Kitchen Briefs

Kitchen Briefs - July 29, 2026 AM

• The US and Saudi Arabia conducted joint strikes against Iranian backed militias in Iraq killing at least 20
• Iran has said they’re firing missiles at the US base in Jordan
• Iran is reporting a US attack in northwestern Iran
• Oil prices are up
• Ukraine says it hit two major Russian oil refineries
• More than 60,000 children have been orphaned in Gaza since October 2023
• Dr. Anthony Fauci is being questioned today by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee led by Rand Paul
• There have been more than 100 aftershocks in Japan
• Trump is unveiling a $22.5B renovation plan for Washington Dulles airport
• The Senate has confirmed Jay Clayton as the new National Intelligence Director
• Actor Jared Leto has been accused of criminal sexual conduct by 10 women
• Trump and the DOJ are asking the Supreme Court to toss out an $83M defamation verdict won by E. Jean Carroll
• Elon Musk’s company xAI is suing Minnesota for banning AI nudification technology
• Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff are urging the SEC to investigate Trump's fast feed
• The absence of Mitch McConnell and death of Lindsey Graham are stalling the SAVE America Act
• BTS has been nominated for a grammy but the band has decided to boycott after the Grammys announced an Asian Pop category
• APNews shares the new media ecosystem reshaping Democratic politics

Kitchen Briefs - July 28, 2026 PM

• Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister says Iran will take any action to control the Strait and has no plans on negotiating with the US
• Saudi Arabia air defences have intercepted and destroyed several drones launched from Iraqi territory attempting to target oil facilities
• Oil prices are going down again
• Netanyahu says he had an excellent meeting with Trump
• Netanyahu then declined to meet with Zelensky
• Senators John Cornyn and Thom Thillis have demanded that the anti-weaponization fund be formally killed to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general
• Colt Gray, the suspect in the Georgia school shooting was sentenced to life without parole today
• A new DHS rule took effect, allowing federal officers to refer asylum applicants directly to Immigration Judges without initial interviews
• ICE has begun arresting people with expired visas at airports, including spouses of American citizens and workers with pending status applications
• The Energy Department selected Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Utah, and Idaho as potential hosts for Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses
• This administration has killed at least 221 people in 67 boat strikes and the DEA has assessed that cocaine flow hasn’t actually decreased at all. Boats have just taken a different route
• A federal judge in Illinois ruled today that the state cannot offer in-state tuition to public colleges to students who are immigrants here illegally
• The DOJ spent $900K renovating its Washington headquarters which included cleaning, new light fixtures and 6 giant banners of Trump
• The president of FIFA announced today his plans to create a $20B company to run the World Cup with private investors and the Kushner brothers
• A video has gone viral of a 16 year old Ryder Williams, a lifeguard in Santa Cruz, California rescuing a 10 year old at Seabright Beach over the weekend
• AI companies, including Anthropic, are buying up used and rare physical books in bulk to scan for training data, then destroying them, exploiting a legal loophole that treats digitizing a purchased book as "transformative" fair use

Kitchen Briefs - July 28, 2026 AM

• Trump threatened to use Iranian frozen assets to fix and replace any damage and Iran says any country using their frozen assets will not be allowed in the Strait of Hormuz
• Trump took some time from posting on Truth Social to call into Fox News and say once again that if talks with Iran don’t go well, he could take out most of their bridges in less than one hour and knock out the power plants within a day
• Oman has sent a proposal to Iran for a joint regional mechanism to manage the Strait of Hormuz with voluntary fees
• Israel says the US used Israeli bases to refuel and take off in recent weeks to carry out strikes on Iran because Iran is striking everywhere except Israel
• Israel’s Defence Minister said he has issued instructions to expand the scope of the military assault on the occupied West Bank
• 3 more Palestinians were killed and 14 injured by Israeli attacks on Gaza
• Netanyahu is meeting with Trump and also meeting separately with Zelensky
• Today is the funeral for Lindsey Graham
• A 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit south west Japan today and a shopping mall has collapsed trapping many people
• Uganda has declared itself ebola free as the last patient was discharged in mid-June
• The administration notified Congress last week that it intends to spend $175.8M to replace outdated and aging undersea telecommunications cables in the Caribbean and Central America to prevent China from moving in
• The Federal Transit Administration hasn’t approved a single new infrastructure grant under the Capital Investments Grants
• The Tate brothers will spend at least the next two weeks in a US jail until their extradition hearing

Kitchen Briefs - July 27, 2026 PM

• 4 Iranian drones are targeting northern Iraq. Sources say that there are more than 10 US warplanes and drones flying over in response to the attacks which includes a gas field which supplies the majority of the region’s electricity.
• There has also been a series of explosions near the US consulate in Erbil
• Iran’s health minister says the US attacks have killed 60 and injured 670
• Trump was given a microphone in Michigan today
• Previously unreleased documentary footage of Lindsay Graham show him celebrating the war in Iran and saying it was the best thing he’d ever done
• Trump asked the Supreme Court today to allow the administration to move forward with implementing his executive order around mail in ballots
• Police now say there were actually 3 shooters in the Seattle Food Festival and one of them is among those dead
• A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit over the make up of the guy in the white house’s Religious Liberty Commission. The lawsuit argued the commission violates rules by excluding non-Judeo-Christian faith traditions and consists almost entirely of conservative Christians and one Orthodox Jewish rabbi
• Trump is demanding the Senate cancel their upcoming August break until they pass his SAVE America Act bill
• Mitch McConnell has been released from the hospital and moved to a rehab center but hasn’t been cleared for work
• Go leave the good podcasts a review and elevate them!
• A shout out to my friend Lina Patton for sending me this amazing hat. Check out her book, The Lake Club, which is already out and amazing. My current read is Full Throttle by J.K. Maclaren

Kitchen Briefs - July 27, 2026 AM

• Trump is claiming the US is deep in talks with Iran but his patience has run out and the talks will either go fast or not at all and if they don’t, the US will go back to very strong military action
• Trump claimed Iran is begging for a deal yet today Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq all reported more drone attacks
• Saudi Arabia is reporting drone attacks launched from Iraq
• The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, expressed concern over the depletion of air defence munitions according to an unnamed US official
• Another Palestinian has died due to an Israeli strike on central Gaza
• Germany has just approved record arms exports to Israel
• Three people were killed and at least 4 were injured in a shooting at the Seattle Food Festival over the weekend
• CNBC is reporting that court documents now show that federal officials admitted withholding billions of dollars in federal grants to states based solely on the fact that they did not vote for Trump
• Netanyahu is meeting with Trump tomorrow at 11am eastern time
• Carly Simon has revealed she has Parkinson’s and treated for skin cancer
• The CEO of Cracker Barrel is stepping down next month

Kitchen Briefs - July 26, 2026

• Iranian media is saying a tanker exploded after hitting a naval mine in the Strait of Hormuz
• Israel says they have killed the Hamas drone commander
• Trump has decided to pause strikes to allow for diplomacy
• One woman has died and 29 were injured when a van drove into a crowd and the man then started stabbing people with a machete at the Berlin Pride parade in Germany. Authorities are saying it was an Islamic terrorist attack by a German citizen with Lebanese roots whom they’ve now shot and killed
• Ukraine has attacked an Iranian tanker in the Caspian Sea and Iran says it was done at Israel’s behest
• Brazil has denied visas to two US State Department officials who were planning on questioning the country's election system
• Russia took some satellite footage of US bases in Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait on July 19 and 20th and gave the photos to Iran to plan strikes and then assess damage
• Seattle police are looking for 2 men who parachuted from the Space Needle
• The OpenAI agent that somehow crawled out of its sandbox also left notes for future versions of itself with instructions on how to break free
• The White House quietly updated their website this weekend re-adding the four service members who were killed last week and also adding 140 to the wounded list
• Katy Perry is expressing outrage over her song Firework being used in a White House tiktok video of the US striking Iran
• Trump's posting all kinds of AI images to Lies Social including fake images of attacks on Iranian facilities and a number of images of him wearing 2028 hats

Kitchen Briefs - July 25, 2026

• The Houthis are escalating attacks in Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil facilities, calling them the bread and butter of Saudi Arabia
• Israel has launched an artillery attack on southern Lebanon
• An Israeli attack on a family home in Gaza has killed at least 2 more Palestinians including the head of the Hamas-led police and a medic
• Iraq air defences have shot down a drone near the US consulate in Erbil and have also fired tear gas at journalists in the Occupied west bank
• Iran says they sold $18B worth of oil during the war and so-called ceasefire with the US
• The IRGC is claiming to have destroyed 17 reconnaissance and operational drones, one F-15 fighter jet inside a hangar, one P-8 aircraft, one C-17 transport aircraft and 8 refuelling aircraft were also destroyed at bases throughout the region
• There are now over 270,000 people displaced due to wildfires in France and Spain
• Those who went to the White House Correspondent’s do over dinner last night were treated to an hour long rambling from Trump
• The award for courage went to the three journalists from the Wall Street Journal who investigated the Epstein birthday card from Trump
• When asked about LeBron vs Michael Jordan, Trump referred to Jordan as a friend whom he plays golf with and then said LeBron might be a racist
• Trump has ordered warning signs to be posted outside of the Smithsonian that say “inaccurate information presented in the Museum.”
• Maine Democrats have officially picked Troy Jackson to replace Graham Platner
• Meta has quit the clean energy pledge
• Good news for today that I discovered thanks to V of Under the Desk News is that a new species of monkey has been discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Kitchen Briefs - July 24, 2026 PM

• Trump is now saying the massive attack on Iran that he was toying with this week might not be necessary after all
• Iran has vowed to kill one member of the US forces for every Iranian killed
• Trump claims he has been promised by China and Russia that they will not, under any circumstances give or sell weapons to Iran
• Sirens are currently going off in Bahrain and citizens are being told to remain calm and find a safe place
• The US Embassy in Jerusalem has advised US citizens to stay alert, be prepared and the possibility of flight cancellations
• 10 people were killed in a Russian attack on a drone exhibition near Kyiv
• More than 140,000 people have been evacuated in France and Spain due to wildfires. Regional emergency crews say extinguishing the fires is beyond the capacity of the fire crews
• The DOJ is suing Milwaukee over their mask ban for federal agents
• Trump wants to investigate EU trade practices for what he’s calling unethical fines on Google and Apple
• Paramount has agreed to pause the Warner Brothers deal while the case plays out
• LeBron James is heading to the Philadelphia 76ers in what he says will be his final contract in the NBA
• The Los Angeles Dodgers kissed the ring yesterday and visited Trump
• The measles has just reached a 35 year high with over 2300 confirmed cases
• In good news, Christopher Hellenthal of Jonesboro, Arkansas helped a man in a wheelchair cross the road while dressed as superman

Kitchen Briefs - July 24, 2026 AM

• Netanyahu is coming to Washington on Tuesday to see Trump
• Iran is attacking the US military base in Jordan and missiles are being intercepted in Bahrain. Here’s what Iran’s army has claimed they’ve done but is not confirmed: in Kuwait, projectiles hit a base used by the US and destroyed an ammunition depot and inflicted casualties among US personnel. In Bahrain, they targeted Amazon’s data center. In Jordan, drone strikes on several US army base facilities including maintenance and accommodation. In Iraq, a drone crash near the airport. US strikes in Iran has killed 4 and injured over a dozen people
• Israel continues to attack in the West Bank
• The Pentagon has removed the names of 4 fallen service members as part of the casualty count for the war in Iran because they say it happened after Trump called for a ceasefire. The count is 18
• Colt Gray, the 16 year old responsible for the 2024 Apalachee High School shooting that killed two students and two teachers and wounded several others is expected to enter a non-negotiated plea today
• Parsley and cilantro have now been linked to the Cyclospora outbreak
• Tonight the White House Correspondent’s dinner will have it’s do over and of course Trump will be in attendance
• Thank you to Diane for providing me with both coffee and wine today!

Kitchen Briefs - July 23, 2026 PM

• Trump says he’s considering a massive attack on Iran
• Marco Rubio is saying that Iran is begging for a deal
• An advisor to Iran’s supreme leader says the threats from Trump to hit civilian infrastructure is proof of how desperate he is
• Iran’s chief negotiator and parliament speaker is literally mocking the US online
• Trump just posted on Truth Social that the US will use Iranian money in its possession to pay for any damages to ships and cargo
• An Israeli air strike on Gaza City has killed at least 2 people
• Trump announced today that the US will impose 10-12.5% tariffs on dozens of countries as his 10% levies are set to expire Friday
• The man who killed Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark, their dog and wounded Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette was sentenced today to two life terms plus 40 years in prison
• 2 people have died in West Virginia due to flash floods
• Laura Loomer went to Ukraine and met with Zelensky and has now reversed her long held pro Kremlin stance on the war
• The DOJ is saying they’re going to withdraw the subpoenas targeting New York Times reporters after admitting legal errors
• The administration and Secretary Duffy is requesting $8B to rehab Penn Station
• Trump announced today that 23 governors have signed his Ratepayer Protection Pledge to shield consumers from data center utility costs
• The Department of Education will no longer treat policies that disproportionately harm one group of students as discriminatory unless the discrimination is intentional
• This week the American Heart Association published a new scientific statement reporting that consuming up to 5 cups of coffee daily is safe for most