Today’s Headlines: Russia is having a great week. It's sharing satellite imagery, intelligence, and drone technology with Iran, sending a tanker of 700,000 barrels of crude to Cuba in direct defiance of the U.S. blockade, and watching oil approach $110 a barrel. Israel assassinated Iran's intelligence minister, Iran's new Supreme Leader vowed revenge, and the IDF is still running wide-scale strikes across Iran and southern Lebanon. The Fed announced no interest rate cuts this month — or likely this year — because starting a war with no plan tends to complicate things. Gas nationally jumped nearly a dollar a gallon in under four weeks, wholesale food prices hit their biggest spike in a year, and that's before oil prices fully filter through to grocery shelves. Trump's solution is to quietly waive sanctions on Venezuelan, Russian, and Iranian oil — the sanctions he spent years bragging about. On Capitol Hill, Tulsi Gabbard testified at the Worldwide Threats Hearing and managed to both defend the war and confirm that Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan are jointly developing nuclear missile systems targeting the U.S. homeland — apparently without noticing the tension there. She declined to confirm Russia is arming Iran, even as it's actively happening. Markwayne Mullin's DHS confirmation hearing got contentious, with Rand Paul making clear he's a no. The Fed held rates steady and basically told Trump to stop asking. In a bombshell report, the New York Times published allegations from more than 60 sources — including civil rights icon and UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta — that labor hero Cesar Chavez groomed and sexually abused girls as young as 12 within the movement. Huerta, now 95, said the abuse led to the birth of two children she placed for adoption, and that she stayed silent for 60 years knowing she would be pushed out of the movement she helped build. Her statement is devastating and worth reading in full. And Meta shut down Horizon Worlds — its virtual reality social network that almost no one used and that cost the company a reported $77 billion.

Resources/Articles mentioned in this episode:

Subscribe to the Betches News Room and join the Morning Announcements group chat. Go to: ⁠⁠⁠betchesnews.substack.com

Morning Announcements is produced by Sami Sage and edited by Grace Hernandez-Johnson

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices