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The Ceasefire Is a Word
Overnight, the United States shot down four Iranian attack drones in the Strait of Hormuz and struck a ground control station in Bandar Abbas that was preparing to launch a fifth. Iran fired on a US tanker crossing the strait with its radar switched off, then the IRGC struck a US airbase, believed to be in Kuwait, at 4:50am local time. The IRGC called it retaliation and warned that further American action would trigger a “more decisive” response. Kuwait’s military confirmed it was responding to what it called hostile missile and drone attacks.
This is not a ceasefire. It is a shooting war with a ceasefire’s name on it.
US officials described the Bandar Abbas strikes as defensive, intended to maintain the ceasefire that began April 16. Iran’s foreign ministry called them violations of that same ceasefire. Both governments are claiming to be defending a framework the other is destroying. No MoU has been signed. No agreement has been reached on anything of substance. The ships are still waiting. There are now at least three documented exchanges of fire since Tuesday.
Two new developments this morning sharpen the picture. The US Treasury Department announced sanctions targeting Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority, the body Iran created to govern maritime traffic through the strait and collect tolls. Entities cooperating with it now face sanctions exposure due to alleged IRGC links. Iran’s foreign ministry condemned both the strikes and Trump’s threat to bomb Oman, with spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei warning that Iran would “take all necessary measures to defend its national sovereignty” and condemning the “threatening rhetoric of American officials against Iran and several regional countries.” Oil jumped more than three percent on the overnight news. Brent is at $96.08. Gas is $4.27, down from $4.46 yesterday as markets price in some probability of a deal — but the strikes are now pulling it back.
Trump, for his part, told reporters Wednesday he would not rush the deal because “I don’t care about the midterms” and insisted Iran would receive no sanctions relief and must surrender its entire enriched uranium stockpile. Iran has repeatedly and publicly rejected both conditions. Those two positions cannot both be honored in any deal that gets signed.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: The Iran ceasefire produced overnight military exchanges for the second time in three days. The US is calling them defensive. Iran is calling them violations. An Iranian paramilitary force struck a US base in Kuwait in retaliation. There is still no signed agreement. The Treasury is sanctioning the Iranian body managing the strait. Oil is up three percent. Whatever this is, it is not peace.
Sources: Bloomberg (markets/international — US strike details, US official defensive framing, no accord in sight); Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — tanker incident, IRGC statement, Trump uranium demand); Times of Israel/AFP (wire — Baghaei condemnation, Oman solidarity, sovereignty warning); India TV News/CBS (wire — IRGC Kuwait strike, 4:50am timing, “more decisive” warning); Daily Pakistan/Reuters (wire — Treasury sanctions on Strait Authority, oil price jump)
Stephen Miller Lied About a Texas Democrat. The DNC Responded in Five Words.
On Wednesday, the official Democratic National Committee account on X posted a picture of James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Texas, with the caption: “Fired up. Ready to go. It’s time to take back Texas.”
Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff and one of the administration’s chief architects of its immigration and cultural policy, responded a few hours later. “The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate,” he wrote.
James Talarico is not transgender. The first transgender Senate candidate in American history was Misty Snow of Utah, who ran in 2016. Miller’s post was a fabrication, designed to attach a false identity to a candidate Republicans view as a genuine threat. The DNC’s official reply was five words: “Shut up you ugly fuck.”
James Talarico has raised $27 million in the first quarter of 2026, against Republican nominee Ken Paxton’s $2.2 million. Texas has not sent a Democrat to the US Senate since 1988. Paxton won the Republican primary with a Trump endorsement over incumbent John Cornyn. Even Karl Rove has publicly warned that Paxton is a weak candidate and that Democrats have a real shot. The Republican response to Talarico has been a kitchen-sink assault: the NRSC launched a deepfake attack ad using an AI-generated version of Talarico reading his own social media posts. Paxton debuted a string of nicknames at a victory rally — “Tofu Talarico,” “Six-gender James,” “Tala-freak-o” — seizing on a resurfaced 2021 statement in which Talarico said modern science recognizes more than two biological sexes. Miller’s post fit the pattern: take something out of context, attach a label designed to alienate voters, and flood the zone before the correction lands.
The correction landed anyway. Miller’s wife, White House communications staffer Katie Miller, responded by identifying the DNC staffer she believed ran the account and attacking her by name and marital status. The DNC deleted the tweet. The story had already spread.
The outrage landed in the same week Paxton came under bipartisan fire for a decision that drew condemnation from members of his own party. Adam Hoffman, a 49-year-old former Waco attorney, was charged in 2022 with repeatedly sexually abusing a 10-year-old boy and was facing life without parole. After a 2025 mistrial in which the jury deadlocked 7-5 in favor of conviction, Paxton’s office offered Hoffman a plea deal that reduced the charges to misdemeanors. Hoffman walked free on Monday after 30 days in county jail and is not required to register as a sex offender. His prosecutors said they wanted to retry the case but the victim, a child, was unwilling to testify again. Incumbent senator John Cornyn, whom Paxton defeated in the primary, said Paxton had “cut him loose to reoffend over and over again, putting more children at risk.” A judge reviewing similar cases from Paxton’s office said from the bench: “If they get a mistrial, all of a sudden it’s just a little misdemeanor with a slap on the hand.”
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: The DNC tweet was the spark. The fire underneath it is a Texas Senate race in which a well-funded progressive candidate is running against a Trump-endorsed attorney general who faces serious criminal exposure, and in which even Republican strategists are worried. The November midterms are five months away. Texas is in play. That is why Stephen Miller was lying about James Talarico on a Wednesday afternoon.
Sources: The Wrap (US — full exchange, both posts, Katie Miller response); Raw Story (US — Talarico fundraising, Misty Snow correction, Rove warning); Mediaite (US — DNC deletion, full timeline); The Advocate (US — deepfake attack ad, Paxton nicknames, Miller false claim context); Texas Tribune (Texas, independent — Hoffman case, Paxton plea deal, bipartisan condemnation, Cornyn quote, judge’s pattern observation)
America Left the Room. The Outbreak Got Bigger.
Two days ago this publication reported that US funding cuts had gutted the global health infrastructure built to contain outbreaks like the one now spreading through the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. On Sunday, CNN reported something worse.
A May 18 internal email from a senior National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases official directed staff on how the agency would engage with the World Health Organization on Ebola: “We’ll be operating in the same manner for Ebola as we have been doing for Hantavirus, assembling a small group of experts — no more than three — to participate.” Those experts could attend WHO meetings. They could not speak. They could listen.
The distinction matters. Withdrawing from the WHO means the US no longer funds or formally participates in global health governance. The listen-only directive goes further: it bars American scientists, whose research infrastructure underpins the global Ebola response, from contributing to the coordination meetings where containment decisions get made. The US is in the room. It has been told to say nothing.
The leadership vacuum behind that directive is compounding the problem. NIAID’s acting director, Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, recently quit. The FDA has no permanent commissioner. The CDC has no permanent director. The surgeon general’s position is vacant. The NIH laboratory in Frederick, Maryland, dedicated specifically to Ebola research, has been shut down. These are not abstract organizational gaps. They are the people who would normally be making decisions about how to stop this outbreak from reaching its fourth country.
Matthew Kavanagh, director of the Center for Global Health Policy and Politics at Georgetown University, told CNN: “This outbreak should have been detected weeks ago. It certainly says that the United States has stopped playing the role.”
The role it stopped playing is the one that prevented the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak from becoming a global pandemic. In that crisis, USAID led the international response, the CDC deployed hundreds of staff, and the US spent more than $5 billion to contain the spread. USAID no longer exists. The CDC has a fraction of its former staff. The State Department mobilized $23 million for the current outbreak, less than half a percent of what the US spent in 2014.
Marco Rubio has blamed the WHO for the delayed detection of the outbreak. The WHO’s detection capabilities in DRC depend in part on the surveillance infrastructure the US spent decades building and the Trump administration spent sixteen months dismantling.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: US infectious disease researchers have been ordered to attend WHO Ebola response meetings in listen-only mode. The officials who would normally lead those responses have quit or been fired. An American surgeon is in a Berlin hospital with Ebola. The administration that created this situation is blaming the WHO for it.
Sources: CNN (US — May 18 internal email, listen-only directive, hantavirus precedent, NIAID director quit, NIH Frederick lab closed); US News/HealthDay (US — Kavanagh quote, vacancy list, NIAID attending WHO listen-only); Yahoo News/AP (wire — Frederick lab closure, Georgetown analysis, role cessation); The Hill (US — 2014 comparison, USAID $5 billion, Kates KFF analysis, $23 million current mobilization)
Numbers at Publication
🇮🇷 Iran: 3,468 killed, 26,500+ injured (Iran Health Ministry via Al Jazeera tracker, May 20)
🇱🇧 Lebanon: 3,185 killed (Lebanese Health Ministry via WAFA, May 26)
🇮🇱 Israel: 26 killed, 7,791 injured (Al Jazeera tracker, May 20)
🇵🇸 Palestine: 4 killed (Al Jazeera tracker, May 20 — floor estimate only; does not reflect recent strikes)
🇸🇾 Syria: 4 killed (Al Jazeera tracker, May 20)
🌍 Gulf states / Iraq: 146 killed in Iran-attributed attacks (Al Jazeera tracker, May 20 — Bahrain 3, Kuwait 7, Oman 3, Saudi Arabia 3, UAE 12, Iraq 118)
🇺🇸 US military: 13 killed, 381 injured (Al Jazeera tracker, May 20)
🛢️ Brent crude: $96.08/barrel (OilPrice.com, Thursday morning) — down from $99.24 yesterday before overnight strikes
⛽ US national gas average: $4.27/gallon (AAA, confirmed this session)
Sourcing note: All war casualty figures sourced to Al Jazeera live tracker, last updated May 20, 2026 at 08:45 GMT, citing Iran Health Ministry, National Health, Defence and Interior Ministries, except Lebanon which is updated to May 26 via WAFA/Lebanese Health Ministry. Methodology differs between countries; figures should not be treated as directly comparable.
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789
