FREAKY THURSDAY IS UPON US

There are 89 days to the midterms.

Trump has declared the Strait of Hormuz “open” at least four times since March, only for fighting or closures to resume within days each time. This week he’s back to predictive language, telling Fox News that talks are “moving along nicely” and the strait “is going to be open very soon.” We’ve heard this before, and the announcement itself will matter less than the details of what’s being negotiated and what happens on the water. The proposal now on the table would give Tehran control over ships entering the Gulf through Hormuz. This would be one of the biggest concessions to Iran since the war began and reverse Washington’s repeated insistence that it would never accept Iranian control over the waterway. The unresolved sticking point is outbound traffic. Regional negotiators want regional supervision of inspections, and any fees kept nominally voluntary. Iran is seeking 5% to 7% of cargo value; Oman has floated 3%; Washington wants zero. That gap alone argues against an imminent signing. Regional sources have pushed back on Trump’s “imminent” framing, and Iran’s foreign minister is on holiday while talks continue. The indicators to watch are those that move independently of statements: the number of ships that transit daily counted against the pre-war baseline; war-risk insurance premiums, which price actual exposure rather than diplomatic language; whether crude, LNG and fertilizer cargoes resume with regularity; and whether Washington’s blockade on Iran-linked shipping lifts in parallel. Past “reopenings” decoupled these steps. The clearest tripwire, one Iranian source said, is that “a single tweet” from Trump could unravel it entirely. The real test is whether we get a detailed, verifiable text, or another vague nod to “positive talks”.

The U.S. Army has used up “virtually all” of its ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles during the five-month Iran war, according to three sources familiar with the data, raising concerns about military readiness for future conflicts. The Navy has also burned through nearly half its global Tomahawk supply. These long-range munitions, costing over $1 million each, allow precision strikes from a safe distance; their depletion means Maladministration II may need to rely more on riskier piloted bombing missions if strikes resume. Officials worry the drawdown could limit America’s ability to deter adversaries like Russia and China, though one source noted Central Command can reload from global U.S. military supplies. That the U.S. has burnd through nearly all ATACMs is bad news for Ukraine, which uses this weapon for its long range strike power.

As Phillips O’Brien put it in his midweek update last night, “These realities mean the USA has lost the war, that Iran will emerge, in the short term at least, in a stronger position and that, most likely, the wider Persian Gulf region will be altered strategically, perhaps forever. I say these “realities” because even though the negotiations (of some sort) are still going on, the war has already caused some dramatic changes that cannot be undone quickly, if at all. And those changes are heralds of what is to come, not roadblocks on the way back to what was... the American Age is already drawing to an end in the Persian Gulf... It is extraordinary how the country has destroyed its strategic position in fewer than six months.” He concludes: “It will take years, maybe more than a decade, to make up for this extraordinary shortfall. The US has neutered itself as a strategic force already in this war. That will have global ramifications.”

O’Brien also points out that the US cannot protect its forces against Iranian strikes. The upshot of this weakness is that the USA is already pulling its forces out of the Persian Gulf - in some cases precipitously. On August 1, the WSJ reported that this is affecting Kuwait. The results of Trump’s War has caused the US to pull many of its forces out of the country already. Trying to sugarcoat the pill, the WSJ says the US is “rethinking” its defensive posture in the region, but the truth is that is has been forced to pull out precipitously because it cannot protect its forces and it is struggling to protect the Kuwaitis. This recent report comes after months of reports of withdrawals from other facilities, leaving many US bases in the Gulf empty. The US is showing its weakness so dramatically and its unreliability and fickleness, the situation is compelling the Gulf states to think more regionally.

Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz is not the only example of a state taking control of the restricted waters that control international seaborne trade Turkey has been charging a fee to transit the Bosporus since July 1st. Malaysia has also been charging a fee to transit the Strait of Straits beginning in July. “Freedom of the Seas” - which has been a policy of the U.S. since the Barbary Wars of the 1790s and led to the War of 1812 - is now a thing of the past as the U.S. is unable to threaten these moves. With Trump having wasted nearly all our modern strategic weapons, there is less likelihood of our being able to oppose moves by China in Southeast Asia or Russia in Eastern Europe. It’s nothing a country whose people are so unserious they would put a man like Trump in the ultimate seat of power don’t deserve. The world will move on. Without us.

Why don’t we pretend to be the Inquisition and Persecute a Scientist? The Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee voted this morning to hold Dr. Fauci in contempt of congress for invoking his 5th Amendment rights and refusing to play victim in their perjury trap last week. Senator Ron Johnson - chair of the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations announced last night that HHS has provided Fauci’s COVID-19 era phone. The Inquisitors are feeling a warm sensation in their underpants over the possibility of having new material for the Inquisition. “Attorneys” General for the failed states of Florida, West Virginia and Looserana announced yesterday they had subpeonaed Dr. Fauci for records of grant awards and book deals and other “evidence of self dealing” by Dr. Fauci. All of this - from D.C. to whatever outhouse in The Everybody Is A Cousin State the AG works from - is the Confederate Traitor way of Smear by Press Release. Galileo could tell Dr. Fauci all about it. There are days I’d like to nuke Red America - this is one of them.

CNN staffers are calling BS on the NYT op-ed written by David Ellison, making his case for Paramount’s proposed $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, which is CNN’s parent company. A dozen state attorneys general are suing to block the merger, along with the Writers Guild of America. Ellison argued the real issue isn’t market share, but trust. Specifically, whether he can be trusted running one of the largest cable news networks in the world. The Nepobaby insisted he has no intention of turning newsrooms into propaganda mills, and said he’s voted for both Democrats and Republicans. But in the very next breath, Ellison said he wants those newsrooms to “reflect the whole world, not one side of it,” which may sound neutral until you notice it’s a go-to conservative talking point when they complain about media bias.

CNN staffers aren’t buying it. Ten CNN journalists were all in agreement that Ellison was gaslighting them. One called his op-ed “insulting,” pointing out that everyone can see with their own eyes what’s he’s already done to CBS. Another said it was obvious Ellison just “says whatever is best for him to get the merger through.” Ellison says his critics should “judge us by the year we just had.” Fair enough. Let’s start with the year that included completely dismantling the #1 news program in the country and tanking morale across the newsroom. If we’re going by Ellison’s own standard, that’s an abject failure. One CNN staffer said Ellison’s track record at CBS “raises questions about his independence and willingness to toe a partisan line for commercial benefit.” Another said his leadership of CBS “inspires no confidence,” and said turning CNN into another version of that “is not the answer.” The remainder of Ellison’s op-ed was mostly fluff, with the kind of vague, vanilla pablum about “facts and truth” that doesn’t mean anything when you refuse to explain how you’ll confront a president who is openly hostile toward the media. Keep in mind, that’s the exact same dodge Ellison gave a year ago when his colleagues pressed him on it directly. We all know CNN, and the media in general, would be much worse off with Ellison at the helm. In 1945, Justice Hugo Black wrote for the Supreme Court in the Associated Press case that the First Amendment assumes the country is better off when information reaches us from as many independent and competing sources as possible. That’s the constitutional standard Ellison is being measured against, and a man who spent the past year merging newsrooms and thinning out the reporters inside them is asking us to grade him on a curve.

In counter to Ellison’s op-ed, writer J. Holtman in today’s The Ankler industry newsletter made an interesting suggestion about solving the Paramount-Warner’s problem: have George Clooney buy Warners. Not just Clooney alone, but other Major Names such as Tom Hanks, a consortium ot top Hollywood talent. Answering the obvious point that these people don’t have the money to do this, the writer pointed out that neither does Larry Ellison, pointing to the NYT article that detailed how Ellison and Oracle, are leveraged to the eyeballs, and much of the money going into Warner Bros. is borrowed against AI investments that plenty of people think are a bubble . . There’s already speculation that even if Paramount-WBD closes, it’ll have to start selling off pieces to service the debt. “Clooney would not need to know how to operate every corner of Warner Bros. himself, any more than Ellison does. Any buyer would need experienced executives, lenders and outside investors. The difference is who sets the cultural mandate, whose judgment and values guide the enterprise and whose reputation holds the line.” Clooney has been part of the Warners’ “Ocean’s” trilogy, “Syriana,” “Michael Clayton” and, as a producer, best picture winner “Argo.”The conclusion: “Imagine a world where George Clooney, Tom Hanks and Ryan Reynolds hit the streets, looking for loans, particularly in this era when $1 trillion of private equity “dry powder” is about to flood the market. Would any reasonable person say no? Really? One good lunch at The Ivy, one round of drinks at the Palm, a good steak dinner at the Smoke House, and it’s gotta be close. Have Julia Roberts just happen to drop by the table and I’m betting that checks will be flying by the end of the meal.” I personally like this idea a whole lot. In addition to Clooney, look at Hanks’ contribution to society: “Philadelphia,” “Forrest Gump,” “Band of Brothers,” “From The Earth To The Moon” - for starters. Unlike Ellison, these folks wouldn’t be making “content.” A boy can dream...

A groundbreaking investigation from the AP found that Maladministration II has detained more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty American service members since taking office, and even deported at least six. At least eight immediate family members of active-duty troops are still currently in immigration custody. The government doesn’t even track these numbers on its own. The AP had to piece it together from thousands of federal court records, media reports, and interviews with families and attorneys. Journalists say the real figure of those detained and deported is almost certainly higher. DHS said that, while it values service members’ contributions, military service alone doesn’t confer legal status or exempt anyone from immigration law. The agency declined to discuss individual cases, though it noted that at least seven of those detained had previously been removed from the country, while at least eight had current removal orders. At least two other detainees had drunk driving or drug convictions. The Pentagon wouldn’t comment at all. For decades, both Democratic and Republican administrations have shielded immediate family of military personnel from deportations. U.S. Army Sergeant Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez told the AP it’s hard to focus on his military service when he’s worried sick about how his wife is doing, after she was detained outside a Walmart in front of their six-year-old daughter. Air Force Tech Sergeant Wendy Gbeve watched her father get arrested during a routine immigration interview in Missouri. Within two weeks he’d been shuffled through detention facilities before being deported to Mexico, which he left decades ago to work on a ranch in rural Illinois. Nobody from ICE has explained to the family why it happened so fast. Army Staff Sergeant Alexis Jaramillo is now on administrative leave from Fort Polk, Louisiana, and is now the sole caregiver for his five-year-old stepson after his wife was detained during what the family assumed was a routine meeting in Alabama. A former ICE deputy chief counsel who worked in Maladministration I told the AP that immigration authorities rarely detained military family members unless they’d committed violent crimes. He called the current approach “insane” and “outrageous.” This is all happening while U.S. Army and National Guard recruiters are actively advertising immigration benefits to convince young people to enlist. One soldier who spent nine months helping patrol the Southern border with Mexico said watching his own father get detained left him with nothing but regret for “all those families I broke.” Such a shitheaded policy, created by a piece of shit like Stephen Miller, only contributes to the destruction of the United States as a world power.

For decades volunteers stood at the back of naturalization ceremonies with clipboards, and people could register to vote in the minutes after they took the oath. The League of Women Voters signed up more than 122,000 new voters that way in 2024 alone. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) shut it down in August 2025. The change took effect the same day it was announced - with no public comment period - and after that only state and local election officials were allowed to help. The National Council of Jewish Women’s Greater New Orleans section sued in November. The League of Women Voters followed, and the cases were consolidated. U.S. Judge Adam Abelson blocked the ban on Monday and found it was likely driven by discriminatory intent. In the same policy, USCIS had swapped the words “naturalization candidate” for “alien” - including for people who had already taken the oath and become citizens - and dropped the requirement that new citizens be handed a copy of the Constitution and a voter’s guide. The 2017 rules are back in force while the case proceeds. The volunteers can stand at the back of the room again.

On December 1 the TrumpDOJ emailed Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold an agreement to sign demanding she hand over every voter’s name, birthdate, address, and either their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number. The department assured her it “cures all potential concerns a state might rightfully raise” about private data. Griswold answered two days later: “We will not be producing unredacted voter files or signing the MOU.” So the regime sued her. The law requires the Justice Department to state a basis and a purpose when it demands records. Judge Philip Brimmer, appointed by George W. Bush, found the December email did neither, calling itself only a follow-up to correspondence that began in May. The May letter never asked for the private file at all. Judge Brimmer dismissed it with prejudice and closed the case, finding that letting the department try again would be futile. The TrumpDOJ has gone after states across the country for their voter rolls and lost every case so far - 20 to zip. At least eight of those rulings came from judges Trump appointed himself.

Energy Storage Solutions wanted to drop a $19 billion, 900-megawatt data center in Kingsboro, North Carolina, using as much electricity as more than 700,000 homes, in a county of about 49,100 people. Commissioners had already rewritten the zoning ordinance to let it happen.

Janice Bulluck, an organizer with Edgecombe Neighbors for Data Center Accountability, spoke at the December 1 meeting, in a room packed with residents wearing red. James Wrenn reminded the board that Edgecombe stopped a regional hazardous waste dump near Conetoe in 1988 and an IBP hog slaughterhouse in Kingsboro in 1996. David Batts, 69, who lives about a mile from the site, warned commissioners that residents would primary them, and in March he beat four-term incumbent Donald Boswell. County Manager Eric Evans announced on July 6 that the company had pulled out. Energy Storage Solutions President Dan Shaffer didn’t dress it up in an email to the Rocky Mount Telegram five days later, saying that investors “insisted that we move forward with other projects that we have in friendlier communities.” Monday night, the commissioners adopted a 24-month moratorium on data centers. It passed unanimously. Fighting works. In red states and blue, voters aren’t buying Big Tech bullshit. And the issue is upending midterm races.

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta, reluctantly granting TrumpDOJ’s motion to dismiss the seditious conspiracy indictment against eight members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, including Stewart Rhodes, all of whom were convicted but later had their sentences commuted by President Trump: “This is the last of the prosecutions seeking to hold accountable those responsible for the events of January 6. That book is now closed. Today’s epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured these convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy - the peaceful transfer of presidential power - to buckle. The court cannot write a different ending.”

Bezos continues kissing Trump’s ginormous ass: Amazon is launching a new series focusing on Melania Trump, a senior adviser to the first lady said, months after the company lost millions on a Melania documentary movie. Marc Beckman told conservative news network Real America’s Voice on Tuesday: “This fall, we are following the film with a docuseries, surrounding the first lady. It’s a completely different look at her world. It gives the viewers a little bit of a peek into what happens right at the beginning of the new 47th presidential administration.” Beckman teased some details about the upcoming docuseries: “If you saw the film, we only captured 20 days of the first lady’s life. We opened the window a little bit into her private life, her marriage, her family; we open a little deeper into her career, as well as her philanthropy. “Gag me with a spoon,” as the Valley Girls used to say.

Last May, Trump promised his new $400 million Flying Arabian Whorehouse, gifted to him by the Qatari royal family would go “directly to the library after I leave office.” That’s apparently no longer the plan, according to Eric Trump, who told NBC News that displaying the Qatari jet “is not the plan at the moment, saying a retired Air Force One jet similar to the Boeing 707 on display at the Reagan presidential library in California would take its place in the presidential library. No one knows exactly what will happen to the Qatari jet. It’s still part of the active Air Force fleet.

The White House recently declassified a report confirming the FBI opened a formal investigation into whether Trump was acting as a Russian asset when he fired former FBI Director James Comey during his first term. That investigation even had its own name: Oxferd Comma. It was folded into the larger Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which was the name for the probe into the whether Russia influenced Trump’s 2016 campaign. Agents who opened it believed it was the least intrusive way to address what they viewed as a serious national security concern.

New Mexico is suing the TrumpDOJ and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, arguing the federal government has been actively blocking its own state investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes at the notorious Zorro Ranch. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez says his office has faced significant resistance from the TrumpDOJ, adding that kind of resistance is uncommon when state and federal investigators often work the same cases at the same time. According to his lawsuit, the Justice Department demanded that all requests for information be submitted formally, only to reject them anyway once they were officially submitted. The suit claims this textbook stonewalling campaign is causing active and ongoing harm to Epstein’s victims, while also undermining the public interest. Torrez is now asking a judge to force the federal government to hand over relevant materials.

To conclude: It’s official - L.A. County’s fire department concluded that electrical equipment owned by Southern California Edison caused the Eaton fire, which leveled 10,000 homes in and around Altadena and left 19 dead. Hoo boy - no one alive who lost a home is going to live to see the end of this mess as the lawsuits pile up.

Remember, you are not the crazy ones, and we were made for these times. Regardless of what you may feel right now, act as if you believe that and redouble your efforts.

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.” - Abraham Lincoln

Rusty

The current media scene is a stark reminder of the importance of independent journalism. We can bring down Trump, with your support. Across Substack, authors like me need your help! It’s only 21 cents a day. Thomas Jefferson said he’d rather have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers because he understood that a republic cannot survive without an adversarial press willing to challenge power. Since January, TAFM has lost 100 paid subscribers; a loss we cannot afford that is happening across Substack for we “originals.” We really need new paid supporters. Thanks to the new subscribers who stepped up with the TC’s Birthday offer of 20% off for the first year for new subscribers. The rest of you free subscribers will get the month of August to join TAFM under that offer - now the price of a cup of coffee. That little bit goes a long way. Thank you to the new paid subscribersfor your support.

“This is great, I love your blog. Keep at it.” - Stephen King (free subscriber on March 15, paid subscriber on April 28)

Comments are for paid subscribers.