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Thursday Afternoon News Updates: Iran Strikes Ship in the Strait – 6/25/26
While a cargo ship burns in the Gulf of Oman, the president has nothing on his schedule but a tele-rally and a steak dinner
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Hi all, Ben here. It’s Thursday, June 25th, and we have got a lot to get through today, so let’s jump right in. Remember to like, share, and re-stack to spread these updates far and wide.
Top stories we’re tracking:
Iran strikes another cargo vessel in the Gulf of Oman, just as I predicted this morning, while ships turn back from the “forbidden corridor”
Foreign Minister Araghchi and Oman’s FM agree to a 60-day window of free transit through the Strait, after which Iran starts charging fees
The Wall Street Journal reports Iran is eyeing up to $40 billion a year in tolls once the dust settles
US crude inventories post a massive surprise draw as Brent crude keeps sliding on what sure looks like market manipulation
Marco Rubio gets grilled in Bahrain on the $300 billion reconstruction fund, the frozen Qatari money, and the unenforceable Hormuz tolling fantasy
Rubio also has to explain why Michael Boulos, Trump’s son-in-law with zero government role, was parked next to him in an official meeting with the UAE president
JD Vance tells UnHerd the Emiratis are now talking directly to the IRGC because they no longer trust the US security umbrella
PCE inflation jumps to 4.1% year-over-year, the highest in three years, driven largely by the Iran war
The personal savings rate craters to 3%, one of the lowest readings in 15 years
Apple jacks up prices on Macs and iPads by as much as $300
Elizabeth Warren shreds Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers nominee Christopher Phelan over basic inflation math he refuses to answer
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin loses his cool in a House hearing, gripping a stress ball while attacking a member of Congress
The Supreme Court hands down four 6-3 or 7-2 rulings today, including shielding Monsanto from cancer lawsuits and gutting asylum protections
Judge Leonie Brinkema rips into the DOJ over Trump’s “slush fund,” saying she doesn’t trust Acting AG Todd Blanche’s representations
New photos show both of Trump’s hands looking visibly bad, not just the usual one
A federal judge in Boston blocks key parts of Trump’s mail voting executive order as unconstitutional
Netanyahu says there’s “still more to do” against Iran, Hamas, and in Lebanon, while Israel’s defense minister brags about leveling villages in the security zone
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Now let’s get into it.
Iran Strikes Again
Donald Trump has gone silent as Iran strikes another cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz. This is exactly what I told you was going to happen, in the very first video I put out this morning. And then, just like that, it happened.
Here are the details.
A UK Maritime Trade Operations warning came through confirming the attack. A cargo vessel was hit on the starboard side by an unknown projectile, with damage to the bridge. The master reported no casualties and no environmental impact, but make no mistake about what this is. Iran is exerting its newly claimed control over Hormuz, one day after what’s being called Oman’s “route breakout.” Iran had already warned that any vessel using the southern corridor without IRGC approval would face consequences. A ship tested that warning. It got hit.
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While Iran is demonstrating, in real time, that it controls passage through one of the most important waterways on the planet, Trump has nothing, and I mean nothing, on his public schedule today. Executive time this morning, closed press. A meeting with the Speaker, closed press. A policy meeting, closed press. Tonight he’s doing a tele-rally, also closed press, followed by a Rose Garden dinner with farmers. Not a single public word about an actual attack on an actual ship in a strait the entire global economy depends on.
Here’s what I keep coming back to. Two US aircraft carriers, fighter jets, drones, and early warning aircraft have been operating in and around the Strait of Hormuz nearly around the clock. And none of it stopped this ship from getting hit in Omani waters. The United States does not control the Strait of Hormuz right now. Iran does.
I’ve been showing you the actual satellite tracking data for days. Yesterday you could see ships attempting to use the Omani route. Today you can see them turning back, choosing either the IRGC-controlled route or simply not exiting the Strait at all. Foreign Minister Araghchi spoke directly with his Omani counterpart, and out of that call came the framework: a temporary 60-day period of free transit through the IRGC-controlled portion of the Strait. After that, Iran starts charging.
And before anyone acts shocked about this, understand that this isn’t speculation. It’s written into the memorandum of understanding, and Iran has been saying it publicly for weeks. The Wall Street Journal reported today that Tehran is looking to collect as much as $40 billion a year in what it’s calling security, safety, and environmental service fees, and they want Gulf states to share in that revenue. The US, Oman, and other Gulf nations are pushing back hard on the idea, but Iran has the leverage here, not them, because Iran just proved it can sink, or at least seriously damage, anything that doesn’t comply.
We also have the audio. The IRGC Navy broadcasting warnings to vessels in the Gulf of Oman, telling them plainly that anyone transiting outside the designated corridor is responsible for the consequences. This was not subtle. This was not cloak and dagger. Ships were warned. Ships that ignored the warning got hit.
Iran’s Top Negotiator Has a Message for Washington
Meanwhile, Iran’s Parliament Speaker and lead negotiator put out a statement this morning. He said America falsely claims that Iran’s unfrozen assets will go toward buying American agriculture, and then added that the only thing the US has actually planted in Iran is decades of mistrust, calling it organic, abundant, and homegrown, while accusing Washington of mainly exporting GMO soybeans, broken promises, and trash talk.
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Oil Prices Are Crashing, and It Has Nothing to Do With Stability
Here’s the part that is truly stunning to me. Brent crude is sitting at $72.53, down over one and a half percent, even as US crude inventories just posted a massive surprise draw of 6.1 million barrels for the week, blowing past analyst expectations of under 4 million. Total US petroleum inventories, crude and refined products combined, including the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, have now fallen by 151 million barrels since the US and Israel attacked Iran back in February. We are sitting at the lowest total stockpile levels in more than two decades.
Compare that to the two years following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when Ukraine was actively striking Russian oil infrastructure. Brent crude was still higher than it is right now, even with far less regional instability than we’re currently looking at. None of this adds up unless you accept what I’ve been telling you for days: this is market manipulation, full stop. Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Bessent have been jawboning these numbers down to manufacture a sense of calm that does not exist. And it’s not hard to figure out why. When the oligarch class needs an excuse to jack up prices later, they’ll point right back to “market expectations of instability.”
Rubio Gets Cooked in Bahrain
Secretary of State Marco Rubio spent his day in the Gulf taking questions he clearly did not want to answer, and it was almost uncomfortable to watch.
Asked whether any Gulf allies committed funding toward the $300 billion reconstruction fund the US has guaranteed Iran under the MOU, Rubio said it simply wasn’t discussed, calling it something for “way down the road.” Except Donald Trump is a signatory guaranteeing that money. If it’s not coming from the Gulf states, and it’s apparently not even being discussed with them, where exactly is $300 billion supposed to come from? This is the same pattern every single time with Trump. He signs something, he doesn’t honor it, and then someone like Rubio gets sent out to pretend the obligation doesn’t actually exist.
Asked whether the MOU should specify a fixed number of years restricting Iran’s nuclear development, Rubio tried to wave it off by calling the MOU “not a final agreement,” just a framework for future negotiation. That’s true as far as it goes, but it conveniently ignores that the MOU does contain binding provisions right now, provisions that get implemented, not rewritten, through whatever longer agreement follows.
Then came the money question. Asked whether any of the frozen funds Qatar holds had already been transferred to Iran, Rubio said he wasn’t aware of any such transfer and didn’t think anyone in the administration had said it occurred. The problem is that this has been reported and is treated as essentially undisputed outside of Rubio’s press conference.
The Trump Family Grift
Let’s talk about Michael Boulos for a moment. That’s Tiffany Trump’s husband. In other words, Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
Boulos, who holds no official position in this administration whatsoever, was seated next to Rubio in an official meeting with the President of the UAE and the ruler of Abu Dhabi. When a reporter asked Rubio to explain why Trump’s son-in-law was sitting in on high-level diplomatic talks, Rubio’s answer was that Boulos’s brother lives there and the two of them are friends, so they used the opportunity to catch up.
What a joke.
You’ve got Jared Kushner is off in Switzerland working the technical talks while reportedly trying to raise billions for his own investment fund. Boulos is hanging out at meetings with Gulf monarchs. Rubio, the actual Secretary of State, skipped the Switzerland talks entirely, leaving JD Vance, Kushner, and envoy Steve Witkoff to handle it instead. Notably, Saudi Arabia wouldn’t even take a meeting with Rubio this week. They’re livid, along with pretty much every other Gulf partner, because the US security umbrella has visibly failed and everyone in the region can see it.
JD Vance basically confirmed as much in an interview, telling UnHerd that the Emiratis, who he described as the most hawkish, most pro-Israel country in the Gulf, are now having direct conversations with Iranians, including the IRGC, that simply never happened before. Vance even described the new arrangement as Iran offering to send someone from the IRGC to “hang out” in Doha with someone from CENTCOM to work out disputes.
The Economy Is Cracking Under the Weight of All This
While all of this chaos plays out overseas, Americans are getting squeezed at home in ways that are directly tied to it.
PCE inflation, the Fed’s preferred measure, jumped to 4.1% year-over-year in May, the highest reading in three years, and largely attributable to the impact of the Iran war. Core PCE, stripping out food and energy, rose to 3.4%, the highest since the fall of 2023. Trump promised, repeatedly, that prices would come down starting on day one. They have done the opposite, and they’re accelerating.
Economist Heather Long flagged something else worth mentioning. The personal savings rate has dropped to 3%, one of the lowest readings in 15 years, down from 4.9% just a year earlier. Americans aren’t saving anymore. They’re surviving paycheck to paycheck and dipping into what little cushion they have left.
And on top of all that, Apple just announced major price hikes across its lineup, with increases up to $300 on Macs and iPads, blaming rising component costs. The Mac mini jumps from $599 to $799. The iPad Air goes up $150. Apple cites soaring memory and storage chip costs for the price increases.
Speaking of higher prices, Trump’s own nominee to chair the Council of Economic Advisers, Christopher Phelan, got absolutely dismantled in his confirmation hearing by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who asked him a simple factual question: is inflation higher today than it was in February 2025? Phelan dodged by comparing it to the Biden years instead of answering the question asked (for the millionth time, inflation was lower when Biden left office than it is now). Warren pressed again on whether inflation is currently outpacing wage growth, and Phelan, under direct questioning, could not produce a coherent one-word answer. Senator Tina Smith had a similarly rough exchange with him over tariffs gutting Minnesota’s farm economy, with Smith pointing out that farmers in her state would say it’s far too late to call the situation “too early to assess.”
Meanwhile, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin spent part of his own hearing visibly losing his patience, gripping a stress ball while the committee chair, a fellow Republican, had to remind him whose turn it was to speak. When Representative Underwood pressed him on deaths of detainees in DHS custody, Mullin’s response was to attack her personally rather than answer the question. I’ll do a separate video report on these hearings shortly.
The Supreme Court Hands Down Four More Rulings, All the Same Direction
The Supreme Court released four decisions today. Every single one was either 6-3 or 7-2, and the right-wing majority wrote every opinion.
Monsanto won protection from cancer victims suing over Roundup, with the Court ruling that federal pesticide law preempts state requirements for cancer warning labels. Hawaii’s law requiring permission to bring guns into private businesses open to the public got struck down. Asylum seekers who were stopped at the border or turned back in Mexico were ruled to have never legally “arrived” in the country, eliminating their right to apply for asylum at all. And the Court ruled the administration can end Temporary Protected Status for migrants fleeing disaster and violence in Haiti and Syria, while also ruling that courts have no authority to review those TPS decisions.
The right-wing, MAGA Court at work.
A Federal Judge Slaps Down Trump’s Slush Fund Defense
In other court news, federal judge Leonie Brinkema is not having it. After the Justice Department refused to confirm in writing that Trump’s so-called slush fund is actually dead, Brinkema pushed back hard, ordering the administration to file a new response within weeks. She wrote plainly that the defendants have refused to give a genuine degree of trustworthiness to their own representations about the fund. The Trump regime acting untrustworthy? Who could’ve predicted that?!
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made claims to Congress that the fund wasn’t moving forward, but he wasn’t under oath when he said it, and Blanche has also refused to rescind the very memo that created the fund’s structure in the first place. As the judge put it, a civil suit doesn’t automatically become moot just because defendants claim they’ll stop doing the thing being challenged. This is a remarkable four-page order from a federal judge who is telling you, in plain language, that she does not trust the word of the nation’s top law enforcement official.
Trump Takes a Big Loss on His Mail Voting Order
There’s actual good news today. A federal judge in Boston blocked key parts of Trump’s executive order targeting mail voting, ruling it unconstitutional. The order had directed creation of federal lists meant to verify citizenship of voters and pressured USPS to restrict who could receive mail-in ballots. Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee, ruled that the relevant provisions are void as unconstitutional violations of the separation of powers, and permanently blocked the administration from enforcing them in the states that sued, covering this November’s election and beyond.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro called it a win for the basic principle that states, not the president, control their own election rules. New York Attorney General Letitia James called the ruling a critical defense of the right to vote.
This comes on the heels of a separate ruling earlier this week permanently blocking the very first elections-related executive order Trump signed in his second term, the one demanding proof of citizenship at registration. Worth remembering that this administration includes people who were directly involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, now sitting inside the White House and DHS working on “election integrity.”
Lebanon and Gaza Aren’t Going Anywhere Either
Netanyahu gave a speech today making clear there’s no winding down anytime soon. He said there’s still more to do against Iran, still more to do against Hamas, still more to do in Lebanon. Israel’s Defense Minister, Israel Katz, said the country will not allow civilian populations to return to parts of Lebanon, adding that the first line of villages inside the so-called security zone has been completely destroyed, in his words, 100 percent. This posture is making peace in the region increasingly out of reach.
That’s where we are today, at least so far. There’s plenty more to cover, and we will be on it all day as always. Stay tuned for Ben on Breaking News at 4:30p ET and the live MeidasTouch Podcast with me and my brothers at 8p ET on YouTube. Ron Filipkowski will be back on Substack later with his full daily bulletin. Thanks for subscribing and staying in this fight!
