Good morning. Happy Saturday! I’m John Byrne. Before we get going, tap that ❤️ and restack this edition. The algorithms often bury our newsletters, and your share is what brings it back to the surface.
Hours after Donald Trump eased sanctions on Russian diesel to bring down fuel prices before the midterms, Ukraine set the export terminal on fire. A focus group of Trump’s own voters watched one of his taxpayer-funded TV ads, and one of them asked for Pepto-Bismol. More than a week after a young plague researcher died in Siberia, Russia still hasn’t said what killed her. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s FDA is proposing to let some toxic chemicals be added straight to food without a safety review.
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Donald Trump has a problem three weeks before Election Day: fuel prices. His solution was Vladimir Putin.
The administration eased sanctions on Russian diesel. A few hours later, Ukrainian drones hit the NZNP Rostovsky oil export terminal in Rostov-on-Don, according to Raw Story.
“This is a products export terminal, exactly where the diesel would leave Russia under the deal,” wrote The Hormuz Letter, an account that covers oil markets and posted video of the blaze.
Ukraine had telegraphed it, too. Ukrainian military sources warned earlier in the day that Trump’s plan to use Russian diesel to cut U.S. prices before the midterms “will bear no fruit.”
The New York Times reported Friday that record diesel prices are hitting farm states just as harvest season starts. Fuel costs have soared since Trump launched his war against Iran, and Republicans are now desperately trying to fix the map as their internal polling gets worse.
So the president started a war that sent fuel prices soaring, then turned to Moscow for relief.
MAGA pundit Brian Glenn summed it up without seeming to notice what he was saying. Trump struck a diesel deal with Russia, he wrote, and “Ukraine then bombs terminal to which the diesel would flow from. There you go.”
There you go, indeed. Trump tried to buy his way out of a midterm problem with Putin’s diesel. Ukraine lit the loading dock on fire.
If you’ve watched an NFL game lately, you’ve seen them: “public service announcements” starring Donald Trump, paid for by you.
Sarah Longwell, a former Republican pollster and publisher of The Bulwark, wanted to know how they’re landing. So she gathered Florida voters who backed Trump in 2024 but now disapprove of the job he’s doing, and showed them one.
The spot pulls from a 2024 rally speech in which Trump vows to “demolish the deep state” and “drive out the globalists.”
“The second that ad started and he started talking I literally just got nauseous,” said a Trump voter named Paul, according to Raw Story. “I need some Pepto-Bismol.”
Dena called Trump “power hungry.” Bob suggested swapping the “paid for by the U.S. government” label for “definition of a narcissist.”
The rest of the country agrees. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found Americans oppose spending taxpayer money on election-related TV ads featuring the president, 86 to 9.
Trump said this week that his super PAC will cover future airings. He won’t be reimbursing taxpayers for the ones that already ran.
A couple of the participants said they plan to vote for Democrats. One, Ramiro, went further.
“Even if the Republicans don’t win for the next ten years, it’s probably best to wash these people out,” he said.
That’s a Trump voter, in Florida, after watching a Trump ad. Money well spent.
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Darya Shipilova was 28 and worked at the Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East in Irkutsk, where she tested antibiotics against the bacterium that causes plague.
She died of pneumonia on October 2. More than a week later, Russia hasn’t said what caused it.
First, the reassuring part. No other known cases have surfaced, and fears of an outbreak are starting to recede, The New York Times reports.
Russia’s public health regulator says her remains didn’t test positive for any of the dangerous pathogens she worked with, plague included. Officially, it was pneumonia of unknown origin.
That’s the part the World Health Organization can’t get past. If plague is ruled out, asked the WHO’s Maria Van Kerkhove, “what did she actually die from?”
Experts say Moscow should know by now. Raj Panjabi, a Biden White House public health official, said Russia can presumably sequence a genome within days.
“They’ve not shared the results, and that’s concerning,” he told the Times.
There’s a reason the world is jumpy. Russia is one of the few countries still working on biological weapons, according to the U.S. intelligence community’s annual threat assessment.
People briefed on U.S. intelligence told the Times there’s no indication the Irkutsk institute was doing bioweapons research.
Even so, the regional governor declared the matter closed on Thursday, saying the WHO had confirmed there’s no risk to public health. The WHO says Russia hasn’t given it enough information to assess the risk at all.
His own constituents weren’t buying it. “X-Files, nothing to see here,” one wrote under his video.
More than six years after Covid upended the world, a government that won’t answer a simple question about a dead lab worker isn’t going to get the benefit of the doubt.
In August, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took a victory lap. He and the FDA declared “promises kept” for closing a notorious loophole that let food companies certify their own ingredients as safe.
What they didn’t mention was what else was in the proposed rule.
According to The Guardian, it quietly expands a different loophole, the “threshold of regulation” exemption.
Today, that exemption lets companies use dangerous compounds without review in food packaging and processing equipment, as long as they aren’t carcinogenic and stay below 0.5 parts per billion.
The proposal would let those chemicals be added directly to food — as flavorings, preservatives, emulsifiers and more.
The trouble, advocates say, is that plenty of chemicals do damage at far lower levels, including hormone disruptors linked to brain damage in children.
There’s a track record here. In 2005, the exemption was used to allow perchlorate, a rocket fuel chemical, in the giant plastic sacks that move grain around farms.
The FDA’s own data later showed more samples of kids’ cereal contained it, and at higher levels. Even very low exposures are linked to lower IQ scores in children.
The agency reapproved it anyway.
“They did not make our food safer,” said Maria Doa, a scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund.
The man who built a movement on getting toxic chemicals out of food is now presiding over a rule that lets more of them in.
If this morning’s edition told you something the billionaire-owned outlets would rather keep quiet, that’s exactly the point. A president who turned to Putin to rescue his midterms. His own voters sickened by ads he billed to taxpayers. A government that won’t say what killed a plague researcher. And an FDA quietly opening the door to toxic chemicals in your food. Facebook and X have effectively shut down our distribution, because two billionaires decided what you get to see before November. Election Day is 24 days away. Becoming a paid subscriber is the most direct way to fight back, and it puts this in your inbox where no algorithm can touch it. We’re behind on our October goal and running out of time, so subscribe or upgrade right now for about 22 cents a day. Then share this newsletter with someone who needs to see it. Every subscriber makes it harder for them to shout this down. Become a paid subscriber right now to make your support go even further.
One more thing before you go: hit the ❤️ and restack this edition. It’s what pushes these stories past the algorithm and into the feeds of people who’d never otherwise see them.
I’m John Byrne. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
