Oil at $110, JD Vance's Disastrous Town Hall, and Trump's Bet on Bibi

The episode opens with a startling detail: the UK Maritime Trade Operations, a voluntary reporting system that has been the primary way the public tracks vessel strikes in the Persian Gulf, has gone 96 hours without reporting a single normal vessel being hit — even as video evidence shows multiple ships on fire or disabled. Analyst Brett Erickson estimates that somewhere between three to seven vessels per day are being struck by Iran, regardless of what gets reported. The implication is that the United States is pressuring companies and countries to suppress information about the true scale of attacks, a joint project between imperial interests and the capitalist class who want to keep insurance rates from skyrocketing ahead of the midterms.

The Expanding War in the Gulf

Brent oil touched $110 a barrel on Friday and sat at $101 as of Monday morning, with national gas prices at $4.30 and diesel at $6.31 — only 20 cents off an all-time high. The State Department has issued a travel advisory warning Americans in the Middle East to exercise "heightened vigilance" due to potential flight cancellations, airspace closures, and the risk that Iran and its proxies "may target other US interests overseas or at locations associated with the United States and Americans throughout the world."