Making the Strait of Hormuz safe for energy shipments would be a remarkable accomplishment, one that the world has never seen since the beginning of the month.

I have no particular feelings one way or another about LaFlamme or any of the other non-Mills/Platner candidates, but I am not sure why Platner immediately got treated like a serious major candidate while a bunch of other people who were certainly not *less* qualified than him got treated as jokes.

Costello and Wood, notably, have *actual qualifications* well beyond Platner's, and the rest are certainly not any less qualified. But for some reason it was decided that Platner was a major candidate. Why was that? Who decided that?

The answer seems to be "literally the political consultants who gave us John Fetterman found their next big star, possibly because he used to sell them cocaine when he was bartending at the Tune Inn". Which is pretty fucked.

Daily Beast says he came up with it on his own and blindsided Homan in the process

He's bothered by what hurts his personal popularity and GOP midterms turnout, but he has not a clue on how to boost either

Obvious proof Trump is deranged & a danger to the entire world is that over the last 3-4 days he’s gone from saying we’ll force Iran to open the Straits, to they’ll just magically open, to it’s up to everyone else to open them, to threatening war crimes against the civilian population of Iran

We need some good news today.

Please please please.

This gets at why Track AIPAC is so insidious. They apparently lump together contributions from organizations like J Street, which is solidly in #3, with AIPAC, which is pretty clearly not with #3, and if not under #4 or #5, is at best in favor of the status quo & opposed to #3.

They only lump them in sometimes though. And seemingly most of the time that they think JStreet is bad is when the candidate is Jewish. bsky.app/profile/cole...

Again, the fact that Trump thinks this & acts like this is not a reason for everyone else in American politics to enable it. Or for the media to totally normalize it. We've had a decade to adjust to this.

Hegseth should be fired immediately if "nobody was even thinking about." It is called contingency planning.

Looks like Barrack is bailing him out.

Understanding ADOS: The Movement to Hijack Black Identity and Weaken Black Unity By Jessica Ann Mitchell Aiwuyor — The term ADOS was created in 2016 to describe and distinctly separate Black Americans from Black immigrant communities. The movement claims to advocate for reparation...

IDK about this situation, but there are definitely “activists“ who are funded by RW to sow division between groups who would normally find common cause. ADOS is an example. We had a pro-ICE Dem who IDed as ADOS in the state legislature who voted with Reps constantly.

ibw21.org/commentary/u...

59% of rural counties have no maternity care. Republicans' answer? Let the ACA tax credits that millions of Americans rely on expire.

Happy 16th birthday to the life saving law Republicans are fighting to destroy.

Reupping because Kat lying about her upbringing and *still* claiming she's poor should've come out much sooner and been a bigger story, which adds to what I've always seen as a bit of phoniness to her, including moving to Streeterville to run for a seat in another district.

To NBC5 Thursday: "AM I poor right now? Yeah. I have depleted my savings. I have been financially independent since I was 21."

She must be living in public housing in Steeterville. I bet her parents don't even let her bring her laundry home to the mansion. (She lives with the CEO of the Onion.)

Sketchy? It stinks as an old professor of mine used to say, like a dead fish in Denmark.

Every counterterrorism EXPERT was fired or left.
But we’ve got THIS guy..

😞🤦‍♀️🙄

10/ All of this was totally foreseeable. Frankly, it’s why previous presidents weren’t so stupid to start a war like this.

Trump has lost control of the war. His best course now is to cut his losses and end it. That’s the only way to prevent an even bigger disaster.

9/ CRISIS FOUR: Trump has no endgame. Iran and its proxies can create chaos indefinitely.

So what’s next? A ground invasion?This would be Armageddon. Thousands of dead Americans.

Declare false victory? Then the new Iranian hardliners in charge just rebuild what we destroyed.

The War with Iran Threatens Syria’s Recovery Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa has a strategy for Syria's recovery. The war with Iran could jeopardize that.

8/ Other potential flash points lurk. So far, the Houthis in Yemen have been relatively quiet. Probably not for long. They can project power into the Red Sea.

For Syria, this is the worst time for Trump to strike Iran. Syria could explode again.

Iraq Becomes Battleground for U.S. Forces Once Again The U.S. is targeting militias that have carried out dozens of attacks in a show of support for Iran.

7/ CRISIS THREE: A broader, regional war is breaking out as Iranian proxies in Lebanon hit Israel and those in Iraq target the U.S.. Israel is now threatening a massive ground invasion of Lebanon, which could become its own new crisis.

5/ CRISIS TWO: We can destroy Iran’s missiles but not all their drones, and war today is drone war.

Iran can hit oil sites in the region indefinitely because they posses so many cheap, weaponized drones.

And they are. They blew up a critical Oman oil depot two days ago.

Why naval escorts through Strait of Hormuz are so risky The U.S. has yet to begin escorting oil tankers through the treacherous Strait of Hormuz, something that increasingly looks like a high-risk proposition during the war with Iran. President Trump, w…

4/ What about naval escorts for tankers? This is a possibility, but it’s harder than you think.

First, it would require our entire navy. 100 tankers need escorting each day.

Second, if we can’t destroy the mines and drones, our ships are at risk too.

Iran deploys explosive ‘suicide skiffs’ disguised as fishing boats in Strait of Hormuz Iranian forces deploy explosive drone boats disguised as fishing vessels in Strait of Hormuz, defense expert Cameron Chell warns, marking new phase of hybrid warfare.

3/ Right now, Trump has no plan to reopen the Strait. And a plan may not exist.

The assets Iran uses to harass and attack tankers - thousands of small drones, speed boats and mines - cannot be eliminated. They are too numerous, too spread out and hidden.

2/ CRISIS ONE: Trump believed Iran would not close the Strait of Hormuz. He was wrong. And now oil prices are spiking.

If the Strait stays closed, a global recession will result. It actually may already be too late. Gas prices are the first to spike, but food prices are next.

It’s crystal clear now that Trump has lost control of this war. He badly misjudged Iran’s ability to retaliate. The region is on fire.

1/ I’m going to explain to you in this🧵what I’ve learned - in part from closed door briefings - about the four biggest current crises.

6/ If Trump paid any attention to the Ukraine War he would have noticed how warfare has changed. But he didn’t. And he blundered.

Worse, the Gulf states are running out of interceptors to stop Iranian missiles and drones - meaning that soon more oil sites will be vulnerable.

Mentally they're boys and always will be