🗳🇯🇵 On July 20, Japan heads to the polls to elect 124 members of its Upper House (half of the House of Councillors).

This election could define the future of Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru.

🧵 https://fxtwitter.com/Nihonpolitics/status/1941981734813213134

🇪🇺 Brussels proposes a new tax on companies with over €50m in net turnover.

The EU de-industrialized and blew up its economy.

Now, it's bankrupt and preparing for asset seizure.

How? Inflation, taxation, and confiscation.

🔗 Alex Recouso

🇺🇸🇺🇦🇨🇳 WSJ: It was Colby, a 45-year-old grandson of a former CIA director, who wrote a memo to Defense Secretary Hegseth in early June outlining how Ukraine’s requests for U.S. weapons could further stretch already depleted Pentagon stockpiles.

https://archive.is/3JYYl

🇺🇸🚤❌🇨🇳 — 📰 ZeroHedge | Marines Test 'Narco Sub' With An Eye On War With China | July 13, 2025:

"Taking creative inspiration from Latin American drug traffickers, the United States Marines Corps is testing low-profile "narco subs" intended for potential use in the Indo-Pacific theater. The Marines have another term and -- of course -- an acronym for the concept: the Autonomous Low-Profile Vessel (ALVP) program.

The unmanned vessel being tested by II Marine Expeditionary Force is called the "Sea Specter," and it's produced by Gibbs & Cox, is a subsidiary of Reston, VA-based Leidos.  “I think that it's OK to say that those narco subs inspired the concept, but that's where the similarities end,” Gibbs & Cox chief engineering officer Jeff Bowles told Defense One. “Narco subs are dirty. They're dangerous. They're not engineered. But in principle, their mission is the same -- move a large volume of cargo with the minimal chance of being observed by anyone else.”

Over recent decades, US operations have been focused on counterinsurgency and other enemies ill-equipped to challenge logistical connections using the air or sea. However, in a potential war with China -- a so-called "near-peer" -- American ships and cargo planes could be much more vulnerable. “So you might not be able to take something that's a big, high-value target, or something that's slow moving or highly observable, to deliver re-supplies to the troops, because it might give away their position," Bowles says."

🗄 Archive

🔗 Full:

🇺🇸🇸🇾 Quite the comments from the US Syria Envoy:

- "We don't owe the SDF the right to establish an independent gov't within a state... Syria can't have a federal system."

"This is a difficult issue for the SDF... but if you can't reach a deal, we won't be your nanny forever."

https://fxtwitter.com/Charles_Lister/status/1943815668547125607

🇦🇪🌍 The UAE is not just investing in infrastructure—it is building geopolitical leverage through a port empire that spans three continents and covers strategic chokepoints such as the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the Strait of Hormuz, access to the Suez Canal, the Eastern Med, and the HOA.

🔗 EGYOSINT

🇷🇺🇺🇦 Russians launched 200 assaults at 56 settlements, fired missiles in one massive strike, made 100 airstrikes targeting 9 settlements, dropped 179 KABs, used 3956 FPVs, and carried out over 5635 barrages, including 84 MLRS.

AFU conducted 14 strikes.

🔗 Vitaly

🇨🇳❌🇮🇱 20 countries - including China (!) - are meeting in Bogota this coming week to declare “concrete measures against Israel’s violations of international law.”

The states due to take part in the summit include Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Djibouti, Honduras, Indonesia, Ireland, Lebanon, Malaysia, Namibia, Nicaragua, Oman, Portugal, Spain, Qatar, Senegal, South Africa, Turkey, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Palestine.

Src: https://middleeasteye.net/news/spain-and-ireland-join-more-20-states-declare-concrete-measures-against-israel

🔗 Arnaud Bertrand

🇺🇸🇺🇦🇪🇺 President Trump announces that the United States is spending 0 dollars on the upcoming weapons to Ukraine.

The European Union will.

"That's the way it should've been a long time ago."

"The European Union is paying for it. We're not paying anything. It'll be business for us."

🔗 Eric Daugherty

🇺🇸🇷🇺 Trump: "I am very disappointed with President Putin. I thought he was somebody that meant what he said — and he'll talk so beautifully, then he'll bomb people at night. We don't like that."

🔗 Rapid Response 47

🇺🇸 xAI on X: Announcing Grok for Government - a suite of products that make our frontier models available to United States Government customers

We are especially excited about two new partnerships for our US Government partners

1) a new contract from the US Department of Defense

2) our products being available to purchase via the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule. This allows every federal government department, agency, or office, to purchase xAI products

📝 Apple Lamps: The U.S. Department of Defense's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) has awarded contracts (up to $200M each) to frontier AI companies Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI to develop advanced AI workflows for national security missions.

This aims to leverage cutting-edge AI tech and talent to enhance warfighter support, intelligence, and enterprise systems, while accelerating DoD's commercial-first AI adoption.

🔗 xAI

🇺🇸❌🇷🇺❗️ — US President Donald Trump issues an 50 day ultimatum for Russian leader Vladimir Putin reach a deal or face consequences:

"We are very, very unhappy with [Russia], and we're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days."

🔗 Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47)

🌐🤝🇺🇸🇪🇺🇺🇦 — NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte agrees with Trump's proposal to make EU buy weaponry from US to send to Ukraine:

"You want Ukraine [to have] what it needs ... but you want the Europeans to pay for it — which is totally logical."

🔗 Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47)

🇺🇸🤝🪖🇪🇺🇺🇦 — US President Donald Trump on the deal with EU and NATO to buy weaponry to Ukraine:

"We make the best equipment, the best missiles...
The European nations know that...
We've made a deal today where we're going to be sending them weapons and they're going to be paying for them.

The United States will NOT be having any payment made."

🔗 Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47)

🇺🇸🤝🇪🇺 — US President Donald Trump on the deal with EU and NATO to buy weaponry to Ukraine:

"Just so you know, [Europe is] paying for everything.
We're not paying anymore.
We have an ocean separating us...

We make the best stuff, but we can't keep doing this — and Biden should've done this years ago."

🔗 Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47)

🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇷 Pence says isolationists losing sway with Trump as he praises moves on Ukraine, Iran

Former Vice President Mike Pence says he thinks isolationists “may have lost some of their footing” in President Donald Trump’s administration, as he praised Trump’s tougher talk toward Russia’s Vladimir Putin and his decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities.

Pence, since his split with Trump after the 2020 election, has often criticized the president’s approach to Russia and his tepid support for Ukraine.

But he told CNN’s Kate Bolduan in an interview Thursday he hopes Trump is “starting to recognize” that Putin is not interested in a negotiated end to the war he started in Ukraine. And he praised Trump’s decision this week to reverse his administration’s pause on some weapons shipments to Ukraine, including air defense missiles.

Pence said that Trump “is not an isolationist.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/10/politics/pence-trump-ukraine-iran

🇷🇺🇺🇦🇺🇸 Putin indicated to Trump in a phone call on July 3rd that he would make a renewed push over the next 60 days to occupy the entire Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts, according to Axios.

https://axios.com/2025/07/14/trump-ukraine-weapons-missiles-russia

🔗 Faytuks News

🇺🇸💡 Omar Fateh is running for Minneapolis mayor with plans to raise the minimum wage by over $4 over the next few years, freeze rent, and “Trump-proof” the city from ICE.

🔗 AF Post