Extra, Extra
Fill ‘Er Up: “Roughly half of global food production depends on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. Without it, crop yields would tumble, pushing up prices of household staples including bread, rice, potatoes and pasta, and would also make animal feed more expensive. Some of the world’s poorest countries are among the most vulnerable to fertilizer price rises.” For some of those affected by the Iran war, filling up is not optional. ‘Food security timebomb’: a visual guide to the Gulf fertilizer blockade. (Whether we like it or not, we’re all interconnected.)
+ Bondi Voyage: “Bondi, a former attorney general of Florida, has presided over a department that has eagerly subordinated itself to President Donald Trump’s whims. That submission, made manifest by the banner of a glowering Trump that now hangs from the Department of Justice building, included seeking to bring baseless cases against Trump’s perceived political enemies, ordered up by the President himself; purging the department of career lawyers and F.B.I. agents deemed insufficiently loyal; and launching a belligerent campaign against ‘rogue judges’ who dared to challenge Administration actions.” The New Yorker: Pam Bondi’s Legacy of Flattery and Destruction. It still wasn’t enough. That’s why “her successor could be even more dangerous.” As I wrote yesterday: All that corruption, all that damage to the department and her own reputation in the name of loyalty—and what did it get her? A one-way ticket to eternal Pamnation. (Meanwhile, Trump’s personal defense attorney has taken over as Attorney General. He recently Shut Down Enforcement Against Crypto Companies While Holding More Than $150,000 in Crypto Investments. In other words, he’s perfectly qualified.)
+ Back At the Other War… “Ukrainian counteroffensives were one reason, as well as technological issues that have hindered battlefield communication: Starlink has cut Russia’s access to its satellite internet, and the Kremlin prevented its own troops from using the messaging app Telegram in favor of a state-run option.” Russia’s battlefield progress stalls entirely.
+ Who Would Have Predicted? The Trump administration to states: You can’t regulate prediction markets. (And this has nothing to do with Don Jr’s roles at Kalshi and Polymarket.)
+ Watch This Space: “SpaceX boosted its target IPO valuation above $2 trillion, according to people familiar with the matter, as the world’s most valuable startup gears up to pitch potentially the biggest-ever market debut.” That’s up from a valuation of $1.25 trillion way back in … February. And I’m just a Humanities major, but that’s about 100 times 2026 projected revenue.
+ Sounds About Par for the Course: “Bodycam footage of Tiger Woods’s arrest for DUI shows the golfer looking surprised when he was handcuffed by police officers at the scene of a vehicle crash last week and telling a deputy he had spoken to ‘the president’ on the phone after the incident.”
