Mario Nawfal

Strongmen almost never leave a bench behind them Trump, Xi, Putin, Erdogan, the usual Latin American strong-center types. Different flags, same habit. The movement is the man. Loyalty beats a farm system. When the name leaves the poster, the party looks around and finds a vice president, a loyalist, or a vacuum. Vance is not Trump. Rubio is not Trump. Medvedev was not Putin. The next guy in Beijing is not Xi. That is the point of building it this way. It wins the room you are standing in and starves the room after you. Coalitions survive a funeral. Personality cults schedule one and call it a transition. Source: Foreign Affairs / Writer: Lucas

🇺🇸 Naming yourself that is doing a lot of the lifting... or it seems 😂 Writer: Lucas t.co/Eh1kOFvIFj

🇮🇷🇨🇳 Iran's foreign minister came out of Beijing talking about who sets the rules in the Middle East from here. "Successful consultations in China with our partners. Iran values strategic partnership we have built over time. Today's decisions will decide future strategic balance in the region, with immeasurable knock-on effects. Four principles for peace outlined by President Xi are key." Notice whose framework he's citing. Not the American ceasefire text, not the Omani channel, but a Chinese peace plan, and Xi has been shopping a new Gulf security architecture since his Egypt visit. Whatever gets signed after November, Beijing intends to have its fingerprints on the paper, and Xi arrives in Washington next week holding that leverage. Writer: Daniel

🇺🇸 Massie just named the day off after Hegseth. House GOP sent members home a day early, which also kicks his impeachment vote against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth past the midterms. Massie said that's the point. Rules gave them 48 hours to hold the vote. They could have done it last night or today, but they left instead. He is calling Thursday the Hegseth holiday. The 2 weeks already cut from the calendar, he is calling the Epstein recess. His read is that the House GOP leadership ran a whip check and did not like the names that might show up. Speaker Johnson says it is about campaigning. The House is gone until after Election Day. The vote waits. Writer: Lucas t.co/4e9Tn0Wk4E

🇵🇱🇺🇦 Poland is planning the installation of a ~70-mile-long electronic security system along its border with Ukraine. While physical barriers already exist, the new system will feature monitoring systems and movement/traffic detectors. Poland also intends to expand existing systems on its borders with Russia and Belarus. Towers with drone-detection systems have specifically been mentioned for the Belarusian border. Ukraine’s eastern front is getting an upgrade. Source: Polish Radio / Writer: Marie

Proof that “the crowd can’t all be wrong” is the most expensive lie we keep buying. Writer: Daniyal t.co/ALLjfyVsd1

🇸🇦🇮🇷 Washington told the Gulf the Iran war would take a month, seven months later Riyadh can't get a call returned, and Israel is grabbing 40,000 bombs before the door closes Before the first strike, Gulf diplomats told Murtaza Hussain what Washington had promised them: "just give us a month… you'll never have this Iranian problem again" They opened their bases on that word. Seven months later the problem has spread to the Red Sea, a Saudi F-15 is in pieces, and the same capitals that lent the runways are being told they're on their own. The 40,000 heavy bombs headed to Israel fit the same clock. Every transfer gets harder to pass, so take everything now, while the most permissive president in a generation still signs. Murtaza's sources in Washington said before the war it couldn't happen because the interceptor math was hopeless. They were right about the math. What they didn't foresee was a government doing it anyway. @MazMHussain @WeTheBrandon

🇨🇳 He was one inch from a closed casket. This guy is knocked out on a bench when a truck reverses and slams into a huge billboard. The whole thing comes down and one of the corners drops right next to his head. Somehow it only smashes the pack of cigarettes sitting there instead of him. He snaps awake, looks around for a second, and then you can see the moment of realization. That’s the closest you get without disappearing. Writer: Daniyal t.co/dMMJqH7jYb

🇲🇽 Independence Day night in Tijuana, Mexico, spilled into a street fight with cars. It kicked off September 15th near Landmark. A celebration turned into punches in the middle of the boulevard; cars got pulled into it, and someone went under a vehicle while the mess was still moving. The official Grito at City Hall had its own crowd. This was the after-hours version on a main strip, when the flags were still out and the road was not. Writer: Lucas t.co/KRoTEjQauO

🇨🇳🇮🇷 China took over Iraq's oil after the American surge, and Washington's war is now handing it Iran the same way without a shot fired Two decades ago, while American troops surged into Iraq, Chinese petroleum engineers followed behind them. Today Iraqi oil runs on Chinese contracts. Peter Alexander, watching from Shanghai, expects Iran to be that story at a scale nobody has priced, because a regime whose only goal is survival will take the one partner that offers survival as a package: "overwhelming influence throughout the region without a single shot fired" The strain shows in one number. Oil in Shanghai now trades about $30 above Brent since the Saudi pipeline burned, and Beijing pays it without complaint, because certainty is the thing it buys. His advice for Washington is the hardest pill in the building. Stop pretending, treat China as a peer, and negotiate the next thirty years while there's still something to trade. @WeTheBrandon

🇺🇸 RFK Jr. says cooking is what finally gave his youngest son a place in the family. He told it on his food show, with 7 kids in the house and 2 boys who like the kitchen. The youngest got good enough that his brothers started asking him to cook, and that turned into prestige at the table, then confidence. He called dinner an old ritual, families making something together, almost a spiritual thing. Writer: Lucas t.co/3ZYL6MOmWI

🇺🇲🇬🇱 U.S. Airmen touched down in GREENLAND for military exercises. The missions tested USNORTHCOM’s ability to operate in the Arctic’s harsh, high-latitude environment while maintaining military preparedness and operational effectiveness. TLDR: Troops went to Greenland to train in s*tty weather. Source: @USNorthernCmd / Writer: Marie

Worst-case scenario: boom, he’s mist. Best-case scenario: everyone watching already knows he’s mist in the brain department. 🤣 Writer: Daniyal t.co/BAvLfD0vA7

🇺🇲 SpaceX’s Falcon just had a SUCCESSFUL LIFTOFF! Look at that beautiful baddie launch. Writer: Marie t.co/UiQy7yisXb

🇺🇸 Ilhan Omar was confronted over the federal investigation into allegations of immigration and marriage fraud, and things got ugly fast. Asked directly whether she had married her brother, Omar flatly denied it and called the question “disgusting.” When the reporter brought up Tom Homan’s confirmation that DHS is investigating allegations involving her, Omar denied being under investigation and was asked whether Homan was lying. Her answer: “He’s been saying some dumb shit like you.” Writer: Sol t.co/WA8wd7C3cS

🇺🇸 Trump is floating a cutoff on trade with every country the US buys more from than it sells to. He put a number on it tonight: $1.5T a year, because a deficit is a loss with a nicer name. Canada, Mexico, Europe. Mexico gets a pass because a deal is close. The rest get the warning. That is how he reads the ledger: other countries get rich off access to America, and the arrangement has gone on long enough. Whether a cutoff collects $1.5T or simply shifts who pays is the fight underneath the line. Writer: Lucas t.co/8Kct6EiMkg

🇺🇲 Trump is still DANCING like nobody’s watching. Even though EVERYBODY is watching.🕺 Writer: Marie t.co/JV6jff7Ixc

🇮🇷 Iran's storage tank lids aren't lifting, which means production has effectively stopped. Twenty empty tankers sit anchored off Sri Lanka. More wait off Chabahar and Jask. Nothing new is arriving at the Malaysian anchorage where Iranian crude normally offloads, and nothing gets past Singapore unseen. Sal Mercogliano, maritime historian and shipping analyst, says trucks and the Caspian back door move a fraction of what one tanker carries. "I think the US is playing a very dangerous game in keeping that oil constrained, because you're backing them into a corner." A country with nothing left to export has nothing left to protect. @mercoglianos

🇺🇸🇵🇸 A Palestinian-American lawyer walked into a Florida budget hearing to fight a $1B Israel Bonds investment and left in handcuffs. Noura Erakat joined a crowd demanding Palm Beach County pull the money. Officials said the bonds weren’t on the agenda. Protesters kept talking. Deputies cleared the room. Erakat was arrested on a trespass charge. Palm Beach is the world’s biggest government buyer of Israel Bonds. So, more than a budget fight, it was politics colliding with a room that refused to stay quiet. Writer: Lucas t.co/68J8g6prFj

🇺🇸 🇮🇷 America sank two tankers as a message to anyone still doing business with Iran. Sal Mercogliano, maritime historian and shipping analyst, calls those strikes demonstrations, aimed at Iranian vessels and the commercial ships trading with them alike. A heavily damaged tanker was just towed out of the strait. Tehran says mine, Washington says missile, and the absence of any oil spill points at the missile. "We're going to have attrition in this tanker fleet. They're inflicting losses. They're killing mariners on board." Escort operations work until the losses outpace the crews willing to sail them. @mercoglianos

Elon’s new Starship film is a victory lap for the flight that finally brought a whole ship through reentry intact. Flight 13 launched in July, deployed 20 Starlink V3s, then survived reentry at roughly 25× the speed of sound and splashed down in the Indian Ocean still sending data. The documentary follows that recovery and the bigger bet: a reusable rocket could open the solar system. Next is Flight 14, and a shot at catching the ship. Source: @SpaceX / Writer: Lucas

🇺🇸🇻🇪 Exxon is nearing a deal to return to Venezuela, 19 years after Chávez seized its assets there The company could sign a memorandum with state-run PDVSA this month covering fields holding more than 50 billion barrels, though talks could still collapse. Chevron committed $7 billion over five years to double its output to 600,000 barrels a day, and Harold Hamm's Continental Resources signed its own preliminary deal Wednesday. Back in January, Exxon CEO Darren Woods sat in the White House and called Venezuela "uninvestable" without real changes to its laws. Caracas has since rewritten its oil rules and cut production taxes. Woods got exactly what he asked for, which is the part worth noticing. Washington pushed for $100 billion in the ground and the majors said no until the legal terms changed, then the terms changed. Every barrel that comes out of the Orinoco is a barrel that does not have to sail past Iranian guns or Houthi artillery, and with Hormuz at a trickle and the Red Sea gone, hemispheric oil stops being an ideological preference and becomes the supply chain. The company Chávez humiliated in 2007 may end up holding the fields that insulate American refineries from the next Gulf crisis. Source: The Wall Street Journal / Writer: Daniel

🇮🇷 🇨🇳 Chartering a tanker from the Gulf to China now runs $1 MILLION a day. It used to be $50,000. Twenty days at sea puts one voyage north of $20 million. Sal Mercogliano, maritime historian and shipping analyst, says the market got so desperate that a used tanker just sold for more than it cost new. Saudi, Kuwaiti and Emirati state ships handle the escorted runs because their governments can absorb war risk insurance no private owner would touch. At those rates the crude still moves. The question is who eats the cost once it reaches a pump. @mercoglianos

🇺🇲Rand Paul said HELL NO to Sen. Kennedy's push for a mandatory nationwide AI KILL SWITCH with his lone objection. "Ben Franklin said failing to plan is planning to fail. Approaching something as important as AI, we need as many facts as possible before we dictate rules for the whole economy!" Paul totally pulled the plug on the "kill switch" 😂 Writer: Marie t.co/aa7PaXlXI7

🇸🇦🇮🇷 Saudi Arabia's mercenaries drove off in American SUVs when the checks stopped clearing, and the kingdom they left behind is built on sand The Houthis sent a thank-you note to the American taxpayer for the trucks. That detail, to Robert Barnes, explains the whole Saudi position. A monarchy that never built an army of its own citizens rents one, and rented armies leave. His larger claim is that the House of Saud's power was never poured in concrete: "built on a house of desert sand" The Wahhabi base that lifted the family now isolates it. The cousins locked in the Ritz remember. The public watched the crown prince abandon the Palestinians, then float asking Israel for help against Yemen. Barnes reaches for 1918, when one war erased four empires inside a decade, and asks whether Iran and Ukraine are doing the same work. That's his forecast, and Riyadh calling Washington twice in a day without an answer is the first data point. @barnes_law @WeTheBrandon

🇺🇸🇮🇷 Trump says the pain at the pump is worth it because Iran's economy is finished... "It's going to end soon because they can't go on. Their nation is destroyed. You have a little higher gas. It's a very inexpensive price to pay for what we've done. That's going to come tumbling down. That's going to be like a rocket ship in reverse." Gas sits at $4.37 against $3.19 a year ago, diesel cleared $6, and the Fed just hiked rates for the first time since 2023. Voters price that as more than "a little higher." Writer: Daniel t.co/EYXVElDHTn

Travis Kelce was scammed by a $35 million Ponzi scheme run by an ILLEGAL immigrant The Chiefs star was named in court as one of many to be wronged by Siddharth Jawahar in the scheme Jawahar, who orchestrated the fraud, was sentenced to 11 years in prison this week after pleading guilty in January to wire fraud. Prosecutors say Jawahar took client money and dumped nearly all of it into a Pakistani tobacco stock. When it slumped, he didn't tell a soul. Kelce’s exact financial losses were not disclosed. Source: New York Post / Writer: Bri

🇺🇲🇮🇷 Trump keeps saying he can end the war in Iran. “That war? That war’s gonna end very soon. Watch, you just watch. Trump was right about everything, you watch. They’re getting decimated, and they want to make a deal so badly... We want to make it, and they’re not ready yet, I don’t think. But we can have a deal anytime we want.” $6/gallon diesel says otherwise, but okay. Writer: Marie t.co/6ksYVZlaWy

🇺🇸🇨🇳 Sam Altman is going to dinner with Trump and Xi. The White House is packing the table with American tech names for the Sept 24 state dinner, and the ChatGPT boss is on the list with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. This lands while Altman has been warning that frontier AI needs a slower hand, and while Chinese models keep closing the gap. The man talking caution sits down at the deal table. Washington wants a show of U.S. AI muscle, while Beijing wants to see who actually runs the labs. Altman gets both rooms at once. Source: CNBC / Writer: Lucas

🇲🇽 Mexico City woke up to a sky full of military aircraft for Independence Day. A local caught the flyover during the 216th parade: Air Force and National Guard planes and helicopters crossing the capital in one tight formation. Officials put the number near 100. That was the opening act before the troops moved from the Zócalo down Reforma. Writer: Lucas t.co/aiYTVSAkGx