Diplomatic Push Collapses as US Renews Iran Strikes and Tehran Threatens Tel Aviv
Iran rejected a new ceasefire proposal from President Donald Trump, and US forces launched another night of strikes against Iranian military targets overnight into Friday after the president warned he was considering a “massive” attack. Iranian sources also warned that any expanded US assault on Tehran would prompt strikes on Tel Aviv and a broader regional escalation.
The New York Times, citing Iranian and Iraqi officials, reported that Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi delivered President Trump’s ceasefire proposal to Tehran after meeting with the president at the White House earlier this month. The report said Iran rejected the offer because it was not interested in a temporary agreement that left control of the Strait of Hormuz unresolved.
Hours later, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced it had begun a 13th consecutive night of strikes against Iran, targeting military headquarters, drone storage facilities, communication networks, coastal surveillance sites and naval capabilities. CENTCOM said the operation was intended to reduce threats from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to commercial shipping and civilian mariners in the Strait of Hormuz, adding that commercial vessels continue transiting the waterway with US military support.
Iranian media reported explosions near Bandar Abbas and Ahvaz, while Nour News said air defense systems were activated in Tehran against what it described as a hostile threat.
Two Iranian sources told The New York Times that if Trump follows through on threats to attack Tehran and critical infrastructure, Iran would expand the conflict by striking Tel Aviv and asking the Houthis in Yemen to close the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.
Iran later claimed it attacked the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan and the Sheikh Isa Air Base in Bahrain, saying drones struck fuel tanks and US personnel quarters in Bahrain and targeted aircraft hangars and quarters in Jordan. Kuwait’s military separately said it intercepted an Iranian drone attack that, according to Iran’s Tasnim news agency, targeted Ali Al Salem Air Base.
President Trump later claimed Iran’s missile arsenal was “down 91%” and announced that any future damage to ships or cargo would be compensated using Iranian funds under US control. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned such a policy would create “a dangerous and inciting precedent,” saying, “once governments normalize confiscation, no one’s assets are safe.”
Ken Paxton Touts His Efforts to Fight Voter Fraud. His Senate Opponent Is Now Accusing Him of Committing It.
The Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas is trying to turn a key talking point of his Republican opponent against him — alleging Attorney General Ken Paxton is guilty of the same type of voter fraud he has spent years trying to eliminate.
“As our state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton has gone on a voter fraud witch hunt,” state Rep. James Talarico, who is challenging Paxton in the race to replace U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, said during a campaign event in Houston. “Turns out, he was committing voter fraud the whole time, voting illegally in six elections in a row from the wrong address.”
Talarico’s comments come after ProPublica and The Texas Tribune revealed that Paxton moved out of the home he shared with his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, in 2024 but continued to vote using that address, including during the March Republican primary in which he beat Cornyn. Three election experts told the news organizations that Paxton may have broken state law.
Last week, the Collin County Democratic Party filed a complaint with the Texas secretary of state, urging that office to investigate Paxton for election fraud.
Paxton has repeatedly declined to answer the newsrooms’ questions about his voter registration and residency. On Tuesday, he held a rare news conference to tout the endorsement of nearly two dozen sheriffs and attacked Talarico as soft on crime. Talarico denied the charge at his own news conference Wednesday, saying he’d voted for billions of dollars in law enforcement funding as a member of the Legislature.
When a Dallas Morning News political writer asked Paxton why he voted in Collin County, the attorney general shook his head as a campaign aide interceded.
“We’re just going to answer questions on law enforcement today,” the aide said.
Paxton’s office and campaign did not respond to similar questions on Thursday from ProPublica and the Tribune. They also did not answer questions about Talarico’s comments.
The fact that Paxton voted in six elections from an address at which he appears not to live may resonate with voters because it reinforces longstanding accusations by critics that he has used his office for personal gain, said Southern Methodist University political science professor Cal Jillson. That was the central theme of the Texas Legislature’s impeachment of Paxton in 2023 on charges of bribery and corruption. The state Senate voted to acquit Paxton.
“There’s been a whole series of legal challenges he’s been able to slip out of, but voters are at least vaguely aware of them,” Jillson said. The latest reporting about his voting practices “is just another example of playing fast and loose with a law you must be familiar with as attorney general,” Jillson said.
Texas law permits voters to temporarily cast ballots using an address where they do not reside, so long as they intend to return. Election lawyers told the newsrooms that it is unlikely Paxton could make such an argument given his ongoing public and acrimonious divorce. (Examples of reasons considered valid include attending an out-of-area college or serving in the military.)
It is unclear what will happen with the complaint filed against Paxton.
State law requires the secretary to “promptly” refer complaints to the attorney general if “there is reasonable cause to suspect that criminal conduct occurred.”
Secretary of State Jane Nelson’s last day in office was Friday, three days after the complaint was filed. Gov. Greg Abbott appointed one of his senior advisers, Robert Howden, to replace her. The office continues to decline to answer questions from reporters, but Collin County Democratic Party Vice Chair Mary Higbe said the secretary of state told her in an email Thursday that the complaint “remains under review by one of our staff attorneys.”
The attorney general’s office has not responded to questions about whether it received the complaint or whether it would hire a special prosecutor to investigate it, given that it involves the attorney general himself.
The silence from the Republican-led state government suggests an effort to slow-walk investigating Paxton, said Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He said that’s difficult to square with rhetoric by Paxton and the secretary of state’s office that securing Texas elections is a top priority.
“You push the idea that you’re going to be really tough on election wrongdoing, and yet here you are with allegations in which you seem to be uninterested in pursuing,” Taylor said. “That smacks of rank hypocrisy.”
US public investments in ag research declined as China’s boomed
For many decades, the United States led the world in public funding for agriculture research. But federal and state investments peaked in 2002 and have declined, adjusted for inflation, by more than 30% since.
Does this decline in publicly funded research and development (R&D) matter? Should farmers and ranchers care? A recent American Enterprise Institute paper by economists Philip Pardey and Vincent Smith argued they should care a lot.
Public R&D investments drive on-farm productivity – that’s supported by “thousands of economic estimates,” the paper maintains – and as public research spending has declined in recent years, so has on-farm productivity growth.
“Worse,” the authors wrote, “agricultural productivity in the United States and other developed countries may decline (that is, growth rates may turn negative) if public support for agricultural research is not substantially increased immediately.”
With crop pests and animal diseases constantly developing resistance, it takes a certain level of investment just to preserve today’s levels of productivity. “Current annual investments in public agricultural R&D appear barely adequate and may even fall short of the amount required to address these sustainability challenges, never mind providing sufficient resources for improving agricultural productivity.”
And while US public investments in ag research have been declining, China’s have been booming. China overtook the US as the largest funder of public ag research in 2011 and has in some years been investing twice what the US invests.
Should farmers and ranchers care about this change in status?
That’s not as clear. The Chinese are doing some ambitious research and could end up developing some groundbreaking new crops. Though some of that research could benefit American farmers, there are risks to having the latest in disease-proof, climate-resistant seeds controlled by your country’s geopolitical adversary.
Then, too, China’s research is likely to increase the country’s ability to feed itself – and rely less on agricultural and food imports from the US and other countries.
Remember, though, that China has a billion more mouths to feed than the US and experienced mass hunger only a few decades ago. In some ways, it’s unsurprising that China spends more on ag research.
The real problem for American farmers isn’t that China is investing more; it’s that we’re investing less. Bragging rights are nice but hardly life changing. If spending on US public ag research were rising rapidly, Americans wouldn’t be nearly as worried about being No. 2 to China.
Those who wonder whether the decline in publicly funded research is really a problem point to American industry’s investments in ag R&D. According to a 2023 study by Iowa State University’s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, fast-rising private-sector R&D spending offsets the public-sector funding decline.
“When we consider private sector spending, the U.S. is probably still the world leader in funding for agricultural R&D,” CARD ventured.
But can private research really substitute for public? Doesn’t it tend to be about creating products rather than unearthing the scientific insights that underly products?
The AEI authors contend that “Much of the private investment in agri-food innovation stands firmly on the shoulders of the public sector’s more basic, riskier, and longer-term R&D.” The AEI paper also argued that the share of all US ag research, public and private, devoted to farm productivity has “erratically but inexorably drifted down.”
The CARD study takes a different view, describing private and public investments in ag R&D as “complementary.” I read that as more like hand-in-hand than one standing on the shoulders of the other.
That difference aside, the CARD paper cites USDA data indicating US farm productivity fell 6% between 2009, when productivity growth peaked, and 2019. This, CARD said, could have been the result of declining public research funding — or of a switch in ag research away from productivity enhancement.
Either way, farmers should care. If you’re tempted to say, “Of course farmers care,” the AEI authors’ rejoinder is that they don’t care enough. Asked to choose between more farm payments or more ag research, the groups representing them invariably pick the former.
It’s shortsighted, Pardey and Smith maintain, to trade higher yields and lower production costs tomorrow for bigger government paychecks today. They have an answer for farmers who say research-driven increases in productivity just mean more production and lower crop prices: The bigger risk of lower crop prices is other countries – think Brazil – both increasing their productivity and putting more land into production.
At a conference recently, a speaker proclaimed that big future innovations in ag technology will need public funding. Private investors demand shorter timelines and more certain payoffs than research on big innovations can promise.
In the hallway later, the CEO of a startup company and a venture capitalist both agreed. It’s yet another reason why more publicly funded ag research is essential.
Tony Romo has reportedly found himself in a stunning off-the-field scramble after the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and CBS NFL analyst was arrested for driving under the influence in Milwaukee County.
The 46-year-old football star-turned-TV voice was pulled over Thursday night while driving southbound on I-43, according to WISN 12 News and an arrest-detention report cited by the New York Post.
The stop reportedly happened around 8 p.m., and what followed quickly turned into the kind of headline no high-profile broadcaster wants attached to his name.
According to the report, Romo failed standard field sobriety tests after he was stopped on the road. He was then taken into custody for OWI book and release, the outlet reported.
A mug shot from the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office was also published, showing the onetime NFL star after the arrest.
Romo, best known to millions of football fans as the longtime face of the Dallas Cowboys offense before becoming one of CBS’ top NFL broadcasters, has spent years in the spotlight for his smooth transition from quarterback to commentator. But this latest report puts him in a very different kind of national conversation.
In Wisconsin, a first-offense OWI is typically treated as a civil offense rather than a criminal charge. It generally carries a fine between $150 and $300, according to the New York Post report.
Still, even a first-time OWI arrest can bring embarrassment and scrutiny, especially for someone with Romo’s public profile. His work with CBS has kept him front and center during some of the biggest games in football, including Super Bowl coverage.
Romo was seen working for CBS at Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas in 2024, continuing his role as one of the network’s most recognizable NFL personalities.
The former quarterback has long been one of football’s most familiar names. After rising to fame with the Cowboys, Romo became known for his ability to read defenses and predict plays before they happened. That same football IQ helped him become a breakout success in the broadcast booth after his playing days ended.
Now, the reported Milwaukee arrest threatens to overshadow that polished TV image, at least for the moment.
The details released so far remain limited, and it was not immediately clear whether Romo or representatives for CBS had publicly commented on the arrest.
RFK Jr.’s hand-picked committee approves manufacture of peptides he uses
In a widely expected move, a committee organized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has voted to endorse removing restrictions on the manufacture of peptides for human use. Thursday’s panel meeting saw a sharply divided group recommend lifting limits on four peptides; votes on three additional peptides are scheduled for today. The move comes despite a continuing lack of evidence regarding their safety and effectiveness.
The move had been telegraphed months earlier as peptide enthusiast and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took steps to ensure this outcome.
Like proteins, peptides are composed of amino acids that are chemically linked into a chain. Peptides differ merely by length; they’re often 10–20 amino acids long, in contrast to proteins, which can be hundreds or thousands. Some of them, such as insulin, are specifically made by targeted processing of a protein into shorter fragments, and the resulting peptide interacts with receptors that have evolved to send signals to cells based on its levels.
But a lot of peptides are just the result of the messy complexity of biology, where larger proteins may break down in a way that consistently produces a stereotypical pattern of fragments. Some of those fragments, being relatively short and flexible, may stick to other proteins in ways that trigger some sort of physiological response. Others may simply be digested and recycled without doing anything of note.
Understanding how a peptide is made and what downstream effects it triggers can take decades of research. In many cases, we have some evidence of what happens when we expose cultured cells to a peptide, but lack any indication of what might happen if an intact animal is. (Notably, transiting this same evidentiary gap is often where promising-looking drug candidates turn into failed ones.)
RFK Jr. and many like him, who fear the clearly defined and well-understood proteins in vaccines, are perfectly willing to inject various peptides in the complete absence of any safety data. However, unlike most of the peptide fans who share anecdotes online, Kennedy is in a position to turn his hobby into policy.
While the FDA has already used its standard processes to approve peptide drugs like insulin and some recently developed weight loss drugs, the lack of safety and efficacy data has kept most peptides off the market. The Biden administration also blocked their manufacture by compounding pharmacies, which make specialty drugs. But, earlier this year, Kennedy announced his interest in reversing that ban.
At the time of his announcement, Ars’ Beth Mole wrote, “Outside experts and watchdogs suspect that before the first meeting in July, Kennedy will work to stack the advisory board with questionably qualified allies who will come with a predetermined decision to ease access to the drugs—no rigorous scientific evaluation needed.” That’s exactly what came to pass. In June, Kennedy added members to the advisory group who, with one exception, had obvious interests in the manufacture and sale of the unapproved peptides.
Yesterday, those newly appointed members provided the decisive votes for overturning the ban, with all of the pre-Kennedy members voting against doing so. Despite Kennedy’s earlier claim that “independent experts will rigorously evaluate each substance on its scientific merits using full clinical, pharmacological, and safety evidence,” no such evidence was presented at the meeting.
According to The New York Times, when asked by a committee member whether the FDA had ever approved anything that had never been tested in humans before, an FDA official said it had not. That may be a critical factor in what happens next. The committee’s role is advisory, and the FDA could reject its recommendations. Doing so, however, would place the FDA’s experts in direct conflict with the wishes of Kennedy, who can simply fire them.
Spain Coach Slams Argentina as FIFA Opens World Cup Final Probe
Spain coach Luis de la Fuente has condemned Argentina’s conduct after the World Cup final, describing the post-match scenes as “intolerable and unacceptable”, after FIFA opened a disciplinary investigation into the incidents.
De la Fuente criticised several Argentina players for their behaviour following Spain’s victory, saying such actions were unacceptable “from players of that calibre”. He also praised his squad for remaining composed despite what he described as provocation and aggression during the closing stages of the match, which saw Argentina’s Enzo Fernández sent off.
“I want to highlight our behaviour. Our players kept their composure and acted like true professionals,” he said.
FIFA has since launched disciplinary proceedings over the incidents at MetLife Stadium.
Reflecting on Spain’s World Cup triumph, de la Fuente praised his players for overcoming demanding travel, humid conditions and limited recovery time. He singled out Golden Ball winner Rodri, saying doubting the midfielder was “an insult to footballing intelligence”, and hailed Lamine Yamal’s maturity throughout the tournament.
Looking ahead, the Spain coach said leading the national team at the 2030 World Cup would be “the greatest source of pride”, while stressing his immediate focus remains on Spain’s upcoming international fixtures.
As climate lawsuits advance, the oil industry enters ‘panic mode’
Could the oil industry be held responsible for fueling the extreme heat that led to a woman’s death?
That’s the question at the heart of a novel lawsuit in Washington state. Misti Leon’s mother died from overheating during the hottest day in state history in June 2021, when temperatures climbed to 108 degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists said the unusual heat dome that descended on the Pacific Northwest would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change. So last year, Leon sued Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, and other oil majors for wrongful death, alleging that they had known for decades that fossil fuel emissions would lead to destructive consequences, but deceived the public about it, delaying action that could have prevented her mother’s death. An estimated 1,200 people in the region perished from the heat during that simmering week in June.
Earlier this month, a King County judge ruled against the oil companies’ motions to dismiss Leon’s lawsuit, allowing it to proceed toward trial. The ruling was a signal that this kind of case has merit, said Mike Meno, the communications director at the Center for Climate Integrity, a nonprofit supporting climate accountability cases. “It’s the latest type of legal liability that the oil companies are absolutely terrified of and are going to fight like hell to try to escape,” he said.
More than a decade after investigations found that Exxon Mobil had known about the dangers of global warming since the 1970s but publicly downplayed the threat, lawsuits against oil companies have proliferated. There are nearly 40 of these cases pending across the country, according to Margaret Barry, who manages a climate litigation database at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center. After years of delay tactics from the oil industry, at least five of these lawsuits — from Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, and Honolulu — have proceeded to the discovery stage, in which both sides try to uncover evidence to bolster their case in court. That’s the last major step before a trial, when oil executives would be forced to defend their actions in front of a jury.
Some cases are on hold as judges wait to hear how the Supreme Court handles a lawsuit from Boulder, Colorado, this fall. The city and county of Boulder allege that Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy violated state laws by concealing the dangers of their products and they want money to pay for the rising costs of improving infrastructure to deal with heat waves, wildfires, and floods. The outcome could affect existing climate lawsuits, or push plaintiffs to take different approaches.
Portland residents fill a cooling center at the Oregon Convention Center during the June 2021 heat dome. Nathan Howard / Getty Images
In the meantime, the industry has been mobilizing a counterattack against the lawsuits with the help of the Trump administration and Republican politicians. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s biggest lobbying group, has said that one of its priorities for 2026 was to “stop extreme climate liability policy.” The industry has begun challenging “attribution science,” a rapidly developing field that seeks to quantify how climate change, and even emissions from specific companies, have intensified extreme weather.
The flurry of activity suggests that the industry feels like it’s under threat, Meno said. “Quite simply, Big Oil is in panic mode.”
Republicans are trying to pass laws to grant oil majors immunity to these kinds of lawsuits, with success in several states so far. Utah, Iowa, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Louisiana have recently signed laws shielding fossil fuel companies from lawsuits related to greenhouse gas emissions, while Montana and Utah (again) reformed existing laws to narrowly define what counts as a “public nuisance,” effectively blocking lawsuits against oil companies to recover damages from climate change under that legal theory. The effort has gone national: Republicans in both chambers of Congress introduced bills this spring that would give oil companies broad immunity from lawsuits seeking to hold them accountable for climate damages, with the backing of the American Petroleum Institute.
In April, an investigation from ProPublica revealed a coordinated effort behind these “liability shield” laws from conservative groups tied to the activist Leonard Leo. Evidence provided to Grist from the watchdog group Fieldnotes shows that Koch Industries and Exxon, in particular, have extensive ties to the organizations pushing for these laws, including the American Legislative Exchange Council and the American Tort Reform Association.
“If these companies have done nothing wrong and they think the law is on their side, why are they lobbying Congress for immunity?” Meno said.
Oil executives have also gotten help from the federal government, following an executive order from President Donald Trump last year directing the attorney general to prioritize blocking climate lawsuits by states. This May, the Justice Department responded to Minnesota’s climate lawsuit against Big Oil with a lawsuit of its own, just as the state’s case was moving into the discovery phase. It said Minnesota was undermining “American energy dominance” and attempting to regulate greenhouse gases, which should fall under the purview of federal law — echoing the oil industry’s well-known argument. In a related development, Robert Levy, a longtime Exxon lawyer, recently joined the Department of Justice in the newly dubbed “Energy and Natural Resources Division” (instead of the “Environment and Natural Resources Division”).
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As oil companies have worked to delay these lawsuits, the scientific backing supporting some of these cases has gotten stronger. A new, major report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concludes that the existing science linking climate change to extreme weather has become increasingly robust, particularly for extreme heat, extreme cold, and heavy rainfall. Though the report doesn’t make recommendations about how the findings should be used, it has drawn an unusual level of scrutiny. Last month, ahead of the report’s release, the opposition research firm Argus Insight requested to see internal communications between the members of the panel working on the report and any emails they might have exchanged with academics and lawyers involved in researching legal strategies for climate court cases.
“We saw pushback to not the science itself, but the process,” said Carly Phillips, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate litigation hub. “For me, that was really illustrative, because the science is really sound.” She sees the opposition as an attempt to discredit scientific evidence before it has a chance to be heard in court.
Earlier this year, Republican attorneys general pressured the National Academies of Sciences and the Federal Judicial Center, the research agency for federal judges, to remove a chapter on climate science from their updated reference manual for judges, but only the Judicial Center complied. Trump entered the debate on Sunday, ordering officials to review the conduct of the National Academies of Sciences. “Our Taxpayers should not be funding Climate Fraud, and Judges should never have relied upon it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Big Oil ostensibly hopes to avoid the fate of Big Tobacco, which paid hundreds of billions of dollars to settle lawsuits demonstrating that companies lied about the health risks of smoking. As the legal theories for those seeking to hold oil companies accountable for global warming evolve, the fossil fuel industry has to keep up, Justin Anderson, a lawyer for Exxon, explained at a panel on climate litigation held by the Federalist Society in November.
“Why do they keep adapting and changing their theories?” Anderson asked. “It’s kind of obvious. I have to win every time. I have to win every case that is brought. They just need to find one they can get through.”
Indonesia doesn’t need China to keep its nickel industry afloat
This is the first of a multi-part serieson Indonesia’snickel industry.
China’s nickel investors in Indonesia are sending a familiar warning: reverse regulatory uncertainty, or they’ll potentially walk. However, that tacit warning rests on an assumption — that Jakarta has no institutions capable of running its own nickel industry — that no longer holds.
In May, the China Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia sent an open letter to President Prabowo Subianto warning that abrupt policy shifts — from mining-quota cuts to new foreign-exchange retention rules — were undermining investor confidence.
Major Chinese smelters have recently throttled output and put expansion plans on hold in response. The underlying message seems to be that if Chinese firms lose patience, they will quit the country, dashing hopes for Indonesia’s downstream ambitions to capture more value from its mineral resources.
China’s tacit threat assumes Indonesia has no institutions of its own capable of carrying the industry forward without a major Chinese or other foreign partner directing it. But that assumption doesn’t square with what Jakarta has actually built over the past two years.
Danantara, Indonesia’s new sovereign wealth fund, announced plans in 2025 to develop 26 downstream projects worth roughly $12.4 billion, spanning mining, metals, energy and agriculture. All are explicitly aimed at keeping more value inside the country rather than exporting resources in raw or semi-processed form.
The state mining company MIND ID and a growing number of domestic private firms are positioned to take larger roles alongside Danantara — not as junior partners waiting on foreign capital to define the terms, but as co-owners structuring the projects themselves.
The area with the most room to grow this way is what industry analysts call the midstream — the stages between digging up ore and building a finished battery cell, including precursor materials, battery cathodes, specialty chemicals, recycling, process engineering, logistics and equipment maintenance.
These stages generally pay better and require more skilled work than mining or basic smelting. They are also exactly where a decade of Chinese investment has built the least, concentrating instead on nickel pig iron, ferronickel and, more recently, mixed hydroxide precipitate — the earlier, more commoditized end of the chain.
The cost of that gap shows up in Indonesia’s trade figures. The country is a net importer of advanced battery systems: An estimated 85% to 95% of domestic demand was met by imports as of 2026, with roughly 60% to 70% of that import value coming from China.
That means a country holding some of the largest nickel reserves on Earth is still buying back finished products built from cheaper chemistry elsewhere, because the domestic midstream never grew fast enough to intercept its own ore before it left the country in semi-processed form.
The chemistry has made the mismatch worse. Indonesia sold roughly 43,000 EVs in the most recent year tracked — most of them from Chinese brands including BYD, Wuling, Chery and Neta — and about 90% ran on lithium iron phosphate batteries, a chemistry that uses no nickel at all.
BYD’s new nickel-free Datang SUV drew 150,000 pre-orders in China in under two months this year, a sign that the same Chinese firms building Indonesia’s smelters are accelerating away from the nickel-heavy batteries Indonesia’s strategy assumed the world would keep buying.
Ferronickel output kept climbing anyway, meeting a market that increasingly didn’t need it for batteries — a large part of why prices collapsed even as export volumes hit records.
Danantara’s own conduct this past year shows that filling the midstream gap doesn’t require choosing sides. In May 2025, Danantara and Indonesia’s other sovereign fund, INA, signed a memorandum with France’s Eramet to build an integrated nickel-to-battery investment platform, with talks on specific projects, including further development at Weda Bay, continuing into the second half of the year.
Three months later, Danantara announced a separate cooperation agreement with China’s own GEM to develop a nickel processing hub. Signing with a French miner and a Chinese one in the same year is a reasonable description of what diversification actually looks like: not excluding any single country, but making sure Indonesian institutions have a real seat at the table regardless of which foreign partner shows up next.
None of this means Chinese capital has become irrelevant, or that domestic firms can immediately replace what a decade of China-led foreign investment built. Financing large industrial projects remains capital-intensive, and many Indonesian companies still lack the scale or established customer relationships to compete independently in global battery supply chains.
But MIND ID already has a track record worth noting. Under Indonesian mining law, foreign-owned mines must eventually divest majority ownership to Indonesian shareholders.
In July 2024, MIND ID did exactly that at nickel miner PT Vale Indonesia, buying a further 14% stake to become the controlling shareholder at 34%, without the mine’s output or its foreign technical partners disappearing.
It’s a working precedent for the model Danantara is now trying to scale across the midstream. The notion that Indonesia has no alternative to China or that Indonesia’s alternatives to China are still maturing are decidedly different claims — and only the latter is true.
Indonesia now has a sovereign fund actively financing dozens of downstream projects, a state miner with a real ownership track record, and, in the same year as its biggest quota cuts, new midstream partnerships with both Western and Chinese firms.
The more accurate question for Jakarta isn’t whether it can survive a Chinese exit that, despite Beijing’s grumbling, isn’t actually happening. It’s whether Danantara, MIND ID and domestic private capital can grow fast enough to make that question increasingly irrelevant.
Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara is the executive director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS). Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is the director of the China-Indonesia and MENA-Indonesia desks at CELIOS.
Violent Interests: Capitalism and Social Transformation in the Eastern Mediterranean
A French-Lebanese couple set out for Beirut where the man wanted to introduce the woman he wanted to marry to his family. However, as their passenger ship docked in Beirut port, the man’s father refused to allow the woman to disembark from the ship. A powerful and wealthy Greek Orthodox businessman, Musa Sursuq was opposed to his son, Jirjis Musa Sursuq, from marrying a French singer. As Kristen Alff describes, ‘He forbade his son from marrying the singer, telling Jirjis that he had already arranged for him to marry his first cousin Emilie.’ The world Musa grew up in, the newly acquired power and wealth acquired by his parents’ generation meant it was imperative for sons and daughters to marry within other newly wealthy Christian families or marrying cousins to strengthen business ties. Economic accumulation through marriage was the world of the 1860s, but by the time his son’s generation grew up in the 1890s, the children were no longer interested in arranged marriage as part of a business venture, as third generation wealthy children they were more interested in romantic love. The story of Lebanese families like the Sursuq family is the story of capitalism and Alff’s new book Violent Interests: Capitalism and Social Transformation In The Eastern Mediterranean, explores the changing nature of global capital through the 19th and 20th century rise of Beirut.
The book follows the Sursuq as well as fellow Greek Orthodox and Maronite Christian families of the Bustruses, Najjars, Trads, Tuwaynis, Khuris and Debbases. The aim is to locate Beirut as a key city not only as a place being shaped by capitalism, but one shaping global capitalism from the 1830s to the 1930s. These families developed a vast network of commercial interests from Beirut, Liverpool, Marseille and beyond. Non-Europeans as agents in expanding capitalism in both the East and West. The Sursuq family were celebrities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, British and French tabloids wrote about their scandals, wedding announcements and legal suits with enthusiasm. When a marriage occurred between Sursuq and Bustrus families, British newspapers not only covered it, but the Russian Emperor became a godfather to their first-born son. In 1887, when a massive fire broke out in Paris’ Opera Comique in Bois de Boulogne, in which 131 people went missing, injured or died, one British newspaper only named members of the Sursuq family caught up in the fire. Arab families were transforming the world around them, in the English northern city of Manchester, 4 Arab trading houses were listed there in 1798 and by 1870, there were 400 of them.
BOOK REVIEW: A History of Modern Syria
Alff challenges previous historical works that argue Islamic law in the Ottoman World stunted the development of a capitalist economy, it is often argued that when Christians in the empire became exempt from local jurisdictions and came under European law in the 19th century, they acquired wealth which enabled them to build modern stock companies. However, as Alff shows, this is simply not true and that to understand the emergence of a capitalist class, we need to understand the intersections of Islamic law, Ottoman reform and European expansion in creating the conditions for them to come into being. By the 18th century, the Ottomans were building up Beirut as a commercial port hub, promoting cotton production in North Palestine and Silk production in Mount Lebanon. The agreement to allow Christians to use French law, facilitated the emigration of Christian families from parts of Syria to Mount Lebanon. Here they formed farming partnerships and these would become the precursor to joint stock companies formed later on.
‘A great degree of continuity in institutional form and social practice thus existed between the eighteenth-century shareholding schemes under the malikane system and the formation of family business…an early predecessor of the joint-stock companies in the Eastern Mediterranean.’ The story ties into northern Palestine as these Beiruti families owned vast landholdings there, but these faced a unique challenge as Zionist settlers began moving into the area. In the late 19th century, these Beiruti families sold some of their land to these European settlers, while others lost their landholdings in 1948. ‘Palestine…is representative of a case of capitalist expropriation in that its history rests on the dispossession of peasants of their land and subsistence rights for the sake of companies’ seemingly boundless drive for corporate profit in the late nineteenth century.’
Violent Interests forces us to rethink the historical relationship between the Eastern Mediterranean and capitalism. Too often the Levant has been seen as a place where capitalism happened too, while for many this may well be true, it ignores not only the fact many from the region shaped it, but also that it emerged as a combination of internal and external forces. The book offers us a way of thinking about socio-cultural, economic and political transformations of the region, while thinking about why we end up with different results in different places. Ultimately, it offers us better critical engagement in trying to understand how the world around us came to be and for that reason is an important read.
BOOK REVIEW: Imperial Iran in the Eighteenth Century: Identity and State Formation under Nader
Hegseth Is Pushing Testosterone. The VA Has Already Struggled With the Treatment.
Providing continuing hormone-replacement therapy at “the High-T Department of War,” as Secretary Pete Hegseth is calling it, may prove difficult for the federal government because the department in charge of healthcare for veterans has already documented a struggle to manage service members’ hormone therapy, The Intercept has found.
A person on testosterone therapy can’t just stop it abruptly. Dr. Adrian Dobs, a professor of medicine and oncology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told The Intercept testosterone therapy can suppress the body’s natural production of the hormone and sperm, as well as create medical needs that persist after treatment stops. “We’re sort of creating a dependency on testosterone,” she said.
Under Hegseth’s new initiative, service members age 30 and older are slated for annual testosterone screening, regardless of whether they have any symptoms, while troops under 30 may request screening during their periodic health assessments. Doctors and endocrinologists warned that this proactive screening could lead to overprescription of hormone-replacement therapy for people who don’t need it. This could affect their fertility in the short term, Dobs said, because “men who take testosterone will have a reduction in their sperm counts.”
And after a service member leaves the military, they may require continued medical care. That care could eventually fall to the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has previously struggled with the same treatment.
“Men who take testosterone will have a reduction in their sperm counts.”
In a 2018 review of testosterone replacement therapy, the VA Office of Inspector General found that providers often started patients on testosterone without adequately documenting symptoms or confirming low testosterone levels and frequently failed to conduct recommended follow-up after treatment began. Approximately 2 out of 3 patients did not get a documented discussion of the risks and benefits of the treatment before starting.
Dr. Alvin Matsumoto, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Medicine and former attending physician and associate director at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System, said the findings show why testing for low testosterone is not enough to determine whether someone should receive treatment. Matsumoto helped develop the Endocrine Society’s clinical practice guidelines for testosterone treatment, which the inspector general found the VA had routinely violated in its 2018 review.
Testosterone levels can change depending on when a patient is tested, whether they have recently eaten, exercised heavily, or are sick, among other factors, Matsumoto said. In about a third of men whose testosterone initially tests low, a second test produces a normal result.
That creates a risk under a program that will routinely screen otherwise healthy troops and make testosterone therapy available to those subsequently diagnosed with a deficiency.
“Initiating testosterone therapy in men who have a single low testosterone [test] but no clinical manifestations of testosterone deficiency will likely result in treatment of some men who do not have hypogonadism,” Matsumoto told The Intercept.
Medical guidelines instead call for doctors to establish that a patient has symptoms and repeatedly low testosterone levels before beginning treatment. Matsumoto said those steps would need to occur either while a service member remains under Pentagon care or after they transition to Veterans Affairs.
The question becomes particularly important when those patients move between the two systems. Matsumoto said a VA provider inheriting a patient already receiving testosterone should review why treatment was started in the first place, including whether the patient had symptoms and repeatedly low testosterone levels.
But he does not expect that reassessment to routinely happen. Usually, “the diagnosis will be assumed to be correct,” Matsumoto said.
It’s a similar problem to one the inspector general identified in its review of VA care. Some providers appeared to be testing patients for low testosterone without first documenting symptoms suggesting a deficiency.
The inspector general made seven recommendations to bring VA practices up to standards, including repeat testing and monitoring. According to the inspector general, the VA implemented all seven recommendations and closed them as implemented, as the VA noted in response to questions from The Intercept.
Among the changes the VA implemented was a requirement that providers establish signs and symptoms of testosterone deficiency before testing a patient’s testosterone level for confirmation — a higher standard than Hegseth’s call for annual testosterone screening based on age alone.
“I would be against universal screening, which is what we’re talking about here,” said Dobs, a position consistent with guidance from the Endocrine Society, which represents physicians and researchers specializing in hormonal health.
The Pentagon’s new initiative presents a different question: What happens when service members arrive at the VA already receiving testosterone treatment initiated while they were on active duty?
The Intercept asked the VA whether it has the clinical capacity to continue testosterone treatment for veterans who begin therapy under the Pentagon’s new initiative, whether those prescriptions would automatically continue after separation or require a new VA evaluation, and whether the VA and the Pentagon have coordinated on transitioning those patients between the two healthcare systems.
The Department of Veterans Affairs did not answer any of those questions.
“VA provides testosterone testing and replacement therapy when medically necessary,” VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven told The Intercept.
Defense Department personnel data from 2024 show roughly 451,000 active-duty troops were age 31 or older, a conservative figure that excludes 30-year-olds, who would also fall under Hegseth’s screening requirement. More than 1 million of the military’s 1.27 million active-duty service members were men.
“Here we have men who are in their prime of reproduction, and we’re causing a drop in their sperm counts when there really may not be sufficient benefit,” Dobs said.
“We’re causing a drop in their sperm counts when there really may not be sufficient benefit.”
The Pentagon did not provide The Intercept with the scientific evidence behind the mandate, say whether it assessed the fertility consequences that can follow testosterone treatment, or address safeguards to prevent unnecessary treatment.
Screening asymptomatic patients is “sort of opening up a can of worms,” Dobs said, citing the difficulty of interpreting test results and determining when treatment is warranted. She was particularly concerned about treating otherwise asymptomatic men whose levels fall within a low or low-normal range — a likely risk in a military overwhelmingly composed of young adults.
The Endocrine Society also recommends against starting testosterone therapy in men who are planning to father children in the near term.
In response to The Intercept’s questions, Defense Department officials pointed to Hegseth’s health and human performance directives, statements from Pentagon officials, and the “High-T Department of War” video.
“It’s not about artificial enhancement,” Hegseth said in his video. “It’s about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight.”
But testosterone treatment can interfere with overall health. Patients placed on testosterone may require continued clinical monitoring to ensure they are not receiving excessive amounts of the hormone. Testosterone can also increase the proportion of red blood cells in a person’s blood, requiring additional monitoring during treatment. It introduces a complex treatment regimen with “very little real proven benefit in this healthy population,” Dobs said.
And there’s the financial cost.
“Who is going to pay for this testosterone while they’re in the service, and who is going to pay for it after,” Dobs asked, “if they require it for many years afterwards?”
Healthcare Replacement Therapy
The virility program Hegseth introduced also intersects with a long-running gap in military reproductive healthcare.
In May, a Congressional Research Service report identified testosterone exposure among the factors that can contribute to infertility. Yet TRICARE, the health insurance military members have, generally does not cover assisted reproductive technologies, including in vitro fertilization, intrauterine insemination, and cryopreservation, which can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Congress nearly expanded that coverage last year. Both the House and Senate versions of the fiscal year 2026 defense authorization bill included provisions requiring TRICARE coverage of certain assisted reproductive technologies. Neither provision survived the final legislation.
The Pentagon is now preparing to routinely screen hundreds of thousands of troops and offer potentially unnecessary testosterone therapy even as TRICARE generally excludes treatments for infertility, one of its potential consequences.
And the plan gives scant consideration to another massive population.
“Nobody’s discussing women,” Dobs said.
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., an Air Force veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee, raised the same concern.
“Testosterone is important for both men and women,” Houlahan told The Intercept. “But when [Hegseth] says ‘biological foundation,’ clearly, he has only one sex in mind.”
Houlahan pointed to years of congressional efforts to expand access to fertility treatment for service members and their families.
“This administration not only has opposed efforts to expand access to IVF for service members and their families but has rolled back policies that enable them to take time off to get the full suite of health care they need,” Houlahan said.
She has pushed for research into how military service affects women entering perimenopause and menopause, including the potential effects of toxic exposure, combat, military sexual trauma, and post-traumatic stress disorder. “There is little to no research” on how those risk factors affect women’s health, Houlahan said.
Hegseth has repeatedly framed the testosterone initiative around military readiness and lethality. But “if Secretary Hegseth was truly looking to improve readiness, he would consider ways to support all service members, not just 49% of the population,” Houlahan said.
She was blunter about what she believes the testosterone initiative says about Hegseth’s priorities.
“This announcement about testosterone proves that Secretary Hegseth is only concerned about reproductive health when it serves his own political and misogynistic agenda,” Houlahan said.
