ANSWERS 🕺🎉🤸‍♀️

1. There were 29% odds of Democrats holding 250+ House seats before the election. Those were the odds on prediction market Kalshi. Betting sites generally did a good job of forecasting the election outcomes, yet the Democrats still blew past expectations.

2. There were 10% odds of Democrats holding 56+ Senate seats before the election. Also from Kalshi. Markets thought Democrats would take the Senate but still underestimated the margin.

[Check out The Weekly Matterboard, where we rate the most and least important news]

3. Trump blamed Fox News. Trump blamed the usually right-wing network for featuring too many Democrats and asking dumb polling questions. He didn’t blame himself or his vice president.

4. 47% favorability rating for Democrats. That’s according to exit polls, so it’s among actual voters, not the overall population. The Republican Party’s favorability rating was 40% in the same exit polls. Winning a majority of congressional seats with an approval rating below 50% means voters went against Republicans much more than they went for Democrats.

5. 89% cited the cost of living as a major concern. Also from exit polls. That tells you even wealthy Americans unaffected by price hikes know that stuff has gotten expensive under Trump.

6. 90% cited government corruption as a major concern. More exit polling. That’s very high.

7. 8 Democratic Socialists will serve in Congress next year. That’s just 2.9% of the roughly 310 Democrats who will be on Capitol Hill. The most left-wing Democrats get a lot of attention but won’t be very influential in Congress.

[What Democrats need now: A convincing leader]

8. Vance’s presidential odds fell by 5 points, to around 14%. The midterms proved Trump is historically unpopular, which is bad news for anybody running on his coattails.

9. Pick another protein. Earlier this year, a TV anchor asked Mississippi Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith what people should do about high beef prices. She said, “You know, there are so many proteins to choose from.” Democratic challenger Scott Colom riffed on that response in a campaign ad analysts say is the best of the year. It’s also funny as shit. Check it out here. Colom is leading in a race that could come down to hundreds or even dozens of votes. If Colom wins, count it as the biggest upset of the midterms.

[Why I lost money on the midterm elections]

10. Musk’s net worth declined by around $45 billion in three days. That’s because the stock values of his companies Tesla and SpaceX sank after the elections. Most of Musk’s net worth comes from his stake in those two goliaths. They could come under tough scrutiny by newly elected Democrats in Congress and in states such as Texas, Ohio, and Georgia.

11. Tesla is discontinuing the Cybertruck. Musk once called it “the best product Tesla has ever made.” But the angular eyesore sold poorly, not helped by Musk’s embrace of Donald Trump and a de facto boycott of Tesla products by millions of anti-Trumpers. Tesla is moving on to self-driving cars, robotaxis, and AI experiments.

12. Fears of an AI backlash. Voters picked dozens of candidates who want stronger regulation of data centers and other AI infrastructure, which could slow spending and investment returns. The S&P 500 index fell 2.5% over the three trading days following Election Day.

13. Newsom commuted all of California’s death sentences. That comes after the ghastly botched execution of a Tennessee convict in October. The California death-row inmates will serve life sentences without parole.

14. All of the above. A crafty researcher discovered more than 4,500 words and phrases Apple does not allow its devices to autocomplete or swipe-type. The full, fascinating list is here. Most of the words are overtly offensive or could be considered offensive. You can still type the words yourself. It’s just that Apple won’t help you.

15. McRib. The class-action lawsuit contends that the occasionally available McRib sandwich isn’t actually pork rib meat, but other parts of the pig. Wow! McDonald’s has some exacting customers who know their BBQ! Or could this be greedy lawyers looking for somebody to fleece? 🤔

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ANSWERS 🕺🎉🤸‍♀️

1. Nicki Minaj. At a Michigan event on October 25, Trump told the crowd, “I looked at one hell of a beautiful ass before — Nicki Minaj. That’s hard to miss.” Minaj, who’s a Trump fan, traveled to the event with Trump and was in the crowd. Trump asked her to stand up, which she did. Before Minaj, Trump had mostly been complimenting men’s body parts. We don’t know what’s wrong with him, either.

2. A public golf course. Trump wants to convert the East Potomac public golf course into a fancy championship venue able to host major tournaments. That means many locals who pay $17 to $48 for a round of golf—which is cheap—would end up priced out. Trump is basically trying to turn a public course for regular folks into a private one for rich people. But there are problems. As ever with Trump, there are legal challenges, and a federal judge recently ripped Justice Dept. lawyers for shoddy work and possible unethical behavior. The beleaguered golf course could end up like the Kennedy Center, closed out of spite and incompetence so that nobody can use it.

[Check out The Weekly Matterboard: What matters and what doesn’t]

3. “It’s a shithouse country.” Of course, it’s not. Norway is a beautiful and civilized nation boasting some of the world’s highest living standards. But Trump is continually pissed he can’t win a Nobel Prize, and the Nobel Committee is based in Oslo, so by extension the whole country sucks. The Norwegians had fun with it. The nation’s tourism agency created an online brochure highlighting “some of the world’s best shithouses.” Some are stunning. Click that link—it’s worth a look!

4. The Cheesecake Factory. And we expect everybody who pays even a little bit of attention to the news to get this one right! The media paid way too much attention to this little beef, which Obama probably triggered on purpose. At a recent Democratic rally, he trashed Trump’s gaudy renovations at the White House as “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.” (Saddam had a taste for over-the-top gold everything.) Trump bashed Obama back and it got dumber from there. A few days later, Obama pointed out that Trump put more effort into rebutting his joke than getting inflation down. He could have added: Without earning a single laugh.

[12 Trump election swindles to watch for]

5. Elon Musk. The billionaire has spent at least $168 million helping the ethically challenged Paxton battle Democrat James Talarico for the prized Senate seat. Paxton could still lose, but Musk’s sunk costs would only amount to 0.018% of his net worth. That’s the same portion as somebody earning $100,000 per year donating $18 to a campaign. Billionaires get to call the shots these days because of the 2010 Supreme Court decision allowing people to give unlimited amounts of money to political causes. Musk has extensive business operations in Texas and no doubt wants final say on regulatory issues and other matters affecting his companies. Citizens should have a say, dontcha think?

6. Democrats. Reporting by the New York Times explained how Alaska’s Democratic Senate candidate, Mary Peltola, and a bunch of party allies found a guy named Dan Sullivan to run in the Senate race as a nonpartisan candidate, to create confusion and possibly take votes away from the incumbent Republican senator, who is also Dan Sullivan. Republicans are aghast because election cheating is only for Republicans! Trump’s Justice Dept. is suing to prevent Peltola from taking the seat if she wins. But it might not end up that big a deal. First of all, it’s not illegal for a like-named candidate to run, for any reason, no matter who recruited him. And Sen. Sullivan is clearly marked on the ballot as the “incumbent” and the “Republican.” There’s a good chance Peltola could win, so we could have some fun litigation to watch as Trump’s B team lawyers try to prove there was a crime when there wasn’t.

7. Author a newspaper commentary. An October 25 Wall Street Journal commentary with the byline Mitch McConnell castigated Trump for sucking up to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and throwing Ukraine under the bus. Excellent take. But did the Kentucky senator write it? Or was it an aide or AI agent? The last public sighting of the 84-year-old McConnell was in mid-September, and he seemed frail bordering on zombielike. So who knows who’s signing his name these days.

8. North Korea. Stealing crypto is one of the biggest sources of revenue for the rogue nation, and it’s good at it. The $6.3 billion hack is the biggest ever and it’s rocking the crypto industry. Binance froze customer accounts and prevented withdrawals, but said it will cover all customer losses from its own funds. It may also be able to recoup roughly half of the pilfered assets. The hack makes one wonder if Binance or any other private-sector entity, or group of entities, could hack North Korea back as retribution. What could happen if you counterhack a nuclear power? 🤔

[The Trump economic bust, in 10 charts]

9. May never be profitable. Here’s the exact language from Anthropic’s S-1 registration statement: “We have a history of net losses and may not generate sufficient revenue to achieve or sustain profitability in the future.” Companies going public are basically required to say stuff like that, and investors may not care when the IPO hits around mid-November, since Anthropic is still in growth mode. But Anthropic will be a huge public company enmeshed in the nation’s AI infrastructure. At some point, its profitability glidepath will serve as a proxy for the whole AI industry.

10. Modest losses lately. A selloff in AI-related stocks has shaved 8% off the tech-heavy Nasdaq index since it last peaked on October 6. The broader S&P 500 index is down 3%. A correction would be a 10% drop and a bear market a 20% drop. Investors are worried that massive investments in AI are hurting profitability at some established companies, driving some valuations lower. A huge longer-term rally remains intact, however, with the Nasdaq up 99% during the last three years. We’ll cover the AI stock situation in our next edition of Market Intel.

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ANSWERS 🕺🎉🤸‍♀️

1. Men’s bodies. For some reason, Trump has taken a shine to the physiques of certain dudes. “I examined his ass,” Trump said recently of Ohio Sen. Jon Husted. “I looked at his shoulders. I looked at his feet. I looked at his hand. He’s got a jawline.” It’s not just Husted Trump is checking out. CNN created this montage of Trump praising the looks and bods of half a dozen men. Anchor Anderson Cooper called Trump “ass-man-in-chief.” 😄

2. If the Democrat wins. Trump’s attempt to block opposition victories in the midterm elections is underway. On October 23, his Justice Dept. filed a lawsuit asking courts to block the certification of the Senate election in Alaska if the Democratic candidate Mary Peltola wins. The Justice lawsuit says the justification is name confusion. There are two candidates named Dan Sullivan in the race. One is the current senator. The other is an unaffiliated candidate who made the ballot. When Alaskans vote, they’ll see the current senator identified as a Republican, with the other Sullivan having no party ID. Republicans already sued to get the interloping Sullivan removed from the ballot, and courts said no. So this federal effort will probably fail. But voters everywhere should be on the lookout for Trump’s efforts to tilt the election his way.

3. He’s a humanitarian. The gullible Witkoff praised Putin after the Russian dictator released an American hostage, Stephen Hubbard, who had been imprisoned in Russia for four years. “You are a humanitarian, sir. I salute that,” Witkoff groveled. Russia imprisoned Hubbard after capturing him in eastern Ukraine, where he had been living for years when Russia invaded in 2022. In prison, he was reportedly tortured. Putin the humanitarian is responsible for the deaths of some 450,000 Russian troops killed in the war so far, plus some 300,000 Ukrainians, at least half of them civilians. Putin is a mass murderer. Witkoff is badly confused.

4. Melania Trump! The veteran diplomat 🤣 supposedly led a humanitarian mission to quell fighting in the city of Oleshky, so suffering citizens can get aid. We hope she’s more effective at negotiating with Putin than her husband.

5. 68%. Those are the Kalshi odds of Democrats winning control of the Senate in the Nov. 3 midterms, as of October 23. The Democratic surge is stunning and it’s entirely because of Trump’s disastrous war in Iran and the global energy crisis it caused. We continually caution that midterm polls are unreliable and the Dems’ Senate odds may be overstated. The shift is remarkable all the same.

6. Trump’s rating is worse. In the latest CNBC All-America poll, Trump’s approval rating on the economy is a dismal 34%. Four years ago, right before the 2022 midterms, Biden’s rating on the economy in a similar poll was 38%. Biden struggled that year, with inflation hitting a peak of 9%. By the time of the election, inflation was headed down, but voters still handed Democrats a midterm loss, with Republicans taking control of the House.

7. Stretching during the National Anthem. James appeared to stretch and mimic a basketball shot during the National Anthem at the home opener of his new team, the Philadelphia 76ers. Trump tried to stir outrage and maybe some racial hostility by calling James a “total disgrace” on social media, saying later that the story was a “big scandal.” Eh. James quipped that it must have been a “slow news day.” The 41-year-old legend logged 17 points and 10 rebounds in a come-from-behind win.

8. Eisenhower’s globe. Hegseth wanted the standing globe Eisenhower used when he was the commanding general in World War II installed in his office at the Pentagon. Aides cut corners while moving the globe and broke it into pieces. Somebody leaked the story, with photos of the broken globe, to the Washington Post. A Hegseth spokesperson responding to the news lied and said the broken globe was a replica, which it wasn’t. Create your own metaphor about the incompetent Hegseth wrecking the great general’s globe.

9. Increased pollution. The United States was the only nation in which greenhouse gas emissions rose significantly in 2025, according to a new United Nations report. The United States emits as much greenhouse gas per person as Russia, which is at the bottom of the list. Trump wanted this. He ended green-energy subsidies and energy conservation policies.

10. “I will come for them.” That’s what Musk said about any Democrats who might be planning to investigate him if their party wins control of Congress. What might they investigate? Musk gutting government agencies as head of Trump’s “DOGE commission.” Musk deciding what level of support the Pentagon provides to Ukraine. His role as an influential presidential adviser while his company SpaceX benefits from huge government contracts.

Democrats have said they’ll investigate Musk aggressively. “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” Musk responded on social media on October 20. “I will find out who is really pulling the strings and come for them.” What is that supposed to mean? With luck, we will find out. Trump has given Musk unprecedented influence for an unelected individual who doesn’t even hold a government job. We should know what the hell is going on.

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And please be tolerant as we experiment. 🙏 The quiz format might not work. There could be technical glitches or maybe you just won’t like it. Let us know what you think and we’ll incorporate your feedback!

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ANSWERS:

1. Government corruption. In the Fox News poll, 88% of respondents cited government corruption as their top concern, topping the 85% who said inflation. This may be the first poll ever where government corruption outranked the economy as a top voter worry. Fox News buried the lede, as we say in journalism. The headline on the story highlighted cost-of-living concerns, not corruption concerns in the age of Trump. Other analysts sussed out the bigger finding.

2. Rubio said Guilfoyle was a “strong ambassador” on Oct. 7, even though news of her attempted shakedown of a Trump donor was in the news by then. Rubio is going to have some very awkward moments to explain if he runs for president in 2028, as many expect.

3. Guilfoyle gleefully showed pictures of men’s penises and credit card numbers to colleagues at Fox News, according to a former colleague, Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery. This is getting attention now because there’s speculation that Guilfoyle may take revenge on Trump for firing her by dishing dirt on the Trump family. She dated Trump’s son, Donald Jr., for six years, and was engaged to him for four, until he broke it off to marry a younger woman. Oh, Kim, do tell.

4. Diesel prices have risen by a few cents per gallon since Trump announced the Russian diesel deal on October 9. Critics, including some fellow Republicans, have blasted Trump for offering to help Russia earn new energy revenue it can use to finance its barbaric war against Ukraine. And diesel prices remain more than 60% higher than pre-war levels. No deal would have been better than Trump’s Russia deal.

5. Katie Zacharia claimed to be a lawyer even though she failed the California bar exam after graduating from Pepperdine Law. She lasted just five days as Trump’s White House mouthpiece. It probably doesn’t matter to Trump that she was un- or underqualified. She embarrassed and upstaged him, which is a mortal sin in Trumpworld.

6. Musk said in 2025 that he planned to start a third political party called the America Party. That came after his bromance with Trump soured and they feuded publicly. But the America Party never went anywhere, as many analysts predicted. Musk is now flooding the GOP with money in a desperate effort to stave off a midterm-election bloodbath driven by Trump’s cratering ratings.

7. Tesla demonstrated a flying car prototype that incorporates rocket technology to move about the sky and even do “kick flips” as it leapfrogs standing traffic. For as odious as Musk can be, the flying “Roadster” is pretty incredible and it’s worth having a look if you haven’t already. Musk says Tesla will actually build and sell this car. We’ll see. It’s possible Tesla could build a multimillion-dollar toy for billionaires to play with on their ranches. Getting safety and regulatory approval for use anywhere near roads or populated areas seems unlikely.

8. Somebody else won the Nobel Peace Prize. It was civil-rights activist Navi Pillay of South Africa. Trump blasted the Nobel committee for not giving him the prize, as if they didn’t notice that he started a huge war with Iran this year and is in effect supporting Russia’s slaughter of civilians in Ukraine. In one of his social media screeds, Trump misspelled Nobel as Noble.

9. Trump posted a video of a mentally unstable man being mauled to death by a tiger at a UK zoo after the man somehow got into the cat’s enclosure. Then he posted a goofy AI video of himself wrestling with a tiger and subduing it. We don’t know what’s wrong with Trump, either. But it’s serious.

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Streamkilling in Texas. To show how tough the US military is, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has arranged for an Army soldier convicted of murder to be executed by firing squad at Ft. Hood, Texas, on December 3. The military will livestream the event so American families can enjoy some wholesome entertainment. The firing squad seems too gentle, however. Why not a beheading? Or draw and quarter the guy? We expect a high-T guy like Hegseth to at least mount the corpse on a pike at the Ft. Hood entrance as a warning to all who enter.

The convict, Nidal Hasan, was an Army psychologist who went on a rampage at Ft. Hood on November 5, 2009, killing 13 and injuring 32. A court-martial convicted him in 2013 and sentenced him to death. But it didn’t say the military should murder him in barbaric fashion or air a snuff film teenagers might want to emulate. That’s all Hegseth, with the apparent blessing of his boss, President Trump. They are manly men doing manly killings in manly ways. As Arlo Guthrie said, Kill. Kill! KILL!

The new money, honey. Trumpworld figure Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is the highly qualified US ambassador to Greece, asked a lesser Trumpworld figure to pay off her $100,000 American Express balance so her finances would look clean when she appeared before the Senate for her confirmation hearing in 2025. “Honey please,” she texted the man, Eric Deters, of Kentucky. If he paid, she promised to get him some favors from the Trump administration, including help from the IRS over a tax dispute.

[5 ways to fix capitalism]

Deters never forked over the money. But the whole story is delightfully weird. First, Kimmy G was engaged to Trump’s son, Donald, Jr., for four years. They broke up in 2024 and Trump Jr. married somebody else this year. But President Trump kept Guilfoyle in the crime family by making her ambassador to Greece. It’s not clear what she did to alienate Deters, who provided the material to the Wall Street Journal and other news organizations.

Was this a crime? Maybe not, if no money changed hands. But add it to the long list of graft and graftlike incidents perpetrated by Trumpers that Democrats will dig deep into if they win one or both houses of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.

Lisa Cook witch hunt. Trump is appointing three of his lackeys to “investigate” whether Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook committed mortgage fraud. Trump already tried to fire Cook from her Fed job, hoping to replace her with somebody more to his liking. The Supreme Court stopped that earlier this year.

[Check out The Weekly Matterboard, where we rate the importance of the latest news]

But the court didn’t rule on the mortgage fraud question, so Trump is now planning a probe. Trump claims Cook listed a vacation home as a primary residence to get a better mortgage deal. Cook says she mistakenly checked the wrong box on a form and never got preferential treatment, anyway. We’d welcome a legitimate investigation that either clears Cook or recommends some kind of censure.

This won’t be that. The three investigators are all Trump appointees known for blind allegiance to the boss. They’re sure to find Cook guilty of something. Then there will be more litigation to determine whether Trump’s sham tribunal has any actual authority. If it does, how about investigating Guilfoyle?

Trump snoozewatch. Here’s Trump nodding off in front of the cameras again at a White House event on October 7. By one count, Trump has fallen asleep at public events with cameras rolling 29 times during his second term. That has to be a record in the presidential TV era.

Diesel prices will be coming down fast! That’s what Trump said on October 9, thanks to some sort of deal he made with Russia to export more of the pricey fuel. He’s promised lower energy prices many times before, so it’s probably bunk.

Trump will ease some sanctions on Russia in exchange for Russia exporting more diesel. But the amount at stake is small and Russia is facing its own energy crisis as Ukraine pummels its energy infrastructure. Diesel prices are around $6.28 per gallon, up 61% since the Iran war began in February. Trump is desperate to convince voters something good will happen before they vote in November and doesn’t seem to realize that people actually look at prices when they buy stuff.

Food safety is now political. New polling by Gallup finds that confidence in the safety of food at stores has dropped from 81% in 2019 to just 65% now. Gallup did the survey while the cyclospora outbreak responsible for “explosive diarrhea” was underway, so that may have been a factor. That parasite may have gotten into lettuce or other types of produce.

There’s now a big difference in the view of food safety by political party. In 2024, when Joe Biden was president, 80% of Democrats felt grocery store food was safe. Under Trump, that’s down to 66%. Republicans, meanwhile, are more likely to think food is safe now than under Biden.

[5 things to expect if Democrats win in November]

Democrats think the Trump administration is doing a terrible job enforcing food safety, while Republicans think it’s doing a great job. Maybe there should be different produce aisles for Democrats and Republicans.

Your Trump tax. We now know just how much inflation Trump has imposed on the country. Research by the New York Federal Reserve found that Trump’s tariffs have pushed the total inflation rate higher by as much as 2.9 percentage points. That’s momentous. The current inflation rate is 3.4%. The new findings imply it would be under 1% without Trump’s tariffs. If inflation were less than 1%, the Federal Reserve would see no inflation problem and it wouldn’t be raising interest rates, as it just did last month, and may do again. Trump wouldn’t be mouthing off about the Fed because it would actually be doing what he wants, either holding rates steady, or cutting them.

Trump’s tariffs only apply to goods, and goods account for only about 36% of all consumer spending. The rest is services, which is something Trump hasn’t tried to tariff, thank god. Services inflation is 3.1%, while goods inflation is 3.9%. With no Trump tariffs, goods inflation would be slightly negative and the only inflation problem would be the higher energy prices Trump’s Iran war caused. It’s too bad Trump doesn’t sleep more, and do less.

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About three weeks after it happened, the woman reported the incident to university police. Cornell investigated, banned the Chi Phi fraternity, and expelled two of its members. But nobody ever prosecuted the assailants.

Last month, the woman filed a lawsuit against Cornell, the fraternity, and each of the seven men she says assaulted her. That put the whole thing back in the news and drew renewed attention to the fact that authorities never prosecuted anybody for an alleged rape. On Oct. 1, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul put the state attorney general, Letitia James, in charge of the matter, most likely assuring that heads will roll. But it only happened because the woman filed a lawsuit that happened to make the headlines. If it hadn’t, everybody would be conveniently looking the other way.

[Check out The Weekly Matterboard, where we break down what matters and what doesn’t]

The Cornell rape is not an isolated incident. A 2025 Cornell study found that 35% of female undergrads reported unwanted sexual contact involving force or incapacitation. Assume it’s the same or higher at every other university and other settings where young people mingle. Young men have always been borderline heathens and date-rape drugs make it easier.

Dads of America: This is on you. Your sons are capable of much worse things than you probably imagine. Teach them better. The first rule of adulting: Don’t rape anybody. The second rule of adulting: If you see somebody in trouble, help them! Impress this on your sons relentlessly and don’t let them leave home until they can prove they get it.

[I placed a bet on falling oil prices]

Overkill. Some states have the death penalty. Tennessee practices the maim penalty. The state tried and failed to execute death-row inmate Christa Pike on Sept. 30, leaving her in critical condition and breathing on a ventilator. The details are gruesome. The executioner stuck at least seven needles in her arm while trying to administer a lethal dose of pentobarbital. It sounds as if the drug was entering tissue instead of the bloodstream. One of Pike’s arms turned purple. A lawyer who was present said there was “blistering and burning” around the injection sites. Pike kicked convulsively. The cruel and unusual procedure went on for two hours until an ambulance took Pike away.

This is the second botched execution in Tennessee. In May, the state tried to execute another death row inmate but the executioner couldn’t find a vein and gave up after an hour.

There are no heroes here. Pike is on death row for the brutal 1995 torture and murder of a 19-year-old woman. She deserves severe punishment. But we all deserve competent government, especially in matters of life and death.

Are you smarter than a senator? Yes, you are! Trumpy Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri really thought he had a winner. During testimony by Jack Smith, the former prosecutor who led two federal probes of Donald Trump, Schmitt thought he caught a lie. Smith said he had never met with Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis, who was pursuing a separate case against Trump. But in text messages, Smith had referenced a basketball game he attended on Feb. 3, 2024. And the only NBA game that night was in Atlanta. Proof! Smith must have been to Atlanta, because that was the only NBA game he could have attended, and since he was in Atlanta he must have met with Willis.

[Believe it or not, the economy is strong]

Schmitt carefully laid his trap, getting Smith to say under oath that he was not in Atlanta on that day. He even got a confused Smith to say he had never been in Atlanta the whole time he was running the Trump probe. Then Schmitt sprung the trap, with an aide holding up the damning text messages on a placard and Schmitt saying smugly, “I don’t think you know we have this stuff … you’ve perjured yourself.”

It turns out, however, that there are also college basketball games, and Smith went to see Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes play the University of Maryland in College Park on the date in question. Wrong league, wrong city, wrong premise, and laughable research. Schmitt, for a week at least, is the biggest jackass in Washington.

Here’s a short clip of the relevant testimony. If you appreciate buffoonery, you’ll get a laugh. The Internet, needless to say, rejoiced. Some of the memes: Schmitt for brains, Schmitt-faced, Schmitting your pants, DipSchmitt, Schmitt sandwich.

Also, somebody made this:

Typographical intelligence. On Sept. 29, President Trump signed a “self-policing” pledge with leaders of Google, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and other big AI companies—and misspelled the name of the country it applies to. Under Trump’s signature at the end, it says, “Donald J. Trump, President of the Unites States.” People noticed because Trump posted the document on social media. Four days later, the version with the typo was still there.

Had Trump’s team asked an AI agent to proof the document, it would have caught the mistake. “The spelling error shows how much time and attention went into drafting the document before it was signed and released to the public,” TechCrunch noted. Trump has a laissez-faire attitude toward AI and thinks worries about the damage it could cause are a “hoax.” Maybe he thinks typos are a hoax, too.

[5 things to expect if Democrats win in November]

Pope vs. AI. Pope Leo XIV has pushed back on AI, and now he’s defending human artists against their mechanized competitors. “It is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce,” he wrote on X on Oct. 2. “Algorithms lack the spark of humanity.” More than 10 million people saw the post, and nearly 3,000 left comments. Some argued with the pope and said they use AI because they can’t afford human artists.

The battle between human- and machine-generated art will surely escalate. It’s worth asking whether AI will ever view the pope as a barrier to its plans for intergalactic domination, and try to eliminate him. If so, which overlord would you rather side with: God? Or AI?

Target: ICE. The family of Renee Good filed two lawsuits related to the unprovoked killing of the Minnesota woman in January by Trump’s immigration thugs. One suit targets the government for the negligence of a federal official. The other suit targets the immigration agent who shot and killed Good, Jonathan Ross, and several other Trump administration officials. We hope there’s a trial, with discovery, that reveals just how unprofessional and bloodthirsty Trump’s immigration agency has become—and grants the family maximum damages.

Gas job. At the White House on September 30, Trump announced that South Korea will invest $54 billion in a natural gas pipeline project in Alaska. There were no Koreans present, and Korean officials later said there was no such deal. We’ve been through this before, so we know that when Trump says one thing and somebody disputes it—believe the other party.

Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, is in a tight reelection race, and if Democrats flip his seat in November it could give them control of the Senate. Trump probably figures he can just mutter something about a huge pipeline project and Alaskans will fall in line and vote for his guy. Alaskans, are you that gullible?

Supreme no more. The Supreme Court begins its current term with the lowest ratings in modern times. The portion of Americans who say they trust the judicial branch is just 46%—the lowest ever in Gallup polling that dates to 1972. The approval rating of the Supreme Court itself is just 34%. Before the Trump era, those ratings were routinely 20 points higher.

The Pinpoint view of the court is that political persuasion and the 6-3 conservative majority aren’t the problem. Dishonesty and corruption are. Justice Brett Kavanaugh probably perjured himself during his confirmation hearing. Clarence Thomas has accepted lavish gifts from rich people with business before the court. Samuel Alito appears to be a wacky election denier who supports the 1/6/21 rioters who rampaged through the US Capitol. The court is riddled with self-interest, no different than venal politicians or greedy corporations. Supremely unsatisfying.

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Trump launched “Trump TV: The Essentials Station” on September 21, after he banned several news organizations from the White House press pool. Trump’s assumption seems to be that Americans would rather watch a stream of disorganized bloviation instead of crisply packaged news with context and explanatory material. A Washington Post reporter watched Trump TV for 24 hours and provided this review: “It not only lacks the polish of news professionals, it is also missing the pageantry of an authoritarian state-run news network.”

I checked it out around 2 pm on a weekday and there were 530 people watching a rerun of Trump participating in a signing ceremony on January 14, 2026. A signing ceremony for what? It didn’t say. But there was a jug of milk on the desk, so maybe it had something to do with dairy farmers. You can catch Trump TV here if you have already cleaned every closet in your house, you have no friends and nothing to do, an electromagnetic pulse has knocked out every other channel, and there’s not a thing in the house to read.

[Check out The Weekly Matterboard, Drone-Launching Triumphal Arch edition]

Socialism rising. Capitalism has a huge branding problem. Though it is far superior to socialism, a lot of people don’t know that and are rooting for the wrong team. A Gallup survey just found that 43% of Americans have a positive view of socialism, the highest level in polling that dates to 2010. Capitalism does better, with 55% approval, but this should be a rout, not a tight race.

We think there’s confusion over the word “socialism,” which connotes authoritarianism to older people but is more like capitalism-lite to younger Americans. After all, anybody who remembers the gloomy, despotic USSR knows it was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. But younger folks see capitalism as a rigged system where Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg control everything and ordinary people just do what they say. They’re not completely wrong, given the recent rise of the American oligarchy.

But there’s a lot of confusion, even in the survey itself. Americans strongly approve of “small business” and “free enterprise,” for instance—but you can’t have either without capitalism. So which is it, people? We’ll have more reporting on this topic soon, because what people really seem to want is what you might call social capitalism, or capitalism that makes all of society better. We’ll be offering some ideas on what that might look like.

[The Weekly WTF: Gas is a bargain, and other Trump knee-slappers]

Politician held accountable! New Jersey’s Lt. Gov., Dale Caldwell, resigned on September 25 after an investigation found evidence of sexual harassment and other problems. Caldwell denied the allegations, but finally stepped down after the state’s governor and other top officials said he should go. It’s quite astounding. We’ve grown accustomed to corrupt officials staying in office forever and even getting reelected. Something strange is happening in New Jersey.

Love him! Your taxpayer dollars are paying for a 30-second Trump political ad that’s been airing on Fox News and Newsmax. The ad features Trump railing against communism and Marxism, with lists of Trump’s imagined accomplishments flashing on the screen (“reigniting American manufacturing”). “Love Me” by JMSN plays in the background. This would all be fine, except at the end, the ad’s mandatory disclosure statement says, “paid for by the US government.”

That’s probably illegal. Federal law bars the use of government resources for political campaigns. A Trump spokesmodel said it can’t be a political ad because Trump isn’t running in 2026. That’s hokum, given that Trump has a direct stake in the outcome of the midterm elections, which will in large measure be a referendum on Trump himself. Oh, and JMSN said he didn’t authorize the use of his song in the ad, and wouldn’t have if asked. He might sue. Some ad.

Cocaine finds a way. Blowing up boats might be Pete Hegseth’s idea of a good time, but it hasn’t done much to stem the cocaine trade, according to reporting by the Washington Post. Operation Southern Spear, as it’s known, began last year and has so far involved the aerial bombardment of at least 79 boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing at least 234. This was supposed to scare drug traffickers away.

It didn’t. Government studies found that those attacks haven’t reduced the supply of cocaine entering the United States, according to the Post. Prices have remained steady, another sign of robust supply. Drug traffickers have changed tactics, moving away from the fast boats US forces have been blowing up on open water, and shipping more drugs via commercial ships and routes closer to the coastline.

[5 things to expect if Democrats win in November]

You could argue, well, if the US boat attacks are forcing cartels to change tactics, then maybe they’re worthwhile. Except that human rights activists say they could be war crimes because they target noncombatants. Plus, those attacks have probably killed innocents with no connection to drug cartels who were targeted by mistake. The four-star admiral who was in charge of the region when the Spear campaign began resigned last December, reportedly because he had concerns about the legality of the whole campaign.

A principled strategy would be, when in doubt, don’t kill people. The Pentagon seems to have the opposite ethos.

Forsaking Dolly. Just one month after music legend Dolly Parton died, there’s an ugly dispute over—what else?—her money. Parton had no kids and her husband died last year. Her estate is worth around $450 million. Her nephew Bryan Seaver, long her head of security, has reportedly made some aggressive moves to corner a chunk of that money. Parton’s manager, Danny Nozell, fired Seaver shortly after Parton died, claiming some sort of shakedown effort. There’s a lawsuit and there may be a trial.

Humanity never fails to disappoint. Dolly Parton was a creative genius and a national treasure. Most others are neither.

[How to profit from rising interest rates]

So that’s why you didn’t get the job! Your coffee says a lot about you—especially at a job interview. Somebody on TikTok started complaining about young job applicants bringing iced coffee to job interviews. What’s wrong with it? The plastic cup might dribble. The straw might slurp. Your hand might be clammy from holding it. You might seem like you care more about the coffee than the job. It’s informal, like sandals. Disrespectful!

Of course, there’s an alternate view, which is: Get a life, corporate prigs. The debate has now blossomed into a media frenzy in which everybody has an opinion. The Wall Street Journal helpfully explained that this is really a proxy battle pitting corporate fossils against young upstarts who have no respect for their elders or the Proven Ways.

Here’s an idea: Pour your iced coffee into one of the four dozen lidded tumblers everybody seems to have in the cupboard these days. Stick a napkin in your pocket in case of emergency. And if you actually know of an open job, be smart and keep it to yourself.

Enjoy a cartoon.

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New standard for useless politician. Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is alive, technically. He’s been seen breathing. But McConnell seems to be impaired in ways that would force just about any other 84-year-old worker into immediate retirement.

McConnell endured some kind of fall and maybe a heart attack in June. He basically disappeared for three months, sparking speculation that he died. Then he resurfaced when the Senate reconvened in September. But something is obviously wrong. Here’s a video of aides wheeling McConnell into a van on Capitol Hill. At one point he gives the camera a thumbs-up, signaling awareness. But once in the van he stares straight ahead like a zombie (or a dementia patient). There’s another video of McConnell casting a committee vote, in which a fellow senator has to tell him how to vote, as if McConnell doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing. At other committee votes, McConnell was a no-show.

[Check out The Weekly Matterboard, Trump KissCam Edition]

It’s undignified for aides or party hacks or family members or whoever’s doing it to use an elderly man for what are obviously political purposes. But it’s even more ridiculous that somebody so infirm can be a “public servant.”

At least the memes are good. Here’s McConnell making a cameo appearance in “Weekend at Bernie’s.” Here’s McConnell going off a ski jump in his wheelchair. Here’s McConnell riding a bronco at a rodeo. Here he is doing acrobatics. Remember, when the only choices are to laugh or cry, choose laughter.

Trump says gas is cheap. We remind readers that while The Weekly WTF may be snarky and sarcastic, it is not fictional. Trump actually did say that gasoline, at an average price of $4.47 per gallon, is cheap.

While discussing gas prices during a speech in North Carolina on September 16, Trump said, “it’s a very inexpensive price to pay for what we’ve done…. Frankly, even if it was a lot more.”

What has Trump’s Iran war done, anyway? When he started the war on February 28, Trump said ordinary Iranians could “take over your government” once the despotic theocracy was gone. The despots are still in charge and ordinary Iranians are more miserable than ever as they cope with a crumbling economy and runaway inflation.

Oil prices have averaged $95 per barrel since Trump started the war, up from an average of $68 in 2025. Higher gas and diesel prices have so far cost the typical household an extra $840. That doesn’t include the government’s $40 billion cost, which is borrowed money added to the $40 trillion national debt.

[An Iran war breakthrough might be coming]

We suspect Trump has never filled a gas tank or paid for gas with his own money. His Iran war has done nothing for anybody except make life more expensive.

Pentagon beauty contest. If you’re a military servicemember and you want to attend incompetent Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “state of the force” event on September 30, you must have a waist-to-height ratio below .55 along with “impeccable grooming standards.” You must also be perfectly clean-shaven. No beards allowed. If you have a mustache, it cannot extend below the top lip line or surpass the corners of the mouth. Sideburns must be trimmed in a horizontal line. Somebody leaked those requirements to the Wall Street Journal, probably to remind everybody what an effete punk Hegseth is. The Journal reported the details on September 15.

If you attend this event, you’ll also need an incredibly high tolerance for bullshit, because Hegseth will probably praise the warrior force he thinks he built while overlooking all the damage he has caused. For starters, Hegseth guided Trump into one of the dumbest wars in American history. Demoralized troops are on extended deployments to fight a never-ending Iran war most Americans disapprove of. Munitions are running short and Navy ships are breaking down. Oh, there’s also a new effort to impeach Hegseth in the House of Representatives—led by one of his fellow Republicans. If Hegseth were to be honest, he’d says the state of the force is a farce, starting with the leadership.

Athlete soilings. What’s the right way to say this? There’s been an awkward public discussion recently about elite athletes pooping in the midst of competitions. Not during a bathroom break. You can’t afford to take a bathroom break if you’re competing. You just poop where you are and keep on moving, as if nothing unusual happened.

[Why AI might try to eliminate humanity]

This all came up because Australian athlete Joanna Wietrzyk had a bout of diarrhea while competing at an endurance event known as Hyrox in Beijing on September 12. Diarrhea streamed down her legs, getting on the running track and other equipment. Cameras caught it all. Wietrzyk kept going—and actually won.

What would you have done? Stopped or continued? What if you were officiating the event? Would you stop everything right then and there, or just let athletes be athletes and clean it up later?

Wietrzyk’s first reaction was, what’s the big deal? “A win is a win,” she said on social media. A shitstorm ensued. Critics said she was inconsiderate and blamed the event organizers for allowing other athletes to compete amid “biohazards.” The organizer issued a statement acknowledging it was dealing with “increasingly complex situations” in part because it pushes athletes to the max.

[It’s time to revise the American Dream]

The media pounced on the story, running pixilated images obscuring the diarrhea, somehow making it seem more ghastly than it probably was. Wietrzyk backtracked, apologizing to the whole world for having to see diarrhea, and saying she should have “stepped off the track” instead of plowing through the crap. She gave up the victory. Hyrox said it updated its rulebook and will now disqualify athletes if they’re responsible for body-fluid contamination.

We think the lesson from this incident is a simple one: When in doubt, get to a bathroom.

Just sports … and sex. There’s a new sports-betting app trying to lure young, horny men with boobs and other female body parts. Is anybody surprised?

Okay, nobody’s surprised. But some people are pissed. The app is called Novig and its shtick is that it only does sports—no politics or IPOs, as Kalshi and Polymarket do. One of the owners is pinup actress Sydney Sweeney, famous for nude scenes that dudes go crazy over. Launch ads for Novig feature Sweeney, naked, with a pair of footballs barely covering her breasts, and other cheeky poses with sports equipment. Get it, guys? Hot blonde … sports betting …. hand over your money.

Real female athletes called Sweeney a poseur and bashed her for sexualizing women in sports. Gymnast Gracie Kramer, as one example, dinged Sweeney while posting this homage to women athletes on Instagram. 10/10!

Nobody involved with Novig is apologizing. Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky explained the ads by saying the goal was to “close the gap from a brand-awareness perspective.” Guess what: It worked. Nobody had heard of Novig a month ago. Now just about every sports bro who lusts for Sydney Sweeney knows where to place his bets.

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Iran war gets considerably worse. There’s one reason above all never to start a Middle East war unless you have to: Developments can easily spin well beyond your control. That’s what is happening now in the Iran war President Trump launched in February.

Iran’s allies, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, have now seized terrain allowing them to threaten and essentially block cargo shipments through the narrow strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. That has become an important alternate route for oil exports from Saudi Arabia that can’t get through the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

Iranian proxies in Iraq also attacked Saudi oil infrastructure, knocking out a pipeline that has been a major conduit for Saudi oil since it lost access to Hormuz at the start of the war. Iran seems to be mobilizing regional assets and escalating its attacks on Persian Gulf energy suppliers, to further constrict global supplies.

This gives Iran’s radical Muslim regime more leverage over global oil supplies than it has had since the early weeks of the war. Brent crude prices, which had dipped to nearly $70 in early July, have now soared back to $108. US gasoline prices are back up to $4.30. Diesel is at a record high of $6.05. Diesel is essential to food production and shipping, and the price spike will raise costs throughout the economy. Odds are now high the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in the coming week, to tamp down the inflation Trump’s war is causing.

[Check out The Weekly Matterboard: What matters and what doesn’t]

Iran and the Houthi rebels it funds may be deliberately making life miserable for Trump (and the rest of us) by squeezing oil supplies hard in the weeks before the US midterm elections, to inflict maximum election losses on Trump’s Republican party. So the squeeze could be temporary. But Iran’s leaders and their Houthi cohorts must be astonished at the amount of pain they’re able to inflict, while the leader of the world’s so-called “superpower” doesn’t seem to do anything more than troll them with goofy AI cartoons.

Trump’s election desperation. Trump is so desperate for political support that he’s trying to buy it, with your money and mine. At the Republican “midterm convention,” he floated the idea of a $5,000 payment to every American if Republicans hold control of both houses of Congress. This won’t happen, because it’s an awful idea. If you want the details, here are some good ones. As a sign of Trump’s temperament, however, this sad plea tells us Trump thinks he’s likely to lose big in November, and we should be prepared for all manner of devious scheming.

More Mommy War$. The Trump administration is planning to change a child-care subsidy program so that stay-at-home parents—read Moms—get taxpayer money for taking care of their own kids. But you would only get the money if you stay at home—not if you work. Some working Moms might be thinking, hey, I have a job, AND I ALSO TAKE CARE OF THE KIDS WHEN I’M NOT WORKING. But I wouldn’t qualify? Yes, that’s right.

This daffy idea is supposedly the brainchild of Vice President JD Vance, who is trying to make some kind of statement about old-fashioned Puritanical values. It could actually happen, without Congressional action. Back to the kitchen, ladies!

9/11, a snoozer. At the Pentagon ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, Trump fell asleep. He does this a few times a month in public, jaw drooping, shoulders sinking, head jerking every few seconds as some damaged neuron tries to snap him out of it. The media doesn’t cover Trump’s public napping very much, but the Internet sure does.

We know Trump is old and he doesn’t get a lot of sleep at night. We’re not letting him off the hook, though. Trump is obsessed with his public image and with the atmospherics of every event he appears at. Does he know how decrepit he looks with his eyes closed and his neck jerking around? We think Trump doesn’t realize he does this, and his aides are afraid to tell him. If Democrats were smart, they’d put Sleepy Trump on every billboard in America.

[See the dramatic story of the Pentagon on 9/11]

Kimmel goes underground. ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel interviewed James Talarico, the Democrat who’s running for the Senate in Texas and has a pretty good chance of winning. But the interview didn’t air on the show itself. While broadcasting on September 9, Kimmel said the Federal Communications Commission under Trump has threatened him, the show, the network, and the network’s affiliate stations, so it didn’t seem safe to broadcast the Talarico interview. Instead, it would air on YouTube the next day.

Clever! The FCC doesn’t have jurisdiction over YouTube, since it doesn’t broadcast over the airwaves. Most people viewing late-night TV do it online, anyway, the next day or when they see clips pop up on social media. So most people watching Kimmel’s Talarico interview saw it the same as they would had it aired on ABC first.

[It’s time to revise the American Dream]

Kimmel, meanwhile, generated tons of bonus media coverage over the “banned” interview, which of course made people want to watch it more. So while dinging Trump and his lackey at the FCC, Brendan Carr, Kimmel ginned up more attention than if the segment had aired with no controversy. Kimmel’s YouTube channel promotes it as “Jimmy Kimmel’s Interview with James Talarico That the FCC Doesn’t Want You To See.” Have a look! 👇

The YouTube interview has racked up 4 million views, 375,000 likes and 25,000 comments. As a TV segment, that’s a win. Polls show Talarico with a narrow lead over Trump-backed Ken Paxton, the former state attorney general involved in a slew of controversies. If Talarico pulls out a win in deep-red Texas, it would be a momentous development for Democrats, edging them closer to control of the Senate. Keep in mind, however, that Kimmel watchers aren’t necessarily swing voters in Texas.

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This is possibly the dumbest thing any US president has ever said. But we have to give Trump some breathing room because, who knows, maybe he’ll say something even dumber tomorrow.

There are 97 countries that have a trade surplus with the United States, including China, Mexico, Taiwan and Germany. If Trump blocked trade with even some of them, it would be an economic disaster. Prices would soar way beyond the inflation of the Joe Biden era. Stocks would crash. There would be widespread shortages and almost certainly a recession.

Trump is angry that interest rates are going up. He wants them to go down. He thinks the Fed can solve the problem, but it probably can’t. The Fed controls short-term rates that mostly affect banks. It doesn’t set long-term rates such as those on mortgages and car loans. If the Fed did cut short-term rates, it could actually send long-term rates even higher. That’s because looser monetary policy can make inflation worse, and bond investors would demand higher interest rates to protect against the eroding value of money.

At least one person in the Trump administration, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, knows how interest rates work. Markets must think he’ll talk Trump off the ledge, because stock movements were pretty normal after Trump’s unhinged post. The market doesn’t take it seriously. Let’s hope that instinct is correct.

Illegal Trump coin sells out. The US Mint now sells a $1 coin with Trump’s face on it for a minimum of $1.55 apiece. Trumpflation has even hit coins.

The coin is probably illegal, because US law says there can be no currency featuring the likeness of a living person. The Mint says the coin is not “in circulation,” so it doesn’t count as currency. Yet you can still buy stuff with it. Typical Trump duplicity.

Here, you have everything that’s wrong with America today in one tidy package: A narcissistic leader breaks the law to flatter himself and gullible fools lap it up. Eww.

ICE Melt. Trump’s immigration gestapo, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, threw quality and procedural standards out the window as it rapidly staffed up last year to send swarms of agents out hunting for migrants, according to at least one agency whistleblower. A 17-year veteran of ICE told the New York Times that ICE gave unqualified applicants badges and weapons, sometimes without proper training or background checks to assure they weren’t putting psychopaths on the job.

It shows. Trump’s immigration goons have killed at least six people during his second term, and fired at many more. Many of the targets were in cars, threatening nobody. Everybody saw the unjustified and cowardly killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January. The ICE agent who killed a Colombian national in Maine in July had a history of mental health problems and violent behavior toward women when ICE hired him. A local police department wouldn’t hire him because of “too many red flags.” The word must be out: If you’re angry and you want to shoot people, get a job with ICE.

Graftville, USA. The portion of Americans who think the federal government is corrupt jumped from 73% in 2024 to 79% in 2025 to a record-high 89% this year, according to Gallup. Can anybody think of a reason why that might have happened?

House sneakers. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives, says he may allow members to wear sneakers in official chambers if his party takes control of the House and he becomes Speaker next year. Hey, why not? The business attire members of Congress wear is kind of a sham, anyway, falsely signaling that these are serious people doing serious work. In reality, Congress has let a gargantuan national debt fester, passed tax cuts for the wealthy that the wealthy don’t need, cut benefits for poorer Americans, and allowed the government to shut down repeatedly. They may as well dress the part.

Jeffries typically sports dark-colored dress sneakers, and he triggered some huffing back in 2023 when he wore a pair—along with striped socks—to an Oval Office meeting with President Joe Biden. Pearl-clutchers trembled at the breach of decorum. Trump, by contrast, is a Florsheim man, occasionally gifting a pair of the starchy oxfords to associates. Honestly, if these people could just do their jobs competently, it wouldn’t matter if they wore Birkenstocks or combat boots.

Bartirometer? Trump mouthpiece Maria Bartiromo, who spent 12 years playing an anchor on the fictional news network Fox, has left her job, according to the network. Real journalists report that she got caught passing Fox News’s coverage plans to Trump. Why would that be a surprise? She’s a quack who’s been a Trump cultist for years. Bartiromo was one of the leading Fox spokesmodels parroting Trump’s claims of fraud after the 2020 election, which got Fox sued by two companies that manufacture voting machines. Fox settled one of those lawsuits for $787 million. The other is ongoing. At any real news organization, you’d get fired immediately for bringing such ignominy upon the institution.

Fox’s parting with Bartiromo may contain an interesting tell, however. CNN reports that Fox has decided not to repeat any Trump claims of election fraud following this year’s midterm elections. That’s the info Bartiromo passed to Trump. If so, that’s a sharp reversal of Fox’s usual stance, which is basically to repeat and amplify any outrageous Trump claim.

Maybe Fox is sick of getting sued and coughing up money. But it might also feel Trump is in permanent decline and not worth backing any more. Bartiromo might be so beholden to her master that she can’t get with the program and sign on with the next Republican charlatan lucky enough to receive the Fox blessing. Don’t worry, she’ll land on her feet as a celebrity endorser of Trump merch or some other MAGA functionary.

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Naming wrongs. President Trump has a tell: When he’s completely out of ideas, he makes absurd territorial claims. The latest is Lake of America, Trump’s new name for Lake Ontario. That’s his punishment for Canada standing up to his latest round of tariffs by imposing their own retaliatory tariffs on US imports.

Trump has also declared the Strait of Hormuz—which is 6,800 miles from the mainland United States—to be US territory. And one of his first moves as president in 2025 was renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

Every rational person in politics should sign a joint statement saying that when Trump is gone, we’ll simply undo all of his inane renamings and other pointless acts. But people are afraid. Google Maps actually shows the Gulf of Mexico as “Gulf of America.” So it may feel it has to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” Since Trump signed executive orders on both of those, there’s a sense of officialness. But other nations don’t need to abide by Trump’s orders, and they use the traditional names. Obviously a future president can sign orders undoing Trump’s, and put the whole naming absurdity to rest. Let’s hope that is what happens, if we ever have a normal president again.

Trump’s trade war with Canada, alas, could do more damage than scribbling a new name on a map. So far, Trump and Canada have each announced new import taxes on $20 billion worth of imports. There are rumblings that Trump may pledge to withdraw from the entire free trade deal with Canada and Mexico that he himself orchestrated in 2020. Analysts have been expecting Trump to go full-tariff, again, once the midterm elections are past, but he’s getting a jump on that. Tariff Man is off the mat and we’ll all end up worse for it.

[Trump’s tiresome Canada tariffs]

Economic D-Day on hold. The Trump administration hyped a big speech by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on August 24, at which he announced an “economic D-Day” against Iran. But D-Day has only been announced. The threatened package of sanctions and other measures—which the administration calls “Operation Economic Outcast”—hasn’t gone into effect yet, and it’s not clear when or if it will.

If this gives you a sense of deja vu, it’s because Trump launched “Operation Economic Fury” against Iran in April. In May, it announced it was ramping up Operation Economic Fury. Economic Fury has now morphed into Economic Outcast.

Their operational nomenclature could use some work. Going from “fury” to “outcast” sounds like de-escalation, not tightening the screws. It also sounds like Operation Ho-Hum. Iran has been an economic outcast for decades, hamstrung by various western sanctions since the 1979 revolution.

[What the bond market wants you to know]

What next? Operation Stern Lecture? Trump has lost the plot on the Iran war, and maybe the war itself.

Youngsters sour on oldster. About one-fifth of the people who voted for Trump in 2024 are sorry they did. And the youngest Trump voters are the sorriest. A new Navigator poll finds that 31% of Gen Zers who voted for Trump wish they hadn’t. The portion of Trump voters who regret their vote declines with age.

I can’t keep track of who’s in what generation, so here’s the age breakdown, as of 2026:

Gen Z: 14-28 (but only those aged 20 to 28 were eligible to vote in 2024)

Millennial: 29-45

Gen X: 46-61

Baby Boomer: 62-80

Trump only got 43% of the under-30 vote in 2024, but that was the best showing among young voters for a Republican presidential candidate in 20 years. The shift of young voters away from Democrats, toward Trump, may even have put him over the top in crucial swing states, clinching the win.

Young voters may now be moving back toward Democrats. Here’s a breakdown of the Navigator poll results:

The Pinpoint view is that analysts make too much of this or that demographic group aligning with either Democrats or Republicans. Many voters these days are simply disgusted with the status quo, which means they turn against whoever is in power. If Democrats do well in this year’s midterm elections, it won’t be because Americans suddenly love their party. It will be because they’re sick of Trumpism. They could just as quickly get sick of whatever the Democrats have to offer.

[What’s changing at the Federal Reserve, and why it matters]

Stupid golf people. The golf company Callaway ended a brand partnership with media venture Good Good Golf over one of the most idiotic ads in memory. The ad shows a female golfer reaching for a golf bro’s driver, which sets him off. He races over and pushes her to the ground, warning, “do not touch my new driver,” as she lies looking up at him. Have a look:

The lesson of this ad is that there are stupid people everywhere. Bosses at both Good Good Golf and Callaway approved the ad, which ran on social media. Maybe they figured woke is out, so obnoxious behavior toward women is cool again.

The ad was supposed to spoof the horror flick Obsession, but it wasn’t remotely funny and wouldn’t have been funny even without the smackdown of the lady golfer. Everybody apologized … this doesn’t reflect their values … blah blah blah. Funny how values are often absent until you have to prove you have some.

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The national debt hit $40 trillion. And it will eventually hit $50 trillion … and $60 trillion … and ….

It’s not news that the national debt is out of control. What would be news is if somebody did something about it. There are murmurs. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent supposedly has a plan to turbocharge economic growth and pay down the debt. If so, what is he waiting for?

Other administration officials say President Trump plans to keep rolling out tariffs, and those import taxes will help lower the annual deficit. Okay, great, except tariffs stunt economic growth because they raise costs on everybody. Did anybody tell Bessent?

Up on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, lawmakers are “sounding the alarm” about the national debt, according to The Hill. That’s kinda funny, because those lawmakers are the same ones who have been cutting taxes, boosting spending, and generating all that debt in the first place. It makes one suspect they are not being completely sincere.

[Check out The Weekly Matterboard, Natalie Harp edition]

Does anybody remember the Simpson-Bowles Commission? Back in 2010, when the national debt was a mere $14 trillion, President Obama appointed a panel to make suggestions for stabilizing the national debt. The group’s roadmap called for eliminating most federal tax breaks for businesses and individuals, cutting spending, getting health care costs under control, raising the income threshold for the Social Security tax, and making a bunch of other changes.

Right, it never happened. But when there’s finally no choice but to deal with the debt, we’ll end up doing more or less what that Simpson-Bowles group recommended. Except everything will be 2x or 3x, since the national debt has tripled since then. Here’s the full report.

The debt crisis is finally arriving. Not because $40 trillion is some kind of tripwire, but because markets are struggling to absorb all the debt governments and corporations are flooding onto the market. The excess of debt is pushing interest rates higher and getting the attention of everybody who’s been worrying about this problem for years. The debt crisis won’t be an overnight cataclysm, but a slow-motion train wreck. Unfortunately, that means the politicians who caused the problem in the first place will probably be able to dither for a few more years.

More Trump fury. Trump said on social media that he’s targeting Iran with “the most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country.” The terrified Iranians read that post and immediately capitulated to every single Trump demand.

Ha. Of course they didn’t. Trump has become a paper tiger and everybody knows that if he can’t subdue Iran militarily, he certainly won’t be able to do it economically. The Islamic regime has faced western sanctions for decades and somehow managed to survive.

If you think Trump has a new strategy, recall that in May, he launched what the Treasury Dept. called “Operation Economic Fury.” So is the new scheme Economic Fury Pt. 2? Or are we at Pt. 5 or Pt. 6? Trump’s Iran war rebrands might eventually overtake The Fast and the Furious franchise in terms of silly sequels.

[Trump is missing his own economic targets]

What Trump ought to be paying attention to is American Fury. His Iran war has cost the average US household nearly $700 in higher costs for energy, food and other things. Trump’s approval rating is in free fall. “We’ve opened Pandora’s box,” Afshon Ostovar of the Naval Postgraduate School said on a recent podcast. “This is going to be a problem, I think, for months and maybe years.”

Trump 💖 Kim (still). Trump wants to meet again with his dictator-bro Kim Jong Un, the tyrant of North Korea. Nobody knows why, except that Trump seems like he is trying to punish South Korea for refusing to help with his Iran misadventure.

Trump has asked South Korea (and other countries) to send ships to help US forces negate Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz. None has agreed. Trump may have asked South Korea for other types of assistance, which he also didn’t get. Trump cites these grievances when explaining why he ordered the Pentagon to cut short joint US-Korean military exercises that have been an annual event for years.

[Trump’s biggest grift yet]

Meeting with Kim would be a further insult to South Korea. North and South Korea are still technically in a state of war, even though there hasn’t been full-blown combat since the 1953 ceasefire went into effect. North Korea has thousands of artillery launchers aimed at Seoul, and could wreak havoc if hostilities ever resumed. Some 23,000 US troops are permanently stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against northern aggression.

South Korea and Japan are America’s most important allies in Asia. North Korea is a Russian ally with nuclear weapons that can reach California. There can be good reasons to engage with an adversary. Dissing your friends isn’t one of them. Kim hasn’t responded, so maybe he’ll play hard to get with his American suitor.

Bessent battles the bond market. The Treasury Dept. surprised markets on August 19 when it said it would double the amount of long-term bonds it purchases as part of normal financing operations. It didn’t say why, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is clearly hoping to lower long-term interest rates such as those consumers and businesses pay on mortgages and most other types of loans.

Rates have been rising since the beginning of the Iran war in February, and as we discussed above, the fiscal debt crisis finally seems to be materializing. It’s not just gads of government debt. Big companies are also issuing hundreds of billions of dollars in bonds to help finance the artificial intelligence buildout. An oversupply of bonds on the market means rates have to rise to coax enough investors to put their money into bonds instead of stocks or other assets.

[The myth of the prosperous worker]

Rates dropped back after the Treasury move. But economists doubt the gambit will have a lasting effect. “Treasury’s bond buybacks won’t work for long,” Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, wrote on August 20. “We expect traders to continue to push the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield higher.” He and others point out that Bessent is addressing the symptom—rising rates—rather than the cause, which is an annual federal deficit that now exceeds $2 trillion per year.

Can we live with higher rates? Sure. Rates right now are high compared with the modern era, which started during the Great Recession in 2008, when the Federal Reserve began deliberately lowering long-term rates. But if you go back further, rates are near historical averages.

The catch is that Americans have gotten used to cheap money and the benefits it brings. Higher rates, combined with a mountain of federal debt, would probably mean slower growth, fewer jobs, and lower living standards for millions. That’s what happens when you run up bills and finally have to pay them.

Enjoy a cartoon.

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Breaking the military, Pt. 1. Something seems wrong in the US Navy, where ships are deploying for longer than usual and sailors are demonstrating acute signs of stress. Several sailors aboard the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier have reportedly tried to commit suicide by jumping overboard, according to Navy Times. Dozens of family members have met with Navy officials to vent concerns about poor working conditions, lack of downtime, and low morale aboard the ship. There were reports of similar problems aboard the carrier Gerald R. Ford earlier this year, including a laundry fire that crewmembers may have set deliberately.

A normal Navy ship deployment is six to eight months. The Ford returned to port in Virginia in May after 11 months, the longest carrier deployment since the Vietnam War. The Lincoln has been at sea for nearly nine months, much of that in the Middle East in support of the Iran war President Trump started in February. Amid the latest uproar, another carrier is now rushing to replace it.

Troops know they can face long deployments during wars and upheavals. But it’s also the job of the Pentagon and the military services to manage their workforces competently and humanely. And Trump’s national-security team is a group of loyalist hacks who earn zero trust.

Pentagon boss Pete Hegseth is the worst Defense Secretary in history, as responsible as anybody for the Iran war debacle. The acting secretary of the Navy is Hung Cao, famous for a 2024 debate in which he criticized the Pentagon’s recruiting tactics and said, “What we need is alpha males and alpha females who are going to rip out their own guts, eat them and ask for seconds."

[Why Hegseth must go]

Trump and his lackeys are bringing down the once-vaunted US military. Democratic members of Congress are raising a stink, but they can’t force Trump to install competent people to run the world’s most complex bureaucracy. Expect this to get worse.

Breaking the military, Pt. 2. Trump isn’t just mismanaging the troops. He’s trashing the Pentagon’s hardware, as well.

On August 13, Trump ordered the Navy to revert to an old and outmoded means of launching jets from carriers on several ships under construction. Armchair Admiral Trump prefers steam catapults like those used on carriers after World War II. But the Navy replaced those years ago with electromagnetic catapults that are more efficient and require less upkeep. Going back to the old technology in the middle of production will add cost, delay deliveries, and degrade effectiveness.

Trump likes old, outdated things. He’s also badgering Congress for billions of dollars to build a new fleet of battleships named after himself. Virtually all of the world’s navies retired battleships in the 20th century because missiles and other long-range weapons made them obsolete. Trump wants billions of your taxpayer dollars to sate his own nostalgia. We are at Peak Farce, people.

[Hey Trump: Fire Hegseth]

ICE torture gloves. The Bad Idea Task Force at the Dept. of Homeland Security is working overtime. The department had the brilliant idea to equip immigration agents with electrified gloves that can deliver a non-lethal shock to targets of their cruelty. These gloves are already in use at some police departments and prisons, and the idea is to use them as a way to subdue a rowdy captive without a gun, taser, club, or other weapon that could be fatal. The gloves supposedly deliver an electric pulse to the skin that tweaks out the nerves in a matter of seconds and subdues the target. If you’ve ever used an electrostatic gizmo to treat a damaged muscle, imagine three or four times the maximum dose of juice from that.

This might make sense at a well-trained law enforcement agency that practices full transparency with maximum civilian oversight. The immigration agency isn’t that. ICE is the most retrograde agency in the federal government, responsible, under Trump, for numerous needless deaths, including the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Anybody who saw the videos of those crimes knows that ICE is a kind of Gestapo. They’ll find a way to abuse the shock gloves, as they’ve abused their authority in numerous other ways. These goons should be carrying plastic swords, not weapons.

Is that Melania? Since Trump’s first term, there have been suspicions that somebody resembling Melania Trump stands in for her at various times, when a wifely presence seems appropriate but she’s just not interested. The intrigue deepened recently when a White House aide named Margo Martin exited Air Force One with Trump (not via the catering truck🤣) and photographers mistook her for Melania. See for yourself:

Martin is just 31, while Melania Trump is 56. But Melania has probably de-aged herself, narrowing the gap. Martin’s hair and build also resemble Melania’s. So from a distance, behind sunglasses, yes, Martin could pass for Melania.

I’m not sure why this matters, but the gossip rags think it’s important. Use this knowledge to demonstrate your shrewd grasp of current events at your next cocktail party or barbecue.

[Check out the Weekly Matterboard to find out what news is worth your time]

More air-travel angst. Flight-tracking service FlightAware had a temporary legal showdown with prediction market Kalshi over flight cancellations. The litigation seems to be over, but it has highlighted something regular fliers ought to know about.

Kalshi offers bets on flight cancellations😦. For now, those bets are limited to systemwide stats, such as how many flights will get canceled in a given week or at a certain airport. There are no bets on the odds of any individual flight getting canceled. Kalshi originally listed FlightAware as the source it uses to verify the data and settle the bets.

FlightAware sued Kalshi on August 10, asking for unspecified damages and a ban on Kalshi’s use of its data. It withdrew the suit a day later. So there was some private agreement between the two companies.

Kalshi now says it settles the cancellation bets using data from “primary source agency”—but a link goes to FlightAware’s web site. So Kalshi is still using FlightAware’s data, just without saying so explicitly on its own site.

FlightAware may simply want its name to be stripped from the betting site, for the obvious reason that there’s something weird about people betting on canceled airline flights. There have been plenty of examples of insiders making bets on markets they can influence, and profiting from the outcome.

Could some aviation insider make a big bet on canceled flights, then gum up the air-traffic software or create an security scare that generates a winning bet? Probably, yeah. If or when it happens, FlightAware wants to make sure it’s not the target of traveler rage. Kalshi seems less concerned.

Burrito Wars. How much should a burrito cost? Be careful before you answer. Are you including the DoorDash delivery fee? Or making your own at home?

Political America has been arguing about burrito prices since a pro-Trump activist argued on social media recently that young people shouldn’t have to pay $20 for a burrito. The activist blamed outlandish burrito prices on—all together now—Joe Biden.

[The double-haters’ guide to the midterm elections]

A kerfuffle erupted. Some aghast responders argued that a burrito only costs $20 if you order some bougie version that DoorDash delivers. Kids these days! 🙄

Oldsters started kvetching about bratty Gen Zers who don’t know the value of a buck, recalling the ancient times when hard-working youth slept on couches and subsisted on ramen until they finally made it as arrogant pundits.

The media picked up on the urgent story, trying to divine a deeper meaning. It’s not about burritos. It’s really about entitlement affordability communism. Hold on … it’s really about … housing! Young people will never be able to afford a home and they know it, you see, so they have no incentive to save money and they don’t mind blowing whatever they have on extravagances.

But nobody answered the basic question, so I will. A burrito should cost $4 at a taco truck. That’s the best place to get one. At a sit-down restaurant, $12 is the ceiling, and that includes sides, chips and salsa. And yeah, DoorDash is for weenies.

Enjoy a cartoon.

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African migrant crisis coming to America. President Trump warned that thousands of African migrants would overtake the United States if Democrats ever regain power. That was Trump’s response to the migrant crisis in Ceuta, a Spanish territory in northern Africa where more than 50,000 migrants recently arrived from neighboring Morocco, many of them transported by trafficking gangs. The migrants are trying to escape poverty and hunger.

“That’s going to be us in three years if the wrong side gets in,” Trump told Fox News on July 31.

Does that make you feel terrified? You’re supposed to feel terrified. Please feel terrified.

Now, most of the migrants returned to Morocco because there was no food or housing for them in Ceuta. Plus, the Spanish authorities, caught by surprise at first, sent military troops to Ceuta to deal with the problem. But think about it: If the migrants can’t get into Europe, the next thing they’ll probably try to do is bob across the Atlantic, right to America. Somebody do something! 😧

Blanche checked. Trump can’t get his attorney general nominee confirmed because he won’t give up on his plan for a personal government slush fund and perpetual indemnity for tax fraud. You might recall, Todd Blanche, as acting attorney general, helped set up the $1.8 billion fund Trump would be able to use to make payments to loyalists. That deal would also have shielded Trump and his family from future tax prosecution. Bipartisan outrage ensued, and a federal judge voided the deal in mid-July.

[Check out The Weekly Matterboard: Missing Mitch Edition]

Several Republican Senators want Blanche to pledge, in writing, that he will never try to revive that corrupt deal. Blanche has said he won’t revive it—but he won’t put it in writing. A few Republicans say they won’t vote for Blanche until he does, and without those GOP holdouts, there aren’t enough Senate votes to confirm Blanche.

What’s going on? Trump clearly doesn’t want Blanche to put anything in writing, probably because he fully intends to give the slush fund another shot. Otherwise he’d tell Blanche, just do what they’re asking and get confirmed. By refusing to put the pledge in writing, Blanche is signaling that yeah, Trump is going to try it again.

For anybody keeping track, there are only three or four out of 53 Republican senators who even seem to care that the next attorney general may be planning something that is blatantly corrupt. All the others seem ready to approve Blanche and let him commit fraud. Anyway, if the Senate doesn’t confirm him, Blanche can continue in an acting capacity indefinitely. But he could face a lot more flak from Congress than a fully confirmed AG would.

[Kevin Warsh has bombed as the new Federal Reserve chair. See why]

Covid forever. Are you still stuck on Covid? Some members of Congress are, roughly five years after the nation emerged from the pandemic, hoping to forget all about it. That’s why we got the absurd spectacle of Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky holding a hearing featuring infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci, who invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times during a three-hour hearing, said virtually nothing, and even declined to answer when asked what color tie he was wearing.

What’s the point of this kind of crap? Paul is a strident libertarian who feuded with Fauci, the government’s Covid czar during the pandemic, over masking requirements and other restrictions. He wanted to grill Fauci on what may have been a change of view over how the Covid virusemerged in the first place. He also clearly wanted to embarrass Fauci. Paul published hundreds of pages of diary notes Fauci kept during the pandemic, including some in which the eminent physician preened about his fame and celebrity connections. Paul got the notes because Fauci kept them on a government computer, and Trump staffers discovered them.

Fauci retired from the government in 2022, at the age of 82. He repeatedly took the fifth during the July 29 hearing because he thought Paul and other critics would try to trick him into committing perjury, which the Trump administration could then prosecute. Fauci was probably right about that. So the ultimate outcome was, two giant egos faced off, accomplishing nothing.

[Trump’s approval rating is cratering. The data explains why]

For what it’s worth, scientists still aren’t sure how Covid originated—and a vindictive congressional hearing was never going to shed any light at all on the mystery.

Hedgefund.gov. The US government has obtained ownership stakes in at least seven additional companies, as Trump operates what is becoming a kind of government-run hedge fund. The new deal involves about $870 million in funding for stakes in seven tech companies. There are now 37 deals in which the Trump administration has bought stakes in private-sector companies or announced plans to. Prominent targets include US Steel, Intel, Westinghouse, GlobalFoundries, and IBM.

Many of these deals are financed using money from the 2022 CHIPS Act, which Congress never meant to be siphoned off for equity purchases in companies. The funding was mainly for grants and incentives to spur US-based technology development. Trump changed the program without Congressional approval.

This quasi-nationalization of certain companies has drawn bipartisan criticism because it’s likely to politicize decision-making at some private-sector businesses. It also distorts capitalism by giving Trump’s favored companies the advantage of too-big-to-fail status, thanks to their imposing government investor. Uncle Sam is badly overreaching under Trump.

[Stocks have been wild. See 5 market concerns]

Elon Musk poverty watch. The tech lord has lost half his net worth during the last six weeks. After his company SpaceX went public in mid-June, Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, with a net worth that peaked at $1.4 trillion. But after surging, SpaceX’s share price has plunged nearly 50% from its peak, with the value of Musk’s share of the company dropping by the same amount.

His other big company, Tesla, has been falling too, with that stock down 31% for the year. Musk’s net worth is now around $700 billion. For now, the world is trillionaireless.

China trumps America. An annual Pew Research survey finds that China now has a better reputation around the world than the United States. Once a year, Pew conducts a huge survey on global attitudes toward America. This year, in 25 of 36 countries, more people said they had a favorable view of China than a favorable view of the United States. In only six countries did the United States outrank China. In five others, views were split more or less equally.

China’s biggest fans are in Pakistan, Malaysia, Palestine, Indonesia, and Singapore. The United States is most popular in Israel, Japan, India, South Korea, and the Philippines. Canada and most European countries, including Spain, Italy, and France, now break toward China.

Something about the United States seems to have changed during the last year or two. In 2024, when Joe Biden was president, a median 47% of global respondents said they had confidence in the US president. Now that Trump is in the White House, only 21% say they have confidence in the US president. Can anybody connect the dots?

Enjoy a real cartoon.

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Trump raises taxes, again. Gasoline prices are back above $4 per gallon and inflation is once again a problem. If anybody in power could cut Americans a break, now would be a good time to do it.

President Trump has other ideas. He’s rolling out a whole new round of tariffs to replace the emergency duties the Supreme Court shot down in February. It’s almost impossible to keep up with the on-and-off-and-on-again Trump tariffs, but the upshot is that Trump has raised the average tax on imports from 2.7% when he took office to roughly 12%. By the end of the year, that will rise to around 13%.

The Yale Budget Lab says the Trump tariffs will cost the average household about $1,110 per year through higher costs and a less-productive economy. There’s virtually no payoff from the tariffs. The US trade deficit hasn’t changed, the manufacturing sector hasn’t grown, and the only sign of dynamism in the US economy comes from the AI buildout.

Nevertheless, he persists.

For those trying to keep score, the new set of tariffs puts a tax of 10% to 12.5% on most imports from 60 countries. These replace a temporary set of tariffs Trump rolled out when the emergency tariffs went away in February.

[Here’s the problem with Trump’s new tariffs]

The legal premise for the new tariffs is that these countries employ “forced labor” in some manner to produce the tariffed goods. It’s a plainly ridiculous pretext that could fail in court when the inevitable legal challenges arrive. But that could take a year or two, and ordinary Americans don’t get refunds for the higher prices they pay, even when Trump’s tariffs turn out to be illegal.

Does Trump care about Americans, even a little? He’s pushing tariff policies that nearly two-thirds of Americans oppose. His Iran war is deeply unpopular and his ratings on handling the economy are terrible. Tariffs über alles.

Iran war end date. Ha, made you look. There is no Iran war end date, but Michael Froman of the Council on Foreign Relations offers a thoughtful way to guess. He cites astrophysicist Richard Gott’s take on the Copernican Principle, which stipulates that there are even odds a random phenomenon will endure as long as it already has. If so, the Iran war, which began on February 28, might wrap sometime in December.

That tracks. Iran is intensely aware that the war is a huge loser for Trump, politically. They also know his Republican party may be facing a wipeout in the November midterm elections, due to the botched war and its ugly effect on the price of gasoline and many other things. And it’s self-evident from Trump’s own bombast that he doesn’t know how to get himself out of the mess he started.

[Democratic Socialists have an awful branding problem]

The Iranians could very well be aiming to keep harassing oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz until the US midterms, then try to make a deal. Froman sees three possible ways the war ends. You can find the full analysis here.

Money oopsie. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made a mistake about money. During a July 15 Fox News interview, Bessent pointed to some old silver and gold certificates depicted in a frame on a wall at the Treasury Dept. “If any of these are still outstanding,” he said, “the silver or gold for them is at Fort Knox waiting for them to be claimed.”

That’s not true, as a few gold bugs pointed out on social media. Gold redemption ended in 1934 and silver redemption ended in 1968. If you brought one of these certificates to Ft. Knox, they probably wouldn’t even let you in the front door.

You can trade in a gold or silver certificate at most banks for regular money in the same amount. But they’re probably worth more as collectibles.

[The double-haters’ guide to the midterm elections]

Does it matter that the Treasury Secretary got this wrong? He probably feels a bit foolish, like a pro infielder who lets a ground ball dribble between his legs. But Bessent counts as a relatively competent Cabinet member among the likes of Trump henchman Bill Pulte, problem drinker Kash Patel, and the punkish Pete Hegseth. We’re willing to cut him a break on this one.

Why the Elong face? Elon Musk has lost more than $600 billion in paper wealth in recent weeks and is no longer a trillionaire. That’s mainly because the stock values of his two biggest companies, SpaceX and Tesla, have hit the skids. Tesla’s share price has fallen 21% this year and shares of SpaceX, Musk’s biggest holding, are down 27% from the price they started trading at when the firm went public on June 12.

Musk’s net worth blew past $1.4 trillion shortly after SpaceX went public, when the stock peaked at $202 per share. That made him the world’s first trillionaire. It has since fallen to $118, with Musk’s net worth now around $740 billion. Eh. Easy come, easy go.

Musk is a complex figure who has alienated millions with his Trumpy political activism and controversial views. In the latest Muskstorm, an interviewer asked Musk if he’s anti-Muslim and he answered with a convoluted reference to “rape and murder” that made it sound as if, yes, he is anti-Muslim. The Economist, which conducted the interview, called Musk “plainly bigoted.”

[Check out The Weekly Matterboard, bad lettuce edition]

But Musk is also partly responsible for the striking turnabout in the Russian-Ukraine war, with Ukraine gaining a long-range strike advantage over Russia, for once. Musk’s SpaceX blocked Russian use of its Starlink Internet service in February, while Ukraine has continued to use it. That has turned into a big advantage for Ukraine. Sometimes Musk is on the right side.

Putin bombs. Military analysts are chuckling at recent efforts by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to gloss over his many reversals on the battlefield in Ukraine. The Kremlin recently released a goofy video of Putin supposedly visiting a command post somewhere near the front lines in Ukraine. But there are telltale signs it’s a fake, such as camouflage netting on the inside of the bunker and studio-style lighting.

“I could stage a better fake visit to the front,” Ryan Evans of War on the Rocks said on a recent podcast.”

“Zero stars awarded,” added Dara Massicot of the Carnegie Endowment for Intl. Peace.

As far as anybody knows, Putin has never visited Ukraine since his troops invaded in 2022. The Kremlin tends to crank up the propaganda when things are going badly, which they certainly are. Russians are fleeing the Crimean peninsula amid Ukrainian attacks, and waves of drones have been knocking out Russian energy facilities, causing fuel shortages in an energy-rich country. War is hell, especially when it backfires on you.

Enjoy a real cartoon.

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They just said no. Most of the major news networks ran other programming on their main broadcasts while President Trump delivered a prime-time address on July 16. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MS Now treated the speech as if it were a newsy curiosity, discussing Trump’s remarks as he made them but giving Trump himself little airtime. Only Fox News ran the speech in full.

Since Trump said in advance he was planning to talk about election fraud, the networks all knew he would gas on about cheating that never happened in 2020 and all the other bogus theories he has trotted out a million times before. That’s exactly what he did. The networks saved themselves a lot of fact-checking and denied Trump a platform for lying to millions of Americans about election integrity, which is actually quite good.

Trump got angry that most of the networks didn’t carry his speech, even though they’re not obligated to. He criticized ABC and NBC during the speech itself, and later threatened to revoke their over-the-air broadcast licenses. The networks have declined to carry other presidential speeches—by Joe Biden and Barack Obama, among others—without provoking any White House outcry at all. If you really want to trigger a bully, ignore him.

[Check out The Weekly Matterboard: News that’s actually worth your time]

Election theft heating up. Trump’s deranged-uncle act would be comical except he’s telegraphing what is likely to be an unprecedented federal effort to overturn opposition party gains in the 2026 midterm elections. Trump has been railing against Congress for its failure to pass the SAVE America election bill, which many critics characterize as voter suppression. Trump may have thought his July 16 speech would create momentum for passing that bill, but it didn’t. The bill can’t get past the Senate filibuster, which means the only way to pass it is to eliminate the filibuster, which even Republicans don’t want to do.

With the elections less than four months away and Republicans likely to lose at least one house of Congress, Trump’s minions at various federal agencies are likely to start working the system hard. The FBI has already sent an army of agents to intimidate election workers in Georgia. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says states that don’t “cooperate” with his department by sharing access to their voting systems will face consequences.

This is all crap. Cheating in federal elections is exceedingly rare and has probably been inconsequential since at least the days of Lyndon Johnson. States and cities don’t need Washington’s help running their elections. Trump and his goons are trying to taint legitimate elections because they know they’re going to lose. There’s a good chance they will try to block or overturn election results they don’t like. Expect November to be ugly.

[The double-haters’ guide to the midterm elections]

The White House opens an insider trading window. Trump’s media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, plans to let financial firms pay a fee of $100,000 per month to get early access to posts on its Truth Social platform. This is the outright sale of inside information for money-making purposes. Trading firms with blazing-fast computers can place trades in fractions of a second when computer algorithms think they detect something likely to move markets. Other social-media sites, such as X and Reddit, already offer faster access to posts, for a fee.

The difference is that those sites aren’t controlled by the president of the United States, who routinely moves markets with abrupt social-media announcements on tariffs, Iran war developments, regulatory actions, and specific companies he wants to reward or punish. Trump posts such market-moving announcements himself on a media platform he controls, and now he plans to sell market-moving news to the highest bidder. This is graft in plain sight.

In other graft news … A man named Gabriel Perez who has been a Trump aide for years, operating the teleprompter Trump uses to read speeches on TV, appears to be one of the Trump insiders winning bets on public betting markets because he had early information on something Trump was likely to say. Teleprompters run the words of a script across the same camera screen the person on camera is looking into, which is how TV people are able to read while looking straight out of the screen. Anybody working with a preloaded script would know what Trump was about to say. Prediction markets allow bets on whether public remarks by prominent figures will contain certain words or phrases. It’s so easy to game that, of course, somebody was going to rig it.

Betting market Kalshi apparently detected the fishy activity itself, and reported it to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. There were more than a dozen trades that netted the bettor more than $100,000. The White House says it has placed Perez on unpaid leave, pending an investigation. We think Trump will reverse himself and give Perez a medal, a raise, and a promotion, for actions completely consistent with the most visibly corrupt presidential administration in US history.

[Inflation is down, but going back up]

Beware “the Brush therein.” Trump plans to impose new tariffs on Canadian imports, to punish our northern neighbor for the wildfire smoke that has been polluting the air over much of the United States. Seems odd, given that no country has burned more of the carbon that has caused global warming, and set the conditions for out-of-control wildfires, than the United States. But we are not responsible for anything anymore here in the land of it’s-your fault-not-mine.

“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and the Brush therein,” Trump wrote on social media on July 17. “Cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying.” Soon, some lucky trading firms will get the word early and make money off of it.

[The Weekly WTF: Trump out-gaffes Biden]

Sky black. This is what the sky over Moscow looked like on July 18 after Ukrainian drones hit a nearby oil refinery. Ukraine has been mauling Russia’s energy infrastructure, to bring the war home to ordinary Russians. Looks like it’s working.

Thank you for your participation in this matter! Trump has won an Iran War Participation Trophy for partaking in the ongoing war with Iran. An artist collective known as Secret Handshake erected the 10-foot golden statue on the National Mall in Washington, DC, about half a mile from the White House. Trump might be able to see it while gazing at the reflecting pool to see how the algae are doing.

A White House spokesperson told Time that the statue is “ugly.” She might have been missing the point.

Overcompensating. Punkish Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon will test all uniformed servicemen 30 and older to make sure they have enough testosterone. That’s in response to widespread concerns among the troops that their testosterone might be deficient.

That’s a joke, nobody has even thought about servicemember testosterone levels except the ridiculous Hegseth. Was this guy forced to wear dresses as a kid, or something? Anyway, if your juice is low, the Pentagon will pay to top you off. Such treatments can cause side effects, such as lower sperm production, infertility and blood clots. But warriors ain’t afraid of no stinking blood clots! Kill harder!

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Will Trump seek retribution? He could order a US invasion of Belgium, which has had a hard time defending itself, historically. Or he could wage a trade war with Belgium. They export cocoa, pastries and some pretty good beer to the United States. Stock up.

Intimations of mortality. At the NATO summit gathering in Turkey on July 8, Trump told the world that Iran might assassinate him. “I may be gone, because I'm their No. 1 target,” Trump said.

That is almost certainly true. Iran is a terrorist state that would probably kill Trump if it could. It may have already tried. Iran would consider it justice for all the Iranian leaders the US and Israeli militaries killed after Trump launched the Iran war on February 28.

[Check out The Matterboard: What’s worth your time and what isn’t]

When a reporter asked Trump about this on Air Force One afterward, Trump said, “I’m No. 1 on their list. But if I go, you go.” He seemed to be referring to the plane itself, as if there were some Iranian effort underway to blow up or shoot down the president’s aircraft.

Something fishy is going on with Air Force One. Trump flew to Turkey on the refurbished jet Qatar gifted him, which the Air Force has retrofitted to comply with the president’s security and communication needs. But Trump flew out of Turkey on the old Air Force One, which was built from scratch to military specs. The two planes are both Boeing 747s, but they’re easy to distinguish. The old one has light blue livery, while the Qatari vintage has red.

Trump first told reporters they were taking the older version “for old time’s sake,” and also so the newer model could go to a US base in England, so servicemembers could take a tour. That seemed like a ruse, so the White House later said the plane switcheroo was part of a “misdirection” effort, as if bad guys were on Trump’s tail and the Secret Service needed to shake them. 🙄

More likely, the retrofitted plane lacks advanced security measures such as anti-missile defenses and aerial refueling capability, as the New York Times reported. The fact that Trump is discussing this publicly is a tell. It sounds like intelligence detected some threat to Trump in Turkey—which borders Iran—and briefed Trump on it. It could have been a plan to shoot down Air Force One. That’s probably why it was on his mind. Then the Secret Service decided they needed the old plane for maximum security.

Trump can fly around in his fancy free jet when he’s back home and the skies are safer.

[See how Trump is mimicking the socialist Mamdani]

Shinto Muslims. Trump said on July 8 that the “Islamic Republic of Japan” had fired 111 missiles at a US aircraft carrier. It was an obvious slip. He meant Iran, not Japan. But how does a brain substitute Japan for Iran? Because they sort of rhyme?

We’re calling it. Trump’s gaffes have surpassed Joe Biden’s impressive tally. Presidential age limits, anyone?

Trump ^💗 Zelensky? Trump may have finally realized he’s been backing the wrong side in the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump has sharply cut back on US aid to Ukraine, while repeatedly spouting Russian talking points meant to justify President Vladimir Putin’s barbaric invasion. But at the NATO summit on July 8, Trump said he supports Ukrainian strikes deep into Russia, aimed at dismantling Putin’s energy infrastructure. Trump also said he’d allow Ukraine to make Patriot interceptors, which it desperately needs to defend against Russian missile barrages. He also praised Ukrainians’ bravery and said more US military cooperation with Ukraine was possible.

[How the AI bubble could burst]

This is a stark change in posture for Trump. Maybe he somehow realized that Ukrainians are the good guys and Putin is the enemy. More likely, Trump has caught on that the tide of the war is turning in Ukraine’s favor—and he just wants to be aligned with the winning side.

Also: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shut off Russian access to the Starlink Internet service earlier this year, while Ukraine still has access. That has given Ukraine a big advantage in navigation and communications and helped with strikes that are wrecking Russia’s battlefield logistics. Trump and Musk are complex people, objectionable in many ways. But they could help Ukraine win if they wanted to. 🤞

Mitch mum. The staff of Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell is denying rumors that he’s dead. The Kentucky senator appears to have had a heart attack at his Washington, DC home in mid June, with emergency responders finding him unconscious. He’s been in the hospital ever since, and hasn’t said anything publicly.

If McConnell dies or vacates his seat, an interesting drama could develop over who replaces him. Normally, a state’s governor would appoint a replacement to serve the remainder of the term. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is a Democrat, so he’d likely appoint one of his own, which would cut the Republican majority in the Senate from three to two.

[More WTF: Icky presidential bedroom]

But Kentucky’s overwhelmingly Republican legislature passed a law in 2024 saying that if anything happens to McConnell, his seat is to remain vacant until the next election. That was a blatant effort to prevent Bashear from appointing a Democrat, as McConnell’s health worsened. The law may be unconstitutional and Beshear could challenge it by appointing a McConnell replacement and sending the whole matter to the courts.

McConnell is retiring, and two other candidates are running for his seat. So a Beshear appointee would have a very brief tenure. But if a Democrat takes the job, even for a short spell, the power of incumbency could help in the November election. Another Democrat could also scramble a few Senate votes into 2027, when the November winner would take office. Beshear is a possible presidential contender and would probably welcome the opportunity.

SpaceX, wink wink. More than a dozen Wall Street analysts published their first recommendations on Elon Musk’s rocket company this week, and the average target price is $242 per share, according to S&P Global. The highest estimate is $800 per share, from Raymond James. The stock meanwhile, trades at around $147, 37% lower than the Wall Street target price. And it’s down 27% from its peak on June 16, which was two days after SpaceX went public.

Target prices are typically forecasts for what analysts think the stock will trade at in 12 months. So SpaceX could grow into the Wall Street consensus. But Wall Street critics argue the price targets are inflated by investment banks eager to please the company and get a chunk of future business. As a reminder, Morningstar—which is a research firm, not an investment bank—values SpaceX at just $63 per share.

Musk clearly favors the stratospheric view. On July 9, he said on social media that “SpaceX will be worth more than the rest of Earth if we accomplish our goals.” If you believe that, add 10 or 20 zeroes to that $800 target.

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Cryptobrohaha. President Trump made more than $2 billion in 2025, increasing his net worth by roughly one-third in a single year. It wasn’t from presidential pay. Most of that money came from crypto ventures he and his family formed after Trump won a second presidential term in 2024. Trump made money by licensing his name and likeness to meme coins that other people buy and selling stakes in his companies to others. Many critics see these businesses as pump-and-dump schemes peddling bogus assets as a way of collecting tribute from wealthy people seeking presidential favors.

Did crypto investors share Trump’s success in 2025? Um … no, it’s more like they just gave Trump their money. The Trump memecoin spiked in value for a couple of days after it launched on January 17, 2025, kind of like a hot IPO. Insiders who bought early and sold during the frenzy made bank. But the coin quickly tanked, and most of the people who bought the coin lost money. If you bought at the peak, by the end of 2025, you were down 97%. Analysts estimate buyers of the coin lost around $4.5 billion. Some of that went right into Trump’s pocket.

[If the AI bubble bursts, it might look like this]

Even bitcoin, the most established cryptocurrency, has lost value under Trump. Crypto bros backed Trump in 2024, because he promised looser rules for crypto and other ways to make it more mainstream. Bitcoin surged for a while in 2024, but ended the year down 7.5%. It has since plunged in value, and is now 35% lower than it was at the start of 2025. The Trump crypto pump seems to have run its course. Trump rarely talks about crypto anymore. He made his killing, mission accomplished.

Trash of the United States. Trump’s bedroom is a mess, according to a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. They report that Trump leaves junk food wrappers scattered about while noshing at night, and stains the carpet with spilt food. Trump also has carpeted bathrooms, they say, which grosses people out because carpets can get defiled with bathroom fluids (🙄). Haberman and Swan imply that Trump is kind of a pig.

When I see stories like this, it makes me wonder who is leaking (sorry, groan) and why. Is it current or former housekeeping staff at the White House or Mar-a-lago? Or are Trump’s sloppy personal habits an open secret among his inner circle? If somebody is trying to embarrass him, why? Could it be Melania? Is the bathroom carpet really a problem, like does it regularly rot away? And will presidential historians be studying this in 50 years?

[America 250 isn’t as grim as it seems]

Election goons. The FBI is rushing several hundred agents to Georgia to investigate election fraud that never happened. It’s all part of Trump’s fixation on his 2020 loss to Joe Biden in the state. Is the FBI going there to plant evidence and claim Trump won? Maybe. But this is probably about the 2026 midterms, with Trump and his crony thugs running the FBI trying to intimidate election workers and possibly set the stage for Trump to cheat in November, when Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff faces a Trump-backed challenger. Trump’s megalomania would be comical if he weren’t vastly abusing federal power in the service of his fragile ego.

Birthright ruckus. The latest emergency among extremist Republicans is the Supreme Court’s appalling refusal to overturn birthright citizenship, which has been enshrined in the Constitution since 1868. The court killed a Trump order that would have limited birthright citizenship to certain people, so now some fringier members of the party are talking about legislation that might do the job.

[The Trump economy is barely improving]

One idea is to ban pregnant women from entering the country, just in case they’re coming here to give birth on American soil. How would that work? Declare your pregnancy status at customs? Would there be physical exams and pregnancy tests to make sure nobody’s lying? And Trump’s ever-trusty customs agents are going to handle this? Will they shoot pregnant women who step out of line?

It’s a dumb idea that can’t die fast enough.

Sweaty socialists. With temperatures in New York City soaring toward 100°, mayor Zohran Mamdani urged city residents to conserve energy and set their air conditioners at 78°.

Wrong temperature! He should have said 68°, or maybe 58°.

Republicans immediately attacked Mamdani:

• “The Social Democrats are coming for your AC.” (Sen. Lindsey Graham)

• “This is communism at work.” (Sen. Rick Scott of Florida)

• It’s “an act of war against women in menopause.” (Rep. Nancy Mace)

• “Telling New Yorkers to set their air conditioning at 78 degrees is an open admission of the failure of the left.” (Windbag Newt Gingrich)

Funny, though, the federal government’s own guidelines for AC say to set it at 78°. Many states recommend the same thing, including Trumpy-red Texas and Florida. Maybe they don’t get heat waves there.

At least it wasn’t an obituary. Did you hear that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is retiring? He isn’t, but NPR published a story on June 30 saying that he was. Famed Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg told her editors Alito was retiring because somebody at the Supreme Court told her there was a retirement announcement and she assumed it was Alito. So NPR published an Alito profile she had prewritten in anticipation of his farewell.

[Tech inflation is now a problem]

The story was only live for five minutes and Totenberg apologized to Alito, plus NPR fully explained itself. So they made amends. Still, this is a journalist’s nightmare scenario. I’ve made published mistakes, and you endure a kind of panic until making the correction. Then you sulk for awhile, feeling stupid.

That’s for small mistakes. This was one the entire journalism world noticed. Somebody obviously cut corners at NPR, but the underlying problem is the rush to be first with a story, which can be a perverse incentive that forces hasty and incomplete reporting. Most people don’t care who’s first, they just want a timely and trustworthy account.

There’s been a lot of speculation about Alito retiring this year after the court’s term ends, which it just did. It would be kind of funny if he retired sometime soon and Totenberg turned out to be right, just premature. Would NPR publish the same Alito retrospective some readers already got a glimpse of? Or does she have to start all over and write a fresh one, to make it seem spontaneous?

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“The pool monologues.” That’s the Internet’s new sobriquet for President Trump’s regular harangues against the algae that keep fouling the reflecting pool on the National Mall that Trump is trying to clean up. Trump hosted NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office on June 24, and the biggest newsmaker from the session wasn’t the Ukraine war or the future of NATO or the Iran situationship, but the status of the algae and who might be abetting the algae in its vile scheme to drive Trump mad.

The upside to this scandal is that we’re all getting an overdue education on these plucky little organisms. For instance: This is why Trump can’t defeat the algae. Here’s why the algae turn everything green. This is why Trump attacked the algae at the wrong time of the year. Here’s an argument for leaving the algae alone and turning the reflecting pool into a huge aquarium, with fish and everything. And if you’re wondering if the algae is a metaphor for Trump’s entire presidency, well, many serious commentators can verify that yes, it is.

[Trump v. Trump: Why the first Trump economy was better.]

Aya-toll. Iran is firming up plans to charge tolls for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz by copying the way Turkey charges fees for passage through the Dardanelles Strait, which a 1936 treaty allows. The Wall Street Journal reports that Iran could earn $40 billion per year in fees for “security, safety and environmental services,” and that Iran is offering to share some of this bounty with other Persian Gulf nations, to get them to buy in.

You might be wondering, hold on, was new money for Iran one of the goals of the war Trump launched against Iran on February 28? Well, it wasn’t then, but maybe it is now. Trump is desperate to end his Iran misadventure. Nobody supports this slipshod war any more, and Trump’s own Republicans are turning on him. With oil and gas prices now falling back toward normal ranges, there’s basically no chance Trump will face down Iran again and risk another energy crisis.

The combative algae and the defiant Iranians have conspired to drive Trump’s approval ratings to new all-time lows in the 30-percent range. The algae will probably retreat once fall arrives and the weather cools down. Iran will remain a menace for years, and future presidents will have to deal with the mess Trump leaves behind.

[Remember the Mag 7 trade? It’s now a bust]

No housing for you! I was getting ready to write an explainer of the housing-affordability bill Congress just passed, which is a rare bipartisan effort that might actually do some good. But Trump is standing in the way. Congress passed the bill on June 23, but the next day Trump said he wouldn’t sign it. He’s not vetoing the bill. What he’s doing is trying to hold the government hostage by blocking everything he can until Congress passes a janky election law, misleadingly called the SAVE America Act. Critics characterize the bill as a voter-suppression effort.

The SAVE America Act has passed the House, but all Senate Democrats oppose it, which means there’s no way it can get past the filibuster. So Trump is pressuring Senate Republicans to scrap the filibuster, in order to get it passed. They don’t want to.

Most Americans are not clamoring for a voter-suppression law. Many do want relief from high prices, including housing, which is the biggest monthly bill for most families. Trump will probably sign the housing bill, even if the delay means Congress has to pass it again. But he’s giving Democrats a gift by taking a stance against affordable housing, if only for a spell. And this comes after Trump said on camera on June 10, “I love the inflation.” Americans have peculiar tastes in presidents.

Shutdown, sure, why not. Imagine that your regular airline said it might shut down for a while in the fall. Or Amazon or Walmart or Netflix. It might be days or weeks, who knows. Sorry, customers, you’ll have to do without.

[Are you better off than one year ago? Our Better-Off Index has the answer]

Well that’s what Congress is signaling. Disputes over spending bills needed to keep the government operating after Sept. 30 are already so severe that members of both political parties are warning of a government shutdown just before the November midterm elections.

The death penalty seems a bit too severe for politicians who can’t keep the government open. But jail time might be appropriate? Fines? Hefty community service requirements, like cleaning trash off the Cross-Bronx Expressway for a couple of months? Whichever candidate makes this part of her 2028 presidential campaign gets my vote.

Is this thing on? When Trump signed an executive order on quantum computing on June 22, he stumbled while trying to read the words “quantum cryptography,” then asked a group assembled in the Oval Office, “does anybody know what that is?” You can watch brief clips here or here. Ask yourself if Trump has any idea what he’s signing, and if he doesn’t, who drafted the quantum cryptography order? Then send me your best joke about Joe Biden’s autopen.

[Here’s the real issue with the SpaceX IPO]

Can you spare some gas, brother? Russia, normally one of the world’s largest exporters of petroleum products, is running so short of gasoline that it’s quietly trying to import 50,000 tons of gasoline from Kazakhstan. That’s about one tanker full of gasoline, or 18 million gallons. More could follow.

Normally, nobody would care. But Ukraine is battering Russia’s energy infrastructure to the point that domestic shortages are developing in a fossil-fuel colossus, which is remarkable considering that Ukraine had essentially no long-range strike capability when Russia invaded in 2022. Now, Ukraine is wrecking refineries and other facilities in Moscow and elsewhere, with some of the world’s most advanced drones.

I provide updates on the Ukraine war from time to time because nobody should zone out on the biggest European conflict since World War II. Also, if life in America is bumming you out, it’s a good reminder that it could always be worse.

Solar power ^🌞. Here’s an upbeat WTF. The Energy Information Administration says electricity consumption from the grid in New York state is declining because of all the solar panels people are installing at the household level. Nobody tracks the amount of solar power generated home-by-home, because it never enters the grid. But household solar installation is up in New York and springtime demand for metered electricity declined this year, which EIA attributes to solar. As a wintry northeast state, New York isn’t what you think of as a solar hotbed. But as the cost of solar equipment declines, homeowners do the math and decide solar makes sense.

Trump’s atavistic hostility toward renewable energy hasn’t killed it. Even though Trump and his fellow Republicans axed most of the green-energy incentives Biden signed into law, most new power generation in the United States is still solar and other renewables. It’s a good example of how progress continues even with troglodytes in charge. Once Trump is out of the way, renewables will rise again.

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Iran … won? That’s the conclusion of a wide spectrum of pundits and analysts now that President Trump has signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Iran to end the war Trump launched on February 28. Here’s a sampling:

“Iran is a bigger defeat than Vietnam” (Foreign Policy)

“Iran has Trump ‘by the balls’” (news site Zeteo)

“Trump’s MOU: Surrender on paper, spin on cable” (Economist Brad DeLong)

“Hawks lament disaster on Iran” (The Hill)

“America has lost its war with Iran” (The Independent)

“Iran wins” (former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley)

A lot of this criticism comes from Trump’s fellow Republicans, who are dismayed that Trump seems to be giving Iran a pathway to rebuild its wrecked military, maintain its nuclear weapons program, resume oil sales, and basically carry on as the same terror-sponsoring bunch of thugs they’ve been for decades.

The MOU, which is not in itself a peace deal, does the following, assuming both sides abide by it:

• Ends the fighting

• Reopens the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days

• Ends the US blockade of Iran, meaning Iranian oil exports resume

• Glides over Iran’s nuclear weapons program

• Lifts all sanctions on Iran

• Unfreezes all Iranian assets

• Establishes the possibility of a $300 billion reconstruction fund to help Iran rebuild from the war

Is this a better deal for the United States than if there had been no war at all? What an inconvenient question. Without the war, sanctions on Iran would remain, Iranian assets would still be frozen, the Strait of Hormuz never would have been closed, and there would have been no energy crisis or resurgence of inflation. Trump doesn’t want you to think about any of this because his war looks like a debacle that could end up empowering Iran without making the United States better off.

But the reality of the MOU is that it’s mostly a fig leaf allowing both sides to avert looming economic disaster, with months or years of haggling ahead. Iran’s not going to give up its nuclear weapons program, but it probably doesn’t want to endure another withering aerial attack by the United States and Israel. So the nuclear material buried under rubble will probably just stay there for a while.

Trump has to get oil and gasoline prices down before real shortages start to wreak havoc. The $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran will probably never materialize. The 60-day deadline for an actual peace deal will probably get extended indefinitely, maybe for the rest of Trump’s presidency.

It’s an epic failure for Trump, who failed to anticipate the asymmetric leverage Iran’s overmatched theocracy could gain by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Trump looks like an idiot and so does his Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth.

But worse than Vietnam? You’ve got to be kidding me. That war killed nearly 60,000 Americans and as many as 4 million Vietnamese civilians. It wrecked American power and prestige for nearly three decades. The US-Iran war was one man’s arrogant folly, entailing 13 American deaths and probably hundreds of dead Iranian civilians. It’s a tragic screw-up, but not an enduring national nightmare for the United States.

Markets, meanwhile, are overjoyed at the end of hostilities, even if Iran will live to terrorize another day. Oil and gasoline prices are heading back toward pre-war levels and stocks are rising. Iran’s rising stature as a survivor of American bombardment could still roil the Middle East. But if gas prices drop back to $3, most Americans don’t really have to care. Trump, meanwhile, probably hopes the next president who has to deal with a belligerent Iran isn’t him.

Library smackdown. Barack Obama’s presidential library opened June 19 in Chicago, and Trump can’t stand it. He’s been trashing the library on social media after calling it a “disaster” last year, well before it opened. A presidential-library expert told the Washington Post, “a president taunting another president about his library isn’t something that has previously happened.” Another first for Trump!

The current president plans to install his library in a 47-story skyscraper in Miami, with the number of floors matching the rank of the president. Wait, sorry, 47 matches the chronological rank of Trump’s presidency, not the qualitative rank. But it might end up representing Trump’s qualitative rank, as well.

One unique feature of Trump’s library will be a hotel, so you can stay for a week or a month if you really want to bask in Trump’s presidency. When you go, make sure to allot plenty of time for the Iran war display.

Make Algae Great Again. How much do you normally think about the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC? Never? Me too. Until now. Trump decided to “fix” the pool by giving two friendly firms no-bid contracts to paint the bottom of the pool blue and get rid of algae that has been a nuisance in the stagnant water for nearly 100 years. But the algae is back, the new blue paint is already flaking off, and everybody who visits the DC monuments now checks out the pool to see how the algae is doing.

The algae is triumphant. Federal workers are still pumping fetid green water out of the pool. Imagery companies are now training satellite cameras on the pool to document how the algae flummoxes federal workers trying to scrape it off the bottom and kill it with hydrogen peroxide. Trump has blamed his predecessor Joe Biden for the “filthy” state of the reflecting pool, but the algae seem apolitical. Maybe Trump should sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the algae.

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