“On October 9 in the afternoon, President Donald Trump said on Truth Social that he had struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, arranging deliveries of diesel fuel to the United States and world markets. Trump said that Russia would immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by an additional 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons ‘immediately thereafter’. Russia will deliver an additional 3 million tons ‘within a short period of time after that’, Trump said. … The announcement triggered outrage in Kiev, with Zelensky condemning the U.S. and Trump personally. Zelensky said it was ‘definitely unfair’, ‘definitely not partner-like’, and ‘a weak decision by strong partners’, effectively portraying it as a stab in the back. The Trump administration had been openly asking Kiev and Zelensky not to launch attacks against Russian refineries, but Kiev rejected the American requests.” (10/12/26)
“Demanding the resignation of a minister is one thing. It is uncomfortable for a government, occasionally embarrassing for a prime minister, but ultimately manageable. Ministers can be sacrificed and their departures can be presented as accountability, and governments can move on. Demanding the resignation of the chief election commissioner is quite another matter and for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the difference could hardly be more consequential. The latest wave of protests in New Delhi centers on allegations of widespread voter manipulation through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and other suspected electoral irregularities, with demonstrators demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.” (10/12/26)
“Last month, the White House announced that the United States and China had ‘operationalized’ their new Board of Trade. The working procedures, however, say remarkably little about how the board is actually supposed to operate. Years of tariff disputes between Washington and Beijing have produced many announcements. The Board of Trade is the newest one. Tariffs and other forms of trade restrictions have been a largely ineffective strategy against China.” (10/12/26)
“Three decades before he was first elected president, Donald Trump had big plans for a 26-acre building site near the South Street Seaport in Manhattan. … He imagined a 150-story structure, including offices, apartments, and a hotel, that would be 1,940 feet high, surpassing Chicago’s Sears Tower, then the world’s tallest building, by nearly 500 feet. Paul Gapp, the Chicago Tribune‘s architecture critic, did not think much of that plan. … ‘The world’s tallest tower would be one of the silliest things anyone could inflict on New York or any other city.’ Trump was indulging in ‘Guinness Book of World Records architecture,’ Gapp said. … Trump did not like what Gapp said. And according to Trump, Gapp had no right to his opinion. Two months after the Tribune published Gapp’s column, Trump sued him and the newspaper for defamation.” (10/11/26)
“[A]fter nearly five years of fighting, Europeans are running out of options, which is why the debate is circling back again to an idea proposed and rejected several times in the past—leveraging the Russian Central Bank assets held in European financial institutions. Europeans—both nation-states and the European Union—have tried just about everything else.” (10/12/26)
“It is in downright soul crushing times like these that the little things become lifesaving. I speak as a learned student of several years of intensive trauma therapy when I say that self-care is a martial art when you are this fucked up. I have my chocolate and my candles and my dreary lesbian rock music but, as bizarre as it might sound, when all feels fucked, I prep, and I’m not talking about HIV. When I say I prep, I mean I prep like a millenarian militia fiend with tits during the run-up to Y2K. … amidst all this doom and gloom and camouflage, I find peace or at least something vaguely resembling it.” (10/11/26)
“Inside the 15th Street Quaker Meeting House on Sunday, October 4, a score of bright-colored paintings depicting Native American heritage and activism were displayed at the center of the worship space. Those paintings, a selection of works by the 82-year-old Indigenous activist and elder Leonard Peltier, drew dozens and then hundreds of people to the venue for an afternoon with members of Peltier’s family, longtime advocates, and friends. Among them was the Church of Stop Shopping’s Reverend Billy, an anti-consumerist preacher personality portrayed by actor and playwright William Talen. ‘This is an event of our lifetime for many of us here,’ he said. Reverend Billy emceed the event, which aired live on the Pacifica Network, and Peltier attended the exhibition virtually from the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Peltier’s son and grandson hauled the paintings on display by truck from there all the way to New York City.” (10/12/26)
“The United States is experiencing constitutional failure. Many of the guardrails of our democracy have given way. At this moment, it requires a feat of imagination to conjure what a new immigration system might look like when liberals regain power. According to the assessment of 500 political scientists (I am one of the respondents) who are regularly queried in the Bright Line Watch survey, the US is currently entrenched in some form of authoritarianism. The first instinct is to stop the bleeding, to stop the slide into complete authoritarianism. Coming up with reforms to heal and strengthen US democracy may be secondary. But liberals need to simultaneously throw sand in the gears of Donald Trump’s attempt at authoritarian consolidation and start thinking about what a replacement immigration system would look like.” (10/11/26)
“The Donald and others have proclaimed that DEI is dead in the States. Obviously, a lot of people disagree with that. Including a great many powerful and connected businesses in fields like banking and finance, education, and health care. As have many State and municipal regimes. Indeed, many entities are doubling-down on pushing these things (which we prefer to call DIE, here at TPOL: Diversity, Inclusion and Equity as they promote it is seemingly fatal to society and liberty. Indeed, the results often seem to be Division, Insanity, and Erasure. Such is definitely not the case in the United Kingdom, as a recent commentary on the failure of a jury to convict a vandal of a Churchill statue pointed out. His Majesty and His Majesty’s government are pushing DEI strongly: some municipalities even more so.” (10/11/26)
