Sarah Schmidt

Let’s be very clear about what’s happening here. This isn’t about ‘righting a wrong’. This is about the next wrong they want them to do. This is setting up the next sedition.

It's next level insane that someone like Eric Swalwell knew about all the skeletons in his own closet and still decided to run for Governor? How delusional are these people that they don't think this shit will come up?

Hungary under Orbán was essentially operating as a pass-through for Russian oil money to fund the international far right. That's ending now.

Being mad that the Pope won't endorse your war is like being mad that your doctor won't endorse your cocaine habit.

Amazing bit of reporting by Cokie Roberts that has stuck with me: Her discovery of a letter from Louisa Adams detailing how members of Congress left behind *40 pregnant mistresses* after the extra-long session of 1820, necessitating more orphanage space--> archives.gov/files/about/ar…

A massive shift among young voters in polling. 2024 Presidential Estimates: 🔴 Ages 18–22: R+2 🔵 Ages 23–29: D+6 2026 Generic Ballot (@YalePolling): 🔵 Ages 18–22: D+23 🔵 Ages 23–29: D+30

EXCLUSIVE: Behind the scenes, the Trump administration has been wielding its vast power to transform the midterm elections. This is the untold story of Trump’s efforts to, as he has called it, “take over” the midterms.

There is no better example of how the fight against Trump & MAGA is a battle between good & evil than the septuagenarian drug addict and life long sexual predator picking a fight with the Pope during a Sunday night Adderall binge. God help us all.

‘Bradley was revolted; Patton withdrew to vomit; Eisenhower, his face frozen white, forced himself to examine every nook and cranny of the camp’

The king is angry with the Pope and the citizenry is spreading easily preventable diseases, what year is it

🎯 Apologists trying to credit Orbán for conceding are intentionally missing the point. He would’ve done anything to stay in power had he thought it possible. Hungarians made it impossible. Trying & failing to destroy democracy receives no credit. He didn't stop; he was stopped.

Master Herbie Hancock's 86th birthday is a great reason to share some of my favorites of his performances with you on tonight's WRFL(dot)fm's #Jazz show Sun 6-8pmET playback on demand at the site. Here's the list and Hancock with his Shelby Cobra photo by Joseph Puhy

@anneapplebaum Orban’s Vance Hail Mary may go down as one of the dumbest political moves by any politician ever.

Finally, Hungary will be sovereign, no longer a vassal of Russia.

Yep. By abandoning the JCPOA and then once again by starting this war, Trump has completely negated and inverted the incentives the Iranian regime once had to negotiate with us. They once understood that refraining from producing HEU and interfering with navigation of the Strait would avert the cost of being subjected a large-scale air attack. But now that we've conducted that attack, and they've withstood it, they have virtually no incentive to refrain from doing the things we want them to refrain from doing. Which is why we negotiated the JCPOA in the first place, and why no prior American administration (from Reagan to Trump I) ever decided to start the war that Trump started last month.

This was so inevitable and the Trump Administration can do nothing to stop it. Clownshow.

US intelligence indicates that China is preparing to provide Iran with air defense systems in a matter of weeks, CNN reported. Beijing is expected to ship shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles known as Man-Portable Air Defense Systems. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

The New York Times reported on April 10, citing US officials, that Iran has been unable to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz because it cannot locate all of the naval mines it laid in the waterway and lacks the capability to remove them. The IRGC used small boats to plant mines haphazardly during the early weeks of the war. Many locations were never recorded. Some mines have drifted from their original positions. Iran does not have a complete map of what it put in its own water. When Foreign Minister Araghchi said on April 8 that safe passage through Hormuz would be possible “with due consideration of technical limitations,” US officials now confirm he was not being diplomatic. He was being literal. The technical limitation is that Iran mined its own strait and lost track of where the mines are. Iran published a chart on April 9 through Tasnim and ISNA showing a large circle marked “danger zone” covering the standard shipping lanes, with two alternative IRGC-controlled routes around Larak Island. This is the chart of a country directing traffic around its own weapons because it cannot guarantee the weapons will not detonate under the traffic it is trying to collect tolls from. The toll system, the IRGC coordination, the escort protocol, the VHF passcode, all the infrastructure built to monetize the chokepoint exists because Iran cannot simply reopen the chokepoint. The tollbooth is not leverage. The tollbooth is a workaround for a self-inflicted minefield. Richard Meade, editor-in-chief of Lloyd’s List, described the situation during an April 10 webinar: “As of this morning, the Strait of Hormuz remains both open and closed, depending on your position, both geographically and geopolitically. It is, if you like, Schrödinger’s Strait.” Traffic on April 10 stood at 7 to 18 ships per day, with only 2 to 4 tankers, against a pre-war baseline of roughly 140 daily. Over 1,000 vessels are queued outside the strait, including 187 tankers carrying an estimated 172 million barrels of stalled crude. The backlog alone would take weeks to clear even if every mine vanished overnight. And the capacity to clear mines does not exist on either side. The US Navy decommissioned its last dedicated Avenger-class minesweepers before the war. It now relies on Littoral Combat Ship mine countermeasures modules that have never been tested at this scale. The Royal Navy withdrew its last mine countermeasures vessel, HMS Middleton, from the Gulf in early 2026 and transported it home on a heavy-lift ship because it could not make the voyage under its own power. The West dismantled its mine-clearing capability months before the war that required it. Trump demanded “complete, immediate, and safe opening” of the strait as the ceasefire condition. Vance is flying to Islamabad to negotiate terms that require a physical outcome neither side can deliver. Iran cannot find the mines. The US cannot sweep them. The UK sent its last minesweeper home on a cargo ship. And the ceasefire that was supposed to reopen 20 percent of the world’s oil supply is hostage to weapons that are drifting silently through a strait that nobody fully controls. The most honest phrase in the entire ceasefire was “technical limitations.” It just took the New York Times to decode what it meant. The mines are still there. The talks start tomorrow. And 20 percent of the world’s oil is waiting on a map that does not exist. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Reminder that under Obama's Iran Deal the Iranians shipped 98 percent of their enriched uranium out of the country - without a pointless and devastating war.