Greetings! Happy National Sweetest Day to those celebrating.

Let’s get into today’s top stories.

🇮🇩 Indonesia inks jet deal with China in first fighter purchase outside the West. Defense officials framed the move as diversification across suppliers, a hedge against embargo risk and maintenance bottlenecks. The package reportedly bundles training, spare parts, and local industry offsets that would seed jobs while reducing long-term dependency. Regional analysts say the buy signals a quiet arms race from the South China Sea to the Strait of Malacca, where deterrence is a geometry problem. Interoperability with existing fleets will be the test, since mixed inventories raise costs unless logistics and software converge. Parliament will scrutinize financing and transfer of technology clauses, which decide whether factories learn or only assemble. Neighbors will measure the decision by radar range and sortie rate, not ribbon cuttings.

🇬🇧 After one scandal too many, the monarchy sidelines Prince Andrew. Palace advisors moved to limit his public role further, a containment strategy that follows years of tabloid drag from lawsuits, settlements, and security disputes. Courtiers are betting that absence works better than explanation in a media market that never tires of repetition. Constitutional scholars note that soft power is the crown’s only power, so reputational stewardship is governance by other means. Public opinion remains split along familiar lines, respect for the institution and skepticism toward its exemptions, a paradox the court calendar cannot solve. Charities and regiments that once welcomed royal patronage are recalibrating for quieter figureheads and steadier fundraisers.

🪧 No Kings protests mix block party energy with constitutional lectures. Organizers say the marches knit together immigration concerns, executive overreach, and protest restrictions into a single civil liberties storyline. City permits, police liaison teams, and legal observers formed a choreography that mostly held, with arrests scattered and brief. Republican officials dismissed the gatherings as merely performative and anti-American, a framing meant to fix partisanship to principle. Political scientists note that movements build power by repetition, not spikes, so the calendar can matter more than the crowd count. Small-dollar donations paid for buses, banners, and bail, the humble logistics of a durable chorus. The next measure is weekday courthouse presence, which turns slogans into affidavits.

🧾 Trump commutes former Rep. George Santos’s sentence in federal fraud case. The order shortens a prison term that followed convictions tied to donor deception and personal enrichment schemes, while leaving restitution and supervised release questions to the court. Legal scholars distinguished commutation from pardon, mercy on punishment, not innocence on paper. Ethics groups warned that leniency for political figures erodes deterrence unless paired with stronger disclosure and enforcement. Campaign finance lawyers expect new bills on donor transparency and straw donor penalties, even if they stall in divided chambers. Strategists will watch suburban districts for backlash, since corruption polls badly across parties. The case now shifts from courtroom to committee room, where rules are written in dry text and long memory.

🚛 DOT will withhold $40M from California over trucker English enforcement. Department of Transportation (DOT) officials said the state failed to apply federal English proficiency requirements for commercial drivers, a technical standard with safety and labor implications. Sacramento called the move punitive and promised an appeal that cites workforce realities and past practices. Trucking firms warned that sudden compliance shifts can thin driver pools and raise freight costs if testing capacity lags. Safety researchers countered that cockpit communication is not a culture war; it is seconds in fog and construction zones. Port operators will feel any short-term squeeze first, where chassis, containers, and gate times already run tight. The budget line looks small, yet policy levers often hinge on precisely these dull pressure points.

🎥 Federal judge wants Chicago immigration agents to wear bodycams. The directive follows affidavits describing volatile encounters during enforcement actions and protests, where narratives split on who escalated and when. Body cams promise time-stamped answers that help courts, defendants, and officers, provided footage is stored and audited properly. Civil rights attorneys welcomed the move and urged quick rules on access, retention, and redaction to protect bystanders. Police departments that adopted cameras saw complaint resolution speed improve, a metric that immigration agencies could replicate. Unions will scrutinize privacy language and discipline thresholds, where policy details decide whether cameras build trust or simply archive tension. Bottom line: evidence is better than argument when liberty is involved.

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That’s all for today!

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See you tomorrow!