Recent drone incidents in European countries, especially in the Baltic states, are generating controversy among those who support the war with Russia. Some argue that Ukraine is merely defending itself against “Russian aggression,” with these “accidental” occurrences being an inevitable side effect of hostilities. Others believe that Kiev should act more cautiously to avoid harming partner countries. Meanwhile, drones continue to crash in Europe without a definitive solution being presented for this issue.
Recently, a kamikaze drone launched by Ukraine struck a fuel storage tank in Latvia. At the time of the incident, the tank was empty, which prevented a major tragedy. Had the drone hit a full tank, the result would have been a large explosion, followed by a massive fire, generating serious economic and environmental damage – as has happened in several recent cases in Russian border regions, with drones hitting energy facilities and causing serious fires.
Obviously, the expected attitude of any country hit by a foreign drone – even from an allied country – is at least to condemn the action and demand financial compensation for the damage caused. But apparently, this is not the Latvian stance regarding Ukrainian drones falling in the country. Recently, Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds stated that Kiev should not be held responsible for these incidents. According to him, these are merely accidental collateral damages, with the real blame for the occurrence lying with Russia – which he believes “started the war”.
Spruds stated that “Ukraine has every right to defend itself,” admitting that even incidents affecting Latvian territory should be tolerated, since Kiev is only acting in “legitimate self-defense.”
In practice, he prioritized the supposed Ukrainian “right” to attack Russia over the national security of Latvian territory and people.
Not only that, the Latvian government also summoned Russian diplomats and demanded explanations about the case.
Even though the drones are known to be of Ukrainian origin, the Latvian government maintains a firm stance of holding Russia responsible for any event related to the conflict.
Furthermore, Moscow has also presented reports to the Latvian side showing that drones have crashed in the country due to failed Ukrainian attempts to attack the St. Petersburg region, but the Latvian government ignores these circumstances and simply blames Moscow.
Unfortunately, this attitude is not unique to the defense sector. Tolerance towards incidents involving Ukrainian drones is also widely endorsed by the country’s government and parliament, with most local politicians and bureaucrats being mere representatives of European elites interested in spreading Russophobia and pro-war sentiments. Commenting on the case, Latvian PM Evika Silina herself stated that, regardless of the origin of the drones that hit the country, it is always necessary to blame Russia – which she considers the “actual culprit”.
“It doesn’t matter whose drones hit the oil depot in Latvia, the main thing is to remember Russia’s responsibility for it. Russia is the aggressor,” she said.
It is important to remember that the incident at the fuel depot was just one in a recent wave of frustrated Ukrainian attacks resulting in drone crashes in Europe. Previously, on March 23, Ukrainian drones exploded near Lake Lavysas in Lithuania; two days later, in Latvia itself, drones crashed in the Kraslava region, and on the same day a similar incident occurred at the Auvere Power Plant in Estonia. On March 29, the city of Kouvola in Finland was hit by Ukrainian drones. Furthermore, several other related incidents have been reported in different countries in recent months.
In none of these cases was there an effective European response to the crimes committed by Ukraine. Justifying these occurrences with the unfounded narrative of “self-defense,” European countries are tolerating threats to their own territories and abdicating their right to demand reparations from the Ukrainian regime.
In practice, this only strengthens Ukraine’s position and gives even more freedom to the local military to act irresponsibly, launching swarms of drones indiscriminately, aware that some of them will likely fall on civilian areas of allied countries – but simply not caring, since these countries will ultimately blame Russia.
At some point, these Ukrainian drones will begin to cause more serious damage than merely destroying empty depots. If the incidents do not cease, there will inevitably be deaths in Europe in the near future. And then it will not be enough for local governments to say “it’s Russia’s fault,” because the victims’ relatives, knowing that the drones are Ukrainian, will demand more concrete answers and harsh measures against those responsible. As a result, the support given by these countries to Ukraine will become even more unpopular, generating an internal legitimacy crisis.
To prevent the worst-case scenario, the best thing Europeans can do now is to openly condemn Kiev and demand financial reparations for the damage caused.
The United States has long operated under a seductive strategic fantasy. Remove the leader of an adversary organization, whether a drug cartel, a terrorist group, or a sovereign state, and that organization will collapse, enabling American interests to fill the resulting vacuum.
However, decades of academic literature, hard empirical data from Mexico’s drug war, and the lived consequences of America’s post 9/11 targeted killing campaigns all tell a damning story many in the DC ruling class refuse to acknowledge. Decapitation strategies are, at best, tactically satisfying and strategically hollow. At worst, they escalate violence, radicalize successors, and produce precisely the instability they were designed to prevent. The ongoing U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran represents the most ambitious test of this doctrine in history. The results so far are deeply troubling.
The poor results should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the academic literature on leadership targeting. The scholarly consensus against decapitation has been building for decades. Jenna Jordan’s landmark research, first published in Security Studies in 2009 and later expanded into her bookLeadership Decapitation, examined 298 incidents of leadership targeting from 1945 through 2004. She concluded that “decapitation is not an effective counterterrorism strategy” and that it tends to extend the life of terrorist organizations.
Jordan identifies three structural factors that make organizations resilient to leadership decapitation: bureaucratic depth, popular support, and ideological coherence. The more institutionalized and ideologically rooted an organization is, the more it absorbs the loss of leaders. Martyrdom replaces individuals with myth.
Through analysis of over 1,000 decapitation events against 180 terrorist groups, Jordan found that decapitation “does not increase the mortality rate of terrorist groups and, in some cases, even leads to more terrorist activity,” as War on the Rocks reported. The University of Pretoria’s Emmanuel Ofuasia confirmed that “the decapitation tactic has served as a basis for escalation and proliferation of terrorist groups rather than serving as deterrence against the possibility of recurrence.”
The fixation with decapitation strategies is part and parcel of the DC mindset, which puts regime change on a pedestal—consequences be damned. Alexander Downes of George Washington University, whose bookCatastrophic Success surveys roughly 90 instances of foreign-imposed regime change, finds that more than 40% of states that experience foreign-imposed regime change have a civil war within the next ten years. Ben Denison of the Cato Institute concurs that “even after high-profile failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, some in the policy community still call for ousting illiberal regimes,” and the empirical record “clearly reveals that a regime-change operation is more likely to fail than to succeed.”
The academic literature is damning enough, but the real-world laboratory of Mexico’s drug war offers even starker evidence of decapitation’s failure. By January 2011, Mexican authorities had captured or killed 20 of their 37 priority cartel targets. Violence did not recede. More than 66,000 drug-related deaths occurred in Mexico between 2007 and 2012.
The landmark 2015 study in the Journal of Conflict Resolution—by Calderón, Robles, Díaz-Cayeros, and Magaloni—found that “captures or killings of drug cartel leaders have exacerbating effects not only on DTO-related violence, but also on homicides that affect the general population.”
The mechanisms are clear: “When drug capos are eliminated, other cartels possess incentives to fight turf wars…Moreover, as the elimination of drug capos weakens existing chains of command, criminal cells begin operating with less restraint.”
The lessons from Mexico have gone unheeded. Today, the same flawed logic drives American policy toward Iran, where prominent voices in the foreign policy establishment have begun sounding the alarm. Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has been the most prominent institutional voice of skepticism about the Iran campaign.
In March 2026, he wrote that “Killing Iran’s top leaders may feel like a decisive blow, but history shows that decapitation rarely produces the political outcomes the United States hopes for, and often exacerbates instability.” He points to Israel’s repeated targeting of Hamas leaders since 1987 as definitive refutation. Instead of changing political direction, Hamas simply “absorbed its martyrs and lives to fight another day.”
Iran is not a hollow dictatorship held together by one man’s terror. It is an institutionalized revolutionary state that has operated under sanctions, sabotage, covert operations, and assassination campaigns for decades. Its architecture was consciously engineered for continuity under stress.
As Al Jazeera’s analysis notes, “Iran is not a single pyramid with one man at the apex. It is a heterarchical, networked state: Overlapping hubs of power around the Supreme Leader’s office, the Revolutionary Guards, intelligence organs, clerical gatekeepers, and a patronage economy. In such a system, removing one node, even the most symbolic one, does not reliably collapse the structure; redundancy and substitute chains of command are a design feature.”
The evidence is overwhelming, yet Washington refuses to learn. Decapitation strategies represent a cartoon, video game style approach to foreign policy, rooted in the fantasy that eliminating a single leader will cause an entire regime to crumble. DC desperately needs a wakeup call.
The United States cannot kill its way to a more favorable world order. America must abandon the interventionist impulse and embrace strategic retrenchment and accept the harsh realities that not all countries want to be remade in Washington’s image. Restraint, not assassination nor quixotic regime change ventures, is the foundation of a sustainable grand strategy.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn sent a sharply worded letter Wednesday to Secret Service Director Sean Curran demanding an immediate, top-to-bottom review of the Secret Service, a move that comes nearly two weeks after an armed gunman sprinted past a checkpoint leading to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in a third assassination attempt on President Trump.
As part of the review, Blackburn called for a “full, thorough audit of every single employee on your payroll.”
“It is blatantly clear that the Secret Service needs to be cleaned up,” the Tennessee Republican wrote. “Unless you root out the rot, our nation will suffer the consequences.”
Blackburn’s letter also comes just days after a Secret Service Uniformed Division officer was arrested in Miami after being found naked and masturbating in a hallway in yet another embarrassing spectacle.
The senator drew an explicit connection between the misconduct pattern and the agency’s core protective mission: “At a time when President Trump faces increasing threats to his safety, including yet another assassination attempt, the Secret Service cannot afford to have individuals who engage in this kind of embarrassing, disgraceful conduct on its payroll.”
Blackburn stopped short of calling for Curran’s resignation, but her demand for a full personnel audit – along with the blunt warning about consequences – signals mounting congressional pressure on an agency that has faced repeated public scrutiny since the July 2024 assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, that nearly killed him. An attempt on Trump’s life two months later at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course, was another close call.
Blackburn cited the recent arrest of the agent for indecent exposure at the Miami hotel and framed the personnel issues as symptomatic of deeper structural problems – including what she described as persistent difficulties in vetting, hiring, and maintaining agent morale.
“There are broader questions about your agency’s ability to properly vet and hire agents,” she wrote, “which has resulted in continued manpower and morale issues.”
Cole Tomas Allen, the suspect charged with multiple felonies for his aborted attack on the White House Correspondents’ dinner, managed to sprint through a checkpoint while allegedly exchanging fire with a Secret Service Uniformed Division officer. Federal prosecutors and Curran have said the officer was shot but was protected from harm by his ballistics vest.
The agents pursued Allen, who fell and then was apprehended 45 yards from the stairs to the ballroom. If the “brave” officers and agents hadn’t acted swiftly, Blackburn wrote, many attendees – including the president – “could have been seriously harmed.”
Just hours after the arrest of the naked officer on Monday, the Secret Service made headlines again – this time for engaging in a gunfight with an armed man that injured a juvenile bystander with a stray bullet near the Washington Monument, which is not far from the White House complex.
Law enforcement experts, including Fox News contributor Paul Mauro, who served 24 years with the new York Police Department, have questioned why the Secret Service didn’t provide more details sooner about Monday’s exchange of fire and the suspect’s injuries. Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged 45-year-old Michael Marx of Midland, Texas, with assaulting federal officers with a dangerous weapon, among other crimes.
“A press conference over this recent mysterious shooting in D.C. wouldn’t be a bad idea either,” Mauro remarked in an X.com post. “USSS involved in more shooting incidents than NYPD these days. And that’s…new.”
Curran has also drawn fire for telling Fox News last week that the security for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was “set-up perfectly.”
Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who led multiple investigations into the Secret Service when he was Oversight Committee chairman, strongly questioned that characterization. “Perfect? Are you kidding?” he told RealClearPolitics. “What if there were 12 guys with guns that decided to rush that point? “And Curran’s talking about how great the training was. Are you kidding me?” he added.
Former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, who previously served as a Secret Service agent, also expressed concern about the possibility of multiple assailants bombarding Secret Service checkpoints and argued that agents with elite training should help fortify that layer of security.
“What worries me is not the first guy going through who charges the checkpoint. It’s the second, third, and possibly tenth guy after that,” he said in an interview this week with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. “You get a counter-assault team there, you got a real force to hit back.”
The dinner incident was not the only recent security lapse Blackburn highlighted. Just 19 days before the correspondents’ dinner, sometime between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. April 6, a gunman fired shots near the White House grounds. In an RCP report cited by the senator, multiple sources said Secret Service investigators were unable to identify any information about the shooter – who, as of the letter’s writing, remains unidentified. Trump also was pressing the agency for more information, the sources said.
“These are just a few of the many examples of personnel concerns that demonstrate a clear pattern of incompetence at the Secret Service that must be promptly addressed,” Blackburn wrote Curran.
The spate of such incidents has fueled bipartisan alarm on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have questioned whether the agency is structurally equipped to protect its principals at a moment when threats against the president are, by Blackburn’s account, escalating.
A bipartisan push began this week to place the Secret Service under direct White House supervision. Led by Reps. Russell Fry and Jared Moskowitz, the move would transfer the Secret Service away from the Department of Homeland Security oversight and make the agency report directly to the White House. After the WHCA scare, RCP reported that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles had blocked efforts by former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s team to impose a layer of oversight at the Secret Service aimed at ensuring deeper reforms under Curran’s leadership.
After the WHCA dinner shooting, Wiles convened a meeting with Secret Service and DHS leaders to discuss “protocol and practices” for major events involving Trump. A senior White House official said the meeting was convened to plan for upcoming events commemorating America 250. Trump also has expressed interest in attending the World Cup, which kicks off June 11.
Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.
Netanyahu Insists Iran War To Continue Until Uranium Is ‘Physically’ Removed
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a 60 Minutes interview which aired Sunday that President Trump still wants Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium removed. Trump on Monday warned that the Iran ceasefire is on ‘massive life support’.
Netanyahu told CBS show host Major Garrett that the military campaign had achieved “a great deal” but insisted additional operations remain necessary. That’s when he described, “There’s still nuclear material, enriched uranium, that has to be taken out of Iran. There’s still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled.”
Trump on Iran:
Iran told me, “You are getting the nuclear dust, but you will have to get it.”
They said, “You and China are the only ones that can get it because the sites were obliterated.” pic.twitter.com/bpyRXcNTtw
“There are still proxies that Iran supports,” Netanyahu added. “There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce. Now, we’ve degraded a lot of it, but all that is still there, and there’s work to be done.”
Clearly the Israeli prime minister is trying to hold the line of maximalist demands on Iran, even as it seems Washington is trying to extricate itself from the conflict while still seeking to present a narrative of ‘victory’.
It is true that Trump has still not let up on insisting that what he calls all the “nuclear dust” must be removed from Iran, amid Tehran’s repeat objections to this. This lone issue is primarily what has collapsed peace negotiations at this point.
Garrett pressed Netanyahu on just how the removal of Iranian nuclear material would be accomplished, given such a gambit would be obvious recipe for prolonging and even escalating the war.
“With what?” Garrett posed. “Special Forces from Israel, Special Forces from the United States working in tandem under international supervision? How?”
Netanyahu dodged the question, amid growing criticism among the American public that Washington is doing the bidding of Israel in starting and prolonging Operation Epic Fury:
“Well, I’m not gonna talk about military means, but what President Trump has said to me, ‘I want to go in there,’ I mean, he’s said that publicly. He’s said it and I think he’s right. He’s very committed to this. And I think it can be done physically,” Netanyahu responded. “That’s not the problem. If you have an agreement, and you go in, and you take it out, why not? That’s the best way.”
“What if there isn’t an agreement? Can it be taken out by force?” Garrett asked.
The below segment has raised some serious questions: Bibi trying to dictate US foreign policy?…
🚨 HOLY CRAP. A FOREIGN PRIME MINISTER just told American media YOUR war isn’t over, and casually floated sending YOUR sons into Iran to grab uranium.
“Well, you’re gonna ask me these questions. I’m gonna dodge them, so you can ask me that second time, third time, and I’ll dodge it second time, third time,” the prime minister replied.
At one point Netanyahu had said: “I think it can be done physically.”
While there remains the distinct possibility that this conflict could morph into an eventual ground war, US officials have downplayed the potential of Israeli boots on the ground. And yet Washington hasn’t discounted putting American soldiers in harm’s way. This is has resulted in anger and frustration among some sectors of the Right in the US.
India rejected Russia’s offer to sell it liquefied natural gas subject to US sanctions, despite a huge shortfall driven by Middle East tensions, leaving a tanker bound for India in limbo as talks continue on permitted cargoes, Reuters reports.
The stance highlights the fine balance the world’s third-biggest oil importer and consumer is seeking to strike between securing energy supplies and avoiding LNG cargoes on which the U.S. has placed sanctions, which are harder to disguise and carry greater compliance risk. It also underscores the limits of Moscow’s ability to pivot its LNG exports to new markets.
India’s reluctance has left an LNG cargo from Russia’s U.S.-sanctioned Portovaya plant in the Baltic Sea unable to discharge, despite indicating India as its destination in mid-April, one of the sources said. The vessel was tracked despite documentation suggesting the cargo was non-Russian, the source added.
Reuters had reported in mid-April, citing LSEG shipping data, that the 138,200-cubic-metre tanker Kunpeng was heading to the Dahej LNG import terminal in western India. The vessel is now near Singaporean waters with no destination broadcast, according to LSEG.
India, the biggest buyer of Russian seaborne crude, conveyed its decision not to buy LNG that was under sanction to Russia’s Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin during his April 30 visit, when he met Indian officials including Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, one of the sources said. It was their second meeting in as many months, and Sorokin could return in June for further talks, said the source.
India’s purchases of Russian crude have meanwhile continued unabated, aided by a temporary waiver of U.S. sanctions introduced to help countries cope with an energy crisis resulting from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, which began on February 28.
Arctic LNG 2 is Russia’s other export plant subject to U.S. sanctions. Washington stepped up sanctions on the LNG plants in early 2025 over Russia’s war on Ukraine.
While crude oil cargoes can be hidden through ship-to-ship transfers at sea, LNG shipments are far harder to conceal from satellite tracking.
While India is open to buying authorised Russian LNG, most of those volumes are committed to Europe, Reuters notes. Meanwhile, China remains a major buyer of both sanctioned and unsanctioned Russian LNG. Moscow is also seeking long-term deals to supply India with LNG and fertilizers such as potash, phosphorus and urea, the source added.
Before the Iran conflict disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, India was meeting half of its gas consumption through imports, about 60% of which had come through the waterway. More than half of its crude supplies came the same way.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday urged people to conserve fuel and foreign exchange by working from home, limiting foreign travel and reducing imports of gold and edible oil.
Iran Deploys Combat-Ready Mini Subs In Hormuz As US Flexes Nuclear Submarine En Route
Rival submarine threats have emerged Monday amid the ongoing Strait of Hormuz showdown and as President Trump has said the ceasefire with Iran is on “massive life support”.
A US Navy nuclear-armed submarine has arrived in Gibraltar while en route into the Mediterranean Sea and likely Central Command or Middle East regional waters, in a very rare Pentagon admission of the whereabouts of one of America’s most secretive weapons.
“The port visit demonstrates U.S. capability, flexibility, and continuing commitment to its NATO allies,” the Navy announced, confirming that the submarine arrived in Gibraltar on Sunday. “Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines are undetectable launch platforms for submarine-launched ballistic missiles, providing the U.S. with its most survivable leg of the nuclear triad.”
The Wall Street Journal has emphasized, “The Pentagon almost never acknowledges the locations of its boomers [US naval slang], which are highly classified. The Navy didn’t provide the name of the submarine in Gibraltar.”
The revelation of the nuclear sub’s movements comes just atter President Trump blasted Iran’s latest counterproposal to a US peace plan as “totally unacceptable” and even called it “garbage” while threatening renewed anti-Tehran military action. It also comes as Trump is about to travel to China for a highly anticipated summit with Xi Jinping.
There’s current some rival ‘sub flexing’ going on among the two rival and warring powers, given also the following from Bloomberg on the same day: “The Islamic Republic has at least 16 of the Ghadir-class midget submarines, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.”
USS Alaska (SSBN 732) (tentatively identified) Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine coming into Gibraltar – May 10, 2026 SRC: X-@PeterFerrarypic.twitter.com/aU7V53tS3V
“Each has a crew of fewer than 10 people and can carry either two torpedoes or two Chinese-designed C-704 anti-ship cruise missiles,” the report described.
Iranian Rear Admiral Shahram Irani said the domestically built submarines, known as the “Persian Gulf Dolphins,” are deployed in active operational positions calibrated to confront evolving threats.
Tehran is in essence warning it still possesses the capability to take out American destroyers and warships patrolling the area, as the deployment reinforces Tehran’s broader asymmetric warfare strategy across the Persian Gulf.
State-linked Iranian outlets have characterized the submarines as “trigger-ready” – but also say they are capable of prolonged seabed-resting surveillance operations.
All of this suggests intense submarine warfare could soon come to the Hormuz Strait and Persian Gulf waters. Already most of the Iranian Navy’s surface vessels were obliterated in over a month of intense US-Israeli airstrikes.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Friday named six Democratic states he wants to join New York in pursuing mid-decade redistricting ahead of the 2028 election—a longer-term play as both parties have raced to redraw maps before the November 2026 midterms.
“It’s going to be incredibly important that states like New York, New Jersey, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Maryland and Illinois are aggressive in moving forward to ensure that there’s a fair national map, particularly in light of what the Supreme Court’s attack on the Voting Rights Act has unleashed,” Jeffries said in an interview with CNN published on May 8.
Congressional maps are slated to be redrawn after the next census in 2030.
The comments came the same day that the Virginia Supreme Court voided an April referendum that would have allowed state Democrats to redraw Virginia’s congressional map ahead of the November midterms. Democrats had said the new Virginia map could result in their having 10 congressional seats to only one for Republicans. Virginia now has six Democratic members of Congress and five Republicans.
Jeffries called the Virginia ruling “unprecedented” and “undemocratic” in a statement released by his office on Friday.
“Over three million Virginia citizens cast their votes in a free and fair election, yet the State Supreme Court has chosen to invalidate their voice, disenfranchise them and violate their due process rights,” Jeffries said in the statement.
He added, “We are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision. No matter what it takes, House Democrats will win in November so we can help rescue this nation from the extremism being unleashed by Donald Trump and Republicans.”
Despite the setback, Jeffries told CNN that Democrats could still flip “at least two” GOP-held seats in Virginia under the existing congressional map.
“If the current map holds in Virginia, we will at minimum flip two seats. And we’re exploring other options given how unpopular the policies of the Republican party have been,” Jeffries told CNN.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court on April 29 ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that Louisiana’s congressional map was unconstitutional because race was the predominant factor in drawing the lines, a decision that limits redistricting based on race. Democrats and voting rights advocates say the decision guts the Voting Rights Act and gives Republican-led states grounds to revisit majority-minority districts.
Republicans hailed the ruling. Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton said on May 6 that the Supreme Court had “opined that redistricting, like the judicial system, should be color-blind.” He noted that the court had also indicated that “states can redistrict based off partisan politics” as the state began redrawing its districts.
Republican-led states have moved quickly.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on May 7 signed a new congressional map that splits Memphis into three districts and will probably eliminate the state’s only Democratic-held congressional seat. The Tennessee General Assembly first passed a measure repealing a state law that had previously prohibited mid-decade redistricting.
Republicans have also moved this year to redraw congressional maps in Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, Missouri, and Florida. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 4 signed a new map that could add up to four Republican-leaning seats to that state’s congressional delegation.
Democrats have countered with their own mid-decade redraws in California and the now-voided Virginia attempt. On May 4, Jeffries launched what he calls the New York Democracy Project, an effort to recruit New York into the mid-decade redistricting fight.
Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), dispatched to Albany by Jeffries, pressed New York Democratic leaders to advance a constitutional amendment enabling mid-decade redistricting before the legislature adjourns the first week of June. A New York constitutional change would require passage by two consecutive legislative sessions before going to voters for ratification.
Jeffries on Monday told House Democrats in a Dear Colleague letter that he will host a caucus-wide briefing on Thursday with Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee, to discuss what he called “the largest voter protection effort in modern American history.”
National Republican Redistricting Trust Executive Director Adam Kincaid told The Epoch Times this past week that the broader push amounted to “Hochul and Jeffries’s annual attempt to illegally gerrymander New York and roll back the state’s twice-voter-approved redistricting commission.”
President Donald Trump said Monday he is seriously considering annexing the South American nation as the 51st U.S. state, citing the country’s vast oil reserves and what he described as strong local support for his leadership.
In a telephone interview with Fox News anchor John Roberts, Trump mused that he is weighing the move for a nation that holds an estimated $40 trillion in oil resources.
NEW: President Trump tells @FoxNews colleague @johnrobertsFox in a phone call just now that he is “seriously considering making Venezuela the 51st US state”, adding that there is $40 trillion in oil there and “Venezuela loves Trump”.
“Venezuela loves Trump,” the president told the reporter.
The suggestion comes months after U.S. forces conducted a military operation in Venezuela in January that resulted in the capture of longtime President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The couple was extradited to the U.S. to face narco-terrorism and weapons charges, effectively ending more than a decade of socialist rule that had transformed one of Latin America’s richest economies into an economic disaster marked by hyperinflation, mass emigration and the breakdown of public services.
Rather than installing opposition figure María Corina Machado, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, as the new leader, the Trump administration supported the installation of Delcy Rodríguez—Maduro’s former vice president—as interim president. Trump has described the arrangement as “spectacular” and predicted a rapid economic turnaround.
Rodríguez’s government has moved swiftly on economic reforms. Within weeks of taking power, it enacted legislation opening the oil sector to privatization, dismantling core elements of the Chavista model that had dominated for more than two decades.
Meanwhile, commercial activity has accelerated thanks to Chevron, which signed two agreements expanding its participation in a joint venture with state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA in the Orinoco Oil Belt, Reuters reported at the time.
Venezuelan oil output is already rising.
PDVSA reported production of 1.095 million barrels a day last month, up 75,000 barrels a day from February, with Oil Minister Paula Henao setting a target of 1.3 million barrels a day by year-end.
Trump administration officials have been candid about the financial stakes.
A White House spokesman called the first $500 million portion of an approximately $2 billion oil-supply agreement a “historic energy deal,” CBS News reported at the time. Trump has said the U.S. would rebuild Venezuela “in a very profitable way,” adding, “We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil.”
‘Mediator’ Pakistan Hosted Iranian Military Aircraft To Insulate Them From US Attacks, Graham Fumes At Islamabad
Summary
CBS reports Pakistan sheltered Iranian military planes, Sen. Graham outraged, calls for ‘reevaluation’.
US President blasts ‘piece of garbage’ Iran response, says ceasefire on ‘life support’, reportedly mulls renewed military action; US Treasury imposes yet more sanctions.
Trump mulls restarting Project Freedom in Hormuz and says forcibly retrieving ‘nuclear dust’ is still on the table, oil jumps on headline.
Iran Foreign Ministry: “Everything we proposed in the text was reasonable and generous.” However, US officials insist on their “unreasonable demands.“
Saudi Arabia condemns Iran for its latest drone attacks targeting the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait on Sunday.
Qatari LNG tanker abruptly U-Turns In Hormuz chokepoint after earlier in weekend an initial one made it through – an unprecedented first for a Qatari tanker of the war.
Pakistan Hosted Iranian Military Planes To Insulate Them From US Attacks
There’s been some outrage in D.C. and among the pundit class over a late in the day Monday CBS News report alleging that US-ally Pakistan allowed Iran to park military aircraft at its airfields, and thus outside the US-Israeli strike zone during Operation Epic Fury:
As Pakistan positioned itself as a diplomatic conduit between Tehran and Washington, it quietly allowed Iranian military aircraft to park on its airfields, potentially shielding them from American airstrikes, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.
Iran also sent civilian aircraft to park in neighboring Afghanistan. It was not clear if military aircraft were among those flights, two of the officials told CBS News.
President Trump and admin officials have repeatedly declared the utter and total destruction of Iran’s air force and navy, but apparently some planes were missed. According to more from CBS:
Together, the movements reflected an apparent effort to insulate some of Iran’s remaining military and aviation assets from the expanding conflict, even as officials publicly served as brokers for de-escalation.
The U.S. officials, who all spoke only under condition of anonymity to discuss national security issues, told CBS News that days after President Trump announced the ceasefire with Iran in early April, Tehran sent multiple aircraft to Pakistan Air Force Base Nur Khan, a strategically important military installation located just outside the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi.
Among the first to very angrily vent outrage is you know who from South Carolina…
If this reporting is accurate, it would require a complete reevaluation of the role Pakistan is playing as mediator between Iran, the United States and other parties.
Given some of the prior statements by Pakistani defense officials towards Israel, I would not be shocked if… https://t.co/OqJ1cdVLFX
US Rolls Out Yet More Sanctions, & Connected to China
Per Reuters on Monday afternoon: “The U.S. government on Monday announced sanctions against three people and nine companies, including four based in Hong Kong and four in the United Arab Emirates, for aiding Iran’s shipment of oil to China. The ninth company is based in Oman.”
“The Treasury move follows sanctions announced on Friday on individuals and companies aiding Iranian purchases of weapons and components used to make drones and ballistic missiles,” the report adds. These new measures target some Iran-linked entities in Hong Kong/China.
As there’s not a whole lot to still sanction inside Iran, it looks like the US Treasury is focused on taking aim on external entities, though this is sure to increase Washington tensions with Beijing…
As Iran’s military desperately tries to regroup, Economic Fury will continue to deprive the regime of funding for its weapons programs, terrorist proxies, and nuclear ambitions. Treasury will continue to cut the Iranian regime off from the financial networks it uses to carry out… https://t.co/nenSlWtW8T
— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) May 11, 2026
Trump Mulls Military Action As Ceasefire On “Life Support”
President Trump is meeting with his national security team Monday to discuss the way forward in the Iran war, including possibly resuming military action, after negotiations with the country deadlocked on Sunday, three U.S. officials told Axios.
U.S. officials say Trump wants a deal to end the war, but Iran’s rejection of many of his demands and refusal to make meaningful concessions on its nuclear program puts the military option back on the table.
This sent oil prices back to the highs of the day…
President Trump also told Fox, that he sees a 1% chance of an Iran deal materializing and succeeding, as even the ceasefire is one of “the weakest, on life support“:
President Donald Trump called out the “piece of garbage” peace proposal from Iran on Monday from the Oval Office, saying only “stupid people” in Iran are questioning his resolve in guaranteeing Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.
The latest Iranian proposal reneged on a past vow to give up enriched uranium.
None of this bodes well for the prospect of the Strait of Hormuz opening up anytime soon. Oil prices have reflected general pessimism at the start of this week.
Trump Might Fully Restart Project Freedom
Fox News is reporting that President Trump is considering renewing Project Freedom, pushing oil up. According to the developing story:
President Donald Trump has stated in an interview with Fox News that he is considering renewing Project Freedom, a military operation originally launched to secure the passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. This operation, involving significant U.S. naval assets, had been paused amid diplomatic efforts with Iran. The initial pause was influenced by diplomatic progress mediated by Pakistan, although recent developments suggest a potential escalation.
However, the reality is that the de facto US naval blockade has remained in place. The Iranians last week fired on US warships which were escorting foreign vessels through the strait. Since then there’s been an uneasy calm amid stalled negotiations. There’s really no movement on either side. Trump indicated in the fresh comments that all of this could be part of a larger operation, and strangely a bit of a contradictory stance: he said of Iran’s “hardline leaders” that “they are going to fold” and that “I will deal with them until they make a deal”. Of course, the very label of ‘hardline’ would suggest the opposite.
The same Fox correspondent was told by Trump that forcibly retrieving Iran’s ‘nuclear dust’ is still on the table:
.@realDonaldTrump Also told me that Iranian negotiators told him the US will have to retrieve the “nuclear dust” at Iran’s destroyed facilities as Iran does not have the technology to do it. pic.twitter.com/2GgLVdQQoL
It is clear there remains a huge gap between the positions of Washington and Tehran, after the past days saw proposal and counterproposal submitted via Pakistan, with the White House issuing its final response over the weekend, as President Trump called it ‘unacceptable’.
According to new Monday words from Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, “Everything we proposed in the text was reasonable and generous.” However, US officials continue to insist on their “unreasonable demands,” Baghaei stressed. He described that Iran’s demands for the war to stop, for the US to lift its blockade, and the release Iran’s frozen assets, remain legitimate. Further, Tehran is demanding safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, along with establishing security in the region and in Lebanon.
Senior Iranian military official Mohsen Rezaee to Tasnim: There Is No Clear Prospect for a Political Agreement With the United States
“Unfortunately, the US continues to insist on its one-sided view,” Baghaei added of the “reasonable, generous offer” built around Iran’s national interests. Iran has strongly suggested that the US is actually too influenced by driving Israeli interests, not American priorities.
But per WSJ, Washington’s focus remains on the nuclear issue, which Iran considers a non-starter in negotiations: “The president on Sunday said a multipage response that Iran sent to the U.S. proposal to end the war, which didn’t include commitments about Tehran’s nuclear program, was unacceptable,” the publication writes.
Iran’s FM Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei:
Iran has proven to be a responsible power in the region, and at the same time, we are not bullies — rather, we are anti-bullies. Just look at our conduct.
Were we the ones who launched a military campaign against America thousands of miles… pic.twitter.com/q6fz3fi75A
Saudi Arabia has condemned and blasted Iran for its latest drone attacks targeting the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait on Sunday, according to a new Foreign Ministry statement. The UAE had intercepted two drones coming from Iran, while Qatar said a drone attack hit a cargo ship coming from Abu Dhabi in its waters. Kuwait in turn also said its air defenses had engaged hostile drones that entered its airspace. Kuwait, which borders Iran, has become a kind of front line for Iranian attacks and drone activity.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry reiterated its support and backing of all measures taken by Gulf states to protect their security and stability, saying, “The Kingdom demands an immediate halt to the blatant attacks on the territories and territorial waters of Gulf states, and to any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz or disrupt international waterways.”
“It emphasizes the importance of adhering to the protection of international maritime routes in accordance with relevant international laws,” the ministry added.
Qatari LNG Tanker Abruptly U-Turns In Hormuz Chokepoint After Weekend Transit Breakthrough
Sunday’s response by Trump to Iran’s counterproposal pushed WTI crude futures nearly 3% higher to $98 a barrel as traders raised the war-risk premium tied to a prolonged disruption in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s counterproposal dominated attention over the weekend, but shipping activity in the region also drew focus after Bloomberg reporter Stephen Stapczynski cited vessel-tracking data showing that an LNG tanker successfully passed through the Strait of Hormuz without incident.
The shipment marked the first time Qatar exported LNG through the strait since the war began ten weeks earlier. The tanker later docked in Pakistan. By Monday morning, Stapczynski reported that another fully loaded LNG tanker, “Mihzem,” was approaching the waterway. “Another Qatar LNG shipment is nearing the Strait of Hormuz, bound for Pakistan,” Stapczynski wrote on X. He added, “Pakistan is dealing with a gas shortage, and has negotiated with Iran for several LNG shipments. If successful, this would be the second LNG cargo to transit Hormuz for Pakistan in a few days.”
Stapczynski’s X post and report about the second Qatar LNG tanker attempting to transit the maritime chokepoint came early Monday. By 0700 ET, new ship-tracking data showed that the Mihzem abruptly reversed course roughly 20 miles before reaching Hormuz Island.
Tanker Leaking
There is a large oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz spotted leaking a trail of oil, after a potential hostile strike. The incident, picked up by satellite monitoring, comes also amid reports of a large oil slick near Kharg Island; however, the Iranians have denied that the Kharg incident is a large-scale leak or oil slick.
Here’s what Tanker Trackers has commented on the below open sources satellite data and imagery (first struck on May 4):
The VLCC supertanker you see in the video below is BARAKAH (9902615). She is owned by UAE’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC); the country’s state-owned oil & gas producer. BARAKAH was struck by Iranian drones on 2026-05-04, which is when we found her in this state on satellite imagery for clients. She’s empty of oil cargo following a secret transfer she had to conduct east of UAE to another tanker. She was struck once heading back west to fetch more oil. ADNOC condemned the attacks.
Satellite imagery appears to show a large oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz leaking a trail of oil following a possible strike. Intense small speedboat activity can also be seen nearby.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is convening a high level security meeting in his office in Jerusalem on Monday, according to The Times of Israel. The meeting comes after President Trump rejected Iran’s response to his ceasefire proposal, and ahead of direct Israel-Lebanon talks in Washington later this week. The Lebanon front has intensified, and IDF warplanes have heavily bombed not only southern Lebanon but the Beirut suburbs over the last days. Hezbollah drone attacks have become increasingly deadly in the meantime, with many serious injuries but also this latest:
An IDF reservist was killed in a Hezbollah drone attack in northern Israel, the Israel Defense Forces said on Monday. The slain soldier was named as Warrant Officer (res.) Alexander Glovanyov, 47, a driver in the Transport Center’s 6924th Battalion, from Petah Tikva.
The attack took place around 4 p.m. on Sunday, when several explosive-laden drones launched by Hezbollah struck in Israeli territory near Manara, close to the border with Lebanon. One of the drones killed Glovanyov, according to an IDF probe.
Iran Still Wants Comprehensive Deal to Include Lebanon
Responsible Statecraftwrites, “No new developments on the Lebanese front give reason for optimism that this round will yield an agreement that two prior rounds did not. The Trump administration, however, has an incentive to push for an agreement because of President Trump’s need to extract himself and the United States from the impasse involving the Strait of Hormuz.”
“The fighting on the Lebanese front since then has been as one-sided in the resulting death and destruction as Israeli combat with Palestinians,” the publication observes. “The Israeli assault has killed 2,700 people in Lebanon, while Israeli fatalities have been 18 military personnel and two civilians. At the height of the offensive, more than a million people — about a fifth of Lebanon’s population — were displaced, and most remain so. Israeli forces have destroyed entire villages in southern Lebanon.”
Iran continues to insist that any broader Iran war truce must encompass Lebanon as the conflict there flows out of the one in the Persian Gulf region. Al Jazeera meanwhile reports of the latest Monday: “Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon continues as Hezbollah claims more attacks on Israeli troops. The Lebanese Health Ministry says Israeli attacks in the past 24 hours have killed 51 people, including two medical workers.”
The United States is seeking to develop small modular nuclear reactors (SMR) for commercial vessels that would potentially bring down shipping costs, the Department of Transportation (DOT) said in a May 7 statement.
The initiative, launched by DOT Secretary Sean P. Duffy and the Maritime Administration (MARAD), has issued a Request for Information (RFI) for this purpose. An RFI is a formal document to gather preliminary information regarding a good or service from suppliers. In this specific case, the purpose of the RFI is to investigate whether the advancements in SMR technology and other developments are “usable, scalable, and can be made commercially viable,” according to the RFI published in the Federal Register on May 7.
SMRs have a power generation capacity of up to 300 megawatts, which is roughly a third of the traditionally larger nuclear power reactors. While the big reactors are typically custom-designed for a specific location, SMRs can be manufactured as pre-fabricated units and then transported and installed at any location.
MARAD is calling on industry stakeholders and innovators to help in the development of an SMR model that would revitalize the U.S. shipping industry, cut down transportation costs, and secure energy dominance, the DOT statement said.
“To successfully introduce SMRs, we must view this through a system-transition lens rather than just as a technology demonstration,” MARAD Administrator Stephen M. Carmel said.
“We are seeking critical insights on how the government can help reduce systemic uncertainty, align regulatory structures, and enable the market conditions necessary for private capital and operators to scale these groundbreaking technologies.”
The federal government is seeking inputs from the industry to advance the development of SMRs that would mostly eliminate fuel costs and minimize maintenance requirements, identify streamlined methods to deploy nuclear power across the nation’s fleets and logistical networks, integrate SMR production into American shipyards, and set up liability, inspection, and insurance frameworks on this matter.
MARAD is collaborating with the DOT, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the U.S. Coast Guard to support the development of SMRs.
According to the DOT, the SMR initiative advances two of President Donald Trump’s executive orders—Unleashing American Energy issued on Jan. 20, 2025, and Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance issued on April 9, 2025.
The Jan. 20 order instructed the heads of all agencies to review regulations, policies, and orders that impose “undue burden” on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources, including nuclear power.
The April 9 order said it is the policy of the United States to rebuild and revitalize America’s maritime industries and workforce to ensure economic prosperity and safeguard national security.
Commenting on the SMR initiative, Duffy said that “under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. is reclaiming its rightful place as a global sea power.”
“To secure this future for America’s shipbuilding industry, we need to innovate. By partnering with industry experts and outside-the-box thinkers to develop a strong SMR model, we will deliver a state-of-the-art energy source that cuts costs and bolsters national security—all at the Speed of Trump,” the DOT secretary said.
SMR Concerns
Despite the potential of SMRs, there are concerns about deploying the technology.
A December 2025 study published in the Energy Research and Social Science journal highlighted that the high upfront costs of deploying SMRs could require injecting public subsidies into such programs.
“Diverting public investment into new small-scale nuclear projects may deprive communities of funding for other urgent priorities such as healthcare, education, and renewable energy alternatives,” the study said.
As for employment opportunities, “although construction and initial operation phases generate employment, these opportunities diminish over time as SMR plants typically require fewer personnel for ongoing maintenance and operation. This raises questions about whether the socio-economic benefits such projects are purported to bring are equitably distributed,” it said.
Meanwhile, big tech companies, such as Amazon and Google, have announced plans regarding the construction of SMRs or buying nuclear power from such facilities.
The U.S. military is looking at deploying microreactors, a subset of SMRs that can typically generate 20 megawatts or less of electricity, according to an April 27 statement from the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
For instance, the Army launched the Janus Program in October 2025, aimed at building microreactors, and has already selected nine potential bases to house them.
The Air Force is planning to set up its first microreactor at Alaska’s Eielson Air Force Base, while the Navy is soliciting offers to power its installations with SMRs and microreactors, the EIA said.
