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Hegseth trims a fifth of the brass, Korea considers $200B in reactors, automatic Trump accounts, Iran mails us a voter guide, and the Times frets that gas might get cheaper. We are doomed. Probably.
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Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Your whirlwind of a roundup includes: Hegseth trimming the brass; Korea “reviewing” a $200 billion reactor bill; a free brokerage account for sixty million kids; the last troops out of Iraq; a Senate that blocked two bills; Iran’s open letter to American voters; and the New York Times, which is worried about cheap gas.
🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍
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September is fading into the rearview, which means we’re rolling into the final full month before the midterm elections: the month of pumpkin spice everything plus the inevitable spooky October surprise. Today’s post unleashes a barrel of pent-up news. It is not a trickle. It is now flooding out. This will accelerate as November 3rd approaches.
Given how many terrific stories there were, I’ve confined my reporting to quick hits and insights. It was all great news, with the possible exception of the final New York Times doom-story, which is actually unintentionally encouraging. And hilarious.
🚀 Let’s start with the military. Secretary of War gave a speech to 600 Quantico officers yesterday and made at least five major announcements. Yesterday, the Boston Globe reported, “Hegseth announces a new drone command and cuts to 20% of generals in ‘State of the Force’ speech.”
Of course, the speech included all his best hits. “We are no longer the woke department,” Hegseth said, “or the weak department.” The Secretary of War repeated his famous line, which is custom-built to intersectionally offend nearly every progressive group: “no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals— just warriors.”
We certainly have come a long way from the Biden military, where each day provided a fresh and exciting opportunity to be shocked by something you thought could never happen, like plump admirals wearing dresses.
Since we’re moving fast today, we’ll set aside the Secretary’s entertaining trash talk. Here’s what is coming:
- Bye Bye, General They/Them.Hegseth said he plans to fire 20% of all generals. Congress has capped them at 857, so a 20% reduction, if he does it, would shed around 170 positions. The announcement itself is a Sword of Damocles hanging over every general who disagrees with his new PT requirement for officers. “The media calls that a purge,” Hegseth said. “I call it accountability, and long overdue.” Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) complained, “He’s purging a generation of great leaders of the military, and it’s going to take a generation to recover from it.”
- A new Autonomous Warfare Command. Robots and drones, which is not at all Terminator-like, and which anyone conscious can see is the imminent future of warfare. Let the robots fight it out. The goal is to have Skynet, er, I mean AWC, operational by October 1st of next year (2027). The Secretary called it “the fastest peacetime shift in modern military history.” Well. Mostly peacetime.
- “Project Meridian.” In case the imminent future isn’t clear, Hegseth announced a new team with three civilian co-directors to “imagine the future of warfare” —it sounded like a sci-fi writer’s brainstorming session— to produce a 120-day study, due January 28, 2027, of emerging battlefields “from subterranean depths to the cislunar frontier.” Subterranean depths?? (Surely not mole people. Presumably he meant things like Gazan tunnels and buried Iranian nuclear facilities. But Palmer Luckey has been writing about war below the crust and underground vehicles, so who knows.) Already on the team: Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey —both inventive, AI-frontier defense contractors, which made perfect sense— plus, for some inexplicable reason, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is great and all, but turns 84 in June. The traditional MIC was unavailable for comment. (Newt’s been talking about a permanent Moon Base, so maybe that’s it.)
- Fortress America. A base modernization project to make all military bases energy independent, so that if an enemy takes down the power grid, the bases’ internet stays on. “Every major military installation,” Hegseth said, “is going to generate its own power. Independent of the civilian grid.” Plus, he announced plans to build the first new domestic military base in forty years, to house 15,000-25,000 troops, using classical architecture, fully self-sufficient, with no state yet selected.
- Office of Religious Affairs. Hegseth said the new team would report directly to him and advocate for the needs of religious service members. “95 percent of our force recognizes an Almighty God,” Hegseth explained. “This won’t be a policy shop pushing paper,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said. “It will have real teeth.” One imagines a toothy porcupine holding an incense taper. In March, Hegseth trimmed 180 recognized “faith codes” (down to about 30). Among the fallen were Magick, Church of the Spiral Tree, Asatru (don’t ask), Rosicrucianism, and various Wiccan sub-denominations.
Each of these would justify a mainstream story or two. Altogether, it was like an announcement neutron bomb, where it should have blown up the news, but nobody reported it.
🔥 Yesterday, Interesting Engineering reported, “Trump unveils $200 billion US energy plan spanning nuclear, gas” More shattered records. “We’re thrilled to announce one of the largest energy infrastructure investments in American history,” the President said.
The first announced project was a new $22.3 billion combined-cycle gas power complex in Encinal, Texas that will deliver an eye-watering 6,472 megawatts for data centers, and will come online as soon as 2029. But then he announced that South Korea is considering financing up to eight new large nuclear power plants, including up to potentially $350 billion in new investments.
Nuclear power construction largely ended in the 1970s. Now it’s back.
You may wonder how Trump got the South Koreans to kick in. The answer is: Using his tariff dashboard, of course, and Korea’s money. Headline from the Korea JoongAng Daily, earlier this month:
“We are turning Korea’s Investment commitments into HUGE Construction Projects, and tens of thousands of AMERICAN JOBS,” Trump tweeted earlier this week.
When the history books about Trump 2.0 are written, there will be entire chapters about how Trump financed his big infrastructure programs not by waiting around for Congress to spend billions of taxpayer dollars— but by just making deals using other people’s money. Trump 1.0 tried this but was unsuccessful. Remember “Mexico will build the wall”? But he didn’t have his tariff dashboard then.
Once again, the President is reimagining what is possible from government— from the ground up.
🔥 On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported, “Treasury Will Auto-Enroll 60 Million Children in Trump Accounts.” I guess they got tired of waiting for corporate media to tell parents how they can get their kids free investment accounts that, for many of them, would be preloaded with thousands of dollars of stocks.
There are so many companies wanting to donate to Trump Accounts that they had to automate the signup process. “Stakeholders have expressed that eligible donors prefer that their contributions reach all children, not just children whose parents have the awareness to opt in,” the program’s new rules explained.
Why don’t parents ‘have awareness’ of how to opt in? Ask your corporate media.
But never mind! Switching to automaticenrollment will let assets in those accounts start growing now, without families needing to do anything, explained Jin Huang, a Washington University professor. “This is the most important design change since the law passed,” he said. “This is huge.”
Since the program’s July launch, only 7 million kids have signed up, with over 65 million kids whose parents are leaving money on the table. Treasury is fixing that. As soon as this week. (A month before midterms.)
The new rules also expand the program in key ways. Money in Trump Accounts can only be used to buy low-cost index funds, which are baskets of stocks mirroring the overall market, and are considered the lowest-risk type of stock investment. But Treasury just announced that people and companies may donate other types of stock directly into the accounts, so long as Trump Account funds aren’t used for the purchase. So, for example, SpaceX could give every American child a share in the company.
CLIP: CNBC explains the new auto-enrollment of kids in free stock accounts (0:30).
This answers one of the critics’ biggest complaints: that the accounts aren’t flexibleenough. Don’t worry though! Critics, who love whining about the “K-shaped” recovery where only investors benefit, quickly pivoted to complaining about the risk of owning individual stocks. “It undermines the entire purpose of the regulated index fund requirement, which is stability,” groused Nina Olson, executive director of an NGO called the Center for Taxpayer Rights. “Let’s say someone donates a bunch of tech stocks and then we have another dot-com meltdown, so that you end up with worthless stocks. How does that help the child?”
Treasury said several donors are ready to make stock contributions on the scale of Dell’s but prefer not to donate cash. The Journal explained that these types of donors can avoid capital-gains taxes, get an income-tax deduction, and push assets out of taxable estates. Win-win. Treasury further explained, “Donors are attracted by the hope that a stock contribution with a five-year holding period may lead recipients and their families to feel that they have a stake in the fate of the corporation to a greater extent than if the child’s holdings of the corporation were only through an index fund.”
President Trump has done more for the children than any administration in American history. Plus— sixty million new market investors will begin lifting the overall stock market even higher without inflation. Tired of winning yet?
🔥 Chalk up another war the Trump 2.0 Administration has ended: Iraq. Yesterday, NPR reported, “The U.S. military withdraws from Iraq over 2 decades after its invasion.” Trump, calling Iraq a quagmire, announced, “the last American forces are leaving Iraq.”
U.S. Central Command announced yesterday that the last U.S. forces have now vacated Erbil Air Base in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. The 23-year-old war is over, all except for the paperwork. President Trump tweeted that it “marks the end of a very expensive excursion into Hell.”
“We came to fight a caliphate,” he added. “There is no longer a caliphate. We are going home!”
Fallujah, NPR reported, is now “a peaceful and relatively prosperous city.” One Iraqi tour operator, Ali al-Makhzomy, said American civilians are ‘generally welcomed’ wherever they go in Iraq. Generally. I’d put this one on the “adventure travel” list. Pack sunscreen, bug spray, and body armor.
🔥 Meanwhile, let’s check in on what the Democrats are up to. Yesterday, in the Senate, they voted down several bills. Yahoo Finance reported, “Senate fails to advance data center and lawmaker stock trading bills before campaign break.”
Yesterday, Democrat Senators nixed threemajor bills that passed the House with huge majorities. The first was a bill that would have required states to formally consider requiring data centers to pay for their power footprint whenever new building permits are issued. It failed 57-43 (four Democrats broke ranks).
Asked why Senate Democrats opposed a popular bill that passed the House 417–3, Democrat Minority Leader Chuck “Cheese” Schumer said, “we don’t vote for frauds.” Case closed.
The second was a bill that would limit Congressmen’s ability to trade new stocks while in office and require a 7-day notice before any stock sale. Democrats explained they opposed the bill because it did not force members to sell all their stocks before entering Congress. Sure. The third one was attached to the trading ban, and would have required an approved form of ID to vote in federal elections. (Call it the SAVE Act-Lite.) Democrat opposition to that one explains itself.
🚀 That’s Democrats. How about Iran? It has thoughts about our midterm elections. On Tuesday, Reuters reported, “Iran’s Revolutionary Guards woo US voters with open letter.” Iranian hardliners published, I am not making this up, a twenty-six-page letter to the American people asking them (in a thinly-veiled way that fooled nobody) to vote for Democrats in the midterms, so as to teach President Trump a lesson.
I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that exactly zero ordinary Americans read their stupid letter. It’s beyond me how they thought anyone, including Democrats, was interested in reading 26 pages of Iranian thoughts on our elections. That right there is a chatbot fail. They should have told ChatGPT to keep it under two pages, max. For most of us, 280 characters is about the limit.
They titled their novella-length essay, “A Brief List of America’s Wrongs and Crimes in Its 73-Year History of Meddling in Iran.” Just a brief list. They could have written more.
I’ll spare you the deep dive. Basically, the letter forcefully denied that Iran wants any nuclear weapons, insisting that its deep underground nuclear bunkers are merely peaceful civilian power experimentation facilities. Here we should note that’s a minority take. If we assume there is a point to international monitoring, even the U.N. believes Iran wants to build a nuke. But okay.
The Iranians also denied trying to gatekeep oil shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, they bragged about doing it. “For the first time in history, Iran has exerted, and retained, operational control over the Strait of Hormuz.” Opinions vary.
But my favorite part was the long section where they tried to explain their national motto, “Death to America.” Ready for this one? They didn’t deny it; how could they? Instead, the Guards wrote that we’ve misunderstood them. The well-known chant, they explained, “does not in any way express any ill will toward the hardworking and honest American people.” Not in any way. It really means the opposite. They are trying to express good will. I’m glad we cleared this up.
They explained that “Death to America” is really just “a prayer for the eradication of the diabolical ruling elite whose seat of power is the White House.” Merely a prayer, recited at the saintly volume of a wood chipper with a bad case of Yankee hatred. Then they asked us to be open-minded, and consider whether oppressed people have the right to “wish death upon” their oppressors. Um. (I don’t think they read the room very well. Charlie Kirk might have something to say about it, were he still with us.)
In any case, they tried to tap into anti-elitesentiment. They don’t want to kill us, they just want to kill our elected leaders. See? Everything is fine. In short, it was a long recipe of Democrat talking points with some Iranian history mixed in along with plenty of spicy TDS.
“You are the ones who empower, with your votes, the government and allow it to do what it does,” the Revolutionary Guard reminded us. It then patiently explained, as if to a kindergarten class, that politicians often win votes through “deception and false promises, as Trump did,” but that U.S. voters “can change the makeup of the government” by choosing better leaders. It encouraged Americans to “wrest control back from corrupt politicians” and “remove from power the evil, deceitful, and violent politicians.”
“Americans need to wake up,” the letter said. “Now is the time, as the American political system is at its weakest.” Speak for yourself.
Imagine if the Russians had done this. It would be a front-page story till the elections: Russian military publishes 26-page appeal urging Americans to vote out Democrats.Democrats would howl that it was foreign election interference, reporters would examine the prostates of anyone who amplified it, and anyone whose rhetoric resembled the letter would face ceaseless demands to explain the overlap.
I could not find any Democrat who commented on the letter. Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung called it a “garbage ‘letter’” and a “farcical and laughable attempt” by a desperate IRGC “who know they have no other options left because they have failed their own people, so they resort to telling the American people to ‘vote Democrat.’”
Unsurprisingly, the New York Times did not deign to cover Iran’s letter. No experts. No ‘analysis.’ No nothing. Instead, it capped its website this morning with six (!) stories about a gross frat-party sexual-assault allegation and the resulting civil lawsuit. Oh, and prepare for this breaking news: a long-form “guest essay” explainer about how gas prices are about to come down and why that is very bad.
🔥 It is difficult to fully describe the schizophrenic panic progressives seem to be experiencing these days. This morning’s Times featured a guest essay with the astonishing headline, “If You Think Rising Oil Prices Are Bad, Just Wait for the Inevitable Crash.” I promise I did not make that up, although “Inevitable Crash” would be a terrific name for a rock band.
I think the Times is starting to worry that gas prices are about to come back down, a lot. “Throughout the petroverse,” the author darkly warned, “conditions are now pointing toward another oil collapse. It is just a question of when.”
Countries outside the Persian Gulf are ramping up production. “Guyana’s vast oil fields are now producing at scale,” the article reported. Argentina is expanding production. “Venezuela’s antiquated oil infrastructure is expected to be overhauled with a rush of funding.” It even speculated about the Ukraine war ending, returning Russia’s sanctioned production to global oil supplies. (Bad news for Zelensky though.)
“Something similar will happen if the Iran war ends and shipping resumes freely through the strait,” he added, clearly feeling hopeless.
It all amounts to an end to the Democrats’ main talking point. “Oil’s big bust is coming,” the author dutifully informed Times readers. “A more dramatic fall now looks likely.” What goes up must come down.
Now, you could be forgiven for wondering how on Earth low oil prices could be bad news. After all, we’ve just been treated to six months of dire predictions from economic experts that high prices would lead to recessions, depressions, great recessions, and even greater great depressions. Hoard toilet paper!
But you see, you are not an expert. Neither am I. I am just a lawyer. Fortunately, the Times is here, eager to explain that falling oil prices —if they fall too far— could hurt oil company profits. It recalled the tragic days of the 1980s, when OPEC opened the spigots and crushed the booming Texas oil market. “Pawnshops, bursting with furs and Rolexes, had to turn away consigners,” it recalled sadly. True, we recovered, but “the psychological effects were deep and lasting.”
The Times wants us to prepare ourselves for the deep and lasting psychological effects of cheap gas. Oil company CEOs would be well advised to get their Rolexes to the pawnshop early. Beat the rush.
My goodness! You can’t please some people, certainly not the Times. If I read this guest essay accurately (and I think I did), low prices are even worse than high ones. We are doomed.
The Grey Lady smells a rat. It clearly thinks the Iran War is close to ending, probably because the Iranians have started demanding a ceasefire. Yesterday, ABC-7 news ran this curious headline (broadly ignored by corporate media):
Last week, President Trump told the UN General Assembly that, if Iran didn’t make a deal, the US would “annihilate” Iran. Trump’s envoys met with the Iranians the same day. Ever since then, the sides have been swapping proposals.
The most wonderful part was the Times’ implied argument. The article’s entire premise was that the Trump Administration has been too successful at reengineering the world’s oil supplies.
First, they told us that expensive oil would wreck the economy. Now we’re warned that cheap oil will wreck it even worse. Pick a lane, Times. But either way, it seems likely that cheap gas is on its way. TAW.
Have a terrific Thursday! Sail back here through the strait of doom for tomorrow’s optimistic installment of essential news and caffeinated commentary.
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