🇷🇬🇧 Iranian spyware campaign targeted dissidents, activists and journalists worldwide British intelligence says Iranian state-linked cyber actors used tailored social engineering to infect targets with spyware capable of stealing messages, screenshots, contacts and microphone access. The malware, dubbed “CHOSEN BRICK,” was reportedly delivered through fake personas, trusted-contact impersonation and even fabricated medical documents. Not mass spam. Individualized surveillance. The more important detail is what happened after infection. According to the FBI, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence used the malware not just to collect intelligence, but to leak stolen data and damage targets’ reputations. That turns spyware into something broader than espionage. First you watch the dissident. Then you map their network. Then, if useful, you weaponize what you stole. Britain, the U.S. and the Netherlands now say Tehran “almost certainly” uses cyber operations to suppress people it considers threats. Source: UK National Cyber Security Centre, Netherlands AIVD, Sky News / Writer: Oliver

🇺🇸 A reporter pressed AG Todd Blanche on Trump’s claim that new evidence points to a Democratic plot behind the Butler assassination attempt. Blanche says the FBI has found new information about the shooter, including his background and history, that investigators didn’t know before. But he didn’t explain how that new information connects the shooting to a Democratic plot. On Christopher Wray, Blanche says Trump’s frustration comes from questions about what FBI leadership did to protect him in the weeks and months before the assassination attempt. Writer: Daniyal t.co/ixsNrO3tWm

🇺🇸🇨🇳 Steve Bannon says the U.S. should stop training Chinese students as engineers and technologists and remove Chinese nationals from American labs: “Get them back to mainland China.” The farewell party at MIT is going to need a stadium. Writer: Oliver t.co/CY39GcMKm9

🇺🇸 You now need $120,000 to buy the average American home. The average American makes $85,000 That's a $35,000 gap between what the typical household earns and what it needs to qualify for the typical house. The two lines used to track each other. Since 2022 they've split apart and kept going. Here's the part that doesn't make the headlines: the Atlanta Fed's measure isn't just the mortgage. It includes property taxes, homeowner's insurance and PMI.. and insurance is the line item that has exploded. In much of the country the premium, not the rate, is what pushed the qualifying income out of reach. The official threshold for "affordable" is spending 30% of income on housing. The national number is now 47%. At what point does this stop being a housing “cycle” and become a structural affordability crisis? Source: Atlanta Fed / Writer: Oliver

🇺🇸 The Attorney General noticed something. Democrats went quiet on AI for months, and now every one of them can find a microphone in the dark. His read: the midterms. He said he shouldn't have to say it out loud, then said it out loud, which is how you know a man enjoys saying a thing. Writer: Oliver t.co/43lcts26FX

🇺🇸🇮🇱 Trump is publicly fed up with Netanyahu, and his answer is to buy Israel 40,000 of the heaviest bombs in the U.S. arsenal. WaPo says the $2.8 billion package being prepared would include 40,000 of the massive bombs, plus another 20,000 penetrator warheads. And these are seriously destructive weapons. The MK-84 can tear through thick concrete, bring down buildings and throw metal fragments thousands of feet. They’re also the same bombs Biden briefly stopped sending Israel in 2024 over concerns about civilian deaths in Gaza. Trump reversed that shortly after returning to office. The sale hasn’t been approved yet. Congress has been informally notified, and the administration is pushing committee leaders to sign off. The package could take years to deliver, but the message is pretty clear: whatever the political disagreements, U.S. military backing for Israel isn’t going anywhere. Source: The Washington Post / Writer: Daniyal

🇺🇸 A reporter told Deputy AG Todd Blanche that Rep. Thomas Massie had introduced articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Blanche: “Who did?” Reporter: “Thomas Massie.” Blanche then shook his head and rolled his eyes. Sometimes the entire hierarchy of political importance fits into one facial expression. Writer: Oliver t.co/fj7wYSKhRl

🇺🇸 Trump says the Kennedy Center board has voted almost unanimously to close the building immediately over safety concerns and prepare it for reconstruction. But there’s a catch. Trump says the actual renovation won’t begin until the D.C. Circuit rules on the board’s disputed renaming of the center. If the administration ultimately loses that fight, he says the reconstruction won’t happen. Meanwhile, Trumays $17 million he raised has been deposited to keep the Kennedy Center afloat. So Washington has arrived at a peculiar place: The building is closing because the ceiling is falling down. And fixing the ceiling now depends on what the building is called. Source: @realDonaldTrump / Writer: Oliver

🇩🇪 German Chancellor Friedrich Merz just said social media should be restricted much more, then immediately shut down the free speech argument with “Don’t come at me with Free Speech. This has nothing to do with Free Speech.” He says the state still has to protect people from false information, which puts him right in the middle of Germany’s fight over how far government can go in policing what people see and say online. You do not have to understand German to know how condescending he is talking here. Writers: Daniyal, Oliver t.co/bziGGj86vq

🇺🇸 Juror in the Lindsay Clancy case is now getting his entire family dragged into the fallout, and it is getting ugly fast. The lone holdout who blocked Clancy's acquittal on a split 11 to 1 jury, has reportedly seen reporters descend on his relatives' homes after his identity leaked online this past weekend, even though the judge had sealed juror names. His brother says the family cannot leave the house anymore because of how relentless the media has been. A GiveSendGo fundraiser called "Stand With the Juror" has already pulled in more than 120,000 dollars, meant to cover security, legal costs and lost wages if things escalate further. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis publicly offered him asylum in his state if the harassment continues, slamming the coverage as a smear campaign. Meanwhile reporters have also dug up an old restraining order tied to a family dispute, a charge that was never actually proven and was eventually dismissed. So a man does his civil duty, votes his conscience on a triple murder case, and now his own mother cannot walk out her front door without a camera in her face. Is this what jury duty looks like now in America? Writer: Oliver t.co/Aqc8nhzckP

🇺🇸 AG Todd Blanche says 12 daycare fraud suspects were arrested in Southern California for allegedly siphoning more than $10 million meant to help low-income families pay for childcare. Stealing daycare money from poor families is one of those crimes that does not require much interpretation. The motive arrives with its own little name tag: “I’m an asshole.” Writer: Oliver t.co/Mdgk7ejsAI