Greetings! Happy National Siblings Day to those celebrating.

Let’s get into today’s top stories.

🇺🇦 Ukraine is exporting battlefield knowledge now. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is trying to redraw what Ukraine means to its allies. In his telling, Ukraine is not just the country absorbing Russian violence but also the one exporting hard-won expertise. He said Ukrainian forces shot down Iranian-designed Shahed drones in several Middle Eastern countries during the Iran war. That claim matters because the same drones have terrorized Ukrainian cities for years. Kyiv has learned how to track them, spoof them, and kill them under pressure. Zelenskyy now says that knowledge has traveled. He presented the operations as help for partners facing the same airborne threat. The military value is obvious. The political value may be even larger. Ukraine is trying to prove it is not only a consumer of Western weapons but a producer of usable defense know-how. That argument lands at a moment when some governments fear Middle East crises will cannibalize support for Kyiv. It also exposes an irony that Zelenskyy wants allies to sit with. Iran armed Russia with Shaheds, and Ukraine says it is now helping bring those drones down elsewhere. This is deterrence by experience rather than theory. In alliance politics, competence can be more persuasive than pleading.

🇵🇸 Gaza’s ceasefire is surviving on semantics. Gaza marked six months of ceasefire Friday, though the word increasingly sounds ceremonial. The deal took effect on October 10th, 2025. Since then, the largest bombardments have eased, but little resembling normal life has returned. Families still crowd tent camps and damaged buildings. Health workers say the hoped-for flood of medicine and aid never truly came. Gaza’s health ministry says Israeli attacks have killed more than 738 people during the ceasefire period. Al Jazeera, citing Gaza’s Government Media Office, says Israel violated the agreement at least 2,073 times between October 10th and March 18th. That tally says Israeli forces shot at civilians 750 times. It says they raided residential areas beyond the yellow line 87 times. It says Gaza was bombed or shelled 973 times. It says homes and other property were demolished on 263 occasions. It also says 50 Palestinians from Gaza were detained. Al Jazeera says those violations killed more than 730 people and injured more than 2,000. Israel says it has struck in response to militant attacks and other violations of the truce. For Palestinians, the lesson is brutal. A ceasefire can reduce the sound of war without removing its structure.

📬 The mail still runs, but the balance sheet is panicking. The United States Postal Service (USPS) now speaks the language of an institution that delivers daily and cannot make the math work. USPS told federal budget officials it will temporarily suspend employer contributions to Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) annuities. The agency says the move is about liquidity, preferring cash for payroll, suppliers, and the mail itself. USPS also says current and future retirees will not lose benefits because other retirement and Social Security contributions will continue. Still, pausing pension contributions is not a normal sign of health. The agency is also seeking permission to raise the price of a First-Class Mail Forever stamp from 78 cents to 82 cents. That 4-cent increase requires regulatory approval. The Postal Regulatory Commission has already given USPS a temporary waiver that lets it redirect billions once earmarked for retiree benefits. Postmaster General David Steiner wants Congress to do more. He is asking lawmakers to raise USPS’s borrowing cap from $15B to $34.5B. He also wants wider pricing and investment authority. The background is unforgiving. Mail volume has fallen from about 220B pieces in 2006 to 110B in 2025. USPS posted a $9B net loss in fiscal 2025. Americans expect the service to function like a civic guarantee, while Washington is learning it runs on emergency accounting.

⛽ March inflation just moved the goalposts again. The March inflation report hit like a gasoline receipt with macroeconomic consequences. Consumer prices rose 3.3% from a year earlier. That was up from 2.4% in February. On a monthly basis, prices climbed 0.9%. That was the biggest one-month increase in nearly four years. The obvious accelerant was energy. The Iran war pushed oil prices higher and sent pump costs through households like a tax nobody voted for. That shock interrupted what had looked like a slow glide lower in inflation. It also pushed the Federal Reserve farther from its 2% target. Economists say this is still not the broad 2022-style inflation wave when price growth topped 9%. But they also say it is enough to delay interest-rate cuts for months. Many Federal Reserve officials will focus closely on core inflation, which excludes food and energy. Clothing costs rose 1% in March and 3.4% from a year earlier, while used car prices fell 0.4% for the month and 3.2% from a year earlier. Consumers do not live in core terms, though. They buy fuel at posted prices, not in adjusted categories. The policy problem is simple. Even a temporary energy shock can do immediate political damage and lasting monetary harm to working class families.

🎙️ Melania Trump chose the White House for denial, not distance. First Lady Melania Trump walked into the White House with a rare message and an old scandal attached. She said she had no ties to Jeffrey Epstein and no knowledge of his crimes. She called the stories linking her to him completely false. She also called them smears against her reputation. The statement was unusually direct for a first lady who rarely enters public political firefights herself. It was also unusually timed. The administration has been trying to move beyond the renewed Epstein scrutiny stirred by document releases and lingering associations. Melania said she and her attorneys were pushing back against what she called unfounded and baseless lies. She insisted overlapping social circles were not friendship. She also said Congress should hold public hearings for Epstein’s victims. That appeal gave the statement a dual purpose. It denied personal knowledge while trying to reposition the moral center of the conversation. The White House setting turned what could have been a lawyerly denial into a formal act of state theater. It also reminded everyone how hard the Epstein story is to bury once it reenters public circulation. In Washington, denial is often delivered as damage control. Sometimes damage control becomes the headline itself.

📈 The market is trading relief, but not yet conviction. Wall Street spent Friday doing what uncertain markets do best, rising a little and doubting a lot. Stocks wavered while oil held roughly steady. The Standard and Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) was up 0.2% in morning trading. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.6%. The Dow slipped about 106 points, or 0.3%. The backdrop was the same fragile ceasefire that has been moving markets for days. Investors want to believe planned American-Iran talks can keep energy routes open and escalation contained. They are not ready to underwrite that belief at full size. Oil prices staying elevated tells the real story. The fear premium is smaller than it was, but it has not disappeared. That matters for allocation because high oil keeps pressure on margins, transport costs, and inflation expectations. It matters for conviction because a second winning week in equities does not mean the thesis is settled. It matters for opportunity because selective strength still exists beneath the index churn. Delta Air Lines offered an encouraging signal after saying demand accelerated into March. The current tape is trading on relief, not resolution. That is why disciplined investors are still reading every headline as if it might rewrite the quarter.

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That’s all for today!

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See you tomorrow!