Podbit · The Rest Is Politics
Despite topping national polls, Reform UK has now lost three consecutive parliamentary by-elections — to Plaid in Caerphilly, the Greens in Gordon and Denton, and Labour in Makerfield. The money scandals, Russia links, and Tory retreads like Jenrick and Braverman are capping Farage's ceiling.
Fitness influencer Connor Murphy died at 32 in Thailand after repeatedly dosing ayahuasca alone every two hours, painting himself, fleeing police, and drowning in a lake. His final video — hair wild, playing with his tongue — is genuinely disturbing.
Over 100 people collapsed from heat exhaustion and 30 were hospitalized while standing outside waiting for the historic Big Boy steam locomotive to roll through Pennsylvania. There were no deaths, just a field of passed-out train nerds.
One of the Big Boy's stops was Nate Marshall's hometown of Reading, PA — literally the Reading Railroad from Monopoly. The line hasn't run through there in his lifetime, making the event a genuine civic moment that happened to kill nobody but hospitalize dozens.
Iran struck at least seven commercial ships in a single week, leaving nearly a dozen crew members killed, wounded, or missing. The US has reinstated a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, with Trump demanding full control — a goal that military analysts say would require eliminating Iran's drone and missile capabilities.
The US has now launched four rounds of strikes on Iranian military sites, and Iran is threatening to block the Bab El Mandeb Strait — a chokepoint that could halt Middle East oil exports entirely. Trump also walked back a proposed 20% fee on Hormuz shipping after Gulf allies pushed back.
After an ICE officer shot and killed a Colombian national in Maine — the second such deadly shooting in barely a week — the Trump administration ordered ICE to halt most vehicle stops. DHS policy bars use of deadly force solely to prevent flight unless the person poses a significant threat, but a former ICE chief counsel notes the threshold is always judged from the officer's perspective.
Full US control of the Strait of Hormuz would require eliminating Iran's ability to fire drones and missiles at commercial ships. Analysts say that means tripling or quadrupling current US strike rates for weeks — and even then, ship owners and insurers would have to decide if the risk was low enough.
Iran is not just targeting commercial ships — it's also striking US bases in Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. Those countries say their defenses have knocked out the missiles so far, but the scale of the confrontation is far wider than a simple maritime blockade.
The US is currently steering ships along a safer southern path near Oman, but Iran is targeting that route too, demanding ships use its own approved corridor near the Iranian shoreline. Analysts say the US may ultimately have to physically escort commercial ships, just as it did during the Iran-Iraq tanker war of the 1980s.
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