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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †
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The bombers were redeployed back to their home bases in the United States, AP reported, initially citing a Pentagon official who was not authorized to discuss sensitive military movements and spoke on condition of anonymity. However, multiple news outlets are now reporting on official statements from the Pentagon.
SKY NEWS – […] “While operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our assets and forces in real-time, we can acknowledge now that all US bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have redeployed to their home stations in the United States.
“The Airmen that operate America’s bomber force, including B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s, remain ready to deliver precision global strike capabilities – including through operations that launch and recover from the continental United States – anywhere, anytime.” (source)
The polls closed at 5:00pm ET, and first results are beginning to come in. Incumbent President and Socialist, Lula da Silva, is up against challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was imprisoned by da Silva loyalists in government.
In an era when USAID (CIA) funding for Latin-American socialists and communists has been curtailed by the Trump administration, the hope is that supporters for Bolsonaro (above left) can defeat the communist supporters for da Silva (above right). The race will likely be close.
The president in Brazil is directly elected by the people, and the winning candidate needs more than 50% of the vote to avoid a second round runoff.
17:45pm ET (25% reporting)
Flávio Bolsonaro 50.63%, Liberal party (PL) | 21,383,323 votes
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva 41.44%, Workers’ party (PT) | 19,903,245 votes
19:11pm ET (90% reporting)
Flávio Bolsonaro 48.19%, Liberal party (PL) | 50,654,815 votes
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva 43.88%, Workers’ party (PT) | 46,474,271 votes
Margaret Brennan asks Energy Secretary Chris Wright to tell her about U.S. troop and military deployments to the Middle East, and whether President Trump is going to “escalate” military operations in the region. Yeah, she asked about that; as if the Energy Secretary would even talk about it on television if he knew.
Unfortunately, this remains the outlook of U.S. media. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that President Trump was “well aware of the risks to energy flows” before launching the Iran war, but he said the president said, “the world cannot sustain a nuclear-armed Iran, and I’m not going to do it.” WATCH:
[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: Good morning, and welcome to Face the Nation. We begin with one of the Trump administration officials tasked with working to lower those high gas and oil prices, Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Good morning to you.
SECRETARY OF ENERGY CHRIS WRIGHT: Good morning, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, it’s good to have you here. You said this past week that Americans can expect lower gasoline prices and diesel prices by election day. The Wall Street Journal editorial board has a piece outlining that the campaign to squeeze around financially is working, but they can still knock out significant Gulf energy infrastructure. They could be planning an October surprise before the U.S. midterms. We are still seeing Iranian attacks on ships now. I mean, how can you be so confident prices are headed down?
SEC. WRIGHT: Well, because we’ve got increasing supplies coming out of the Strait of Hormuz and they’ve continued to rise over the last months, over the last recent weeks. We’ve got U.S. gasoline production today at record high. We have demand for gasoline, as we come out of the summer driving scene, starting to go down. Similar stories with diesel. Diesel’s mostly been infected by the Russia-Ukraine war and also by China’s decision not to export diesel or gasoline into the marketplace. And of course, we’re living with two refineries that were recently closed, large refineries in California that Gavin Newsom forced the closure of. And frankly, 15 years of Democrat policies that have been energy subtraction, trying to close coal plants, close refineries, and shrink our capacity. Which means when you get in crisis, we’re just less resilient than we should be.
The New York Times is looking at Lukoil from the perspective of President Trump organizing financial gains for people close to his administration, specifically Witkoff and Kusher. {GO DEEP}
That aspect is nonsense, total nonsense; however, if you pull back and look at the background story without the Trump derangement overlay, there’s a potential here for something very good to come out of it.
As the story is told, Russian President Vladimir Putin has inquired about the potential for the U.S. to remove sanctions against Lukoil, a quasi-private energy company based out of Russia. Before, getting too weedy about it, remind yourself of the statements that surfaced during the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, August, 2025.
You might remember that both the U.S and Russia spoke of strategic partnerships surrounding the energy sector. Obviously, this makes sense when we consider the “west” is actually fractured on the topic of energy. There are two competing interests that overlap in the financial side of the issue, the ‘trillions at stake’ aspect.
On one side you have the “climate change” team, those who are fully invested (literally) in the financial mechanisms of the climate change, green new deal, build back better talking points. The Green Energy team in the west. The Paris Climate Treaty and carbon-trading proponents et al.
On the other side you have the pragmatic energy team in the west. These are the Trump-minded and aligned western perspectives that look at oil, natural gas (LNG), clean coal and nuclear technology. These are the “all the above” aligned voices in the more pragmatic view of low-cost energy production and development.
In the middle, between both sides of the fracture, are the banking and finance systems. This is the BIG MONEY play, with the Climate Change team supported by banking ideology inside the city of London, while the Carbon Use team is constantly having to assemble finance and insurance from outside the banking control mechanisms.
The Climate Change team have support based on ideology within the finance system. However, the Carbon Use team have the advantage of low-price outputs, global dependency and actual profits as leverage. This is a fight essentially inside the larger energy sector, and we are all very familiar with it because it has been happening for decades.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is currently the main tool deployed by the Climate Change team on behalf of the London finance system. Carney’s main opponent is U.S. President Donald Trump.
This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †
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Barbara Boyd opens with diesel: as Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries tighten the world’s supply, President Trump threatened to halt U.S. diesel exports unless Europe released its emergency stocks, and the G7 agreed to release 100 million barrels. She presents it as the opening move of a 35-day economic offensive running into the midterms. The week of action includes Trump’s visit to the Peterbilt truck plant in Denton, Texas, where employee Sarah Renshaw credited tariffs for 1,000 new jobs; his Oklahoma rally; a White House luncheon with tech leaders on superintelligence; what the White House calls the largest steel plant ever built in the United States, coming to Iowa; Vice President Vance at the groundbreaking of Saronic’s Port Alpha shipyard in Brownsville, Texas; and South Korea’s plans for an Alaska LNG pipeline, a 6-gigawatt power plant in Texas and eight nuclear reactors.
On affordability, the episode walks through price increases under Biden (energy up 33% from January 2021 to January 2025), Vice President Vance on the inflation crisis he says the administration inherited, refining capacity, housing regulation and immigration, Secretary Kennedy at the MAHA Summit on AI giving every patient a better-informed second opinion, and the White House fraud task force’s crackdown on Obamacare enrollments. It closes with Michael Shellenberger’s account of the student riots in France, French intelligence tying the movement to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed (LFI), and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on a new golden age of space exploration. WATCH:
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appears for an interview with Axios co-founder Mike Allen. The wide-ranging conversation covered the U.S. economy, the war in Iran and the Trump administration’s approach to AI.
Secretary Bessent responds to Americans’ frustration with the cost of living; explains why he doesn’t think the AI boom is a repeat of the dot-com bubble and argues that AI leaders warning about losing control should slow down. Bessent also discusses possible U.S-China cooperation on AI risks, Treasury’s economic pressure campaign against Iran, the bond market, Trump Accounts and his clashes inside the administration. WATCH:
Chapters:
0:00 – Cold open
0:24 – Inside Treasury’s Cash Room
1:38 – Unpacking why Americans still feel squeezed
5:21 – Bessent’s economic campaign against Iran
7:35 – Is AI in a bubble?