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Here’s another video I recommend to you, following up on the shipping one from last night but on a different topic. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s office sent out the video this afternoon. It’s a speech the Senator gave on the Senate floor this afternoon. It’s about Trump, Russia and Jeff Epstein. Among other things it reminds us of how Bill Barr bamboozled most of the US press into thinking the Mueller investigation came up empty on Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia. But this is a broader story. The speech runs almost an hour long. But it’s worth it. There’s so many details in the speech it defies easy summary. The best overview is to think of all the ways Donald Trump was and is connecting to the Russia government and the oligarch para-government. Whitehouse then shows that Jeff Epstein is right there at almost every point of contact. It’s a mix of old information, new reporting and a pretty close analysis of emails in the Epstein Files that wouldn’t really jump out at you on their own but become quite interesting when lined up with other outside information which places them in context. Whatever that ‘thing’ is Epstein is just as tied up in it as Trump and at a lot of points he seems to be a connecting tie. You can watch the speech after the jump.
Humiliation is Donald Trump’s calling card. It’s the other side of domination. It’s an expression of domination. When I heard the news today of Noem’s ouster, which has certainly been telegraphed for weeks, it seems exquisitely Trump that he allowed her to go to Capitol Hill and get pressed on the entirely predictable question of whether she is having sex with her notional top aide — Corey Lewandowski — when she had only one day left on the job.
We’re on Day Three of this year’s Annual TPM Membership Drive. It’s simple. If you’re not already a member we need you to sign up and become a member of our community.
That’s what allows us to publish this site for you every day. There’s no big corporation behind us that makes this possible. It’s just our readers. And we need our active readers to become members. Please click right here and join us.
We’ve been getting reportsallmorning that Trump is about to fire DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and has been asking around about what various allies think of the idea.
Just minutes ago, he broke the news on Truth Social (where else?) that Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) will take over for Noem, “effective March 31, 2026.” Presumably that means he is Trump’s nominee to be Senate-confirmed.
Noem will be shuffled into a new “special envoy” position.
Here’s another post following up on the earlier one about free passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the pinched off little turn in the Persian Gulf where the waterway is at its narrowest. On Bluesky, in response to my earlier post, one user pointed me to this video, a daily ~30 minute update on a YouTube channel called What’s Going on With Shipping.
I want to start by stating clearly the basis upon which I’m sharing this video. I’d never heard of the channel before a couple hours ago. It’s run by a guy named Sal Mercogliano who says he’s a former merchant mariner and historian who teaches maritime history and also consults on the topic. In other words, he appears to be a merchant shipping and tanker professional/nerd. And he runs this shipping news channel. I can’t independently vouch for his credibility. However, I watched today’s episode and a number of factors — subscriber count, reliance on credentialed news articles and industry data sources, tone, meticulousness and more — make me think that it’s at least legit enough to get a beginning overview of the situation in the Gulf. I found it fascinating. It reminds me — sadly — of reporting on the supply chain breakdowns at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. You suddenly had to come up to speed on the complex but to most of us little-understood world of global supply chains, the underbelly and machinery of how the modern interconnected world actually runs.
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