United States | News & Politics

Looks like The White House is just winging it, and there's no plan whatsoever:

A recent internal assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency that was circulating inside the Pentagon in recent weeks determined that Iran could potentially keep the passage shut for anywhere from one to six months, four sources familiar with the document told CNN. But White House and Pentagon officials insisted that the assessment — particularly the longer end timeframe, which some consider a worst-case scenario — was not being seriously considered.

According to Breaking Defense, the program was launched after the Army halted internal development of the Extended Range Cannon Artillery system and shifted toward evaluating existing self-propelled howitzers in 2024. The report noted that an official list of competitors has not yet been released.

However, several companies are known to be pursuing the program. These include South Korea’s Hanwha, Germany’s Rheinmetall, U.S.-based Elbit America, and a joint offering from Leonardo DRS and European land systems group KNDS.

https://web.archive.org/gothamist.com/news/luigi-mangione-seeks-trial-delay-saying-he-wants-to-help-pick-his-own-jury

cross-posted from: https://lemmus.org/post/20972845

Unannounced Deals:

• Patriot PAC-3 Missiles— about $5.6 billion;
• CH-47 Chinook helicopters— about $1.32 billion.

The State Department is not required to announce the sale to the public under the rules governing U.S. arms exports, which use different modalities for different types of sales.

The sales were not announced publicly because they expanded previously agreed arms deals.

Source: Wall Street Journal(WSJ).

https://archive.ph/9QbGK

"[W]e have included a map marking each of these facilities, in hopes of providing local journalists, organizations, and concerned citizens with information about the hold rooms operating closest to them. We have also included a list of each hold room broken down by state so that readers and researchers in each locale can more easily find the facilities near where they live."

It is that broader Trumpian coalition — rather than the core base of MAGA supporters — that some Trump backers fear has been endangered by Trump’s policy choices. As the conservative activist Mike Cernovich put it this week, “A generational coalition, squandered.”

Here are the key issues that threaten to tear that coalition apart.

Shortly after Trump took office for a second time, his administration made it clear that it felt constitutional rights were merely privileges it would extend only to those who fully supported whatever the hell the administration happened to be doing.

“At a time of extreme and growing inequality," said one critic, "today’s proposals will drain lending away from Main Street families’ needs and priorities and further enrich the already wealthy on Wall Street."

Putin couldn't have picked a better tool to do it.

cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/205715

The Trump administration’s directive to federal immigration agents on the detention and deportation of parents of minor children is clear: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents must accommodate a parent’s “efforts to make alternative care arrangements for their minor child(ren) prior to detention.” But a report released Wednesday by the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) and Physicians…

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Prosecutors have struggled to prove in court what the president and his aides have repeatedly said in public: that a network of leftist activists presents a serious threat to national security.

Probably because the protesters are patriots in a way that Republicans and ICE are not.

This post uses a gift link but the NYT is doing an A/B test where about 1/10 of people are asked to register when they click on a gift link. If that happens to you, you can use a private browsing window or archive.is

The closure of the strait of Hormuz is causing a “paralyzing, real-time problem” for any prospective manufacturing surge in the US defense industrial base, and even for the repair of defense equipment damaged by Iranian attacks, according to analysis published by West Point’s Modern War Institute.

In particular sulphur, a vital upstream input in the extraction of critical minerals including copper and cobalt, has seen a “near total” disruption of seaborne trade in the straits, which makes up half the world’s total shipments, and prices have spiked nearly 25% since the war began, and seen a 165% rise year on year, the report said.

According to the analysis, these minerals – used in everything from microprocessors to jet engines to drone batteries – “dictate how fast things can be built and scaled under the pressure of an ongoing war”, and the effects of a sudden supply shock on US defense readiness have never been modeled.

Key things to understand:

• Immigration "judge" means an executive branch employee, not a Senate-confirmed judge with a lifetime appointment
• Immigration "judges" get fired if they rule in favor of immigrants

Also see https://www.marinelink.com/news/industry-bodies-raise-concerns-jones-act-537093