Issue 13 May 25 – May 31, 2026
Week of May 25
The Iran war lurched toward an off-ramp: a peace framework and $300B in reconstruction money surfaced even as Israel's extremists tried to torch it. Meanwhile Trump gilded horse statues, funneled his son $620M, and the family grift stopped bothering to hide.
The war finally has an exit, and Israel is blocking it. Iran announced a US-Iran peace framework with concrete withdrawal and strait terms, and the US is now [offering Iran $300B](/4le0... )$300B in reconstruction to end the conflict it started. Then Ben-Gvir publicly vetoed Trump's diplomacy, Israel kept striking across Iran and Lebanon, and Rubio, having sabotaged multilateralism for years, crawled to the UN to reopen Hormuz while Iran rebranded its extortion toll an environmental fee. Saudi Arabia rejected Trump's Palestinian erasure outright.
Israel keeps confessing, institutions finally flinch. The IDF landed on the UN sexual violence blacklist, a rare bit of actual pressure, while the right's intellectual project collapsed defending collective punishment as self-defense.
The grift is now federal policy. The administration handed Trump Jr's company a $620M loan, froze $1B of Iran's crypto mid-transaction to prove "decentralized" means nothing, and gilded horse statues with $100M. Trump wants his face on a $250 bill like a third-world dictator.
The regime is deporting its own citizens. The White House admitted deporting US citizens while the DOJ subpoenas social media critics of its removals. State media runs through the back door.
America's decay in miniature. A CIA officer got arrested with $40M in stolen gold, Nazi membership cards became searchable in Germany as Gen X eastern Germans embrace fascism, and the White House lied about Trump's weight by two pounds to dodge the obese category.