Kitchen Briefs - July 31, 2026 PM

• Israeli settlers attacked a sheep farm today firing shots and injuring a 10 year old in the West Bank. Settlers also illegally seized an ancient archaeological site and turned it into a swimming pool
• The US military is posting on social media that the Strait of Hormuz is open to commercial vessels
• Treasury Secretary Bessent says the US is searching for Iranian assets all over the world
• The former Israeli chief of staff says Netanyahu has capitulated with the Gaza peace plan
• Trump says the US is decimating Iran
• An F-35 fighter jet has crashed near Miramar air base outside of San Diego
• Authorities are releasing the ransom notes in the Nancy Guthrie case in the hopes that someone recognizes the writing
• Today is the last day of funding from the federal government for legal services for children who entered the US alone
• Trump said he saw what happened in Spain yesterday with hundreds of thousands of migrants, no it was 60,000 and he says that could happen in America if Republicans don’t get elected
• There was a cyber attack in Minnesota targeting 30 water systems
• The National Archives sent an email to staff at offices in San Bruno, just south of San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle that they will be closing and records will need to be relocated
• The headline says Oprah is closing her school for girls in South Africa but she’s actually turning it over to the provincial education department
• Minocqua Brewing Company in Wisconsin is about to lose its alcohol permit and the owner says it’s in retaliation to him offering free beer
• Are you registered to vote?

Kitchen Briefs - July 31, 2026 AM

• Trump has announced that thanks to The Board of Peace, there’s a new peace plan on the table between Hamas and Israel
• Another Palestinian has been killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza
• Iran continues to launch strikes and Kuwait says they have destroyed drones entering its airspace
• Iran claims it has struck and stopped 2 oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz
• 60,000 people crossed Spain’s border from Morocco in 24 hours
• FIFA presidential advisor Carlos Cordeiro resigned today over Infantino’s plan to sell off World Cup
• Trump doubled down this morning about how mad he is that Senator Cornyn won’t confirm Todd Blanche
• Have you heard of Meredith O’Rourke also known as "the princess of darkness". She’s helped Trump raise $800M
• ABC submitted a 119-page filing to the FCC accusing the agency of "attempted censorship" and retaliatory action over the network's broadcast programming and editorial choices
• Ohio Congressman Max Miller’s ex-wife has filed for a restraining order against him and has accused him of abuse
• Scouting America is currently hosting its National Jamboree and decided to eliminate spaces for gay youth, women and scouts of color because Hegseth demanded it
• Trump is taking his cabinet on a little retreat this weekend at Camp David
• The bots went rogue again. First it was OpenAI and now it’s Anthropic who discovered during testing that Claude models hacked another company

Kitchen Briefs - July 30, 2026 PM

- Iran says they didn’t strike the vessel in Egypt and is saying it was false flag operations because they want Egypt secure

Iran claims it struck US assets at a base in Bahrain

- Israeli restrictions on aid are crippling Gaza relief efforts. The UN Palestinian refugee agency says half their vehicle fleet is inoperable because they won’t give them spare parts or lubricant oil

- Senate Republicans with the exception of Collins, Paul and Murkel voted to let Trump continue his war

- Katie Phang won big in court today when the judge said unredacted Epstein files needed to be turned over and the DOJ

- Trump is now saying he might remove his nomination of Todd Blanche as attorney general

- The administration has decided to wrap up the coverage for Medicare Part D which covered prescriptions in response to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act

- On Thursday, the Union of European Football Associations and its 55 member associations unanimously voted to boycott all FIFA competitions in protest of the plan to sell to private investors

- RFK Jr has launched a new cooking show because the sacred ritual of cooking at home has been abandoned

Kitchen Briefs - July 30, 2026 AM

• The IRGC is claiming an attack on the US military base in Kuwait. Two drone hangars and a fuel tank for an aircraft and military helicopters were set on fire and destroyed at the base
• The IRGC is claiming to have attacked Jordan’s al-Azraraq airbase and to have destroyed 3 US F-35 fighter jets, caused heavy damage to 3 others and have said they killed a number of enemy officers and technical and mechanical personnel
• Iran has also struck two vessels, one was US owned at an Egyptian port. This is the first strike on Egypt
• Kuwait says one person was killed in an Iranian strike of a building of a Chinese company
• An Israeli drone attack in northern Gaza has killed four more including 2 children
• US forces bombed a building on Iran’s Qeshm Island killing a couple and their 2 year old child. An 11 and 7 year old were pulled from the rubble and are receiving medical care
• Yesterday the US struck a deal with Lockheed Martin for a contract worth $58.6B to produce more Patriot interceptor missiles
• Poland is blaming Russia for firing a missile into its territory as Russia is unleashing deadly attacks on Ukraine with at least 8 killed
• The vote to confirm acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has been delayed because Senator John Cornyn refuses to yield
• US Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6B to launch 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base through 2027
• The National Urban League released its annual “State of Black America” report today and says The American Dream is even further out of reach for Black Americans since the Civil Rights Movement thanks to the current administration
• Florida’s attorney general has launched an investigation into Dr. Fauci over his “lack of candor to Congress”

Kitchen Briefs - July 29, 2026 PM

• Iran confirms the US/Saudi attack killed at least 4 people affiliated with the IRGC
• The Israeli military ordered an evacuation for a refugee camp in Gaza City and then struck it twice
• Other Israeli strikes have killed 2 more Palestinians
• Dr. Fauci pleaded the 5th 100 times today. The committee is expected to vote next week on whether to hold him in contempt
• The deadline passed on Monday for Trump to file a Supreme Court rehearing petition on birthright citizenship
• Alex Jones is calling for Trump's immediate impeachment because of a social media post on April 7th
• Matthew Wingate, the government-relations director for defense and foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation tried to take a 9 mm gun magazine with 10 rounds in it through security into a Senate office building on Friday
• A reporter asked Epstein survivors how acting attorney general Todd Blanche has been condescending to them
• Yesterday Marjorie Taylor Green put a ring on it in Vegas and married Brian Glenn
• The White House is not happy that John Mellencamp paused his concert over the weekend to call renaming the Gulf of Mexico was a stupid idea
• Read more books

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