the DON JONES INDEX…
	GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED 6/19/26… 15,629.57 6/12/26… 15,624.05 6/27/13... 15,000.00
(THE DOW JONES INDEX: 6/19... 51,564.70; 6/12... 50,848.75; 6/27/13… 15,000.00)

LESSON for FRIDAY, JUNE 19, 2026 – “STARVE those (american) BASTARDS!”

The best food is what’s on your plate in front of you...

We may have a peace deal, which may mean an oil deal... particulars expected today or over the weekend... but we still have a food crisis (which no foreign covenant can relieve).

It’s not, as some skeptics and scoffers maintain, simply a supply chain issue in which fresh prodice, meats and dairy are waiting for trucks to the market. After all, the price of eggs is down, isn’t it?

And it’s not, despite the liberal contentions, wholly an issue of gouging by growers and grocers cruelly jacking up their prices in wartime, nor is it a question of feeding more troops. The ranks of the military, despite the war, are stable or even declining.

America is being asked to do more with less, except for the few fortunate sones like the biznessman who’s just passed from the status of the billionaires and into the stratus of the world’s only trillionaire

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in April, after rising 0.9 percent in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.8 percent before seasonal adjustment.

The index for energy rose 3.8 percent in April, accounting for over forty percent of the monthly all items increase. The shelter index also increased in April, rising 0.6 percent. The index for food increased 0.5 percent over the month as the index for food at home rose 0.7 percent and the index for food away from home increased 0.2 percent.

FOOD

The Consumer Price Index for food rose 0.5 percent in April after being unchanged in March. The food at home index increased 0.7 percent over the month. Five of the six major grocery store food group indexes increased in April. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs increased 1.3 percent over the month as the index for beef rose 2.7 percent. The fruits and vegetables index increased 1.8 percent in April and the nonalcoholic beverages index rose 1.1 percent. The index for dairy and related products increased 0.8 percent over the month and the index for cereals and bakery products rose 0.1 percent in April.

In contrast, the index for other food at home fell 0.4 percent in April after being unchanged in March.

The food away from home index rose 0.2 percent in April. The index for limited service meals rose 0.4 percent over the month and the index for full service meals rose 0.1 percent.

The index for food at home rose 2.9 percent over the 12 months ending in April. The fruits and vegetables index rose 6.1 percent over the last 12 months. The index for other food at home increased 2.5 percent over the same period and the index for nonalcoholic beverages rose 5.1 percent. The cereals and bakery products index increased 2.6 percent over the 12 months ending in April and the meats, poultry, fish, and eggs index rose 1.5 percent over the same period. In contrast, the index for dairy and related products fell 0.6 percent over the year.

The food away from home index rose 3.6 percent over the last year. The index for full service meals rose 3.8 percent and the index for limited service meals rose 3.2 percent over the same period.

The index for food rose 0.2 percent in May after rising 0.5 percent in April. The food at home index increased 0.1 percent over the month. Three of the six major grocery store food group indexes increased in May. The index for nonalcoholic beverages increased 0.6 percent over the month as the index for beverage materials including coffee and tea rose 1.1 percent. The cereals and bakery products index increased 0.4 percent in May and the fruits and vegetables index rose 0.2 percent.

In contrast, the index for dairy and related products fell 0.6 percent in May as the index for cheese declined 2.9 percent. The meats, poultry, fish, and eggs index decreased 0.2 percent over the month. The index for other food at home was unchanged in May.

The food away from home index rose 0.3 percent in May. The index for limited service meals and the index for full service meals both also rose 0.3 percent over the month.

The index for food at home rose 2.7 percent over the 12 months ending in May. The fruits and vegetables index rose 6.1 percent over the last 12 months. The index for nonalcoholic beverages increased 5.8 percent over the same period and the index for other food at home rose 2.0 percent. The meats, poultry, fish, and eggs index increased 1.8 percent over the 12 months ending in May and the cereals and bakery products index rose 1.9 percent over the same period. In contrast, the index for dairy and related products fell 1.0 percent over the year.

The food away from home index rose 3.5 percent over the last year. The index for full service meals rose 3.8 percent and the index for limited service meals rose 3.3 percent over the same period.

The AI overview on food insecurity (ATTACHMENT ONE) cites “Low Food Security” and “Very Low Food Security” as being a consequence of “financial constraints” resulting from “unemployment, underemployment, rising costs of living and groceries, unexpected medical expenses, housing instability, and transportation barriers.” 

Among those who can afford to eat... if not necessarily lavishly... Fox News (June 16, ATTACHMENT TWO) reported on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) results for 2026, which saw longstanding fan favorite Chick-fil-A dethroned by the insurgent ham slicers at Jersey Mike’s

Their ACSI score of 84 out of 100 edged Chick-fil-A’s 83.

Ranking near the bottom were Dairy Queen and McDonald's, which tied for last place among major quick-service chains with scores of 72.

More bad news for The Clown from Tasting Table (June 13, ATTACHMENT THREE) which named McDonald’s double cheeseburger the worst of seven fast food offerings tested.

(TT chose Popeye’s chicken sandwich as America’s favorite.)

The McD’s double cheese is... TT carefully pointed out... not the Big Mac: but that didn’t fare very well either – being just not “worth the room in your belly”. The clownburger flavors, across the board, were “barely there and textures were exceptionally dry.” According to the tester, "The patties themselves had very little flavor — just a vague salty meat taste — and certainly weren't juicy. Two stacked together still didn't amount to much." 

Described as “limp and lackluster”, the only offering on McDonald's menu that was any sadder is the single cheeseburger. TT also turned noses up on the filet-o-fish, McNuggets... even their coffee.

The severity of fast food criticisms at home seemed to have little impact on the international tourist trade... especially those coming to America to attend FIFA World Cup matches.

Delish (June 12, ATTACHMENT FOUR) found that FIFA tourists were especially raving about seven American foods – ranging from Buc-ee’s Beaver Nuggets to Chicago deep dish pizza to Hidden Valley ranch dressing and, even, the Waffle House.

The FIFA tourists were less impressed by prices at the games with Newsweek interviewees calling them “shambolic”. (June 13, ATTACHMENT FIVE)

According to USA Today, beer in Los Angeles’ (recently unstruck) SOFI Stadium “ranges from about $15 for domestic options to more than $22 for larger craft or imported pours, while soft drinks and water cost $7.75 and $5.25, respectively.

“Food items—pizza, tacos, burritos and nachos—cluster around the $19–$20 range, with even basic snacks such as hot dogs ($10) and chips ($5.75) adding up quickly.

Prices were even higher in Canada where, in Toronto, “a basic combination of two hot dogs and two soft drinks priced at 57.50 Canadian dollars (roughly $41 USD), with beers reaching roughly $24 CAD (approximately $17.15 USD) depending on size and brand.

In Mexico, however concession costs remain significantly lower—even within the same event. “Reports from the opening match in Mexico City suggest a 24-ounce beer at Estadio Azteca cost about 290 pesos (roughly $16.67 USD).

“Some studies suggest beer prices in Mexican venues can fall as low as the equivalent of $2–3 USD, while similar drinks in U.S. stadiums can exceed $13, more than four to six times higher.

“Meal-and-drink combinations illustrate the disparity even more starkly: Seatpick’s analysis found fans could pay about $9.77 in Guadalajara versus over $34 in California.

“If live events become perceived as elitist,” Newsweek added, “organizers face not just backlash but long-term reputational damage—particularly for competitions built on mass participation and global identity.

Americans, journeying abroad, are finding legendary meals from iconic eateries... often cheaper than at US FIFA stadium matches.

Food and Wine (June 13, ATTACHMENT SIX) choose the food in Hong Kong as the world’s tastiest treats.

F&W’s Janice Leung Hayes singled out a few favorites... Chef Vicky Cheng’s of the acclaimed “Chinese x French” fine-dining spot Vea and the haute Chinese restaurant Wing promoting her iconic jiggly sea cucumber in a thin spring roll wrapper with scallion sauce, or housemade century eggs with crystal clear whites, served with a lacy drizzle of tingly mala chile sauce.

Hayes concluded that the menu “evokes the food Hong Kongers grew up with, amplified and refined.”

Vicky Lau, chef of the two-Michelin-starred, French-meets-Chinese Tate Dining Room called the sparkling new Bistro Jija “translated: chirping birds”) with its umami in a housemade mushroom and pork sausage; Chinese artichokes, pickled with black cardamom, Szechuan pepper, and star anise and “long, minty, crunchy wild rice shoots might be tossed in a searing-hot wok with yancaigao, a salty-sour fermented vegetable paste reminiscent of fish sauce.”

Chef Tony Mok of Path touts his dan dan noodles with luxurious pile of Hong Kong’s native flower crab instead of the usual pork while “rowdy hot pot den” Big JJ offers high-quality (and sometimes obscure) cuts of beef, sliced expertly for cooking at the table, as well as a thoughtful wine selection.

While the privileged foodies wander the world in search of the next trend, Oxfam (ATTACHMENT SEVEN) sorts out “moderate” food insecurity (where people may not consume enough nutritious food that meets their dietary requirements), “severe food insecurity” where they go a day or more without anything to eat at all” and the final step: starvation.

Food security, Oxfam contends, exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy lifestyle. ?”A functioning food system is the backbone of food security. It includes agriculture production, good infrastructure to store and move food to where it needs to go, local businesses that transform raw ingredients into the food we all love to eat, as well as local markets that make food available—all without worsening the climate crisis and inequality.”

And, also, presuming that the political climate allows and that three conditions are met: availability, access and utilization, plus a fourth: stability. Even in prosperous America, Oxfam‘s Behind the Barcodes campaign has worked “to hold supermarkets–including Whole Foods–accountable for the mistreatment of farmers and workers around the world.”

Beyond the local and national, Oxfam designates climate change “driving extreme weather and failed harvests”, the whims and will of the powerful against the people and, often, civil and national conflicts – as destroy farms and, in the criminal aspect, can use food as a weapon of war.

All of these, and more, are causing increases in global food and nutrition insecurity which are increasing despite broadly stable supplies of major staples. Since the last update in March (according to the biznessmen at the World Bank... ATTACHMENT EIGHT... as well as to the liberals at Oxfam, agricultural and cereal price indices have risen by 3 and 4 percent, respectively. “Conflict and climate shocks continue to be the primary drivers of acute food insecurity.”

With plenty of numbers at hand, the World Bankers deem millions at risk in Africa, the Mideast wars compromising food security and, especially, the abailability and affordability of fertilizer.

As to the weather, “a 61 to 87 percent probability of El Niño emerging by mid-2026 and continuing into 2027 could make the situation worse by threatening crop production in South Asia, Southern Africa, and parts of East Asia, with rice output (which has been improving) potentially falling by 20 to 50 percent.” Even higher prices could impact maize and wheat.

The bankers called regional patterns uneven – Latin America and the Caribbean and South Asia experienced an increase in food inflation, whereas Europe and Central Asia and parts of Africa generally saw moderate increases, although several countries in Eastern and Southern Africa continued to record double-digit food inflation. “In real terms, food price inflation outpaced overall inflation.”

Uneven outcomes have also ranged within food sources. As American climate factors... too much or too little rain... have sent the price of beef soaring, the National Hog Farmer journal (June 15, ATTACHMENT NINE) projects pork production to increase while prices decrease.

The USDA's Quarterly Hogs and Pigs report, scheduled for release on June 25, is expected to offer more insights into producer farrowing intentions for the second half of 2026. This data will also help establish clearer expectations for hog supply and pork production conditions during the first half of 2027.

The waning of the Bird Flu has also caused a normalization in prices for chickens and eggs. But the Progressive Farmer (June 10^th, ATTACHMENT TEN) offers up plent of numbers, citing the USDA Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin posted June 9 for the week of May 31-June 6, as compare the present drought conditions to some of America’s worst dry spells – potentiated by record heat (the August 2025-May 2026 average temperature of 52.38 being 4.16 degrees F above the 1901-2000 mean value of 48.22 F.

Another potential risk to agriculture is the possibility of increased and even new forms of increasingly resistant pests. Wild animals, insects (including the several notorious infestations of locusts, grasshoppers, Japanese beetles and others) in the past, What ABC 15 in Arizona called potentially terrifying... the emergence of the New World screwworm, whose larvae can actually eat living tissue in people, pets and livestock (June 13, ATTACHMENT ELEVEN)... has been dismissed as comparatively miniscule by expets such as State Veterinarian Dr. Ryan Wolker who, while describing some of the gruesome aspects of the pests, also contends that government deployment of fly traps and even sterile screwworms have been working and that Arizonians “should be alert, (but) not alarmed.”

Foodtank.com (ATTACHMENT TWELVE) adds that the screwworms have been joined by other hungry parasites; the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) recently confirming the presence of NWS, a parasitic fly, in the United States with  nine cases have been detected in Texas and New Mexico.

But the tankers surmise that far greater dangers are coming from synthetic pesticides that lose potency over generations of buglife, as well as the promotion of raw milk by HHSec Bobby K. Junior – referring to studies by Brown University Health calling Kennedy’s miraculous claims fictitious and that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn that unpasteurized milk can expose people to dangerous bacteria including E. coli, Listeria, Brucella, and Salmonella: all of which “can pose a serious risk to eaters—especially children under 5, adults over 65, as well as those who are pregnant or have weakened immune systems. Just last week, Idaho’s Department of Health and Welfare reported that 60 people became sick after consuming raw milk.” 

When asked about the risks, raw boy Mark McAfee largely denied them or brushed them off, even as his own farm has been linked to illnesses. “I’ve put a couple kids in the hospital, and they have been sick, but they recovered,” he admits. 

Howsoever the vampire flies, screwworms and bacterial raw milk may be afflicting some Americans, most believe that a far greater danger arises from unaffordability here – and an even more deadly rampage of starvation worldwide. The majority of victims are in the poor or conflicted nations of Africa, the Mideast, Asia and some parts of the Americas, but there are even a few surprises taking hold as 2026 progresses.

Yahoo News and the conservative Telegraph U.K. (June 10^th, ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN) cited the complications to the usual food shortages as the Iranian war and Hormuz shutdown passed 100 days.

“We told the world the closure of the Strait was going to have a massive impact," Dr Jean-Martin Bauer, the World Food Programme's director of food security analysis, told The Telegraph.

"There have been impacts on energy markets, on trade, on shipping, and all these are combining to create this cost of living crisis affecting millions of people."

But even if US/Iranian ceasefire re-opens Hormuz, agricological experts say the war's impact on food security will be long-felt due to two critical elements: energy and fertiliser.

"The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is not a regional issue; it is a global food security risk," Dr Qu Dongyu, head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation Council of the UN, said at a high-level meeting earlier this week.

And even if Presiden Trump and the Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen (not to mention the complications of the Iranian terror surrogates elsewhere in the MidEast and the recalcitrant Israelis) keep their promises and the war machines are quieted for the next two months or so, the backlog of fertilizer sitting on tankers rather than proceeding onward to hungry nations such as the three listed by the Telegraph/Yahoo reporters (Afghanistan, Somalia and Sri Lanka) may not arrive in time to save the 2026 harvests.

AFGHANISTAN’s estimated 4.9 million mothers and children are already suffering from acute malnutrition, a near-record figure. An eight-month-long border closure with Pakistan, the country's key trading partner, repeated floods and earthquakes, and a steep fall-off in foreign aid as Western countries increasingly slash overseas development budgets have all exacerbated the crisis, according to the UN.

The proportion of SOMALI households that can no longer afford what the UN calls the "basic food basket" – things like cooking oil and grains – has risen from 47 to 60 per cent in late 2025, according to the WFP's analysis.

SRI LANKA... a middle-income country with GDP per capita more than six times Somalia's... is also acutely exposed to events in the Gulf, the UN says, importing 63 per cent of its energy and between 90 and 100 per cent of its fertiliser from Mideast. Its prinicipal export, tea, has also been decimated by the war and remittances sent back to Sri Lanka from the likes of Kuwait, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have also ceased “as industries like construction, farming, and tourism have ground to a halt.”

Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens next weekm experts warn the food crisis “is set to only get worse because of the delayed impact of falling fertiliser supply.” Some are plowing their cornfields, wheat fields and rice paddies under and planting soybeans... far less fertiliser-intensive “but used for livestock feed, not human consumption,” contend the authorities at YahTelegraph (who may not have factured in tofu). But even these being planted now will not be harvested until “the autumn and into 2027.”

Across the world, 260 million people already face varying levels of food insecurity with the worst off in poor and fragile countries unable to meet their basic caloric needs.

“Many are selling off livestock and land to put food on the table. In the long term, the food crisis will irreversibly damage physical and cognitive health, particularly in children, experts say.”

Western countries have so far been relatively sheltered from the food crisis, broadly because governments can absorb prices and help to cushion inflation, and the average person spends significantly less of their income on food than those in the Global South.

But experts say it's only a matter of time before the effects of the Iran war are felt on the shelves.

“Strong yields during last year’s harvest have provided a temporary buffer against increasing food costs,” said Maximo Torero, chief economist at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

"That's why prices have not increased so much. But by the end of the year these will be depleted, so prices will start increasing by 2027," even in the prosperous West.

YahTelegraphics also warn that the world's food security is also set to be particularly precarious in 2027 as an unprecedented "super" El Niño hits the Southern Hemisphere this summer, dramatically reducing the ability of farmers to work due to heat stress and crippling crop yields.

“A report released on Monday by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit predicted drops in British imports of rice, as well as fruits like grapes, lemons, oranges, and coffee.”

England can take the loss of coffee, perhaps importing more tea if the war ends or, at least, winds down awhile, but no lemon seasoning the teapot? No orange marmalade on the scones?

Barbaric!

Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst III told the House Armed Services Committee on April 29 what nine weeks of war with Iran has cost: $25 billion. A State Department spokesperson questioned by the Council on Foreign Relations (May 12, ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN) said “the agency’s humanitarian tab since the start of the war is $49 million. That’s a ratio of 510:1, and the gap has likely widened.”

As Washington debates, “the direct and cascading impacts of Operation Epic Fury have pushed millions of people to the brink of starvation... 1.24 million Lebanese—nearly one in every four people—are experiencing acute levels of hunger. That represents a 42 percent increase over the six months prior. This follows U.S. cuts to global humanitarian aid from $14 billion in 2024 to $4 billion in 2025.

Across the first four months of 2026, the U.S. humanitarian retreat is becoming increasingly alarming. The Trump administration’s global humanitarian aid contributions this year ($2.4 billion) is not even half of what the National Retail Federation reported Americans spent on Easter candy and flowers ($5.7 billion).

In the larger picture, the UN World Food Program (WFP) projects that in countries dependent on food and fuel imports, primarily in Africa and South Asia, “some forty-five million more people could face acute food insecurity if the Iran war continues through June. This toll would exceed the record levels reached when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Within Sudan, which is experiencing the world’s largest hunger crisis, famine rages [PDF] for a third consecutive year. Those in South Sudan are hardly faring better. Between 2020 and 2024, U.S. aid to South Sudan regularly exceeded $700 million. This year, the State Department has provided only $100 million, while the WFP reports a $193 million shortfall—meaning fewer meals to feed the seventy thousand South Sudanese already experiencing famine conditions. And it’s not just food that people can’t access: health services are collapsing as conflict rages, leaving few trained staff to treat patients suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

The CFR also reported (April 13, ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN) that, in Yemen—where rising food, fuel, and fertilizer costs have caused severe economic shocks—is entering its most dangerous food security phase in years, with half of the population suffering from severe hunger.

And in Afghanistan, where 3.7 million children are suffering from acute malnutrition, three out of four were turned away from clinics with therapeutic food even before the Iran war began. Today, the WFP (above) says that the cost of imported goods has tripled due to the ongoing conflict.

“Still, Lebanon exemplifies perhaps the starkest funding shortfall yet.” The United Nations’ $308 million emergency Lebanon appeal—intended to fund a government-led response for a three-month period from March to May 2026—was only 41 percent funded. To lesser extents, the list of countries impacted by the Iran war can, and does, go on. Gaza is reckoning with a bread shortage caused by ingredient restrictions and price spikes. Egypt’s vegetable prices have tripled. Post-Hurricane Melissa recovery is stalled in Jamaica due to stranded building materials. Ethiopia is facing fertilizer scarcity right as planting season begins. A lack of fuel in Myanmar is disrupting humanitarian operations. “And the international NGO Save the Children projected that every $5 increase in oil prices triggered by conflict will wipe out one month of life-saving humanitarian aid for nearly forty thousand children.”

Somalia, the CFR added, has experienced “severe drought had already plunged 6.5 million people into acute hunger.” Half a million children [PDF] were termed now one step removed from famine, with supply chain disruptions triggered by the Iran war causing shortages of life-saving therapeutic peanut butter paste.

In the nation’s Bay region — once the country’s breadbasket — “sorghum and corn fields are withering from lack of rain. Prices for imported rice have surged amid shipping disruptions caused by the conflict in Iran.” (WashPost, ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN)

Now meteorologists warn of a “never enough” crisis becoming a “too much” El Niño event; a climate upheaval “often accompanied by soaring temperatures and more extreme weather that imperil agriculture in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions.

“Experts fear that the event, combined with the high fuel and fertilizer prices triggered by the Iran war, could push parts of the world into a major hunger crisis by the end of this year — one that may trigger political instability and threaten the lives of millions.

“What’s coming toward us, with this economic shock and climate shock at the same time … we are entering uncharted (and volatile) waters,” Jean-Martin Bauer, director of food security and nutrition analysis at the World Food Program told the Posties.

Largely agreeing with the WFP and CFR’s doomscrolling outlooks, the WashPost also cited a newly released outlook from the U.S. State Department’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network, forecasting that 115 million to 125 million people in the world’s 26 most vulnerable countries will require urgent food assistance by December. Sudan and South Sudan particularly face a risk of famine, said Lark Walters, senior food security decision support adviser for the network.

“All of the ingredients for severe to extreme food insecurity impacts are present,” she said.

Strong yields during last year’s harvest have provided a temporary buffer against increasing food costs, said Maximo Torero, chief economist at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. But in May the price of cereals like wheat and corn jumped 2.6 percent from the previous month.

“This is a multilayered crisis,” Bauer said. “We’re looking at not just a few weeks or a few months where we’re in the danger zone, but it looks like for the next year … we’ll be in a period of extreme risk from a global food security perspective.” But since the beginning of Trump 2.0’s administration, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that international aid dropped by nearly a quarter between 2024 and 2025 — the largest annual decline since the organization began tracking with the United States, formerly the world’s largest provider of development assistance, cutting its aid budget by more than half.

The problem isn’t only in Africa, the MidEast and Asia... closer to home, the drought in Central America’s “dry corridor,” which stretches from Guatemala to Nicaragua, could spell disaster for millions of subsistence farmers, forcing many to migrate to: guess where!

Without swift action to protect vulnerable farming regions and enhance humanitarian assistance, Bauer said, “the world may soon face not only escalating hunger but intensifying political turmoil” as radical regime changes turn much of Central and South America into no-go-zones, driving torrents of migrants northwards and reignited ICE/alien clashes on Don Jones’ home turf

Since 1982’s crop failures in Peru as “may have contributed to escalating clashes between the government and the Shining Path rebel group” and through the Arab Spring occurred amid price spikes associated with El Niño-induced drought in 2011 to the Post’s most recent El Niño reportage, in 2022 and 2023, (as saw protests and food riots break out in countries including Albania, Sri Lanka and South Africa), climate-induced food desertification may intensify into famines, which... FEWSN Walters told the Post... represent “extreme levels of human suffering in terms of hunger, malnourishment and mortality.”

Even the fat-cat bankers at the Wall Street Journal (June 12, ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN) worry that the rats may be taking over and bursting through the walls, desperate with hunger.

Of particular concern has been the Hormuz blockade of fertilizer – without which the crops don’t grow, the food doesn’t get produced and people go hungry. Evidence, provided by the Fence Post of Greeley, Co (June 3, ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN) which found empty barns all across South Dakota – symbolizing the difficulty for younger generations to get involved in agriculture due to ever-increasing land prices and interest rates.

Corporate agriculture is taking the people out of the production and government – which is supposed to enhanced a healthy and prosperous America is, instead, putting the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) on the chopping block.

Analysis of federal personnel data from the US Office of Personnel Management confirms widespread headcount reductions across all USDA agencies, with the exception of staffing increases in the immediate office of the Agriculture Secretary, which grew by 18% in 2025, according to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) of June 11^th (ATTACHMENT NINETEEN).

On July 24, 2025 US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released a memo (SM-1078-015) announcing a planned reorganization of the department, drafted without consultation with farmers, Congress, or other stakeholders but at the dictate of DOGE and now-trillionaire Elon Musk.

After stakeholders responded with widespread concern, the Secretary announced an ad hoc, informal opportunity to comment on the reorganization, which generated 46,845 responses. According to USDA’s own analysis, 82% of comments were negative, expressing serious concerns with the reorganization. Major themes of concern included the loss of local oversight and expertise, reduction in personnel and resources, and a desire for adequate staffing in every county. 

Despite these overwhelmingly negative responses and continued concern from stakeholders about local presence, the Secretary has continued to move forward with the reorganization plan that would relocate agency headquarters and leadership and impose further cuts on food safety, research, education and the Forest Service.

Noting that the ten states experiencing the largest percentage of staff losses were all blue, NSAC argues that “Congress must treat the collapse of USDA’s workforce as a crisis that can be averted,” but inasmuch as Congress is impotent and/or ignored, a report by Inside Climate News, Successful Farming (Iowa) and the Daily Yonder (Kentucky) interviewed Amanda Koehler of the Land, Capital, and Market Access Network, who contends that the Trump administration, in late March quietly axed a little-known but nonetheless critical Biden-era program designed to boost land affrdability for farmers.

FarmStand, a legal advocacy group, has sued the administration, demanding it provide a full record of how it chose the grants to cut. “So far, the USDA has not provided it, but what it has produced shows that the agency targeted any awarded grant” that contains anti-American words in its prospectus... including “equity,” “environmental justice,” “climate change,” or “biodiversity.”

“They just typed words into a database, saw what hit and then listed those grants for termination,” said David Muraskin, managing director for litigation at FarmStand. “It was like: ‘Let’s find the people who you can point to as getting grants like this and terminate them regardless of reason.’”

A USDA spokesperson said that the agency terminated the grants because of corruption which they called an “egregious misuse of taxpayer dollars to the tune of $300 million,” saying that inappropriate spending under the program included $20,000 for a barbeque smoker, $110,000 for a camper, and $20,000 for pens. 

Blocked from simply firing USDA employees, administrators are delivering an ultimatum to thousands of its employees as part of its sweeping relocation plans — “move to keep their jobs or quit.” (Federal News Network, June 11^th, ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE)

One NIFA employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, told Federal News Network that they are “actively seeking another job, but said they have not yet decided what they will do.

“If I can get a job that meets my needs, then I will quit the federal government, even though I don’t want to,” the NIFA employee said. “My family can’t afford for me to be unemployed. If we have to move, we will. We will leave behind family and friends and a life we love.”

USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden told lawmakers last summer that department leaders expect fewer employees will refuse to move this time around, because mass layoffs across the federal workforce have made the job search more challenging in the D.C. area.

“I think many of them will choose to come, because given cuts made by other federal agencies here in Washington, D.C., the job market isn’t what it once was here,” Vaden told the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee last June.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told lawmakers during a House Agriculture Committee hearing last week that the relocations across the country – which, in addition to uprooting families will, according to American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) officials, cost some employees thousands of dollars out of pocket in moving costs – will be a “massive value add” for USDA research.

February data... the last from the shrinking USDA... now contends that, in parts of the United States, “nearly one in five households struggle to afford enough food.” While the national average sits at 13.3%, “several states—concentrated largely in the South—report rates far above that level” (Visual Capitalist, ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO) and, unlike the investigatory and enforcement cuts noted by NSAC, most are already deep red.

The worst state for affordability, VC’s charts and graphs list, is Arkansas with unaffordability – related hunger at 19.4% of households, followed by Kentucky, Lousiana, Texas and Mississippi. The best are Vermont, New Hampshire and the Dakotas.

New Mexico (with food affordability 11^th worst at 14.5%) has been accused of tolerating federal food assistance fraud, according to the liberal, but honest folks at Source New Mexico (ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE).

“New Mexico has the nation’s highest SNAP reliance rate — 21.5% — of any state in the country and typically oversees more than $90 million a month in federal SNAP benefits that go to more than 445,000 New Mexicans, or roughly one in five.

“The LFC (Legislative Finance Committee’s) report, which analysts presented to lawmakers on Tuesday during an interim Legislative Committee meeting in Ruidoso, found that New Mexico’s fraud rate was .04%, far less than the national average of between 1% and 2%. 

“But analysts stressed that figure underestimates the state’s actual fraud rates and buttressed their assertion by providing examples of “high-risk” SNAP transactions they said the New Mexico Health Care Authority, including its inspector general’s office, should have caught.”  

The LFC review found two smoke shops in the state that each collected more than $400,000 in SNAP payments in 2025 — suspiciously high amounts for businesses that don’t primarily sell food.” The LFC did not name the smoke shops but included photos of them, including one with a large sign announcing that it accepted SNAP debit cards. 

“The Health Care Authority (HCA) Office of the Inspector General is under-investigating and under-identifying potential SNAP fraud,” LFC analyst Clayton Lobaugh told lawmakers.

The HCA also disqualifies the smallest percentage of SNAP recipients after findings of potential fraud than any other state in the country, according to the report. 

For instance, in fiscal year 2023, only 18 SNAP recipients were disqualified, amounting to 0.004% of the state’s SNAP recipients. 

That same year, the national average disqualification rate was 0.1% — a rate 250 times higher than New Mexico’s.  But HCA Secretary Kari Armijo said the inspector general’s office “often doesn’t investigate cases that allege small amounts of fraud, based partially on local prosecutors’ unwillingness to bring criminal charges unless large amounts of money are stolen.

And LFC Chair Nathan Small (D-Las Cruces) even admitted giving the small fry fraudsters a pass in that the median income of SNAP households is roughly $30,000, less than half the $77,000 median salary statewide. SNAP fraud that comprises a fraction of overall spending should not be used as reason to restrict eligibility, he said (and besides, the guilty parties would probably eat better in prison.)

As opposed to prosecutions, conservative politicians are supporting simple cutoffs – nearly a year after the SNAP reforms were signed into law, the number of children receiving food assistance has plummeted by at least 776,000, according to a ProPublica analysis. At least 12 states break down program participation by age, and of the 1,670,011 people who are no longer receiving benefits in those states, 776,134, or 46%, were children.

Can’t lock them up, but you can starve them.

Although children weren’t the intended targets of the legislation’s changes, they’re increasingly “collateral damage,” said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins about her recent comments that it was “good news” that millions of people no longer receive SNAP. If more than 700,000 children have been dropped in the 12 states that report those figures, “that number’s going to be into the millions” when other states are included, he said.

Rollins responded, “The 700,000 number of children is not correct,” contending that most people who were kicked off SNAP were “fraudulent” and called Pro Publica partisan.

Some of the largest SNAP cutoffs (100,000 in all) took place in redly Tennessee where Tennesseelookout.com (June 16, ATTACHMENT TWENTY FIVE) interviewed some people behind the numbers including cancer patients whom bureaucrats accused of dodging work requirements, women’s shelter residents coping with domestic abuse, veterans and the homeless.

The Ohio Capital Journal (March 23, ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX) opined that the new work requirements to get federal food assistance “will cause 900 premature deaths in Ohio by 2040.”

If administrative costs dramatically increase state expenses and force Ohio to abandon the program altogether, “those deaths will soar to 23,000, according to a report released Tursday by the Center for American Progress” who called the numbers “similarly harrowing” for other states. 

Passed last summer, President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill “gave $1 trillion worth of tax cuts to the richest 1% of Americans over 10 years. It cut nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid spending over the same period.” 

For many, losing food benefits will make chronic health problems worse.

“Research has consistently shown that access to SNAP is linked with many positive health outcomes,” the Center for American Progress report said.

“Beyond reducing food insecurity, which itself is associated with a lower-quality diet and multiple chronic conditions such as kidney disease and coronary heart disease, increased SNAP access has been associated with slower growth in diabetes prevalence.”

Where the original estimate was 93,000 preventable deaths by 2040, the Center for American Progress revised that number down to 70,000 because fewer Americans are now estimated to lose SNAP because of the work requirements.

The liberal Guardian U.K. (June 18^th, ATTACHMENT TWENTY SEVEN) called out ‘mega-consumers’ of food and energy who cost environment $5.7tn a year, according to researchers at University of Oxford and University of Leiden

The acadamiacs found that “the average annual environmental damage bill for someone in the global top 10% ranged from $2,300 to $7,500. This figure rose to $19,000-$63,000 for those in the US.” The wealthy in low-income but populous countries with high inequality levels are “catching up”... the average “environmental damage bill for the top 10% in China has overtaken that of the top 10% in Germany,” the report says.

“If anything, these numbers are conservative. The bill leaves out the emissions tied to wealthy people’s investments,” said Paul Behrens, a British Academy global professor at the Oxford Martin school and a co-author of the study.

“Research has shown that a large proportion of a rich person’s carbon footprint comes from what they own, not how they live; meaning their stocks, bonds and other assets.”

A Greenpeace study last week estimated that the assets owned by the world’s richest 1% – often invested in greenhouse gas-intensive companies – were associated with a quarter of global emissions and caused nearly $1tn of climate damage each year.

The “mega consumer” report concludes that governments could target this high-consuming groups through taxes on luxury goods, wealth and carbon, reducing emissions and pollution while raising revenue to support sustainability transitions and reducing inequality.

Other proposed solutions from references listed above include Oxfam’s proposal to pressure corporations to “move away from business models founded on short-term profit maximization toward more holistic ones that value social and environmental performance and good governance,” institute “equal pay and equal treatment for women, push for climate action to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis on food production, and call for inclusive and accountable leadership—all to achieve more equitable food value.” (Attachment Seven, above)

Rotsa ruck!

When the Congress did, finally, hold hearings on food, fraud and inequality (MSN, April 6^th, ATTACHMENT TWENTY EIGHT) AgSec Brooke Rollins reportedly “struggled” when asked “basic questions about her department's own data.”

"I don't think you understand the difference between an error rate and a fraud rate. I honestly don't. It is one of the lowest programs — the lowest fraud rate in any program in America, is the SNAP program," contended Rep. Angie Craig (D-Mn).

"You can't be serious," Rollins responded.

"Your own data says 1.6 percent," Craig said.

Rollins claimed that the reason it's so low is that states don't allow the federal government to "confirm" the information, presumably with their own investigations.

Craig documented the administration's record with data: the U.S. lost 15,000 farms in 2025, farmers face $28 billion in losses, and 70% cannot afford necessary fertilizer. Farm diesel prices hit $5.41 per gallon in May —up 95% year-over-year.

When Rollins blamed the Biden administration, Craig countered, "Joe Biden is no longer the president. Mr. Trump is. Your party controls Congress. You own these numbers." (MSN, ATTACHMENT TWENTY NINE)

When discussing fertilizer, Craig asked what share of farmers can't afford it this planting season. Rollins instead broke down fertilizers by categories.

"Oh, my God!" Craig cut in, adding, "70% is the answer."

Rollins then accused Craig of grandstanding, but Craig warned the administration must understand family farmers are suffering, not thriving.

Around the world, there are plenty of losers – but also a few winners. MSN also analyzed the farming fortunes in South Africa and found them among the best on the planet. (ATTACHMENT THIRTY)

Figures released on 9 June 2026 by Statistics South Africa show that the country’s agricultural gross value added expanded by 3.9% quarter-on-quarter (seasonally adjusted) in the first quarter of 2026, from 0.4% in the last quarter of 2025.

These robust growth figures also align with the strong trade figures for the first quarter.

These encouraging data are notwithstanding the challenges posed by foot-and-mouth disease in cattle, African swine fever in the pig industry and floods in the northeastern regions of South Africa at the start of the year.

In the current 2025-26 production season South Africa still has an ample harvest, with an expected record summer grain and oilseed harvest of 21.1 million tonnes, up 3% up year-on-year. This production figure comprises maize, sunflower seed, soybean, groundnuts, sorghum and dry beans. The better harvest is primarily supported by the La Niña rains during the 2025-26 summer season and by farmers’ decision to maintain decent plantings.

India, however, is still under the gun of El Nino (MSN, ATTACHMENT THIRTY ONE).

During El Nino years, the trade winds tire. The warm water slides back east. The engine that drags moisture towards India loses its grip.

The monsoon winds weaken, carry less moisture, and the rain that does fall arrives unevenly. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) warns that the monsoon core zone, the rain-fed belt across central, western and eastern India where irrigation is thinnest, is likely to stay below normal.

“Not every crop suffers equally. Pulses and oilseeds, grown largely without irrigation, are the most exposed.

“A dry spell at the wrong moment can shrink a whole harvest,” MSN explains. Coarse cereals such as bajra and jowar have stumbled in past El Nino years too.

Rice is partly shielded, because nearly 70 per cent of its area is irrigated. But when output dips, food prices climb, and the household grocery bill becomes the place most Indians finally feel a distant ocean.

A positive Indian Ocean Dipole, a warming of the western Indian Ocean, could yet soften the blow. And Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan says the government has built a war chest of seeds for resowing should the rains fail.

Further east, the Vietnamese practice of supplementing diets with dog and cat meat is drawing more critism by do-gooders like Humane World for Animals while the authorities are starting to fight dog and catnappers, according to the BBC (ATTACHMENT THIRTY TWO)

“More than 400 cats destined for slaughter have been rescued in Vietnam after authorities dismantled an alleged feline theft ring,” HWS said. Forty, pets and work animals were reuined with their owners.

The consumption of dog and cat meat is legal in Vietnam, but vendors require permits that show the origin of animals. “While the consumption of dog and cat meat remains more common in Vietnam than other Asian countries, campaigners say attitudes are changing.”

Police said they tracked down the group on 11 June after investigating a spate of pet thefts in Ho Chi Minh City by what police described as a "criminal group specialising in stealing and collecting cats", according to the official newspaper of Ho Chi Minh City police.

Afghans, particularly children, lacking access to edible dogs and cats had been devouring fortified biscuits distributed by the World Food Programme (WFP – Attachment Thirteen, above) until the Iranian war diverted humanitarian aid supplied by Indonesia Now, according to U.N. News (June 13^th, ATTACHMENT THIRTY THREE) getting the supplies into the country is a “logistical minefield.”

Instead, the WFP is venturing an entirely new land corridor from Dubai to landlocked Afghanistan across the Caucasus. “It’s costlier, more complex and adds another 8,000 km to the journey, but it is the only remaining option.”

Along the rougnly 3,000 km route, “truck drivers face long waits at border crossings, signing paperwork and snatching moments of sleep beneath open skies.” When the trucks finally arrive in Kabul, Abdul Ahad Monib a WFP Supply Chain and Delivery officer, says that, for Afghanistan’s children, it’s a packet of biscuits that helps them stay healthy,” says Monib.

In Western African countries like Senegal, the charity consumable of choice (or necessity) is Plumpy'Nut, a ready-to-use therapeutic food, or RUTF; “a nutrient-dense paste made up of peanut butter, powdered milk, oil and sugar, fortified with vitamins and minerals,” being distributed in rural clinics under the auspices of U.S. funding and nonprofit organizations. (NPR, June 13^th, ATTACHMENT THIRTY FOUR)

But after the beginnings of Trump 2.0’s massive cuts to foreign aid the clinics often have no Plumpy’Nut.

“Roughly 1 in 10 children in Senegal are acutely malnourished, a condition that can lead to long-term health and cognitive deficits. If it becomes severe, it can be fatal,” NPR warns, citing Ndèye Astou Badiane, country director in Senegal for Helen Keller Intl., who says: “About half of the mortality of children under 5 is related to malnutrition."

"So many activities that were supported by the American government have stopped all of a sudden," says Badiane. "It was really a severe shock."

Some of the Plumpy'Nut that ends up at Fatma Diouf's clinic is typically stored in a warehouse over an hour away, in the town of Diourbel. The heavy metal doors creak as Latsouk Faye, regional supervisor for food, nutrition and child survival in Diourbel, opens them for journalists and foreign aid workers.

"This place used to be full," he says, able to store about 4,000 boxes — enough to feed over 4,000 kids for several weeks of treatment. "But since USAID left, since the start of the problem with Trump, UNICEF has become weaker," Faye says, gesturing at the empty space.

Helen Keller is scrambling to fill the gaps too, according to Senegal country director Badiane. "Senegal is a poor country," she says, and the government has many competing priorities for spending.

"We need to treat these children, and they cannot wait,” she adds They need RUTF."

Even in the better off Western democracies, food inequality is causing inconvenience... if not death... for the bottom 90% while the elite feast on steaks chops and, according to Bloomberg, below, chocolate croissants.

For the believers, rich or poor, some simply appeal to prayer, or to the hope that the powers that be will show a little mercy to the vast underclasses – if not for humane-ity, or the sake of their souls... if they have any... but to forestall what might become a worldwide uprising that may not bring justice, but, at least revenge.

Cognizant of the danger, Pope Leo XIV will visit the WFP’s headquarters in Rome on Monday to meet with participants at the annual session of the Executive Board (Vatican News, ATTACHMENT THIRTY FIVE) having previously visited the headquarters of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) on October 16, 2025, to mark World Food Day and the 80th anniversary of the organization’s founding.

Last month, Pope Leo XIV's prayer intention for May was "so that everyone might have food," inviting Catholics globally to pray and work for this intention, as he highlighted how millions of brothers and sisters continue to suffer from hunger while so much food is wasted.

Where democracy, such as it is, still exists, the issue of access to food at the local, national and/or international levels is sliding into the partisan considerations – sometimes munificent, sometimes discriminatory (in either or both the astute or prejudicial senses).

Midterm primaries to date with more to come before the red/blue factored November races... as well as the growing swamp of ballot issues and advertising hype playing out in sponsored or ostensibly analytical media... will not escape the grasp of what is being termed the “affordability” issue.

As relates to food, and agriculture in particular, proposals have risen advocating the plethora of grievances and potential solutions.

In South Carolina, WYFF of Greenville reports on the primary election for the next Commissioner of Agriculture, “one of the most consequential races in the 2026 election cycle,” which resulted in a runoff between Danny Lee Ford II, son of legendary Clemson football head coach Danny Ford and Trump-endorsed Cody Simpson, who told the network that “(p)eople are, unfortunately, under these threats of overdevelopment with solar, with data. Those entities, regardless of what you may think of them, they're taking our farmland out of production.

“I tell people often, for every acre that's taken out of production of ag, we're actually depending on another acre in some foreign soil," Simpson said.

And in Alabama, Corey Hill and Christina Woerner Mcinnis faced off in the runoff for that state’s AgCommish Republican primary. Hill, who wants more and better catfish farming in the state, also echoes Simpson in wanting to “get a handle” on data centers and solar farms in the state so farmers and producers can keep their land. (Alabama Reflector, June 12, ATTACHMENT THIRTY SEVEN)

Mc Mcinnis, founder of the SoilKit complex (who if elected would have been the state’s first woman elected to the role), wanted to expand the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to include rotisserie chicken told the Yellohammernews.com that she denied holding any medicinal marijuana interests and, in addition to the chicken, ran on a five-point plan focused on “keeping China out of Alabama agriculture,”

“China is here,” McInnis said. “They own one out of four hogs. They own 400,000 acres of our land, and we are not putting the next generation of farmers into the fields profitably and successfully.”

Hill, on Tuesday, won the nomination by carrying 53.30% of the vote to McInnis’ 46.70%, according to unofficial returns,

While candidates and voters look to a future... their future, as it may be... historians of an optimistic bent are looking backwards to premises and proposals that worked... then... and might be adaptable now.

The “Successrul Farming” company published an anthology of America’s past agricultural successes by Eric Hodson of the Wisconsin Historical Society with the introduction that, in the 1700s, about 80% of the U.S. population was engaged in farming. “Today, the USDA estimates it’s less than 2%. Despite such a steep decline, our country produces a plentiful supply of food, thanks in part to innovations made by inventors, entrepreneurs, scientists, and scholars over the past 250 years.

The ten named by Hodson included Eli Whitney (the cotton gin), tractorman John Deere, Cyrus McCormick, the reaper, model milkmaid Anna Baldwin, and peanut innovator George Washington Carver,

He also described the career of Henry Wallace, better known as Vice President under Franklin D. Roosevelt... but also developed better hybrid corn and served as AgSec from 1933 to 1940. Corn was also improved by geneticist Barbara McClintock, wheat geneticist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, Pierre Robert of Minnesota, who developed soil and fertilizer enhancement technology and pest control pioneer Robert T. Fraley, the 2013 World Food Prize Laureate.

The next steps, as derived from the Council on Foreign Relations attachments 14 and 15, above included a charge to Lil’ Marco at the State Department to lobby for inclusion of a Strait of Hormuz “humanitarian corridor” in any future US/Iranian deal. They also stated that the Trump administration should immediately reinstate humanitarian funding to Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen (despite the hostility of their dictators) and. finally, to unlock their frozen $4.3 billion humanitarian aid funds.

HAS MIGHTY MoU COME TO SAVE THE DAY?

A week ago, inklings of an American/Iranian deal began trickling out of France, ventured with the help of some friendly friends in Pakistan – subsequently leading to the Memorandum of Understanting (MoU) eventually ratified today.

Hardly the be-all and end-all of all disagreements, the MOU (see transcript, ATTACHMENT “A” below and rapid-fire supplementary takeaways thereafter), Time’s take on the deal (ATTACHMENT FORTY) includes Trump’s statement from the golden Palace of Versaille where he proceeded to the G-7 Summit that: “A lot of great things are going to happen to the Middle East right now, and very importantly, the oil is plummeting down, and the stock market is shooting up like a rocket today.”

U.S. officials, however. offered a more complicated picture of the timeline – including the resumption of humanitarian aid wanted by so many. “One senior official said traffic through the vital shipping corridor would increase gradually and that normal conditions were still weeks away.”

Prospects are bleaker for relief in Lebanon, after Israeli PM Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that Israel’s strikes came in response to “continued Hezbollah attacks on Israel’s territory, including a terror drone strike this morning.” They added: "Israel will not tolerate firing into its territory."  

Even if deal leads to a perfect resolution (or, even, two months of relative peace), foodies at Bloomberg (below) maintain that it will take more time... and more “pain”... for the farmers and ranchers to get back into the saddle, while the ecological doomscrollers, like at EU SCIENCE HUB (also below) hold that even a return to the quieter days of 2024-5 won’t stop the climactic juggernaut driving humanity over the edge and into a polymorphous perdition of hunger gamesmanship by the end of the century.

Bloomberg’s story of one chocolate croissant as described above and included as ATTACHMENT FORTY ONE tracked the components and collaborators to one of ten thousand pastries served up weekly by the Ealing Bakery in London – purveyors to “luxury hotels and cafes across the capital” as enabled by farmers, milkmen, millers, cocoa producers, truckers, bakers and retailers (both in the stores and cafes and online). Homestead Café founder Lewin Chalkley sells the pastries for £3.10 apiece, up 50% over three years, and says he’s wary that he can’t see the business being able to charge much more than that.

The proles and paupers might be grateful for a crust of bread in Somalia, Vietnam... even America... but the upper crust is suffering too, sort of.

Finally, the EU Science hubcaps (ATTACHMENT FORTY TWO) noted that, even before the Iran War, their AI models predicting food crises from climate alone showed “large gaps across socio-economic pathways: conflict and inequality could more than triple end-century exposure to food crises compared to sustainability and mitigation scenarios,” based on projections from food insecurity data for the period 2010-2022, obtained from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET). 

Climate sets the stage, the Hub counseled, but human choices determine the scale of future food crises. “Sustainable development and mitigation don’t just lower emissions, they dramatically reduce the number of people pushed into hunger.”

	IN the NEWS: JUNE 12th, 2026 to JUNE 18th, 2026
Friday, June 12, 2026 Dow: 51,173.74	Space X IPO makes Elon Musk the world’s first Trillionaire and, to celebrate, he dances the Freddy. It’s bringin an economic boon to Brownsville, TX – doubling incomes every ten years. Musk says he’ll use all his money to colonize Mars. President Trump pulls the plug on Pulte for National Security chief, replaces him with Jay Clay. He promises his peace deal with Iran will prevent them from having nukes for 15 or 20 years, In the courts, he wins on holding the UFC White House fight, loses on renaming the Kennedy Center. Marco Rubio compares the UFC fight to the moon landing (but not Mars). The Pentagon releases more UFO (or that other word) files and pictures, implying that we might expect to find colonists already on other interstellar bodies. Bodies in motion in South Carolina as a wannabee Doctor Depravo is arrested for sex crimes (a Facebook fan opines: “He’s cute!”; golfer Phil Mickelson denies his sex crimes but is banned from his own golf club and strippers in the dead of night strip Trump’s name off the JFK Center. Sexperts claim the American fertility rate is dropping (not as fast as Japan’s, not at all for Mister Musk) with economics at fault. Bean (or Pablum) counters say the average new American child will cost $13K per year,many seek charity options..
Saturday, June 13, 2026 Dow: Closed	The White House now says a Hormuz deal “has never been closer.” President Trump promises a deal tomorrow to highlight his 80^th birthday and the UFC bash on the grass. Informed sources say that the likely deal would be similar to the Obama deal that he tore up months ago. A busy sports weekend as New Yorkers continue celebrating (often violently) the Knicks’ first championship in 53 years. All the celebrity fans are jubilant: Spike, Timothée, Tracy, Jerry... even Larry David cracks a smile. Carolina’s victory over Vegas in the NHL only took 23 yeas, but welcomed too. FIFA begins as America advances with a 4-1 thrashing of Paraguay, with Australia and Turkey next. A daring, diving catch by Rep. Erik Schmitt (R-Mo) lifts Republicans to 11-2 rout of donkeys in annual Congressional baseball game. The upset of the week/year/century comes as the world’s 3^rd smallest nation, Cabo Verde, ties #2 Spain nil-nil. And, despite losing, Curacao celebrates its first FIFA goal ever (as against seven for Germany). And, for those who care, Louisville beats DC to win the UFL title. Under withering criticism, Anthropic pulls some of its AI models. Americans continue to blame AI data centers for higher power bills and ecological damage (Floridians say it kills flamingoes, Nashville says it kills country music). And Over There, King Charles and Queen Camilla celebrate the Trooping the Colours (and remissive cancers). Joining them are Prince Bill and Princess Kate; not present is Prince Harry.
Sunday, June 14, 2026 Dow: Closed	It’s the President’s 80^th, which he celebrates at UFC bash before heading off to the G-7 summit in Geneva. Both Uke Zelenskyy and Glad Vlad Putin send congratulations. On Talkshow Sunday, US ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz denies an impending deal would just replicate the Obama failure. We’re not paying “piles of cash” to Iran, he says, just giving them back their assets. (How is unclear... could it be crypto?) Off the table: tolls, terror and nukes. Trump, Waltz says, “has always put diplomacy first” but we must have “credible military force” to back it up. He adds that TreaSec Bessent’s “Economic Fury” is hurting the evil empire worse than the bombs and drones. Former Obamoid Wendy Sherman says America is in a dark and dirty place, contending that we didn’t used to have war, high gas prices. Prolonging the “war of choice” has made Iranians “full of themselves” so the harder hardliners now in charge have no reason to negotiate. She predicts any deal will require “a lot of lawyers”. Oily Rob McNally (Rapidan Energy) says enough oil is “sneaking out” but if no deal manifests, shrinking inventories will result in “realy bad news” for consumers. If it does, “we’ll see the flow.” Not in the mix – the Israeli war on Lebanon... Bibiman Arne Vilan says the PM doesn’t trust America anymore. Negotiations are useless with the “Death to America” mullahs, the only solution is to bankrupt Teheran. The ABC rountdablers tackle Trump’s 80^th and the UFC, not kindly after Josh Hokit calls Michelle Obama a man. RINO Chris Christie says Trump is jealous of JFK while liberal Donna Brazile calls the President our “Entertainer in Chief”. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) predicts Congress will elevate Acting A.G. Blanche to the real job. Dissenting, failed Dems call him a nut job.
Monday, June 15, 2026 Dow: 51,671.07	Late Sunday night, a peace “deal” is announced that will include a 60 day cease fire (during which nukes and oil will be discussed), Hormuz reopening by Friday and Israel left twisting in the wind (and so, dropping more bombs on Beirut). Stocks spike upward and gas drops down to avg. $3.99 gal. A happy 80 now –Trump then flies off to France for the G-7. He leaves behind flash floods going wacko in Waco as cars are swept away and drivers drowned. High surf up and down the Pacific Coast drowns swimmers, but inland drought, heat (110° in Vegas) and wildfires as far as the Rockies join more flooding – crawling east from Texas and, to the north, tornadoes. New York, at least, finally moderates for Knicks fans to scream and dance and burn school buses. Accidental death also pays America a visit... two die in Florida boat crash, 12 in Missouri plane crash. Tent collapse during church service kills one, injures 22 in Virginia while a man in Minnesota is suffocated under corn in a grainery bin and bees on a plane from Cancun to L.A. sting passengers. There’s more butchery in Brazil as bungee jumper’s handlers forget to attach the bungee and a copter crash kills six, including singer Oliver Tree. And the “spider man of Yeman” dies falling off a local volcano. Adding diseases to accidents, Ebola toll up to 181 worldwide while a Florida teen fights off flesh-eating bacteria; heatshock cases surge in the West (below) and screw worms attacking animals and Americans.
Tuesday, June 16, 2026 Dow: 50,872.11	Bouncing between France and Geneva for the G-7 summit, President Trump says he won the war and/or secured a peace deal, but details remain froggy beyond a dual Iranian-American commitment to unblock the straits of Hormuz until consolidation today, with more details to come in 60 more days. One condition he says: no Iranian nukes. Iran disagrees. French President Macron says he trusts Trump. Dems don’t, nor do Israelis – at least Bibi and his disciples. Nor fired MAGAgirl Nikki Haley, who says: “Iran wins!” The authorities claim victory over one Tyson Proper and his strange militia of transpolitical conspiracy theorists who wanted to blow up the UFC, snipe survivors amd take pver the world. He’s arrested along with four goofs (perhaps twenty more may be charged, if found) because he was turned in by his mother. There’s low comedy and high tragedy all over the beds and bath (pools) of America and beyond. Jelly Roll and Bunnie X.O. are divorcing (she’ll write a book). The White House reflecting pool that Donnie painted “American Flag Blue” is turning green with algae, not envy. And Norway’s Crown Prince is convicted of rape and sentenced to four years of cold confinement. Evil L.A. cops hear a woman scream and storm the house – she’s a Knicks’ fan and her Knicks jerseyed dog tries to protect her and is gunned down. But some doggone news is good. 500 of the remaining beagles sentenced to medical experimentation in Wisconsin are sent to a Florida rescue farm. Cosmetics czar of ELF finds God, gives away his wealth and becomes a priest. And Venus and Serena Williams will team up again for Wimbledon.
Wednesday, June 17, 2026 Dow: 52,210.17	President Trump praises Iranian “rationality” while criticism grows from both left and right. He tells the Egyptians that his deal is very strong, “even without knowing what it is.” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Ca) calls the $300M payout to the Republican Guard a case of “taking Americans to the cleaners”. But, dividing the Republican base, the deal is also blasted by Florida Sen. Rick Scott while even supporters duck the media. Fox, at least, calls critics of the green algal reflecting pool “anti-Americans”. (Pro-ecological?) As investigators investigate, the media pimps the idiot plot to blow up the Sunday UFC created by malcontents on Signal to accomplish vague political goals. Sitting for their first interview in years, Barack and Michelle Obama defend the Affordable Care Act and DEI. Michelle says that hope is gone, but will coe back when people are fed up enough. Barry says his political model is George Washington. Now, as his Presidential Center opens in Chicago, he says he’s “moving from a player to a coach.” Controversial invermectin cancer treatments defended by survivors Mel Gibson (“Braveheart”) and cartoonist Scott Adams (“Dilbert”). Barry Manilow, cancer beater, will release a new album and go on tour.
Thursday, June 18, 2026 Dow: 51,564.70	In the appropriate golden palace of Versaille, President Trump signs the MoU with the Iranians (the full text of the 14 point plan is duly leaked to world and American media: see Attachment “A” below and the corresponding analyses that come quickly Rumblings from the left, the Dumocrats, and even ‘Pubs (Cassidy of Louisiana, Ted Cruz are echoed by PM Bibi, who repeats that the deal will not apply t o him. To charges of “appeasement” POTUS says that if Iran doesn’t cooperate, “we’ll go right back to smacking them on he head.” Dispatching his Vice to Pakistan, he says “if it down’t work out, I’m blaming J.D. That’s what I do... deals.” Thousands of New York police and secret agents untold and unknown infiltrate the Knick’s celebration parade through downtown which transpires relatively peacefully; however, a teenage maniac starts shooting people at random farther north in Times Square.. Death and disaster come to the streets of Laredo, where a private jet carrying a tech CEO crashes, killing seven. A deranged driver goes on a ramming rampage in LA but is arrested at a McDonald’s drive through window; a teen tourist from India is killed in a Central Park horse and buggy crash and police in Senatobia, MS, aiming at a shoplifter kill a one year old, sparking protests and riots. To the rescue comes Ben Crump! Death, disaster and drama coming in summer of sequels and spinoffs beginning with Tayloresque Toy Story Five, Shrek, also five, Spiderman, Supergirl and negotiations on Austin Powers Three (nursing home spies?).
The prospect of peace with Iran tantalizes (and concerns) and, in the end, investors reap money on the stock market (and Elon Musk makes his trillion) but Don Jones is going to wait and see whether prospects of peace and prosperity are reality or a mirage.

THE DON JONES INDEX

CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000

(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)

Gains in indices as improved are noted in GREEN. Negative/harmful indices in RED as are their designation. (Note – some of the indices where the total went up created a realm where their value went down... and vice versa.) See a further explanation of categories HERE

ECONOMIC INDICES		(60%)
CATEGORY	VALUE	BASE	RESULTS by PERCENTAGE				SCORE		OUR SOURCES and COMMENTS
INCOME	(24%)	6/17/13 revised 1/1/22	LAST	CHANGE		NEXT	LAST WEEK	THIS WEEK	THE WEEK’S CLOSING STATS...
Wages (hrly. Per cap)	9%	1350 points	6/12/26	+0.32%		6/26	1,904.26	1,904.26	https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/average-hourly-earnings 37.41 37.53 (0.3% v inflation
Median Inc. (yearly)	4%	600	6/12/26	+0.054%		6/26/26	1,132.36	1,132.97	http://www.usdebtclock.org/   52,147 173 201
Unempl. (BLS – in mi)	4%	600	6/12/26	-2.33%		5/26	542.60	542.60	http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000/  4.3 nc
Official (DC – in mi)	2%	300	6/12/26	+0.054%		6/26/26	214.36	214.24	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    7,395 399 403
Unofficl. (DC – in mi)	2%	300	6/12/26	+0.10%		6/26/26	260.38	260.12	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    13,150 160 173
Workforce Participation Number Percent	2%	300	6/12/26	-0.015% -0.033%		6/26/26	295.49	295.39	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    In 162,495 473 448 Out 105,240 289 342 Total: 267,735 762 790 60.69 68 66
WP % (ycharts)*	1%	150	6/12/26	-0.162%		5/26	149.98	149.98	https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate 61.80 nc
OUTGO	(15%)
Total Inflation	7%	1050	6/12/26	+0.5%		6/26	901.77	901.77	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.6 .5
Food	2%	300	6/12/26	+0.2%		6/26	257.37	257.37	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.5 .2
Gasoline	2%	300	6/12/26	+7.0%		6/26	181.96	181.96	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm    +5.4 7.0
Medical Costs	2%	300	6/12/26	+0.5%		6/26	267.14	267.14	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.6 .5
Shelter	2%	300	6/12/26	+0.3%		6/26	238.38	238.38	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.0 .3
WEALTH
Dow Jones Index	2%	300	6/12/26	+1.41%		6/26/26	391.36	396.87	https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/ 51,562.25 50,848.76 1564.70
Home (Sales) (Valuation)	1% 1%	150 150	6/12/26	+3.73% +2.78%		6/26/26	137.08 287.30	137.08 287.30	https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics Sales (M):  4.02 .17 Valuations (K):  417.7 429.3
Millionaires (New Category)	1%	150	6/12/26	+0.058%		6/26/26	137.41	137.49	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    24,261 273 287
Paupers (New Category)	1%	150	6/12/26	+0.0325%		6/26/26	134.86	134.82	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    36,910 920 932
GOVERNMENT	(10%)
Revenue (trilns.)	2%	300	6/12/26	+0.11%		6/26/26	477.50	478.11	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    5,480 487 493
Expenditures (tr.)	2%	300	6/12/26	+0.06%		6/26/26	291.08	290.74	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    7,136 139 142
National Debt tr.)	3%	450	6/12/26	+0.074%		6/26/26	346.09	345.83	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    39,213 239 268
Aggregate Debt (tr.)	3%	450	6/12/26	+0.105%		6/26/26	367.83	367.45	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    108,164 251 347
TRADE	(5%)
Foreign Debt (tr.)	2%	300	6/12/26	+0.105%		6/26/26	251.74	251.48	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    9,551 9,564 574
Exports (in billions)	1%	150	6/12/26	+1.93%		5/26	203.57	203.57	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 320.9 327.1
Imports (in billions))	1%	150	6/12/26	-0.47%		5/26	134.69	134.69	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 381.2 383.0
Trade Surplus/Deficit (blns.)	1%	150	6/12/26	+7.87%		5/26	253.48	253.48	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 60.3 55.9
ACTS of MAN	(12%)
World Affairs	3%	450	6/12/26	+0.1%		6/26/26	469.14	469.61	EU debates inviting Ukraine into the club. Swiss voters reject bill to limit population to 10M. England passes regulatory ban on kids finding AI lovers (‘can’t fuck the robots).
War and terrorism	2%	300	6/12/26	-0.1%		6/26/26	282.59	282.31	Top Tren del Agua terrorist killed in Venezuela, Russian agents kill dissident artist Simon Skrepetzky in Polish exile. Eoropol says criminal gangs recruiting child assassins via gaming sites like Roblox. US police warn kids not to play with realistic water pistols.
Politics	3%	450	6/12/26	nc		6/26/26	452.40	452.40	Cal, Gov. Newsome accuses DoJ of targeting him and his wife before 2028 run. Sportwriter/Presidential wannabee Stephen A. Smith says Trump jinxed the Knicks in Game 3.
Economics	3%	450	6/12/26	+0.1%		6/26/26	427.06	427.49	New Fed Chair Warsh off on wrong foot with Trump for holding interest rates steady where he wants them lowered despite rising inflation, Space X stock soars on first full day of trading: Musk becomes trillionaire. ELF cosmetics czar quits CEO job to become a priest. Fox buying ROKU streaming for $2B failing Pizza Hut sold at bargan $2.7M.
Crime	1%	150	6/12/26	+0.1%		6/26/26	202.54	202.34	Confusing politico-religious cult recruits teens on social media to attack UFC DC match with drones and bombs; incompetent mastermind Tyson Proper arrested, as many as 18 more at large. U. of Wash. says only 3% of ICE arrestees are violent criminals. One of these, an illegal from Mexico deported after serving time for killing 18 month old toddler.
ACTS of GOD	(6%)
Environment/Weather	3%	450	6/12/26	-0.1%		6/26/26	278.61	278.33	Heatshock cases escalate as fire danger migrates north to Spokane and east to the Rockies while rain clears out of East in time for Knicks’ parade. Tropical storm Arthur fails but dumps flooding rain all across Gulf Coast. El Nino accused not only of high Pacific tides (above) but birthing more warm and hungry sharks.
Disasters	3%	450	6/12/26	-0.1%		6/26/26	464.01	463.55	Plane crashes kill 12 skydivers in Missouri, 8 B-53 soldiers at Edwards AFB, California and six in Brazil (above) while one dies but five rescued in Texas. Inferno at Saratoga kills 17 horses. 6.7 EQ in Indonesia, lesser California tremors prompt TV-geologists to warn that the San Andreas is overdue for a big one.
LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX		(15%)
Science, Tech, Education	4%	600	6/12/26	-0.1%		6/26/26	619.21	618.59	Gumments crack down on AI. U.K. bans kids falling in love with AI apps while U.S. locals increasingly regulate messages to children. Victims sue police for arrests due to faulty AI face recognition tech.
Equality (econ/social)	4%	600	6/12/26	+0.1%		6/26/26	671.70	672.37	Dying DoEd to euthanize Special Education and Civil Rights divisions. Three pioneering women become the first of their gender to referee a FIFA world cup match
Health	4%	600	6/12/26	-0.1%		6/26/26	413.82	413.41	TV docs say Ozemipic weight losers are slacking off on exercise due to anhedonia. Clover Hill listerial ricotta cheese recalled, as is botulistic Nara baby forumula and 255K stalling Fords.
Freedom and Justice	3%	450	6/12/26		nc	6/26/26	479.20	479.20	Prince Andrew excluded from Charle’s trooping the colors but still free – unlike Norweigian crown prince, sentenced to four years for rape. Back to court go Gilgo strangler Rex Heuerman (he says he’s sorry but gets two life sentences) and Luigi Mangoine (who first pleads insanity, then drops it). SCOTUS overrides execution where judge overrode jury. Tyra Banks sues Netflix for defamatory documentary.
CULTURAL and MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS			(6%)
Cultural incidents	3%	450	6/12/26	+0.1%		6/26/26	594.07	594.66	Champions crowned, Carolina beats Vegas for Stanley Cup, Knicks rust Spurs as Brunson outscores Wemby. Official Victory Porade last night. Serena loses in doubles match but will team up with Venus at Wimbledon while FIFA opening with US win over Paraguay, despised Iranians tie New Zealand 2-2, upset ties with Congo/Portugal, tiny Cabo Verde in nil – nil shocker with #2 Spain, tinier Curacao celebrates scoring a goal in a 7-1 loss to Germany and hundred of bagpipers celebrate Scots win over Haiti by drinking up all the beer in Boston. Spielbergian UFO/UAP standalone “Disclosure Day” wins at B.O. with a barrage of summer sequels coming (above); celebrity Hollywood auction merching Luke Skywalker’s light saber, handwritten Lennon lyrics and Oz wicked witch’s hat. RIP: Actrors Ann Scheindlen (“Alf”) and Daveigh Chase (“Donnie Darko”, voiced “Lilo and Stitch”), rocker Walter Parazaider (“Chicago”), NFL’s Aldon Smith. R(etire)IP: NYC ABC newscaster Bill Ritter after Alzheimer’s diagnosis. D(ivorce)IP: Jelly Roll and Bunnie X.O. who is writing a book about their breakup. Lil Nas X, out of rehab for walking around in his underwear, says: “I’m black! I’m gay!” (some say “He’s crazy!”)
Miscellaneous incidents	4%	450	6/12/26	+0.1%		6/26/26	553.40	553.95	The week’s animal stories include five hundred rescue beagles shipped from cruel Wisconsin experimental lab to shelter in Florida. Random cat crashes Romeo and Juliet ballet to lick the face of dying hero. Escaped monkey steals mangoes in Florida.

The Don Jones Index for the week of June 12^th through June 18^th, 2026 was UP 5.42 points

The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator. The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal action againth parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders.

Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com.

ATTACHMENT ONE – FROM FOOD INSECURITY

AI OVERVIEW

Food insecurity is a household-level economic and social condition characterized by limited or uncertain access to enough nutritious, safe food to live an active, healthy life. 

Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP) (.gov) 

Key Concepts & Definitions

· Low Food Security: A condition where a household obtains enough food to avoid hunger but must compromise the quality, variety, or desirability of their diet. 

· Very Low Food Security: A more severe, physiological state where normal eating patterns are disrupted and food intake is reduced because the household lacks the money or resources for food. 

· Food Insecurity vs. Hunger: Food insecurity describes a lack of resources and access to food, whereas hunger is a resulting individual physical sensation—such as discomfort, weakness, or pain—caused by prolonged lack of food. 

Causes & Impacts

· Root Causes: Food insecurity is primarily driven by financial constraints. Common causes include unemployment, underemployment, rising costs of living and groceries, unexpected medical expenses, housing instability, and transportation barriers. 

· Health Consequences: Consistently lacking access to balanced nutrition contributes to chronic health conditions (like diabetes and heart disease), developmental delays in children, and adverse mental health outcomes. 

Current Scope & Assistance

Recent U.S. data shows that about one in seven households faces food insecurity. To combat this, several strategies and programs are actively used to support struggling families: 

(See AI)

ATTACHMENT TWO – FROM FOX NEWS

FAST-FOOD GIANT DETHRONED AS CUSTOMER STUDY CROWNS AMERICA'S NEW FAVORITE RESTAURANT CHAIN

Sub chain scored 84 out of 100 in study based on over 16,000 surveys, edging Chick-fil-A's score of 83

By Andrea Margolis Fox News Published June 16, 2026 8:00am EDT

America's favorite fast-food chicken chain has been knocked from the top spot in a closely watched customer satisfaction ranking.

Chick-fil-A, which topped the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) in 2025, fell to second place this year.

Jersey Mike's claimed first place, with an ACSI score of 84 out of 100, edging Chick-fil-A's 83.

The shift marks the first time in over a decade that a new chain has led the ACSI's quick-service restaurant (QSR) category.

The latest study, released Tuesday, was based on 16,464 completed surveys conducted via email between April 2025 and March 2026.

The ACSI described Jersey Mike's as "a new leader among QSRs," adding that it was the first time in more than a decade that a new chain led the quick-service category.

The report credited Jersey Mike's with maintaining high customer satisfaction while rapidly expanding its restaurant footprint.

"Jersey Mike's ACSI success is consistent with their business performance, including rapid unit growth, strong customer demand, and a model designed around throughput and off-premise convenience from high digital pickup usage," the study noted.

Jersey Mike's, founded in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, in 1956, has more than 4,000 locations across the U.S. and Canada, according to its website.

The chain is best known for its made-to-order subs and "Mike's Way" sandwiches topped with onions, lettuce, tomatoes, oil, vinegar and spices.

The ACSI added that the chain's menu is "fairly narrow, and they have a model conducive to franchisee success."

Though Chick-fil-A was dethroned for the first time in more than a decade, the ACSI said the Atlanta-based chain "is still the clear leader for chicken."

Following Chick-fil-A were Jimmy John's and Panda Express, which tied for third place with scores of 81.

KFC, Papa Johns and Pizza Hut followed with scores of 80 — while Domino's, Raising Cane's, Starbucks and Subway each earned ratings of 79.

Burger King, Culver's, Dunkin', Little Caesars and Panera Bread rounded out the next tier with scores of 78.

Ranking near the bottom were Dairy Queen and McDonald's, which tied for last place among major quick-service chains with scores of 72.

Fox News Digital reached out to Jersey Mike's and Chick-fil-A for comment. 

ATTACHMENT THREE – FROM TASTING TABLE

THE WORST FAST FOOD DOUBLE CHEESEBURGER COMES FROM A POPULAR CHAIN

By Autumn Swiers June 13, 2026 1:00 pm EST

What do juicy, thick, restaurant-style burgers and fast food burgers have in common? Not a lot, actually — some offerings even less than others. Especially when foodies envision a double cheeseburger, tantalizing images of toothsome and full-mouthed bites of beef come to mind. Applied to the drive-thru lane, however, something about the alleged doubly-meaty idea gets lost in translation. To determine which are worth ordering and which ones to skip, Tasting Table ranked seven fast food double cheeseburgers, and McDonald's offering fell to last place. 

A word to the wise: McDonald's Double Cheeseburger and McDouble are, in fact, not the same thing (the McDouble has one less slice of cheese). Essentially, the chain's Double Cheeseburger comprises two 100% all-beef patties seasoned with salt and pepper, topped with pickle coins, diced onions, ketchup, mustard, and two slices of American cheese. It's a lot of seemingly good elements that somehow add up to nothing. As mentioned in our review, flavors were barely there and textures were exceptionally dry. According to our tester, "The patties themselves had very little flavor — just a vague salty meat taste — and certainly weren't juicy. Two stacked together still didn't amount to much." 

Limp and lackluster, the only offering on McDonald's menu that's any sadder is the single cheeseburger. That second helping of meat makes a big difference. In fact, the moisture and fat from two slices of melty processed cheese make a fairly impactful difference, too. In another review, we tried and ranked every McDonald's burger, and the Double Hamburger (the close relative of the Double Cheeseburger) fell dead last. Ultimately, though, Mickey D's Double Cheeseburger came in 7th out of 11 options, which is still pretty bleak. 

SKIP THE GOLDEN ARCHES WHEN A DOUBLE CHEESEBURGER CRAVING STRIKES

By Katie Mach/Tasting Table

It's worth noting that some folks seem to dig this uninspired, little burger. In one Reddit thread, a fan writes, "[A]t least to me, nothing beats the good ol' McDonald's Double Cheeseburger. I don't have to break my jaw to get a bite, and the flavour is just right." In response, comments range from acquiescing to diplomatically patronizing. "There is a time and a place for a delicious McD double cheeseburger, especially when they're hot, fresh and the cheese is melted just right," says this Redditor. Another user claims, "You are free to think what you want, there is no wrong or right, enjoy your burgers," to which this Redditor retorts, "There is only pleasure and pain." 

In yet another Reddit post, apparent longtime fans maintain that the taste of McDonald's cheeseburger has changed for the worse in recent years, even if the bar wasn't particularly high to begin with. "I miss my old crappy burgers," writes the poster — and that's supposed to be a positive review.

By our count, the best thing about this burger is the catchy jingle from its iconic 1980s ad campaign. "Double, double, cheese, cheese, burger, burger, please," we sing ... before ordering something else. Our advice? Foodies on a time crunch are better off snagging a double cheeseburger from Five Guys or Shake Shack — the fast food chains that topped our ranking for their seriously beefy flavors. Or, if you're hitting McDonald's, order the Quarter Pounder with Cheese, instead.

8 ITEMS TO AVOID ORDERING AT MCDONALD'S

By Hunter Wren Miele Aug. 19, 2025 5:20 pm EST

Ah, good ol' McDonald's. Love it or hate it, the fast food giant is an American icon with a storied rags-to-riches past the likes of which define the post-war epoch of its birth. The McDonald brothers — children of impoverished immigrants — faced their fair share of trials and tribulations while they were taking their humble California hamburger stand to new heights. But despite reigning as one of the most prolific fast food chains on the planet today, hardships still befall the restaurant, many of which stem from its food, which, let's just say, doesn't always hit the spot.

In recent years, McDonald's has seen a drop in sales, likely due to ongoing economic hardships among the working class. But we'd be lying if we said the food wasn't also the problem. While there are plenty of tried-and-true favorites on the Micky D's menu (a McGriddle and a sweet tea might be the best fast food breakfast of all time), some items don't hold up (please get the McRib the McAway from us).

Using personal experience, including past reviews by Tasting Table staff, plus online reviews and discussions on internet forums, we've put together this list of some of the most egregious items on the McDonald's menu. Some of these foods lurk ominously in the dark corners of the menu, while others make up the chain's most famous offerings. Whether the recipes went downhill, they're outrageously unhealthy, or they just never tasted very good to begin with, these are the items on McDonald's menu that are the McWorst.

BIG MAC

You might be surprised to see the mighty Big Mac, McDonald's golden child, on this list. You can't even think about those big shining arches without a vision of the massive Mac — with its sesame seed bun, double beef patties, pickles, cheese, lettuce, onion, and super secret Big Mac sauce — begging to be added to your next burger order. But, as iconic as this burger is, we have to give it to you straight: The mac daddy of the McDonald's menu sadly just isn't worth the room in your belly.

Let's totally ignore the ingredients for a second and talk about cost. All of McDonald's menu prices seem fair at first glance, but looks can be deceiving. If you pay attention to what McDonald's charges for the Big Mac compared to what you're getting, it simply isn't worth the splurge. A former McDonald's chef even claims you should never order the Big Mac, explaining that you can order a double cheeseburger with added Big Mac ingredients to get more bang for your buck.

Now, let's say you're not concerned at all with price (okay, Rockefeller) and you're only thinking about flavor. Well, here's another bummer for you: The whole three-bun schtick means an overwhelming amount of bread, and to make matters worse, you never get enough sauce to give each bite the moisture it deserves. Order up that modified double cheeseburger instead and save your appetite (and your wallet) from the frustration.

FILET-O-FISH

If the idea of fish from a fast food joint disturbs you, well, good. The famous Filet-O-Fish joined the McDonald's menu back in the 1960s as an alternative to meat for customers observing Lent. Today, it's still a Lent staple and a permanent fixture on the McDonald's menu, although changing tastes might prove that it won't stand the test of time for much longer.

The modest Filet-O-Fish doesn't have a whole lot going for it. It consists of just a lightly breaded square fish filet, tater sauce, and a half slice of American cheese on a steamed bun — a bun unique to the Filet-O-Fish, while other McDonald's sandwiches require a grilled bun. This fishy (pun intended) meal sparks so many questions: Why is the filet square? Why no lettuce or tomato? Why a half slice of cheese and not a full slice? Why didn't McDonald's immediately throw this recipe in the ocean where it belongs?

We appreciate that McDonald's offers a non-meat sandwich, but we wish it would step up its game for the pescatarians among us. The fish lacks any sort of crisp, leaving us wondering why McDonald's even bothered to bread it in the first place. The steamed bun gets soggy quickly, while the tartar sauce is watery, and the flavor of American cheese doesn't pair well with seafood whatsoever. No matter how famous, the Filet-O-Fish can't stand up to more modern fast food fish sandwiches; it just feels stuck in the past.

COFFEE

By Klymenko Mariia

We don't have to be the ones to tell you that expecting a quality cup of coffee from a fast food restaurant is downright silly. But it's worse than you might think. McDonald's coffee comes primarily from Gaviña Gourmet Coffee, which sources its beans from many of the top coffee-producing countries in Central and South America, Africa, and other areas. It uses Arabica beans, as opposed to robusta, which is cheaper, more bitter, and generally lower in quality. But you wouldn't know that the chain opts for the higher-quality variety based on its taste.

McDonald's offers regular drip coffee and espresso drinks, but no matter what you get, you'll be met with the same too-strong, acrid taste. There are multiple theories as to why McDonald's coffee is so dastardly. If we hearken back to the infamous lawsuit of 1992, we'll recall that McDonald's still brews its coffee lava hot and didn't learn its lesson, which yields a burnt-tasting final product (not to mention the possibility of serious injury).

It's also thought that McDonald's coffee is the worst thing on its menu because it simply doesn't brew fresh coffee every 30 minutes as it claims it does. Every cup has the unmistakable flavor of beans that were roasted until charcoal nuggets spilled from the roaster before it was brewed, just to sit in a carafe for hours. Then, some poor sucker — who was looking for a little morning boost — found themselves with a cup of sludgy, charcoal lava and a ruined morning.

BIG BREAKFAST WITH HOTCAKES

By Keith Homan

Remember the days when folks would gather around the breakfast table for an early-morning feast of pancakes, eggs, bacon, juice, biscuits, and all the fixings? Nowadays, we're more content with a smoothie and maybe a slice of avocado toast for our first meal of the day, saving our appetites for the evening. But McDonald's protests our frugal morning eats with its self-proclaimed Big Breakfast with Hotcakes. This humongous dish comes with pancakes, eggs, sausage, hash browns, and a biscuit, plus plenty of butter and syrup. Large breakfasts might not be as fashionable anymore, but that's not why McDonald's Big Breakfast is one of the worst things you can order at the chain.

No one looks to McDonald's for a healthy meal, but when it comes to breakfast, a 1340-calorie fast food dish isn't setting you up for a successful day. The Big Breakfast with Hotcakes has more than half a day's worth of calories (for the average adult), plus 90% of the day's allotment of sodium, 82% of the day's allotment of sugar, and a whopping 122% of your saturated fat for the day. Now, let's be clear: We're not against the Big Breakfast because we hate fun. There certainly is a time and place for an epic feast, calories and sugar be damned. But for a less-than-satisfying, soggy meal in which more than half of the ingredients were microwaved, it just isn't worth it.

CINNAMON ROLL

By Amber Nicole

You either love cinnamon rolls or you need a lobotomy — 'nuff said. But if you don't love McDonald's cinnamon rolls, we don't blame you. Before trying one of these hefty baked goods, you might have thought that there was no such thing as a bad cinnamon roll, but Micky D's is here to prove you wrong.

This McDonald's dessert comes topped with a thick layer of icing that looks more like a sheet of melted plastic than the gooey, wispy cream that normally adorns a fresh bakery cinnamon bun. If you don't wind up with a cold, icing sheet, then you were probably the unlucky recipient of a cinnamon roll with icing that's too hot and therefore watery, so it winds up sticking to the top of the container, leaving you with a sad, bare bun. If the dough was soft and fluffy, maybe we could look past the egregious icing. But once you take a bite, you're met with a tough, too-dense pastry that tastes like it had been abandoned for a week before it found its way into your McDonald's order.

There's barely any cinnamon on its namesake bun, so if you ended up with most of your icing on the lid of the container, there isn't much to carry this treat in the flavor department. Even if your icing stays intact, it has a strange marshmallow-like flavor — as opposed to a rich, coat-your-mouth sweet cream cheese taste — that doesn't do a good job of masking the tough dough's texture.

DOUBLE HAMBURGER

By Joe Raedle

There's a reason why nearly every depiction of a fast food burger contains some sort of cheese. A cheese-free burger needs top-tier beef to steal the show if the patties are showing up to the party in their birthday suit. And McDonald's beef just doesn't make for an appetizing product in the dry, flavorless Double Hamburger.

The double hamburger comes with pickle slices, the chain's famous minced onions, ketchup, and mustard, plus a double helping of beef in between a grilled bun. The burger patties at McDonald's are famously thin, so opting for two just makes sense. However, going for the double meat in the hamburger over the cheeseburger just amplifies the dry, bland flavor of the chain's beefy hockey pucks — erm, we mean burger patties. They're begging for a little cheese to up the moisture content and give the sandwich a flavor boost.

If you're dead-set against cheese, order a double hamburger with extra fixings at the very least. A double dose of pickles, onions, and condiments can make the patties appear less dry and give your meal the flavor it deserves, because without a little something extra, this burger just isn't worth it. Ask for a mayo packet or four to smear on the meat and up the moisture content even more (or just swallow your pride and get the cheeseburger).

SAUSAGE BURRITO

Keith Homan

There's something about a bad burrito that's more disturbing than other poorly executed dishes. Maybe it's because you can't see what you're biting into until it's too late. At McDonald's, you'll know before your first bite that the Sausage Burrito — with sausage crumbles, egg, cheese, and green chiles — is a no-go.

Unlike the savory, delectable creations at Taco Bell, there are no grill marks on the tortilla to make the Sausage Burrito crispy and give it a little personality. It's soggy, lumpy, and barely as long as your pointer finger — we don't know if that's better or worse. The sausage inside doesn't taste much like real meat; it's more akin to greasy, wet chunks of salt, and it comes scattered throughout the burrito in tiny brown spheres that are identical to dog food. Yuck. The fiery chiles do all the flavor heavy-lifting in the burrito, since the egg goop and bland, melty cheese do nothing but create a weird soupy texture.

Don't worry — it gets worse. McDonald's employees claim that the breakfast burritos are crafted early in the morning, sitting around for hours until an unfortunate patron tacks one onto their order. Then, the hard burritos are tossed in the microwave. Pockets of the burrito are lava hot while others are ice cold, proving that nuking them does little to mask the stale ingredients that make this McDonald's breakfast a manifestation of sadness.

McNUGGETS

By Kittyfly

We know what you're thinking — "how dare you lump McNuggets with the Filet-O-Fish and McDonald's near-deadly coffee?" Hear us out. Objectively, the Chicken McNuggets aren't terrible, per se. But they used to be so, so much more delicious, making the new, sad excuse for McNuggets a distressing reminder of what was taken from us far too soon.

Currently, McNuggets are made with white meat chicken, which sounds appealing on paper. But back in the early '80s, when McNuggets were first rolled out, they were an absolute sensation. Folks had never tasted anything like them, and that was thanks to their unique recipe, which included the same crispy breading that's used today, plus dark and white meat chicken.

Compared to the McNuggets of today, the vintage nugs tasted like genuine meat and less like a spongy, bland, chicken-like product. Back then, we all fought over the dark meat nuggets, which were identifiable by their longer shape and greasier exterior. They were more tender and moist than the nuggets that contained more white meat, with a melt-in-your-mouth quality that the modern product could never compare to. The dark meat chicken was rich with savory flavor, and its moisture content gave them a more appealing texture contrast against the ultra-crispy breading. But alas, white meat became trendy in the 2000s, so McDonald's ripped dark meat nuggets away from our grease-stained fingers in 2003 to give us drier, blander white meat nuggets. And we'll never forgive, nor forget.

PLUS at the Other End...

EVERY POPEYE'S SIDE DISH, RANKED WORST TO BEST

By Emily Hunt Dec. 6, 2024 12:15 pm EST

I'll say this unashamedly: Popeyes is my favorite fast food chain. I'm a huge lover of crispy chicken sandwiches, and Popeyes has nailed the formula for my ideal chicken sandwich — its breading is indulgently crispy with moist, tender meat on the inside, and adding bacon and cheese at home makes it simply perfection, especially when topped with Chick-fil-A sauce. As much as I could rave about the chain's chicken sandwiches (and a new favorite of mine — its five flavors of wings), other menu items deserve equal recognition — namely, Popeyes' side dishes. 

Read More: https://www.tastingtable.com/1719604/popeyes-side-dishes-ranked/

ATTACHMENT FOUR – FROM DELISH

SEVEN AMERICAN FOODS INTERNATIONAL WORLD CUP FANS CAN'T STOP RAVING ABOUT ONLINE

Their reaction to ranch is totally valid, TBH.

By Megan Schaltegger Published: Jun 12, 2026 3:40 PM EDT

· International World Cup fans are discovering classic American foods and chains across the U.S.

· Buc-ee’s, Taco Bell, ranch dressing, Waffle House, and Big Gulps are among the biggest culture shocks.

· Many visitors are especially stunned by the portion sizes, free refills, and sheer excess of it all.

You’ve probably had Taco Bell and Waffle House and a good ‘ole 7-Eleven Big Gulp a million times in your life—that is, if you have taste and grew up in the United States. For people who fall into the latter camp, though, our most quintessential American foods are apparently thrilling novelties. The former group is simply a lost cause.

As international fans descend on the U.S. for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, they’re discovering a whole new way of life—one built around 30-ounce sodas, ranch dressing, and Crunchwrap Supremes. What many of us take for granted, international visitors treat as full-blown cultural landmarks. Across social media, travelers have been documenting their fascination with these American staples and marveling at portion sizes that seem to defy both physics and nutrition labels.

Without further ado, here are the foods, restaurants, and fast-food stops World Cup fans cannot stop raving about online:

BUC-EE’S

“The European mind cannot comprehend how intoxicatingly good these things are. Yes, I was the European mind,” Scotsman @shaunvlog_ wrote on X about Buc-ee’s Beaver Nuggets while documenting his World Cup trip around the U.S. “A place like this could ONLY exist in America and I LOVE it,” he added from in front of the famous roadside stop.

“A wild Korean explores Buc-ee’s,” another visiting FIFA fan wrote on the platform. “The Texas Cheesesteak Burrito is to die for.”

Even Americans are enjoying the whole timeline. “Thrilled to be alive for the Europeans discover Buc-ee’s timeline,” one person wrote. “My favorite thing about the World Cup this year is seeing all the Europeans experience American things like Buc-ee’s or condiments for the first time,” another added.

RANCH DRESSING

Europeans are losing it over ranch so much, they’ll probably be smuggling bottles of Hidden Valley back home.

“Why did no one tell me ranch sauce is like crack? EUROPE WE NEED RANCH ASAP,” one Swedish fan wrote. In a follow-up, she added, “I think my trip just turned into — find the best ranch in America.”

TACO BELL

I totally agree with Freddy here: it is, in fact, the holy land!

CHICAGO-STYLE CLASSICS

As a native Chicagoan, this one feels especially important to me. The Europeans have discovered our local cuisine—and they get the hype. “Some proper Chicago food bro they have a milkshake with cake in the cup it‘s ridiculous,” one German user posted about Portillo’s.

“Got a lot of DMs about my Portillo‘s experience so we waited about 30 minutes for our food, but the location itself is a highlight with so much cool old stuff and they had some interesting beers at the bar that made our waiting time amazing,” he added in a follow-up.

A self-proclaimed “huge fan of The Bear” also stopped by Mr. Beef in the Windy City for another local specialty: Italian beef.

And yes, visitors also made time for both tavern-style and deep-dish pizza.

WAFFLE HOUSE

Another favorite? Waffle House. Clearly, someone gave them good recommendations. “Just had our first Waffle House experience at 1am,” @FreddyLA7 wrote. “Great food, great prices, and friendly staff. 10/10, we will be coming back.” He apparently kept that promise with another visit later that same week.

CHILI’S

Just wait until they discover the Triple Dipper.

FREE REFILLS

They cannot believe the free refills and have been getting genuinely emotional about the tradition online. “I can refill this 1,000 times?” one European visitor asked in disbelief.

BBQ

Scotsman Shaun tried Carolina-style BBQ ribs for the first time and promptly declared that all other meat had been “ruined” for him.

BIG GULPS

Look, we knew our portion sizes were a novelty. But the Europeans’ genuine wonder over the Big Gulp really confirms it.

ATTACHMENT FIVE – FROM NEWSWEEK

WORLD CUP FANS STUNNED BY FOOD, BEER PRICES: ‘SHAMBOLIC’

By Sam Stevenson Jun 13, 2026 at 11:51 AM EDT

World Cup fans arriving at stadiums across North America are being hit with high prices for food and drink, sparking backlash online and renewed concerns about affordability at the tournament.

Across U.S. and Canadian host cities, supporters have begun sharing receipts and menu boards showing beers, soft drinks, and basic meals priced at levels comparable to high-end American sporting events—fueling debate over whether the biggest World Cup in history is drifting out of reach for ordinary fans.

The criticism is emerging at a moment when millions of traveling supporters are already absorbing the cost of flights, hotels and, in many cases, premium-priced tickets—turning everyday matchday expenses into a flashpoint for broader concerns about affordability.

Europeans Complaining About World Cup Prices? That’s Rich

Newsweek contacted FIFA via email on Saturday morning to ask about the allocation of corporate and hospitality tickets and their role in empty seats, the transparency of attendance figures, and what responsibility the governing body takes for high food and drink prices, including whether it will act to ensure affordability for fans.

WHY THIS MATTERS NOW

Major international tournaments are typically framed as inclusive celebrations, drawing fans from across economic backgrounds. But the 2026 World Cup represents a potential tipping point.

The combination of dynamic ticket pricing, premium stadium costs, rising global travel expenses and record commercial expectations creates a model that risks reshaping who can afford to attend.

If live events become perceived as elitist, organizers face not just backlash but long-term reputational damage—particularly for competitions built on mass participation and global identity.

A Tournament Built for Scale—and Spending

The 2026 World Cup is not only the largest in soccer history, with 48 teams and 104 matches across 16 cities; it is also FIFA’s most commercially ambitious event to date.

Financial projections show why prices are under scrutiny.

FIFA is expecting roughly $8.9 billion in revenue from the tournament itself, within a broader $13 billion commercial cycle, driven by broadcast rights, sponsorships, ticketing and hospitality.

That commercial scale matters as the modern World Cup is not just a sporting event but what industry analysts describe as a global “trading platform,” monetizing everything from tickets and merchandise to fan zones and food concessions.

Against that backdrop, even relatively small costs—like a beer or a meal—take on symbolic importance, particularly for fans already paying significantly more than in previous tournaments.

INSIDE THE STADIUM: WHAT FANS ARE PAYING

At SoFi Stadium, renamed Los Angeles Stadium for the World Cup, one of the tournament’s flagship venues—fans are seeing prices broadly in line with premium U.S. sports standards.

According to USA Today, beer ranges from about $15 for domestic options to more than $22 for larger craft or imported pours, while soft drinks and water cost $7.75 and $5.25, respectively.

Food items—pizza, tacos, burritos and nachos—cluster around the $19–$20 range, with even basic snacks such as hot dogs ($10) and chips ($5.75) adding up quickly.

SIMILAR PRICING PATTERNS ARE EMERGING ELSEWHERE.

In Toronto, a widely shared menu shows a basic combination of two hot dogs and two soft drinks priced at 57.50 Canadian dollars (roughly $41 USD), with beers reaching roughly $24 CAD (approximately $17.15 USD) depending on size and brand.

Fan zones, marketed as more accessible alternatives, are not necessarily much cheaper. Prices circulating online suggest beers near $19 and soft drinks between $7 and $10.

While prices vary by stadium and vendor, a recent study by SeatPick comparing all 16 World Cup venues suggests the trend is consistent.

The analysis—based on the combined cost of a standard beer and a basic meal—found fans could pay more than $32 at Los Angeles Stadium and over $34 at Levi’s Stadium, currently San Francisco Bay Area Stadium for the World Cup, among the highest in the tournament.

FANS REACT: ‘SHAMBOLIC’

Reaction has been swift, with social media users expressing frustration at the costs.

Former Wales footballer Thomas Hal Robson-Kanu described the situation as “shambolic,” arguing that fans who have already spent heavily to attend should not face such steep additional charges.

“Football is the game of the people,” he wrote Saturday, adding that it should remain “inclusive, safe and enjoyable for everyone.”

X user @LeahRay44, who has over 175,000 followers, wrote on Friday: “$19 for a Stella at the 2026 World Cup. America, I love you but this one is kinda crazy. People have to dig into their life savings just to get a small buzz.”

Another user, @YegTomBraid, wrote on X on Saturday: "New food drink listing and prices are up at World Cup games in Toronto 1st game (Vancouver should be the same), shocking soccer fans from what they are used to at soccer games. $57.50 for 2 hotdogs and 2 drinks! $25.25 for a cheeseburger, $24.25 for a beer......."

NOT JUST A WORLD CUP ISSUE: THE ‘STADIUM TAX’

Part of the explanation lies in where the tournament is being hosted.

The U.S., in particular, has some of the highest concession prices in global sport. Data from the NFL—the closest comparison—shows that the average price of a beer was $8.81 in 2023, with many venues charging significantly more, and top-end stadiums exceeding $14 or even $16 per drink.

That pricing model—often referred to as the “stadium tax”—reflects a captive audience, high operating costs, and the economics of live sports, where teams and venues rely heavily on in-stadium spending.

Research suggests those costs have been rising steadily. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported in February that admission prices for sporting events have increased by 123 percent since 2000, outpacing many other categories of consumer spending.

For the World Cup, those trends are colliding with international expectations. In previous host countries, food and drink prices have often been lower or more tightly controlled, particularly for local supporters.

A STARK DIVIDE ACROSS NORTH AMERICA

One of the most striking features of the tournament is how dramatically prices can vary depending on location.

In Mexico, for example, concession costs remain significantly lower—even within the same event. Reports from the opening match in Mexico City suggest a 24-ounce beer at Estadio Azteca cost about 290 pesos (roughly $16.67 USD).

Some studies suggest beer prices in Mexican venues can fall as low as the equivalent of $2–3 USD, while similar drinks in U.S. stadiums can exceed $13, more than four to six times higher.

Meal-and-drink combinations illustrate the disparity even more starkly: Seatpick’s analysis found fans could pay about $9.77 in Guadalajara versus over $34 in California.

ATTACHMENT SIX – FROM FOOD AND WINE

WHY HONG KONG’S FOOD SCENE IS AS EXCITING AS EVER

The city’s chefs are embracing regional ingredients and traditions with delicious results.

By Janice Leung Hayes Published on June 13, 2026

If you haven’t been to Hong Kong in a while, I can’t blame you — and I live here. Travel warnings were raised in 2019 during citywide protests, and before anyone could catch their breath, faces were covered, flights were canceled, and the once-24-hour city was shut down. That moment of forced introspection, when identities were rocked to the very core, was beyond difficult. But like hot iron from a forge, the city — my city — has emerged renewed, and there’s no better place to see that than in our food and drink scene.

“I had a bar, and with the pandemic curfews, we weren’t doing much business,” recalls Vicky Cheng, the chef behind the acclaimed “Chinese x French” fine-dining spot Vea and the haute Chinese restaurant Wing. “In the bar space, we started making supper for friends, like clay pot rice — things we wanted to eat,” he says of Wing’s beginnings. “Believe it or not, we originally wanted to create a casual restaurant.” Today, Wing epitomizes contemporary Chinese fine dining, ranking No. 11 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2025. Many of its dishes are now considered iconic: jiggly sea cucumber in a thin spring roll wrapper with scallion sauce, or housemade century eggs with crystal clear whites, served with a lacy drizzle of tingly mala chile sauce. The menu evokes the food Hong Kongers grew up with, amplified and refined.

The desire to dig deep into our personal and collective identities percolated citywide. Suddenly freed from the expectations of travelers and business diners, chefs began cooking, first and foremost, for themselves and their community. 

This shift in perspective was seismic. For a long time, Hong Kongers have looked abroad, especially to the West and Japan, for the latest trends. But in recent years, as Vicky Lau, chef of the two-Michelin-starred, French-meets-Chinese Tate Dining Room, observes, “people began to be more open-minded about different kinds of cuisine closer to home.” This newfound curiosity has led chefs like Lau to explore the vast larder of mainland China.

In practical terms, purchasing ingredients from the mainland was easier than flying them in from other countries (the special administrative region is geographically attached to China), especially given China’s advanced logistics network. But new openness to sourcing from China wasn’t just about supply chain adjustments; it was also a philosophical shift. Hong Kongers had long been skeptical of anything made in China, whose reputation was marred by stories of “fake food.” These days, China has come a long way in terms of ingredient quality and traceability, and as the definition of luxury shifts from imported foie gras toward hyperseasonal, regional, and expertly sourced foods, chefs and diners are embracing the bounty in our backyard.

EXPLORE HONG KONG FLAVORS AT THE 2026 FOOD & WINE CLASSIC IN ASPEN

Lau’s exploration of regional Chinese ingredients led to her newest opening, the Yunnan-inspired bistro Jija, which means “chirping birds” or, in Cantonese slang, “excited chatter.” She describes it as a “Chinese kind of bistro” built on the cuisine of southwestern China: Prized seasonal mushroom varieties burst with umami in a housemade mushroom and pork sausage; Chinese artichokes, rarely seen outside Yunnan, are pickled with black cardamom, Szechuan pepper, and star anise. Even the simplest side of stir-fried vegetables provides a window into the region: In spring, for example, long, minty, crunchy wild rice shoots might be tossed in a searing-hot wok with yancaigao, a salty-sour fermented vegetable paste reminiscent of fish sauce. Though Yunnan is just 800 miles away from Hong Kong (approximately the distance between New York City and Chicago), for Lau it once felt like another world. Her research, travels, and direct conversations with growers have unearthed Yunnan’s nuanced richness and brought it within arm’s reach. 

“I think there’s such beauty in that cuisine; it looks very casual, but it’s got lots of flavor,” she says. “It’s very ingredient-driven and very accessible.” Her favorite finds include ganbajun, the prized wild coral fungus indigenous to the region, as well as more familiar fungi like morels and pencil-shaped black termite mushrooms.

Like Lau, chef Tony Mok of Path restaurant draws inspiration from close to home. Growing up in a wai chuen, one of the centuries-old walled villages of Hong Kong’s New Territories, with a father who trained in a traditional Cantonese kitchen, his inspirations are profoundly personal and unabashedly homegrown. Mok says he designed his intimate eight-seat restaurant, with counter seating around an open kitchen, “so that customers can talk to me directly and ask me questions anytime,” because the food is ultimately his story. “The inspiration comes from things I ate in the village when I was little as well as dishes that are common in Hong Kong food culture. But I don’t want to just replicate it. I want to express these traditional flavors in a new way.” 

His take on dan dan noodles has a luxurious pile of Hong Kong’s native flower crab instead of the usual pork, and he caresses each serving of chalky white al dente noodles by hand to assess their starchiness, a technique learned from making Korean mul naengmyeon (cold noodles). The noodles sit atop a silky roasted-cashew sauce and are finished in chile oil and a shower of crispy, garlicky breadcrumbs. He serves the dish cold, a refreshing spin tailored to Hong Kong’s heat. 

The embrace of local ingredients and traditions extends beyond fine dining and can be found at every price point throughout the city. “In Hong Kong, a lot of the people who started these traditions are still in business, so younger folk have the opportunity to approach them and, with the right amount of sincerity, courage, and curiosity, really internalize the ways of doing business and the techniques involved,” says Hong Kong–raised 2021 F&W Best New Chef Lucas Sin who is working on a book inspired by the city’s cha chaan tengs (dinerlike all-day eateries). Tai On Coffee & Tea Shop, he says, “was one of the first” revived cha chaan tengs. It now serves flat whites alongside locally inspired mashups like creamed corn on French toast, where an intense corn velouté and grilled corn on the cob meet thick-cut, fluffy white bread, fried to golden perfection. “It’s always heartening to see new people stepping in with the goal of continuing a business and celebrating what people have been doing for a long, long time,” Sin says. 

Old ways are getting new life everywhere: Rowdy hot pot den Big JJ shakes things up by re-creating the energy of an old-school dai pai dong, or street stall, while offering high-quality (and sometimes obscure) cuts of beef, sliced expertly for cooking at the table, as well as a thoughtful wine selection. At the “Cantonese cocktail salon” Kinsman, drinks draw from traditional Chinese and locally made liquors — the Kaya Toast blends jiuniang, a sweet fermented rice wine, with clarified brioche vodka made using bread from the celebrated Bakehouse bakery. 

As someone who grew up in Hong Kong in the 1990s, people often ask me whether much has changed since the “handover” in 1997, when Hong Kong ceased to be a British colony. When it comes to food, I’d say the changes have only just begun.

ATTACHMENT SEVEN – FROM OXFAM

The world grows enough food to feed everyone in the world, yet as many as 720 million people went hungry in 2024. This is a decrease from 2023. However, there are still places in the world where conflict, climate change, and low commodity prices paid to farmers continue to prevent people from escaping poverty.

These factors, as well as high food prices in poor countries in 2024, meant that hunger did not improve in Africa and western Asia last year.

You can find out more below about the definition of food insecurity, its causes and effects, and what we can do to improve global food security.

WHAT IS FOOD INSECURITY?

When people are unable to meet their food needs, they are food insecure. They may eat one day, but not know where they will get their next meal. Moderate food insecurity means people may not consume enough nutritious food that meets their dietary requirements. People experiencing severe food insecurity have run out of food completely, and go a day or more without anything to eat at all.

FOOD INSECURITY AND INEQUALITY

· 20%

Of population in Africa (307 million people) faced hunger in 2024.

· 8.2%

Of the world’s population estimated to have been hungry in 2024.

· 32%

Of the people living in rural areas across the world were moderately or severely food insecure in 2024

WHAT IS FOOD SECURITY?

Food security is about ensuring no one goes hungry. It exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy lifestyle. A functioning food system is the backbone of food security. It includes agriculture production, good infrastructure to store and move food to where it needs to go, local businesses that transform raw ingredients into the food we all love to eat, as well as local markets that make food available—all without worsening the climate crisis and inequality.

SO, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN IN PRACTICE?

· Availability: The first step in ensuring food security is local food availability. If food is not available on store shelves and market stalls, people will be food insecure. In settings where food markets are not functioning, we help traders, shop owners, and vendors finance food purchases and we also work to ensure the availability of food aid.

· Access: Physical, social, and economic access to food so that everyone—men and women and nonbinary people alike—can obtain food in ways that are socially acceptable, and that people have the financial resources needed to purchase that food. Oxfam works with partners to respond in humanitarian emergencies in ways that ensure women and girls can access emergency food aid safely and equitably, and help women refugees get the resources they need to produce their own food.

· Utilization: People are food secure when the food they access is nutritious, free of diseases, and of sufficient quantity that allows them to live a full, active lifestyle. Importantly, different populations have different food needs—pregnant women, infants, and young children have unique nutritional needs that must be met. A diversity of foods is also required for food security at the household and community levels. Alongside food, clean water and sanitation facilities are essential components of food security.

· Stability: Skyrocketing food prices and seasonal food shortages due to climate change and conflict imperil food security. Oxfam‘s Behind the Barcodes campaign has worked to hold supermarkets–including Whole Foods–accountable for the mistreatment of farmers and workers around the world

WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF GLOBAL FOOD INSECURITY?

LACK OF SUPPORT FOR SMALL-SCALE FARMERS AND WOMEN FARMERS

Small-scale farmers, many of them women, produce most of the world’s food but do not get adequate training, finance, access to land, and other support. As a result, 32 percent of people living in rural areas, who produce most of the world’s food, were moderately or severely food insecure in 2024, according to the 2025 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report. (About 24 percent of people in urban areas were moderately or severely food insecure in 2024.)

CLIMATE CHANGE AND FOOD SECURITY ARE CLOSELY LINKED

The climate crisis is stressing the ecosystems which we rely upon for agriculture, and is driving extreme weather and failed harvests – destroying livelihoods in the process.

CONFLICT

Wars can affect food security when agricultural lands are destroyed, forcing farmers to flee their fields and homes, and when food is used as a weapon of war.

POWER AND INFLUENCE OF LARGE FOOD COMPANIES AND GLOBAL TRADE

A handful of companies are dominating global food markets. They are driving an export-oriented approach to agriculture in poor countries that must then import expensive food, and do not protect the rights of their workers or pay decent wages.

EFFECTS OF FOOD INSECURITY

INCREASED RATES OF POVERTY AND MALNUTRITION

Although the world is producing more than enough food, our global food system is failing to distribute food where it is needed. It’s a problem even in some of the world’s wealthier countries. So why is food security important? Because it can have direct effects on rates of poverty, malnutrition, and public health.

WORSENING INEQUALITY

Rising food prices make it more difficult for many to afford a decent diet. Meanwhile, as poor people spend a higher and higher proportion of their income on food, billionaires involved in the food and agribusiness sector have seen their collective wealth increase by $382bn (45 percent) from 2020-2022. This increasing inequality also increases food insecurity and poverty. Khwas Blov (left) and Sol Preng are two women from the Malik village of Cambodia who helped mobilize their community to challenge a Vietnamese rubber plantation company’s seizure of a large amount of their farming and burial areas, communal land, and spirit forest.

SOLUTIONS TO FOOD INSECURITY

CHALLENGING CORPORATE POWER IN FOOD SUPPLY CHAINS

The global private sector will increasingly shape the welfare of the world over the next decade. Since 2013, Oxfam has pushed the world’s largest food and beverage companies and retailers to change the way they do business. Our Behind the Brands campaign (2013-2016) and our Behind the Barcodes campaign (2018-present) challenge these companies to adopt stronger social and environmental sourcing policies.

But making commitments is only the first step. The true measures of success are improvements in the lives of people living in poverty and protections for our environment and natural resources. Companies–retailers, manufacturers, processors, agribusinesses, and financial institutions alike—have a responsibility to do right by the people most vulnerable in their supply chains.

That's why we call on companies to move away from business models founded on short-term profit maximization toward more holistic ones that value social and environmental performance and good governance. We fight for equal pay and equal treatment for women, push for climate action to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis on food production, and call for inclusive and accountable leadership—all to achieve more equitable food value chains.

Asili Sode, Ake Aila, and Mumina Barile of the Uye women group in Kenya participate in a project to improve food production with training from PACIDA, an Oxfam partner organization.

SUPPORTING SMALLHOLDER FARMERS TO ADAPT TO CLIMATE CHANGE

As weather becomes more extreme due to the climate crisis, so do the challenges facing smallholder farmers trying to feed their families and communities on farms less than five acres in size. We work with small-scale producers to adopt climate-resilient agriculture practices, increase productivity and improve their incomes, and to support collective action to help groups of producers take advantage of market opportunities and engage with local and national governments to articulate their needs and demand action.

Oxfam promotes the adoption of farming practices based on agro-ecological principles, such as agro-forestry. As women make up about half the agricultural labor force, we focus on making sure critical resources are directed toward women who receive less advice, support, training, and access to land and financing than men. We also work with partners and allies to challenge harmful and discriminatory laws and practices, and promote investments in agricultural development that improve lives and livelihoods.

SECURING LAND RIGHTS FOR WOMEN SMALL-SCALE FARMERS

Land is the primary asset of small-scale farmers. Equitable access to and control over land empowers women and their communities to have a meaningful voice in decisions that affect their lives. Yet land inequality is increasing globally, threatening the livelihoods of 2.5 billion people involved in smallholder agriculture. And biodiversity hotspots (that maintain the ecological balance of our planet and help regulate the climate that enables global food production) are under threat.

That’s why Oxfam works to secure women’s land rights, enable women and their communities to be directly involved in decision-making on the land issues that affect them, and strengthen transformative leadership for women’s land rights.

We help protect forests and biodiverse lands, such as in the Amazon, from exploitation that drives carbon emissions, and we support land rights defenders and promote campaigns to defend community land rights and respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights. We also advocate in global forums to strengthen land rights, such as through the Generation Equality Forum and monitoring commitments under the Sustainable Development Goals.

EQUIPPING FOOD ENTREPRENEURS WITH TOOLS TO GROW FOOD AND FIGHT HUNGER

We are also supporting innovations in food systems through the Urban Food Hives initiative. In partnership with Second Muse and partners in six cities across Africa, Asia, and the Americas, the initiative equips women and youth food entrepreneurs with the tools to grow, process, and distribute food in an equitable and sustainable manner—including a favorable policy environment as well as access to capital, a strong workforce, sufficient infrastructure, and open markets.

The initiative also aims to help consumers in urban and peri-urban centers access nutritious and affordable food. The big vision of the Urban Food Hives is to spur a movement around the world and create replicable and scalable models of what is possible to transform the future of food systems to be climate resilient, nourishing, and equitable.

ATTACHMENT EIGHT – FROM WORLD BANK

LATEST FOOD SECURITY UPDATE – MAY 2026

(data as of May 22, 2026)

Global food and nutrition insecurity is increasing despite broadly stable supplies of major staples. Since the last update in March, agricultural and cereal price indices have risen by 3 and 4 percent, respectively. Conflict and climate shocks continue to be the primary drivers of acute food insecurity. Up to 67 million people in need of food assistance in East and Southern Africa, with 14 localities considered at risk of famine in Sudan, and nearly 52.9 million people are projected to be acutely food insecure in West and Central Africa during the June to August 2026 lean season.

Download the latest brief on rising food insecurity

The Middle East conflict is increasing risks to food security. Disruptions to oil, gas and fertilizer flows through the Strait of Hormuz drove a 46 percent month-on-month rise in urea prices and increased agricultural price indices by 8 percent, raising the risk of an affordability crisis. The World Bank Commodity Markets Outlook projects that fertilizer prices will rise by 31 percent on average in 2026, reaching their least affordable levels since 2022.

A 61 to 87 percent probability of El Niño emerging by mid-2026 and continuing into 2027 could make the situation worse by threatening crop production in South Asia, Southern Africa, and parts of East Asia, with rice output potentially falling by 20 to 50 percent.

Since the last update in March 2026, agricultural and cereal prices indices have increased by 3 and 4 percent, respectively, while the export price index has decreased by 4 percent. Maize and wheat prices, which closed 5 and 11 percent higher, respectively, are driving the increase in the cereal price index, and rice prices closed 5 percent lower. On a year-on-year basis, average prices for wheat and maize are 19 and 5 percent higher, respectively, and rice prices are 6 percent lower. Maize and wheat prices are 23 and 18 percent higher, respectively, than in January 2020, and rice prices are 6 percent lower.

Domestic food price inflation remained moderately high between January and March 2026. Data for this period indicates a slight deterioration in low-income countries, resulting in a higher share of countries with food inflation above 5 percent (40.0 percent to 45.0 percent). On the other hand, conditions improved in lower-middle-income countries (from 40.8 percent to 36.7 percent), upper-middle-income countries (from 34.0 percent to 29.8 percent), and high-income countries (from 6.8 percent to 5.1 percent). Regional patterns were similarly uneven. Latin America and the Caribbean and South Asia experienced an increase in food inflation, whereas Europe and Central Asia and parts of Africa generally saw moderate increases, although several countries in Eastern and Southern Africa continued to record double-digit food inflation. In real terms, food price inflation outpaced overall inflation (based on year-on-year changes in the overall consumer price index) in 14 percent of the 148 countries where data is available, underscoring pressure on household purchasing power in those countries.

ATTACHMENT NINE – FROM NATIONAL HOG FARMER

HEAVIER DRESSED WEIGHTS TO PUSH PORK PRODUCTION HIGHER IN 2026

WASDE is projecting the average barrow and gilt price to be $65/cwt in 2027, down $2 from May’s estimate.

By Ann Hess June 15, 2026

The USDA has increased its 2026 red meat and poultry production forecast to 109 billion pounds, with anticipated gains in broiler production expected to offset lower red meat output. According to the June World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report released last week, pork production has been raised slightly to 27.955 billion pounds, based on reduced slaughter for the second quarter being outweighed by heavier dressed weights. 

For 2027, total red meat and poultry production is also projected to reach 109 billion pounds. With slightly heavier dressed weights anticipated, pork production has been raised to 28.290 billion pounds. The USDA's Quarterly Hogs and Pigs report, scheduled for release on June 25, is expected to offer more insights into producer farrowing intentions for the second half of 2026. This data will also help establish clearer expectations for hog supply and pork production conditions during the first half of 2027.

Related: Summer rally – Is it a when or an if?

The average barrow and gilt price has been reduced to $66.63 per hundredweight, $1.75 less than last month. The WASDE is projecting the average barrow and gilt price to be $65/cwt in 2027, down $2 from May’s estimate. 

2026 pork exports are now expected to reach 7.252 billion pounds based on strong shipments to key markets reported in recent trade data but are unchanged for 2027, at 7.330 billion pounds.

ATTACHMENT TEN – FROM DTN PROGRESSIVE FARMER

AG WEATHER FORUM

Past 10 Months Were Driest in Almost 50 Years in Contiguous US

By Bryce Anderson, Ag Meteorologist Emeritus 6/10/2026 | 9:48 AM CDT

The past 10-month period in the Lower 48 U.S. states has been remarkable for dryness. In fact, it's been so dry that August 2025 through May 2026 now ranks as the sixth driest such period on record for the contiguous United States. This analysis is featured in the USDA Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin posted June 9 for the week of May 31-June 6.

The report noted that, "Across the contiguous United States, August-May precipitation averaged just 20.78 inches, well below the 20th century mean of 24.23 inches. It was the nation's driest August-May period since 1976-77, when an average of 20.20 inches fell." This dryness landed easily in the Top 10 despite near-normal precipitation in the Lower 48 states during May 2026.

Historically, the first half of the 20th century featured a cluster of dry August-to-May periods. The driest August-through-May period on record is 1917-18, with 19.97 inches. This dry stretch is closely followed by 1933-34, with 20 inches from August through May. The 1976-77 period is third driest with its 20.20 inches. Then we find 1930-31 fourth with 20.23 inches, and 1924-25 in fifth place with 20.30 inches precipitation. The first half of the 20th century certainly had chronic dryness.

That extensive and lingering dryness has made a sizeable impact on the U.S. Drought Monitor. The USDA analysis noted that "drought coverage -- as reported by the U.S. Drought Monitor -- topped 60% of the area of the Lower 48 States each week from April 7 to May 26, 2026."

The impact of dryness was made even worse by record-setting high temperatures for the contiguous U.S. The USDA report noted that the U.S. August-May period was by far the warmest such period on record. "Across the Lower 48 States, the August 2025-May 2026 average temperature of 52.38 (degrees Fahrenheit) was 4.16 degrees F above the 1901-2000 mean value of 48.22 F," the report said. "Prior to 2025-2026, the warmest August-May period had occurred in 2011-12, with an average temperature of 51.74 F."

This dry 10-month time frame's positioning in the history ledger of contiguous U.S. is also a culmination of significant smaller periods of dryness during the past 10 months. And, as we have seen with such occurrences as record-level rangeland fires and winter wheat crop loss, the consequences of such a period of dryness and warmth can be extreme.

ATTACHMENT ELEVEN – FROM ABC 15, ARIZONA

STATE AGRICULTURE VETERINARIAN SPEAKS ABOUT THE SCREWWORM RECENTLY FOUND IN THE SOUTHWEST

New World screwworm sounds terrifying – its larvae can actually eat living tissue in animals – but Arizona’s top veterinarian says pet owners should be alert, not alarmed.

By: Craig McKee last updated 9:43 PM, Jun 13, 2026

PHOENIX — New World screwworm sounds terrifying – its larvae can actually eat living tissue in animals – but Arizona’s top veterinarian says pet owners should be alert, not alarmed.

In our extended interview, State Veterinarian Dr. Ryan Wolker explains what this parasite does, why open wounds and thin-skinned areas like the eyes, nose and genitals are most at risk, and how it’s affecting cattle and dogs just south of the border. He also breaks down what to watch for on your own pets and when it’s time to call your vet.

Dr. Wolker also takes us inside Arizona’s quiet line of defense: Hundreds of fly traps set and tested since last August, with no New World screwworm detected in Arizona so far. He details how the federal government is ramping up sterile-fly releases along the border, why Arizona’s climate helps but doesn’t guarantee protection, and why early reporting from pet owners and ranchers is critical to keeping this parasite out of the state.

Watch the full interview in the player above to see what the state is doing behind the scenes — and the simple steps you can take to protect your animals.

ATTACHMENT TWELVE – FROM FOODTANK.COM

FOOD TANK’S WEEKLY NEWS ROUNDUP: SYNTHETIC PESTICIDES CHALLENGED, MARINE SPECIES PROTECTED, NEW WORLD SCREWWORM DETECTED IN U.S.

TAKEAWAYS

Each week, Food Tank is rounding up a few news stories that inspire excitement, infuriation, or curiosity.

THE RISE OF RAW MILK

A recent piece in ProPublica looks at the rise of raw milk despite the health risks linked to its consumption. 

Promoted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others, weekly sales of raw milk in the U.S. jumped as much as 65 percent between 2023 and 2024, according to NielsenIQ. Supporters say it can cure allergies, asthma, and lactose intolerance or deliver special probiotics.

Brown University Health and other experts state that there’s no evidence for these claims and instead point to the harm it can cause. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note that unpasteurized milk can expose people to dangerous bacteria including E. coli, Listeria, Brucella, and Salmonella. All these can pose a serious risk to eaters—especially children under 5, adults over 65, as well as those who are pregnant or have weakened immune systems. Just last week, Idaho’s Department of Health and Welfare reported that 60 people became sick after consuming raw milk. 

But these concerns haven’t stopped farmers like Mark McAfee, the focus of ProPublica’s story. In the early 2000s, McAfee was a producer of pasteurized milk who didn’t think twice about offering a raw alternative. But when he connected with a community looking for a consistent source of unpasteurized milk, McAfee realized the demand that existed. In the years since then, McAfee converted his dairy to raw milk, and in 2011 he established a nonprofit to promote claims in support of raw milk’s benefits. 

When asked about the risks, McAfee largely denied them or brushed them off. But his own farm has been linked to illnesses. “I’ve put a couple kids in the hospital, and they have been sick, but they recovered,” he admits. 

ProPublica, however, reports that it’s not just a few cases: according to regulators, more than 230 people have been sickened in eight outbreaks linked to his farm since 2006. At least 40 have been hospitalized, and this total is likely much lower than the reality.

Still, people continue seeking out raw milk. Melanie Copeland in Huntington Beach has doubts that the outbreaks ever truly happened, stating that the possibility is “slim to none.” And Alyssa Wolfer in Bakersfield calls drinking raw milk a “true American freedom.” Even more concerning: the government isn’t stepping in to protect consumers. Instead, government officials have championed the industry’s expansion. 

NEW PAPER CHALLENGES NECESSITY OF SYNTHETIC PESTICIDES

A new briefing from the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) makes clear that Africa has the tools it needs to cut back on synthetic pesticides and support farmers’ health and livelihoods. 

Across the continent, a wide range of biological and agroecological approaches are helping farmers control pests, boost yields, and improve the environment. Despite this, the authors state that solutions often don’t evolve beyond pilot or experimental settings due to limited investment and labor, regulatory shortcomings and lacking institutional support. This contributes to the predominating idea that pesticides are indispensable. 

But ACB’s analysis of 90 studies from the last 15 years challenges the idea of pesticide-dependent food systems. They argue that if integrated, systems-level solutions are put into place to help farmers restore ecological functioning and reduce pest pressure over time, the transition away from these chemical inputs is possible. 

According to the Centre’s Director Mariam Mayet, “Productive and resilient food systems do not require escalating chemical use. They require ecological integrity, functional biodiversity, and policies that support farmers to work with nature rather than against it.”

Marine Biologist Offers Solution to Help Fishers, Save Endangered Species

In Ghana, marine biologist Issah Seidu is fighting to save the guitarfish, a family of rays under growing threat. Today, more than half of its species are critically endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). 

The Guardian reports that Seidu launched a grassroots campaign to protect the guitarfish, whose meat is seen as a local delicacy, by encouraging fishers to raise the African land snail. In 2019, he and his team began meeting with fishers to understand what they would do if they didn’t catch guitarfish.

Initially, the conversations were difficult. Fishers worried for their livelihoods.But education and training helped the community understand the extinction risk, convincing around 200 to stop or scale back their guitarfish operations. 

Discussions with fishers also helped them settle on the harvesting of land snails—a popular source of protein that’s in demand—as a viable alternative. Seidu explains that farming giant snails makes financial sense: it’s lucrative and the investment needed upfront is minimal. And he’s seen success in the community. 

Now Seidu setting his sights on a longer term goal: helping to establish Ghana’s first locally-managed marine protected area.

IUCN’s Chair calls this work “exactly the kind of effort needed.” 

USDA CONFIRMS CASES OF FLESH-EATING PARASITE IN THE U.S.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) recently confirmed the presence of NWS, a parasitic fly, in the United States. At least nine cases have been detected in Texas and New Mexico, according the to USDA. 

The larvae, which feed on warm-blooded animals, can lead to “severe, potentially fatal infestations, according to the agency. This can cause “serious damage to livestock and economic losses” for farmers.

Joint federal-state field teams are now working to expand surveillance and response efforts to control the spread. Canada is also taking precautionary measures, temporarily restricting the import of livestock, including horses, from affected areas in the U.S. 

Although the spread is alarming to farmers, the USDA has confirmed that NWS doesn’t infect meat, fruits, vegetables, or other food products, and the country’s food supply is still safe.

“GROUNDSWELL” DEBUTS FOR GLOBAL AUDIENCES

“Groundswell,” the final film in a documentary trilogy celebrating the potential of regenerative agriculture, recently debuted on Amazon Prime. The release follows its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

Directed by award-winning Filmmakers, Josh and Rebecca Harrell Tickell and narrated by Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore, the film is the final chapter in a series that includes “Kiss the Ground,” released in 2020, and “Common Ground” from 2023.

“Groundswell” follows food systems experts including farmers, scientists, and Indigenous leaders across five continents who are proving that regenerative farming is viable and already delivering real results for communities.

Tied to the film’s release, the Tickells also launched One Billion Acres, a global campaign to accelerate the transition to regenerative agriculture.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN – FROM YAHOO/TELEGRAPH UK FOREIGN

THE HUNGER CRISIS EXPERTS WARNED OF IS HERE – AND IT’S LIKELY TO GET WORSE

Maeve Cullinan Wed, June 10, 2026 at 2:13 PM EDT

A farmer prepares to sow rice seeds in Yangon – but the fuel and fertiliser crisis caused by the Iran war is expected to severely impact harvests and exports.

Pregnant women in Kabul, sheep-herders outside of Mogadishu, the urban-poor in Colombo. As the war in Iran passes 100 days, these are the people on the front line of a new hunger crisis.

Months ago, the UN cautioned that a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz would push millions into hunger; now they say their worst fears are materialising.

A report produced by the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN's food-assistance branch, found that 45 million additional people now face "critical" levels of food insecurity as a direct result of the war in the Gulf.

Across the world, 260 million people already face similar levels of food insecurity. Most live in poor and fragile countries and are unable to meet their basic caloric needs.

Many are selling off livestock and land to put food on the table.

In the long term, the food crisis will irreversibly damage physical and cognitive health, particularly in children, experts say.

"We told the world the closure of the Strait was going to have a massive impact," Dr Jean-Martin Bauer, the World Food Programme's director of food security analysis, told The Telegraph.

"There have been impacts on energy markets, on trade, on shipping, and all these are combining to create this cost of living crisis affecting millions of people."

But even if the Strait reopened tomorrow – and a peace deal currently feels elusive – experts say the war's impact on food security will be long-felt.

The crisis revolves around two critical elements: energy and fertiliser.

Both form the backbone of modern farming and food distribution. A quarter of global oil supplies are shipped through the Strait, along with roughly a third of the world's fertiliser.

Because of the bottleneck, oil has now been consistently fluctuating in and around $100 per barrel, up 30 per cent since before the war. Fertiliser prices have risen even more sharply, spiking up to 50 per cent since February.

Fertiliser is a particular problem, because, unlike oil, the world operates no strategic reserve to manage the shortfall.

As a result, the overall cost of producing, distributing, and ultimately purchasing food is far more expensive.

"The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is not a regional issue; it is a global food security risk," Dr Qu Dongyu, head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation Council of the UN, said at a high-level meeting earlier this week.

The World Food Programme (WFP) report focused on three countries – Afghanistan, Somalia, and Sri Lanka – chosen for their different geographies and varying vulnerabilities, to map out how exactly the strain on global agriculture is affecting people on the ground.

"These deep dives are specific cases that we can learn from," Dr Baurer of the WFP.

"What we're seeing with these studies in Afghanistan and Somalia and Sri Lanka is that this risk to the food systems of these fragile countries is materialising before our very eyes."

SOMALIA

Somalia, Africa's easternmost country, is particularly exposed to the current crisis.

Already grappling with extreme drought and conflict, the country imports 100 per cent of its oil and 90 per cent of its grains, which make up around half of the population's calorie intake a day.

The East African country also relies on the Middle East for 91 per cent of its exports.

Saudi Arabia purchases upwards of $350 million worth of Somali livestock every year, which is the country's main source of external revenue, with Oman and Dubai accounting for most of the rest.

The Gulf as a whole is importing less of almost all goods as insurance and freight costs skyrocket.

It's a devastating blow to the country's livestock industry, which forms much of Somalia's economic backbone. Around 65 per cent of the country's population are involved in animal raising in some way, mostly working as herders.

Clinics treating malnourished children in drought-hit Somalia have been forced to turn away patients following shipping disruptions - Feisal Omar/REUTERS

The proportion of Somali households that can no longer afford what the UN calls the "basic food basket" – things like cooking oil and grains – has risen from 47 to 60 per cent in late 2025, according to the WFP's analysis.

It means ultimately an additional 2.5 million people in Somalia could be unable to afford a basic food basket by the end of the year.

Soaring jet fuel prices, which have risen on average 150 per cent since the beginning of the war, are also hampering humanitarian efforts, according to the WFP.

The United Nations Humanitarian Air Service – which delivers food to hard-to-reach areas in Somalia and other conflict-affected countries – is facing significantly higher costs, and has had to scale back its operations as a result.

Compounding the impacts is a significant drop in overall foreign assistance, as Western countries have slashed their overseas aid budgets to pivot spending towards defence. In Somalia, the WFP is now operating with an 89 per cent funding gap.

"The risk is increasing, but the response capacity is less," said Dr Bauer.

AFGHANISTAN

Before February, Afghanistan was already in the grips of a severe hunger crisis.

An estimated 4.9 million mothers and children are already suffering from acute malnutrition, a near-record figure.

An eight-month-long border closure with Pakistan, the country's key trading partner, repeated floods and earthquakes, and a steep fall-off in foreign aid as Western countries increasingly slash overseas development budgets have all exacerbated the crisis, according to the UN.

After tensions between Kabul and Islamabad escalated in October last year, the Taliban pivoted much of its trade – of things like raw materials, fresh produce, fuels – from Pakistan to Iran.

"By February 60 per cent of Afghanistan's trade went through Iran, so when the first bomb hit, Afghanistan was economically exposed," John Aylieff, Afghanistan Representative and Country Director, told The Telegraph.

The World Bank has said Afghanistan's per capita GDP has now declined by 5.6 per cent.

Afghan women with their malnourished children at an MSF hospital in Herat - Wakil KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images

An additional 2.3 million Afghans are food insecure as a result, mostly pregnant women and children who are more vulnerable to food shortages.

Mr Aylieff told The Telegraph calls to WFP's emergency hotline have surged in recent months, with women begging the organisation to help them feed their starving infants.

The organisation, which is the largest provider of food assistance in Afghanistan, has suffered a 40 per cent blow to its budget since 2024. It says it is now only able to provide food assistance to a fraction of those in need.

Before February, WFP could only provide emergency food aid to a quarter of malnourished children and one in three pregnant and breastfeeding women.

The war in Iran has forced the organisation to scale down ever more.

"We can't transport food into Afghanistan through Iranian ports, so we have to go by truck via land. We go through several countries to get there from our hub in Dubai – the UAE, Saudi, Syria, Turkey, Azerbaijan, over the Caspian Sea, into Afghanistan," Mr Aylieff said.

"It costs five times more and takes three times longer," he said, adding that transporting supplies like fortified biscuits – ready-to eat, shelf stable biscuits that are high-calorie and packed with essential nutrients – into Afghanistan used to take 10 days and can now sometimes take as long as 75.

"One million kids now can't be fed just because of the transport issue. We have to turn away six out of seven children who need treatment for malnutrition," he said.

SRI LANKA

Sri Lanka is a middle-income country; its GDP per capita is more than six times Somalia's.

Yet it is also acutely exposed to events in the Gulf, the UN says.

Sri Lanka is heavily economically tied to the Middle East. It imports 63 per cent of its energy and between 90 and 100 per cent of its fertiliser from the region.

It also exports almost 45 per cent of its tea, one of its most vital foreign exchange earners, to the Middle East. Experts estimate the country loses between $10 and $15 million per week when exports to the Gulf are disrupted.

Remittances sent back to Sri Lanka from the Gulf also generate an estimated $3.4 billion for the country's economy, but thousands of workers have returned home as industries like construction, farming, and tourism have ground to a halt.

More than 8 out of 10 Sri Lankans who leave the country for work do so in the Middle East – chiefly Kuwait, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

"The Gulf employs a lot of people from South Asia, and so remittances have been harmed and reduced as well, and as a consequence household food security for those households dependent migrant workers have been hit," Leigh Mante, a Fellow on Climate and Energy at the think-tank ORF Middle East, told The Telegraph.

Fertiliser is now also more expensive and difficult to obtain in Sri Lanka.

The problem is particularly acute in the South Asian country after a disastrous decision taken by the government in 2021 – where it banned the importation of chemical fertilisers completely – led to an agricultural crisis which is still playing out.

The country is now unable to access roughly a third of its normal fertiliser supply, which is set to hit the nation's supply of rice significantly next year after harvest.

The WFP projects that up to 1.3 million additional people in Sri Lanka may be at risk of being unable to meet their basic food needs, adding to an existing baseline of 4.7 million.

Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopened tomorrow, experts warn the food crisis is set to only get worse because of the delayed impact of falling fertiliser supply.

Farmers in almost all regions of the world are grappling with higher prices and are reporting they have been forced to plant fewer crops, or pivot to produce that requires less fertiliser.

One major switch, according to experts, is from wheat and corn – which require high levels of nitrogen – to soybeans, far less fertiliser-intensive but used for livestock feed, not human consumption.

The effects will not be felt immediately. Crops being planted now will be harvested in the autumn and into 2027.

"The crop calendars of the world have been impacted, so not only in the east but also in the south, north, west. So we have all countries that have been touched," Dr Maximo Torero, chief economist at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, told The Telegraph.

"The choices are to produce with fewer inputs, which implies lower yields, or to switch crops, or to produce less overall," he said.

Svein Tore Holsether, chief executive of Yara – one of the world's largest fertiliser producers – has said a shortage of nitrogen fertiliser could reduce yields for crops like wheat and maize by as much as 50 per cent in 2027.

Globally, the estimated drop in fertiliser supplies could cost the world 10 billion meals a week.

Western countries have so far been relatively sheltered from the food crisis, broadly because governments can absorb prices and help to cushion inflation, and the average person spends significantly less of their income on food than those in the Global South.

But experts say it's only a matter of time before the effects of the Iran war are felt on the shelves.

This is mostly because of the delayed effects of fertiliser shortages.

"All the crop calendars of the world have been impacted, so not only in the East but also in the South, North, West. All countries have been touched," said Dr Torero of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.

"We had good production in previous years and currently good stocks," said Dr Torero.

"That's why prices have not increased so much. But by the end of the year these will be depleted, so prices will start increasing by 2027."

British farmers say they are suffering from the fallout. In April, the cost of nitrogen fertiliser was 40 per cent higher than before the conflict.

Tom Bradshaw, the president of the National Farmers Union (NFU), said on Wednesday that growers would be considering "whether to plant at all" after a surge in the cost of agricultural essentials since the war began.

They say that without government intervention, yields of essential food items like arable crops and feed for livestock would fall.

The world's food security is also set to be particularly precarious in 2027 as an unprecedented "super" El Niño hits the Southern Hemisphere this summer, dramatically reducing the ability of farmers to work due to heat stress and crippling crop yields.

A report released on Monday by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit predicted drops in British imports of rice, as well as fruits like grapes, lemons, oranges, and coffee.

Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security

ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN – FROM CFR

THE IRAN WAR’S FORGOTTEN FRONT: GLOBAL FOOD INSECURITY AND THE LIMITS OF U.S. AID

The Trump administration’s Operation Epic Fury has fueled a global hunger crisis affecting millions of people. Meanwhile, the State Department is sitting on $5.4 billion in unspent humanitarian funds. The rainy day it was saving them for has arrived.

By experts and staff Published May 12, 2026 10:44a.m.

By Sam Vigersky International Affairs Fellow

Sam Vigersky is an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He previously served as senior humanitarian advisor to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and has two decades of experience as a field aid worker and policymaker.

Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst III told the House Armed Services Committee on April 29 what nine weeks of war with Iran has cost: $25 billion. A State Department spokesperson said the agency’s humanitarian tab since the start of the war is $49 million. That’s a ratio of 510:1, and the gap has likely widened.

The Trump administration is discussing a $200 billion congressional supplemental funding package for the war, and not a penny is allocated for aid. The absence of humanitarian funding is a sharp break from precedent. In the earliest weeks of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, for example, Congress approved $2.5 billion for life-saving aid—equivalent to $4.5 billion today.

As Washington debates, the direct and cascading impacts of Operation Epic Fury have pushed millions of people to the brink of starvation. According to a report [PDF] released the same day as Hurst’s testimony by the Integrated Phase Classification System, the internationally recognized scale for classifying the severity of food security, 1.24 million Lebanese—nearly one in every four people—are experiencing acute levels of hunger. That represents a 42 percent increase over the six months prior. This follows U.S. cuts to global humanitarian aid from $14 billion in 2024 to $4 billion in 2025.

Across the first four months of 2026, the U.S. humanitarian retreat is becoming increasingly alarming. The Trump administration’s global humanitarian aid contributions this year ($2.4 billion) is not even half of what the National Retail Federation reported Americans spent on Easter candy and flowers ($5.7 billion).

This year’s anemic spending is not for lack of evidence or urgency. Nor is it for lack of budget: the State Department’s new Bureau for Disaster and Humanitarian Response has some $5.4 billion in funds already appropriated for 2026. That’s in addition to the $2 billion carried over from 2025, which was transferred to the United Nations in February after it was announced in December.

Despite the mounting evidence of record-breaking hunger, that money remains unspent so far. Perhaps it’s because a lean new bureau needs time to find its footing. Or maybe, simply, they’re saving that $5.4 billion for a rainy day.

But that day has come. It is pouring across the globe, and it’s time for the State Department to respond.

The new bureau is described as the U.S. government’s “center of excellence” for international humanitarian food assistance and food security—tasked with leading the country’s response to high-priority, complex humanitarian situations overseas. If anything meets the threshold of this mandate, it’s the current global hunger crisis.

And yet a decline in U.S. aid funding has continued despite famine conditions in two countries and hunger spiraling toward record levels across the world. In three countries that are one step removed from famine—Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen—a new State Department policy has outright terminated U.S. support.

A GROWING GLOBAL CATASTROPHE

The UN World Food Program (WFP) projects that in countries dependent on food and fuel imports, primarily in Africa and South Asia, some forty-five million more people could face acute food insecurity if the Iran war continues through June. This toll would exceed the record levels reached when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Those affected would join the millions of people already unsure of where their next meal will come from. Within Sudan, which is experiencing the world’s largest hunger crisis, famine rages [PDF] for a third consecutive year. New research from Islamic Relief found that 42 percent of the country’s community kitchens, a lifeline of local aid, have shut down in the last six months due to international funding cuts.

Outfits that are still operating face soaring costs, with fuel and wheat up 80 percent and 70 percent, respectively. Emergency supplies previously stored at the UN humanitarian hub in Dubai have been forced to reroute, doubling the cost of shipping to Sudan for some UN agencies. Amid this supply chain volatility, the Sudanese pound depreciated by 10 percent, leading Prime Minister Kamil Idris to ban imports of foods and industrial inputs to stem inflation.

Those in South Sudan are hardly faring better. Between 2020 and 2024, U.S. aid to South Sudan regularly exceeded $700 million. This year, the State Department has provided only $100 million, while the WFP reports a $193 million shortfall—meaning fewer meals to feed the seventy thousand South Sudanese already experiencing famine conditions. And it’s not just food that people can’t access: health services are collapsing as conflict rages, leaving few trained staff to treat patients suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

Read More of CFR’s Humanitarian Coverage

· The World Agreed to Stop Using Food as a Weapon. It Hasn’t.

ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN – ALSO FROM CFR

THE EASY WIN THAT COULD HELP UNLOCK THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ

By Diana Roy April 13, 2026

In Somalia, severe drought had already plunged 6.5 million people into acute hunger. Half a million children [PDF] are now one step removed from famine, with supply chain disruptions triggered by the Iran war causing shortages of life-saving therapeutic peanut butter paste. Clinics are now rationing supplies, turning away mothers and children in desperate need. Without funding, the WFP is closing programs. In total, thirty districts in Somalia no longer receive emergency food aid because of cuts. Countrywide, WFP can only reach one in ten people who need aid.

The International Rescue Committee has warned that Yemen—where rising food, fuel, and fertilizer costs have caused severe economic shocks—is entering its most dangerous food security phase in years, with half of the population suffering from severe hunger. Worsening the situation is the $3,000 risk fee added to forty-foot containers destined for the country, raising the cost of imported goods by 15 percent. Sea freight now routed around the Strait of Hormuz is incurring 400 percent insurance premiums while air freight capacity on key routes is down 50 percent.

Afghanistan is growing more desperate by the day. In a country where 3.7 million children are suffering from acute malnutrition, three out of four were turned away from clinics with therapeutic food even before the Iran war began. Today, the WFP says the cost of imported goods has tripled due to the ongoing conflict.

Delivering food aid had once involved direct transit across the Strait of Hormuz to Iran before entering Afghanistan. Now, it entails an odyssey that passes through much of Saudi Arabia before crossing Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Georgia, and Azerbaijan—followed by a trip across the Caspian Sea by ferry and a final journey across Turkmenistan. These extra costs hollow the food budget every day the Strait of Hormuz remains a choke point.

Still, Lebanon exemplifies perhaps the starkest funding shortfall yet. The United Nations’ $308 million emergency Lebanon appeal—intended to fund a government-led response for a three-month period from March to May 2026—is only 41 percent funded.

The list of countries impacted by the Iran war can, and does, go on. Gaza is reckoning with a bread shortage caused by ingredient restrictions and price spikes. Egypt’s vegetable prices have tripled. Post-Hurricane Melissa recovery is stalled in Jamaica due to stranded building materials. Ethiopia is facing fertilizer scarcity right as planting season begins. A lack of fuel in Myanmar is disrupting humanitarian operations. And the international NGO Save the Children projected that every $5 increase in oil prices triggered by conflict will wipe out one month of life-saving humanitarian aid for nearly forty thousand children.

HOW THE STATE DEPARTMENT SHOULD PROCEED

The State Department should take three immediate steps to mitigate the suffering of millions.

First, the Strait of Hormuz needs a humanitarian corridor. The newly drafted United States resolution in the UN Security Council calls for such a passageway, relying on parties to the conflict to support that action and placing coordination in the hands of the United Nations to facilitate impartial and unhindered access. This is the right direction. Now other countries need to rally behind this move.

Second, the Trump administration should immediately reinstate humanitarian funding to Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen. The people on the edge of famine deserve compassion and life-saving aid.

Finally, it is time for the State Department to respond to the moment for what it is: a spiraling humanitarian crisis that already ranks among the worst in the twenty-first century. That means aggressively spending their $5.4 billion budget to save lives and alleviate needless suffering. And if the Defense Department is asking for money linked to this war, the State Department’s humanitarian bureau should too.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN – FROM WASHPOST

EL NIÑO AND THE IRAN WAR MAY SPARK HUNGER CRISIS FOR MORE THAN 100 MILLION

by Sarah Kaplan

In Somalia’s Bay region — once the country’s breadbasket — sorghum and corn fields are withering from lack of rain. Prices for imported rice have surged amid shipping disruptions caused by the conflict in Iran.

Farmers are selling off livestock, equipment, even furniture just to afford food. Children are getting as little as half their required calories, a deficit that weakens their immune systems and stunts their growth.

Now meteorologists have declared the arrival of an El Niño event, a climate pattern often accompanied by soaring temperatures and more extreme weather that imperil agriculture in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions.

Experts fear that the event, combined with the high fuel and fertilizer prices triggered by the Iran war, could push parts of the world into a major hunger crisis by the end of this year — one that may trigger political instability and threaten the lives of millions.

“What’s coming toward us, with this economic shock and climate shock at the same time … we are entering uncharted waters,” said Jean-Martin Bauer, director of food security and nutrition analysis at the World Food Program.

In Somalia, the event could bombard the area’s parched soil with too much rain for the ground to absorb. Massive floods could wipe out crops and displace even more people.

By the end of the year, humanitarian groups warn, the country may be facing famine. And it’s not the only region at risk.

A newly released outlook from the U.S. State Department’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network forecast that 115 million to 125 million people in the world’s 26 most vulnerable countries will require urgent food assistance by December. Sudan and South Sudan also face a risk of famine, said Lark Walters, senior food security decision support adviser for the network.

“All of the ingredients for severe to extreme food insecurity impacts are present,” she said.

As El Niño-powered extreme weather surges across the planet, the most severe complications for global hunger may come from the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, said Maximo Torero, chief economist at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. Since it began in late February, the conflict has choked off shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — a crucial waterway for transporting roughly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade and as much as 30 percent of all fertilizer exports.

The subsequent surge in fuel and fertilizer prices has already hit farmers, raising the cost of running tractors, pumping water and nurturing crops. Some have responded by planting less or curbing their fertilizer use, which will reduce yields. Others will increase their prices, making food less affordable for the world’s poorest.

Strong yields during last year’s harvest have provided a temporary buffer against increasing food costs, Torero said. But in May the price of cereals like wheat and corn jumped 2.6 percent from the previous month.

Countries that rely heavily on imported food have seen even bigger increases, Bauer noted. In Afghanistan, rice costs at least 30 percent more than it did 12 months ago. The price of flour in Sudan has increased 47 percent year over year.

Even before considering the effects of El Niño, the World Food Program estimates the war will cause 45 million additional people to fall into “acute food insecurity.”

Meanwhile, it’s become more expensive to provide humanitarian relief. Higher fuel prices increase the cost of delivering aid by plane or truck. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has created congestion at other ports. Heightened security concerns across the Middle East region have prompted many vessels to avoid the Red Sea. Bauer said WFP grain shipments that previously routed through the area must now sail all the way around the southern tip of Africa and up through the Mediterranean, adding four weeks, 9,000 miles and enormous additional costs to the journey.

These challenges are unfolding in a world with far less funding available for humanitarian programs than in previous years. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, international aid dropped by nearly a quarter between 2024 and 2025 — the largest annual decline since the organization began tracking. The United States, formerly the world’s largest provider of development assistance, cut its aid budget by more than half.

“This is a multilayered crisis,” Bauer said. “We’re looking at not just a few weeks or a few months where we’re in the danger zone, but it looks like for the next year … we’ll be in a period of extreme risk from a global food security perspective.”

Against this backdrop of economic upheaval, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday that El Niño conditions have officially developed in the eastern Pacific. The U.S. agency’s forecast predicts a 63 percent chance that the event will be “very strong” by winter, and other outlooks have suggested it could break records.

During the natural climate phenomenon, which develops every two to seven years, warming waters in the Pacific Ocean trigger a chain reaction of global weather disruptions. Dangerously dry conditions often emerge in India, Southeast Asia and parts of Africa while other regions are pummeled with more intense rain.

When these weather shifts hit regions racked by conflict, disease or economic turmoil, the consequences can be devastating. An El Niño-linked drought that coincided with a decades-long civil war caused the starvation deaths of an estimated million people in Ethiopia between 1983 and 1985. During the 1997 to 1998 event, record-setting rainfall shortages ravaged Indonesia’s rice crop, tripling the number of people living in poverty in just two years. Perhaps the worst disaster occurred in the late 1880s, when a record-setting El Niño exacerbated by harmful colonial policies led to a global famine that killed more than 50 million people in Brazil, China, India and elsewhere.

Improved monitoring, more robust global trade networks and stronger humanitarian programs have helped mitigate the food shortages often associated with El Niño events.

Yet other global factors could make the impending El Niño more challenging than usual, said Benjamin Selwyn, a professor of international development at the University of Sussex who studies supply chains and food.

For one thing, it is occurring amid dramatically higher global temperatures fueled by human greenhouse gas pollution, which can make its effects more extreme.

Scorching conditions in the tropics will reduce crop growth, diminish the health of livestock and make it less safe for people to work. Weaker and more erratic monsoon rains in India could hurt production of rice, corn and wheat. Drought in Central America’s “dry corridor,” which stretches from Guatemala to Nicaragua, could spell disaster for millions of subsistence farmers, forcing many to migrate.

“Global heating is making the food system more vulnerable, and all these kinds of political and economic events are compounding it,” Selwyn said

Without swift action to protect vulnerable farming regions and enhance humanitarian assistance, Bauer said, the world may soon face not only escalating hunger but intensifying political turmoil.

A 2011 study in the journal Nature found that El Niño events double the probability of new civil conflicts in the tropics — the region hit hardest by the climate pattern. For example, crop failures linked to the powerful 1982 event in Peru may have contributed to escalating clashes between the government and the Shining Path rebel group. The Arab Spring occurred amid price spikes associated with El Niño-induced drought in 2011. The most recent El Niño, in 2022 and 2023, saw protests and food riots break out in countries including Albania, Sri Lanka and South Africa.

“It’s a risk for stability,” Bauer said. “We need to be really open about that.”

Yet the emergence of an El Niño doesn’t automatically doom the world to starvation and suffering, said Amy Ostrander, markets and trade adviser for the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

Although the phenomenon tends to load the dice for crop failures in some vulnerable regions, overall global production usually remains stable.

In other words, there’s still enough food for everyone in an El Niño year. “But it’s moving food around between countries and global and regional trade that is never perfectly efficient,” she said.

If major exporters impose trade restrictions in an attempt to keep domestic prices low — it can make food even less affordable for nations that rely on imports, said Torero. Many of these nations are low-income and heavily indebted, meaning their governments have fewer resources to support farmers or help subsidize the cost of food.

The El Niño forecast has prompted the World Food Program to launch programs to provide farmers with drought-resistant seeds and transfer cash to families so they can prepare for weather disasters. These programs can help stave off crop failures and buffer against the surging cost of food, Bauer said.

But WFP and other humanitarian groups need more resources to reach the growing population in need, he added. The U.N. agency projects that funding shortfalls and the rising cost of delivering aid could cause 9 million people to lose assistance in the coming months.

In hard-hit Somalia, food assistance reaches less than a fifth of the people who need it, Walters said. Her analysis found that many of the country’s rural health and nutrition clinics have shuttered, pushing people to travel farther and spend more to reach the treatment they need.

If the next harvest fails — or is wiped out by flooding — it may lead to widespread starvation and destitution. At least 30 percent of young children could be acutely malnourished. Two out of every 10,000 people could die of hunger every day. The nation will have officially slipped into famine.

“Famine represents extreme levels of human suffering in terms of hunger, malnourishment and mortality,” Walters said. “It’s the most extreme and urgent type of concern one can identify.”

ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN – FROM WALL STREET JOURNAL

WORLD’S FOOD SUPPLY IMPERILED BY IRAN WAR, FERTILIZER MANUFACTURER FERTIGLOBE CHIEF SAYS

Governments need to step up efforts to get fertilizer moving through the Strait of Hormuz and offer more support to farmers, Ahmed El-Hoshy says

By Adam Whittaker June 12, 2026 8:12 am ET

Conflict in the Middle East is threatening to spike grain prices and exacerbate hunger among the world’s poor, the chief executive of fertilizer manufacturer Fertiglobe says.

Global governments need to step up efforts to get fertilizer moving through the Persian Gulf and offer financial support for farmers to help offset the jump in prices, Ahmed El-Hoshy said in an interview.

ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN – FROM THE FENCE POST – GREELEY, CO

EDITORIAL: EMPTY BARNS 

By Kaycee Monnens Cortner Jun 3, 2026

I recently took a trip to my old stomping grounds in eastern South Dakota. The small acreages, silos, and fertile prairie soil were all a stark contrast to my current home in eastern Wyoming. Still, I love to see the differences in land and agriculture across our great country.  

One pattern stuck out to me as I drove further and further east on Highway 212. Empty barns.  

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have an affinity for barns. You know the ones: red or white with a rounded roof and hayloft. Those that still exist have been helped along by continued refurbishing – and thank goodness for that –but few seemed to have any animals in or around them.  

While many old barns still stand, that’s nearly all they do. I think of three generations ago when the barn was the lifeblood of the farm. It’s where cows were milked, teams were hitched, and all manner of animals took shelter from the harsh prairie wind and snow.  

Now, many historic barns are used for storage sheds, if they are even used at all.  

Assuredly, this pattern has been compounding for many years, but I believe the empty old barns are representative of larger issues in the ag industry.  

It is more difficult than ever for younger generations to get involved in agriculture due to ever-increasing land prices and interest rates. Older generations seem to be hanging onto land and homes, rather than downsizing or transferring land to the next steward. Consolidation of land and assets make it difficult for small operators to expand. And those small acreages with once-great barns are hardly profitable enough for people to want to be involved in production agriculture. So, barns are empty.  

This short list is certainly not exhaustive and numerous books could be written about the issues named. However, I will live up to the stereotype that “ranchers are eternal optimists” and choose to find hope and offer encouragement.  

Even though agriculture rapidly changes, some things don’t change. Those who want to be involved in agriculture still need to be flexible, business-minded, and gritty – a lot like those who built those barns. Homesteading wasn’t a walk in the park, but neither is it simple to operate today. The common denominator is that one must be determined in their pursuit of finding an open door.  

One advantage of the modern era is that we live in the information age. That means that there is a plethora of educational resources available to aspiring and operating producers. It may be harder than ever to increase margins, optimize land or run a profitable farm or ranch. But the good news is that one can take affordable online classes, read good books, use agency resources and listen to podcasts to hone one’s knowledge on business, marketing, grazing, production and more.   

Still, no man is an island. Relationships are key to building and growing in agriculture. It is my hope that those who are passionate about entering into ag cross paths with mentors willing to help them achieve their goals.  

The small, growing subset of people who are passionate about growing their own food and raising their kids in agriculture give me cause to hope.  

As an industry, I hope we can collectively work to fill those barns once again.  

ATTACHMENT NINETEEN – FROM THE NATIONAL SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE COALITION (NSAC)

USDA STAFFING CRISIS: NATIONWIDE LOSSES

June 11, 2026

Editor’s Note: This series draws on analysis the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) conducted in partnership with Bernie Kluger, Managing Partner at Prospect Partners, LLC. 

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The past sixteen months have seen an unprecedented staffing crisis unfurl across the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). This blog post offers a fresh look at the depth and breadth of the ongoing staffing crisis, as well as updates on previously reported nationwide staff cuts across other USDA agencies. A second post examines the deep losses sustained by the farmer-serving staff of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and a third uses previously unpublished data on Farm Service Agency (FSA) County employees to examine the devastating losses of local county staff. 

Analysis of federal personnel data from the US Office of Personnel Management confirms widespread headcount reductions across all USDA agencies, with the exception of staffing increases in the immediate office of the Agriculture Secretary, which grew by 18% in 2025. NSAC urges Congress to use every available tool to address the USDA staffing crisis and pass a bipartisan farm bill that restores the department’s capacity to serve farmers and rural communities. 

USDA Impact: Staffing Declines Across All Agencies, Staffing Increase in the Immediate Office of the Secretary

Between January 2025 and January 2026, USDA lost approximately 20,000 employees, according to staffing data published by the US Office of Personnel Management. Every USDA agency was affected, and staff losses were spread across the entire nation. Our analysis attributes the majority of staff losses (~15,000) to the so-called Deferred Resignation Program, a program run by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to encourage federal employees to voluntarily leave their positions.

On July 24, 2025 US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released a memo (SM-1078-015) announcing a planned reorganization of the department, drafted without consultation with farmers, Congress, or other stakeholders. After stakeholders responded with widespread concern, the Secretary announced an ad hoc, informal opportunity to comment on the reorganization, which generated 46,845 responses. According to USDA’s own analysis, 82% of comments were negative, expressing serious concerns with the reorganization. Major themes of concern included the loss of local oversight and expertise, reduction in personnel and resources, and a desire for adequate staffing in every county. 

Despite these overwhelmingly negative responses and continued concern from stakeholders about local presence, the Secretary has continued to move forward with the reorganization plan that would relocate agency headquarters and leadership. Thus far, reorganization plans have been announced for the Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services agency; Food Safety and Inspection Service; Research, Education, and Economics mission area; and the Forest Service. Reporting on employee reactions to the reorganization plan suggests that relocation will lead to further staff losses, exacerbating the existing USDA staffing crisis with negative consequences for farmer and rancher-facing services. A recent survey by the American Federation of Government Employees, for example, found that 76% of its members do not plan to relocate when required by the reorganization plan and would instead leave their positions. 

STAFF LOSSES ARE NATIONWIDE

While Secretary Rollins and other headquarters leadership have attempted to frame the USDA reorganization as moving staff out of DC and closer to farmers, the reality is the vast majority of USDA staff already work outside of DC. In January 2025, just 3.24% of all USDA employees worked in Washington, DC. By January 2026, after massive staff losses, still just 3.56% of all USDA employees worked in DC. In reality, 98% of the USDA staff lost between January 2025 and January 2026 were outside of Washington, DC (19,259 employees). 

The map below shows the percentage and number of USDA staff lost in each state between January 2025 and January 2026. 

Figure 1: USDA Staff Losses January 2025-January 2026

Percent USDA Staff Loss Jan 2025-Jan 2026

−13%−41%

SEE Map: NSAC & Prospect Partners Source: OPM, FOIA Get the data Created with Datawrapper

Every state and territory lost USDA staff during this time period. The states that lost the highest number of staff were: Maryland (1,411), California (1,080), Texas (925), Virginia (896), Colorado (850), Oregon (682), New Mexico (640), Kansas (559), Georgia (546), and Missouri (514). 

The relative impact of staffing losses was unevenly spread, with multiple states losing over 20% of staff. The 10 states experiencing the largest percentage staff losses include: Maryland (41%), Rhode Island (41%), Virginia (37%), Maine (29%), Alaska (29%), Kansas (28%), Massachusetts (27%), Vermont (27%), New York (25%), and Florida (24%). 

Note: the biggest losses were in Democratic states

Figure 2: Top 10 States with USDA Staff Losses (Jan 2025-Jan 2026)

Source: Office of Personnel Management (OPM), FSA County staff provided via FOIA on April 8, 2026 

LOSS OF EXPERIENCED STAFF

USDA also experienced a dramatic loss of highly experienced and skilled staff. Between January 2025 and January 2026, the number of staff with more than ten years of service declined by nearly 7,000 (from 45,247 in 2025 to just 38,291 in 2026). These experienced mid and late-career staff carry irreplaceable institutional knowledge that supports the functioning of the department.

EVERY USDA AGENCY LOST STAFF

While the overall loss of 1 in 5 USDA employees is already staggering, some departmental agencies had even more significant staffing losses. The Office of Partnerships and Public Engagement (OPPE) lost more than half of its staff (55%), the Office of Budget and Program Analysis (OBPA) lost 41%, National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) 40%, Rural Development (RD) 36%, and National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) 36%. Staff losses at NIFA are particularly troubling, with the Government Accountability Office reporting lingering negative impacts on productivity following a previous relocation in 2019 of the agency to Kansas City, MO.

Table 1: USDA Staff Losses by Agency (Jan 2025-Jan 2026)

USDA Agency	Jan-25	Jan-26	% Staff Loss
Office Of Partnerships And Public Engagement	53	24	-55%
Office Of Budget And Program Analysis	59	35	-41%
National Institute Of Food And Agriculture	473	284	-40%
Rural Development	4,873	3,097	-36%
National Agricultural Statistics Service	781	498	-36%
FPAC Business Center	1,594	1,030	-35%
Departmental Administration	507	330	-35%
Food And Nutrition Service	1,834	1,202	-34%
Civil Rights	148	97	-34%
Economic Research Service	292	198	-32%
Agricultural Research Service	7,109	4,916	-31%
Office Of Communications	40	29	-28%
National Appeals Division	66	48	-27%
Office Of The Chief Financial Officer	989	730	-26%
Office Of The Chief Economist	67	50	-25%
Office Of The Chief Information Officer	1,585	1,191	-25%
Foreign Agricultural Service	713	543	-24%
Office Of The General Counsel	275	210	-24%
Natural Resources Conservation Service	11,861	9,078	-23%
Animal And Plant Health Inspection Se..	8,672	6,663	-23%
Farm Service Agency (Federal)	3,284	2,604	-21%
Homeland Security Staff	57	46	-19%
Risk Management Agency	418	351	-16%
Forest Service	31,257	26,260	-16%
Office Of The Inspector General	422	359	-15%
Agricultural Marketing Service	4,478	3,890	-13%
Food Safety And Inspection Service	8,310	7,444	-10%
Farm Service Agency (County)	7672	7022	-8%
Office Of The Secretary Of Agriculture	97	114	18%
Total	97,986	78,343	-20%

Source: Office of Personnel Management (OPM), FSA County staff provided via FOIA on April 8, 2026 

The current Administration’s impact on the “People’s Agency” is clear: USDA has lost one in five of its employees in just twelve months, with the overwhelming majority of cuts to staff capacity and expertise happening at the state and county level. The reorganization plan now underway risks transforming a shortfall into a crisis, as the majority of employees subject to relocation requirements have indicated they would leave the agency rather than uproot their lives and families to move. The posts that follow examine in greater detail the losses sustained by two agencies with the most direct farmer-facing roles: the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Farm Service Agency.

Congress must treat the collapse of USDA’s workforce as a crisis that can be averted. With one in five USDA employees gone in a single year and reorganization plans poised to drive further departures, lawmakers must use every available lever to reverse course. America’s farmers, ranchers, and rural communities are facing serious challenges, and they need a USDA that is fully staffed and fully functional. 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY – FROM SUCCESSFUL FARMING (IOWA)/DAILY YONDER (KY)

UNDER TRUMP, THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE HAS DITCHED CONSERVATION AND CLIMATE EFFORTS

By The Daily Yonder Published on June 8, 2026

Also with Georgina Gustin / Inside Climate News and Peter Aldhous / Inside Climate News

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Amanda Koehler has spent the past decade working to help young and first-time farmers gain access to land—the single biggest obstacle for people who aspire to grow crops or raise animals but can’t afford the soaring cost of acreage.

Recently she and other advocates learned the Trump administration in late March quietly axed a little-known but nonetheless critical Biden-era program designed to boost opportunities for these farmers, determining the program had, in essence, failed. In fact, it was just gaining momentum.

“I wasn’t surprised it happened,” Koehler said. “But the timing was a shock.”

The program, called Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access, aimed to help underrepresented farmers, but also had the potential indirect effect of countering the growing consolidation and corporate control in the agriculture industry, which has made it nearly impossible for new farmers to break into the business. These larger, industrial-scale farms are typically responsible for agriculture’s sizable carbon impacts.

The cut to the program, which cost a relatively modest $300 million in total, is only the latest in a series of Trump administration moves targeting conservation programs and staff at the USDA. During the Biden administration, USDA launched a number of climate and conservation initiatives to address agriculture’s role — as both culprit and victim — in the climate crisis.

During the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, many of those were slashed or altered in a way that either disadvantages small-scale farmers in favor of big operators or sidelines conservation efforts.

Overall, USDA lost 21% of its workforce — compared with a 12% cut across the entire federal government, according to an Inside Climate News analysis of data from the Office of Personnel Management covering the first year of the second Trump administration. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the agency’s primary department overseeing climate-related efforts, took one of the biggest blows, losing more than 23% of its staff, dropping from nearly 12,000 employees to just over 9,000.

“All federal agencies got hit hard, but USDA got hit really, really hard,” said Becky Schewe, a policy analyst for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition who extensively analyzed USDA staff cuts last year. “And NRCS got hit particularly hard. These are the people providing technical guidance and assistance and support for farmers; they’re the ones managing and paying out working lands conservation programs.… All of those staff losses have a direct conservation and climate impact.”

The vast majority of these cuts, Schewe noted, were staff who left the agency voluntarily, through the Department of Government Efficiency’s deferred resignation program in which employees agreed to leave federal agencies in April of last year, but got paid through September. 

“A large part of it has to do with morale,” Schewe noted. “They thought they were going to lose their jobs anyway.”

Most of the staff who left the agency served or lived in rural areas and were not based in or near Washington, D.C., even though the administration had said Washington-based employees were its primary target for termination. While the agency’s Washington headquarters lost 12%, and offices in suburban Maryland, home to major research and inspection wings of USDA, lost about 40%, some ag-heavy states, including Kansas and Illinois, lost as much as 30%.

All of those staff losses have a direct conservation and climate impact.

— Becky Schewe, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

“There’s this disconnect between the rhetoric that we’re, quote, moving service closer to farmers and the fact that they are, in fact, laying off or separating or moving staff who serve farmers directly and are already in the field,” Schewe said.

Many of the highly trained soil scientists and engineers who consult with farmers on how to implement and assess conservation practices are now gone, and those still serving these areas are often stretched thin over several counties rather than one or two. 

The NRCS staff “work in extremely close partnership with farmers on a day-to-day basis,” said Rebecca Bartels, executive director of Invest in Our Land, a newly formed group focused on protecting conservation dollars for farmers. “We see a lot of concerns, both on the delivery of the programs and also for farmers’ ability to navigate how the conservation practices that the program facilitates can help them overcome very real day-to-day challenges like extreme weather.”

President Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, provided about $19.5 billion to farmers for practices deemed to have a beneficial climate impact. Under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed last July, $14 billion that had not yet been spent was instead rolled into USDA’s baseline spending for conservation programs.

Ultimately that provided more permanent funding for conservation programs over time. But in the process, the administration lifted rules that direct the funds to be spent specifically on programs with a climate benefit. The new legislation also raised income limits on conservation funding, meaning large farms with greater resources and technical support can qualify for conservation funding that doesn’t have a climate-specific goal. 

“Where there’s real concern is how this is going to play out,” said Richa Patel, a policy specialist with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “With a lack of staff, it’ll just be easier to write contracts for the folks who are well resourced … and don’t need that more technical one-on-one help and support from their local field staff, because there’s just far less of them.”

The lack of field staff also means the administration’s own programs appear to be getting shortchanged. In December, USDA announced a new “Regenerative Pilot Program” intended to help farmers deploy more conservation practices, such as growing soil-restoring cover crops or implementing grazing management techniques to control erosion. But farmers have reported that their local NRCS offices are unfamiliar with the program or how to help them carry it out.

Even among politically conservative farmers, who historically have questioned the causes of climate change, conservation and climate programs have become hugely popular. USDA’s largest conservation program, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), pays farmers to achieve certain conservation benefits.

“EQIP is wildly oversubscribed and popular,” Bartels said. “How will farmers continue to trust that if they choose to enroll, a contract will be respected and staff will be there to support them?”

Koehler, who manages the Land, Capital, and Market Access Network, said she knows of many farmers who had to seek professional help to secure a grant in the past three years, at significant cost to them. “The farms that can access the program are farms that are able to find and pay for their own technical assistance,” she explained. “I know farmers who were unable to get a [Conservation Stewardship Program] or EQIP contract without hiring a grant writer. That’s not how these programs should work.”

USDA’s staff cuts have accompanied the agency’s announcements of major reorganizations. At the end of March, the agency announced it would move the U.S. Forest Service headquarters from D.C. to Utah and “begin a sweeping restructuring of the agency to move leadership closer to the forests and communities it serves.”

USDA hasn’t yet disclosed the fate of the departments across the rest of the agency.

“We know very little in terms of formally confirmed and shared information there,” Schewe said. “I would say the department is very tight-lipped. They’re not even providing information to staff, much less to other stakeholders.”

Schewe referenced public announcements from the agency about office lease terminations, suggesting it is indeed planning for staff relocations. “So it’s definitely moving forward,” she added. “But the status of what it is and what their plans are is very unclear.”

When asked for details, a USDA spokesperson responded by email: “Secretary [of Agriculture Brooke] Rollins understands the array of mission critical positions and programs at the department, and she will ensure that those areas, including NRCS, have the resources and personnel they need to continue serving the American people,” they wrote. “Some aspects of the reorganization will be implemented over the coming months while other aspects will take more time to implement. As the reorganization progresses, employees and other relevant parties will be updated accordingly.”

Beyond staff shuffling and cuts, USDA has slashed individual conservation and diversity-focused grants.

FarmStand, a legal advocacy group, has sued the administration, demanding it provide a full record of how it chose the grants to cut. So far, the USDA has not provided it, but what it has produced shows that the agency targeted any awarded grant that had an array of terms, including “equity,” “environmental justice,” “climate change,” or “biodiversity.”

“They just typed words into a database, saw what hit and then listed those grants for termination,” said David Muraskin, managing director for litigation at FarmStand. “It was like: ‘Let’s find the people who you can point to as getting grants like this and terminate them regardless of reason.’”

They withheld approvals that grantees were required to get to do the work, and so they essentially bottlenecked the program and then blamed awardees for not making progress.

— Amanda Koehler, Land, Capital, and Market Access Network

Michigan Senate Panel Mulls Financial ‘Catch-22’ for Farms Pledged Federal Clean Energy Funding

The recent termination of 49 out of the 50 Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access projects, announced in late March, effectively killed the entire program and is just a continuation of that process, critics say.

“It’s clear we’re seeing the ripple effects of this blunderbuss approach,” Muraskin said, noting that the termination letters grantees received accused the grant program of fraud, abuse and waste, but didn’t cite specific allegations.

In fact, Koehler said, USDA froze the funding for the grants for months. “They withheld approvals that grantees were required to get to do the work, and so they essentially bottlenecked the program and then blamed awardees for not making progress,” she said.

The grants and low-interest loans for farmland, farm infrastructure and equipment were intended to provide practical support. “These are people who are trying to feed their communities and care for the land,” Koehler added. “And we all know that young and underserved producers are much more likely to participate in regenerative and climate-smart practices.”

A USDA spokesperson said that the agency terminated the grants because of an “egregious misuse of taxpayer dollars to the tune of $300 million,” saying that inappropriate spending under the program included $20,000 for a barbeque smoker, $110,000 for a camper, and $20,000 for pens. 

Like many critics of the current USDA, Koehler pointed to the rare progress the agency had finally made toward addressing climate change—long overdue, many advocates say—under the Biden administration.

“Under the last administration, climate became a clear priority for the first time,” Koehler said. “And it’s been very concerning to see the loss of these programs and the loss of this focus.”

The Daily Yonder provides news, commentary, and analysis about and for rural America. You can see daily coverage at dailyyonder.com.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE – FROM FEDERAL NEWS NETWORK

USDA EMPLOYEES FACING RELOCATION WEIGH WHETHER TO STAY OR GO. SOME ARE ELIGIBLE FOR INCENTIVES EITHER WAY

National Agricultural Statistics Service employees facing relocation are being offered incentives to leave or stay with the agency.

By Jory Heckman June 11, 2026 7:08 pm

The Agriculture Department is making an ultimatum to thousands of its employees as part of its sweeping relocation plans — move to keep their jobs or quit.

USDA is embarking on a multi-part reorganization plan that includes relocating more than half of its D.C.-area workforce to hubs across the country by the end of this summer. About 90% of USDA employees already work outside of the Washington, D.C. area.

Employees impacted by relocation plans work at the Food Safety and Inspection Service, Forest Service, Economic Research Service, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and Food and Nutrition Service. USDA employees outside the D.C. area are also receiving relocation notices.

USDA is setting different deadlines for employees at its component agencies to make their decisions.

Employees at the department’s National Agricultural Statistics Service have until July 8 to decide whether to accept their reassignment to St. Louis or one of the agency’s regional offices. NASS employs about 500 employees, most of them working as agricultural statisticians. The agency serves as an authoritative source of data on crop production, livestock, and farm finance. It conducts a census every five years to collect agricultural data on every county in the United States.

In a memo sent Monday, NASS wrote that employees who agree to relocate must report to their new office by Sept. 21. USDA wrote in its notice that employees may have the option to voluntarily report to their new location sooner than their official relocation date.

“NASS maintains a policy of effective, efficient and balanced utilization of human and other resources to achieve program goals. Based on program needs, management has decided to reassign your current position,” the agency wrote.

The decision isn’t an easy one for most impacted USDA employees. Internal union surveys show a majority of their members would rather leave the agency than relocate to keep their jobs. That’s what happened under the first Trump administration, when USDA tried to move hundreds of jobs to Kansas City. The department’s research agencies dealt with major staffing shortages that took years to resolve.

But regardless of their choice, employees at NASS are eligible for financial incentives. According to the notice obtained by Federal News Network and conversations with those impacted, NASS employees who agree to move and commit to working in their new office for two years will receive a relocation incentive. The notice, however, doesn’t offer much detail about what employees would receive.

A USDA spokesperson didn’t provide any additional details about the relocation incentive, or whether employees at other department components will be eligible to receive one.

“The secretary continues to work methodically and thoughtfully to deliver on the president’s mandate for better accountability to the American taxpayer,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Each mission area is mindful of the critical functions it delivers and the customers it serves, and each announcement and implementation plan is reflective of that.”

The memo also states that NASS and all components under USDA’s research, education and economic mission area will offer buyouts and early retirement to employees who received relocation notices. The Forest Service told employees earlier this month that it will offer Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP) to staff impacted by its relocation plans.

Employees at the Food Safety and Inspection Service, which is relocating about two-thirds of its D.C.-area workforce to “mission-critical locations,” including Iowa and Georgia, were told last week they must decide whether to relocate or quit their jobs by June 30. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture sent relocation notices to non-bargaining unit employees on Monday. But bargaining-unit employees have not yet received their notices.

One NIFA employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, told Federal News Network that they are “actively seeking another job, but said they have not yet decided what they will do.

“If I can get a job that meets my needs, then I will quit the federal government, even though I don’t want to,” the NIFA employee said. “My family can’t afford for me to be unemployed. If we have to move, we will. We will leave behind family and friends and a life we love.”

USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden told lawmakers last summer that department leaders expect fewer employees will refuse to move this time around, because mass layoffs across the federal workforce have made the job search more challenging in the D.C. area.

“I think many of them will choose to come, because given cuts made by other federal agencies here in Washington, D.C., the job market isn’t what it once was here,” Vaden told the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee last June.

The NIFA employee said many of their colleagues were hired as remote employees and are now being asked to move to cities “a lot of us have never visited and have no ties to.” They said the lump-sum relocation program “won’t cover our actual costs.”

“Now I have to evaluate how much money we’d lose by moving, versus how long I might be unemployed if I quit,  and figure out what my best options are,” the NIFA employee said. “I didn’t expect, going into public service, or really with any position, to have to pay out of pocket just to keep my job, but that’s what’s happening.”

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told lawmakers during a House Agriculture Committee hearing last week that the relocations across the country will be a “massive value add” for USDA research.

“We have some extraordinary researchers, but most of them don’t want to be in Washington, D.C.,” Rollins said. “The challenge is when you have decades of Washington, D.C.-located research, they’re doing extraordinary work, but you begin to lose out on the opportunity to have some of the brightest minds who may not want … to move to Washington, where it’s much more expensive to live and to do that research.”

Surveys from USDA unions, however, suggest employees are less willing to relocate. Internal polling conducted by the National Treasury Employees Union in May found that 80% of D.C.-area Food and Nutrition Service employees would quit their jobs rather than relocate this summer. Another survey conducted by the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, representing ERS and NIFA employees, found that about 76% of its members are not planning to relocate.

NASS employees who agree to move and commit to working in their new office for a year will be partially compensated for relocation expenses through the department’s new “lump sum” reimbursement model. AFGE said the new reimbursement model is less generous than what USDA offered to employees who relocated under the first Trump administration.

Traditional federal reimbursement policies cover costs such as shipping household goods, moving employees and their families, tax allowances and other discretionary items like temporary storage. USDA’s “lump sum” model would provide a flat moving reimbursement rate for relocating employees, based on the department’s moving cost calculations. USDA said its new “lump sum” model will expedite reimbursement processing times, improve cost predictability and reduce administrative burden.  But AFGE officials say the new policy could mean some employees end up spending thousands of dollars out of pocket in moving costs.

“Moving or relocation expenses incurred by you in connection with this reassignment will be paid by the agency in accordance with the relocation lump-sum program,” NASS wrote in its notice. “Exact entitlement is determined on a case-by-case basis, but with the lump-sum program, employees receive a single lump-sum payment, calculated using employee-specific data, to cover relocation allowances.”

Between January 2025 and January 2026, USDA lost about 20,000 employees, according to federal workforce data published by the Office of Personnel Management. Since the start of the second Trump administration, USDA components impacted by upcoming relocation plans have lost 30% to 40% of their staff.

If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email jheckman@federalnewsnetwork.com, or reach out on Signal at jheckman.29

ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO – FROM VISUAL CAPITALIST

2/22/26

In parts of the United States, nearly one in five households struggle to afford enough food.

The latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reveals stark geographic divides in food insecurity across the country. While the national average sits at 13.3%, several states—concentrated largely in the South—report rates far above that level.

This map breaks down where food insecurity is highest by state, highlighting the regional inequalities shaping access to basic necessities in America today.

Ranked: Food Insecurity Rates by State

For the analysis, the USDA surveyed 32,719 households between 2022 and 2024 on their level of food insecurity.

Food insecurity is considered as the lack of consistent access to enough nutritious food, driven by limited financial resources. The table below shows state averages over the period.

Search:

Rank	State	Share of Households	Average Number of Households
1	Arkansas	19.4%	1.3M
2	Kentucky	18.8%	1.8M
3	Louisiana	17.7%	1.9M
4	Texas	17.6%	11.5M
5	Mississippi	17.3%	1.2M
6	Oklahoma	16.9%	1.6M
7	Wyoming	15.6%	0.2M
8	Nevada	15.0%	1.3M
9	Michigan	14.7%	4.2M
10	Georgia	14.6%	4.3M
11	New Mexico	14.5%	0.9M
12	Ohio	14.2%	4.9M
13	West Virginia	14.1%	0.7M
14	New York	14.0%	7.9M
15	Indiana	13.7%	2.8M
16	South Carolina	13.5%	2.3M
17	Florida	13.3%	9.3M
18	Illinois	13.3%	5.1M
19	Missouri	13.3%	2.6M
20	Tennessee	13.3%	3.0M
21	Arizona	13.1%	2.9M
22	Alaska	13.0%	0.3M
23	Maine	12.9%	0.6M
24	Nebraska	12.7%	0.8M
25	Idaho	12.6%	0.8M
26	California	12.5%	14.0M
27	Kansas	12.5%	1.2M
28	Oregon	12.5%	1.7M
29	Virginia	12.4%	3.5M
30	Alabama	12.1%	2.1M
31	Connecticut	12.1%	1.4M
32	Wisconsin	12.0%	2.5M
33	North Carolina	11.8%	4.4M
34	Massachusetts	11.7%	2.8M
35	Montana	11.7%	0.5M
36	Maryland	11.5%	2.3M
37	Utah	11.5%	1.2M
38	Washington	11.0%	3.2M
39	Pennsylvania	10.9%	5.3M
40	Delaware	10.8%	0.4M
41	Hawaii	10.8%	0.5M
42	Iowa	10.8%	1.4M
43	Rhode Island	10.6%	0.4M
44	Colorado	10.5%	2.4M
45	District of Columbia	10.3%	0.3M
46	Minnesota	9.9%	2.3M
47	New Jersey	9.8%	3.6M
48	South Dakota	9.5%	0.4M
49	Vermont	9.4%	0.3M
50	New Hampshire	9.1%	0.6M
51	North Dakota	9.0%	0.3M

ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE – FROM SOURCE NEW MEXICO

NEW STUDY FINDS NEW MEXICO UNDERESTIMATES, FAILS TO INVESTIGATE FEDERAL FOOD ASSISTANCE FRAUD

Health Care Authority Secretary agrees agency’s inspector general should investigate more alleged fraud in SNAP program

By: Patrick Lohmann June 16, 2026 3:00 pm

Two New Mexico smoke shops each received more than $400,000 in 2025 in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Payments, according to the Legislative Finance Committee.

New Mexico legislative analysts tasked with assessing fraud among state recipients of federal food assistance reported Tuesday that the state’s low fraud rate may be misleading and stems from a failure to collect data and investigate fraud allegations.

The Legislative Finance Committee’s 78-page report, six months in the making, resulted from a $50,000 appropriation Republican state legislators secured in November. At the time, the Legislature had just agreed to allocate up to $162.5 million in state funding to pay Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits amid a federal government shutdown.

New Mexico has the nation’s highest SNAP reliance rate — 21.5% — of any state in the country and typically oversees more than $90 million a month in federal SNAP benefits that go to more than 445,000 New Mexicans, or roughly one in five.

The Legislative Finance Committee’s report, which analysts presented to lawmakers on Tuesday during an interim Legislative Committee meeting in Ruidoso, found that New Mexico’s fraud rate was .04%, far less than the national average of between 1% and 2%. 

But analysts stressed that figure underestimates the state’s actual fraud rates and buttressed their assertion by providing examples of “high-risk” SNAP transactions they said the New Mexico Health Care Authority, including its inspector general’s office, should have caught.  

“The HCA Office of the Inspector General is under-investigating and under-identifying potential SNAP fraud,” LFC analyst Clayton Lobaugh told lawmakers.

The transactions the LFC flagged include an estimated $85 million annually that New Mexico SNAP recipients spend in other states. While recipients can spend SNAP dollars wherever they like, repeated out-of-state SNAP spending likely means recipients are violating the state’s requirements that recipients live in New Mexico. 

The LFC review also found two smoke shops in the state that each collected more than $400,000 in SNAP payments in 2025 — suspiciously high amounts for businesses that don’t primarily sell food. The LFC did not name the smoke shops but included photos of them, including one with a large sign announcing that it accepted SNAP debit cards. 

The federal USDA authorizes SNAP retailers, though analysts said the state could have flagged the smoke shops to the USDA.

In addition to those specific cases, the report also looked closely at how the HCA’s Office of the Inspector General handled fraud allegations it received through a state telephone and email tipline. 

Between fiscal years 2018 and 2023, the office received 9,953 tips but completed only 312 investigations, according to the report, which amounts to roughly 3%. 

The HCA also disqualifies the smallest percentage of SNAP recipients after findings of potential fraud than any other state in the country, according to the report. 

For instance, in fiscal year 2023, only 18 SNAP recipients were disqualified, amounting to 0.004% of the state’s SNAP recipients. 

That same year, the national average disqualification rate was 0.1% — a rate 250 times higher than New Mexico’s. 

HCA Secretary Kari Armijo told lawmakers that she largely agreed with the LFC report’s findings, including that the inspector general’s lack of fraud investigations “is an area that the agency needs to do better on.”

But she said the inspector general’s office often doesn’t investigate cases that allege small amounts of fraud, based partially on local prosecutors’ unwillingness to bring criminal charges unless large amounts of money are stolen. And investigating fraud takes a long time, which also means the agency might be trying to only go after major cases.

“We have an investigation backlog right now,” she told lawmakers. “Investigations don’t get cleared quickly. They take a lot of time.”

Republicans in both chambers of the Legislature said the report shows New Mexico’s food system “is broken” and accused the HCA of willfully enabling fraud.

A system that rarely verifies, seldom audits, and barely investigates fraud is a system designed to fail,” House Republicans said in a statement Tuesday morning.

But LFC Chair Nathan Small (D-Las Cruces) noted during Tuesday’s hearing that the median income of SNAP households is roughly $30,000, less than half the $77,000 median salary statewide. SNAP fraud that comprises a fraction of overall spending should not be used as reason to restrict eligibility, he said. 

“These are households — without this help — their ability to sort of go and make it through a day, much less a week, much less a month, much less a year, is very, very challenging,” he said, “particularly as we see elevated fuel costs, which are going to translate into elevated food costs, because of the war on Iran.”

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FOUR – FROM PRO PUBLICA

MORE THAN 770,000 CHILDREN ARE NO LONGER RECEIVING SNAP BENEFITS AFTER TRUMP CHANGES FEDERAL FOOD PROGRAM

Republican backers of Trump’s signature domestic policy bill repeatedly claimed that revisions to the food benefits program wouldn’t affect the most vulnerable. But reports from a dozen states show children are losing access.

by Nicole Santa Cruz June 17, 2026, 6:00 am

As a House committee debated President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy bill last year, Republican backers repeatedly emphasized that its changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, wouldn’t affect vulnerable people.

SNAP reforms would “restore integrity” to the program and ensure it works for the “most vulnerable among us, including children,” said Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican and chair of the House Agriculture Committee.

Passing the bill would be a “historic accomplishment” that will ensure “those in need can continue to receive the assistance they need,” said Rep. John Rose, a Republican from Tennessee.

And Rep. Dusty Johnson, a South Dakota Republican, said the bill would focus resources on the “neediest” Americans. “If you are a pregnant woman, your benefits are unaffected. If you have young children at home, your benefits are unaffected by this bill. If you are disabled, your benefits are unaffected by this bill.”

But nearly a year after the measure was signed into law, the number of children receiving food assistance has plummeted by at least 776,000, according to a ProPublica analysis. At least 12 states break down program participation by age, and of the 1,670,011 people who are no longer receiving benefits in those states, 776,134, or 46%, were children.

Another analysis reached the same conclusion: Just last month, the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found there were 700,000 fewer children receiving food assistance.

Arizona has seen the nation’s largest percentage decline in SNAP participants; 205,223 children are no longer receiving the benefit since July 2025, a 55% drop. Louisiana had the second largest percent decline among children, 22%.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, hasn’t detailed the impact on children aided by the program, but initial figures show that compared to February 2025, 4.3 million fewer people received SNAP nationwide in February 2026, leaving 37.8 million participants.

Although children weren’t the intended targets of the legislation’s changes, they’re increasingly “collateral damage,” said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

If states are trying to comply with the law’s changes to SNAP, they’re likely not focusing on making the program accessible, Bergh said. Other experts said that people may be pushed off the program because of increased paperwork requirements to remain eligible.

States are required to impose work requirements for most adult recipients, while preparing for two major cost shifts. In October, states will begin covering 75% of the program’s administrative costs. States have been paying 50% of those costs.

In addition, states will have to pay a larger share of SNAP benefits starting in October 2027, based on their error rate. Error rates reflect overpayments or underpayments of SNAP benefits. While sometimes characterized as fraud, such errors are usually the fault of the state agency or the SNAP recipient, according to USDA, which describes them as “largely unintentional.”

If a state agency is facing staffing shortages and struggling to comply with new regulations, it will be harder for low-income families to access the benefits, Bergh said. “Families are falling through the cracks.”

In Massachusetts, for example, the share of SNAP applicants who called an assistance line and couldn’t reach a worker rose from 61% in November to nearly 81% in March, according to the Department of Transitional Assistance, which administers SNAP in the state. The state agency did not respond to a request for comment.

A USDA spokesperson did not address ProPublica’s questions about the number of children who have lost access to SNAP. “There is no shortage of resources for the most vulnerable among us, including children,” the spokesperson said.

The three members of the House Agriculture Committee who defended last year’s bill before its passage — Rose, Thompson and Johnson — did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about their statements now that many children no longer receive SNAP benefits.

Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins about her recent comments that it was “good news” that millions of people no longer receive SNAP. If more than 700,000 children have been dropped in the 12 states that report those figures, “that number’s going to be into the millions” when other states are included, he said.

Rollins responded, “The 700,000 number of children is not correct,” contending that most people who were kicked off SNAP were “fraudulent.”

“That is not a nonpartisan group that gave you that number,” she said. (ProPublica independently verified the figures reported by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)

McGovern said he has talked to people who have lost food assistance. “These are people who actually need and rely on this food assistance to provide basic nutrition for their families,” he said.

Pressure to lower error rates “creates a temptation for the states to bump off working families,” said Parke Wilde, a food economist at Tufts University. Working families may have more volatile incomes, making it harder for state agencies to assess benefits accurately.

“When they say we want to preserve SNAP for those with the greatest need, they’re sort of acknowledging that they want the scale of the SNAP program to be smaller,” he said.

Mariana Chilton, an expert in child hunger at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said a smaller program won’t save money in the long run. Research shows that children who receive SNAP benefits are healthier, have better academic outcomes, use hospitals less often and have better mental health as teenagers.

She called the situation a “public health crisis” in the making. “When children are not healthy, this affects children today and it affects them throughout their lifetimes,” she said, likening hunger during early childhood to a brain injury.

As Arizona’s SNAP participation drops, nonprofits are feeling the effects. St. Mary’s Food Bank, the largest in the state, has seen a 15% increase in need this year, which translates into 300,000 more visits from people in search of food, said Milt Liu, the chief executive officer.

“It’s important for everyone to realize that policies have implications for people on the edge, and we’re seeing that in our line every day,” he said.

On a recent morning, Ana Alvarez waited in a line of vehicles at a St. Mary’s food bank in Phoenix. Alvarez, a single mother of five who works at a restaurant, started coming to St. Mary’s after she lost her SNAP benefits in September.

She reapplied for SNAP with the Arizona Department of Economic Security in December, but the application is still pending. The department did not respond to questions about its backlog.

She clips coupons and has cut out trips to the zoo and restaurants with her children. The slow season at the restaurant where she works is about to hit. And as summer temperatures rise, Alvarez wonders how she will afford her electric bill, her rent and her car payment.

At least once a week she contacts the agency about her application. The last time she called, a worker told her what others have in the past: She will have to keep waiting.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FIVE – FROM TENNESSEELOOKOUT.COM

AFTER ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL ACT, 100,000 TENNESSEANS’ LOSE SNAP FOOD AID

Advocates for low-income Tennesseans say the cuts are coming as more Tennessee families struggle to put food on the table

By: Anita Wadhwani June 16, 20265:02 am

As she neared her 60th birthday, the stable pieces of Cassandra Doyle’s life began to fall away: first, she was laid off from her job. Then, a newly-purchased used car died in the middle of the freeway. 

She depleted her savings and retirement to pay rent, as she unsuccessfully tried to find a job with limited transportation. Ultimately, Doyle said, she decided to make a fresh start in Nashville, arriving in December from her hometown of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Weeks after she moved to Tennessee, Doyle was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. 

Living in a woman’s shelter while undergoing treatment at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Doyle in January qualified for a $300 Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, to supplement the food provided at the shelter with the healthy and fresh foods her healthcare providers urged her to consume. She lost that benefit in April.

“The notice said I was denied because I am able-bodied,” Doyle said. Notice came from the Department of Human Services, which administers the federal program in Tennessee.

Boyle joins about 100,000 people in Tennessee who have lost the federal food aid since July 2025, according to state enrollment data. In May of this year, 597,890 Tennesseans received some level of SNAP benefits, down from 696,000 people in July 2025, the data shows. One out of every seven individuals who relied on the benefit last year no longer have it.

The drop in enrollment coincides with a new law from the Trump Administration that rewrote many of the rules in the program. Beginning last July, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act cut $186 billion from the SNAP program, an 80-year-old federal program that provides low income individuals and families a monthly cash benefit, loaded onto debit cards, to spend at the grocery store. 

The law also added and expanded the requirement to hold down a job or attend school as a condition of receiving the benefit: previously, the rules made exceptions for individuals over the age of 55, veterans, children aging out of foster care and individuals experiencing homelessness. Now, these individuals must work or attend training or school to get the food assistance.

Boyle falls into two of the new categories: she is unhoused and over 55. She has applied for federal disability benefits, but these can take months, or even years, to obtain. In the meantime, she said that even if she felt physically well enough to work, her frequent cancer treatments and doctors appointments make it nearly impossible to find a job. 

“It’s frustrating, because I’m trying to do the right thing all the way through. That’s what it feels like, ‘you are doing what you are supposed to do and you get penalized for it,” said Cassandra Boyle of qualifying for federal food benefits.

“I’m just so close to saying, ‘forget it,’ and figuring out a way to get any job,” she said. A job would allow her to rent an apartment and move on with her life. “But the reason I haven’t done it is simply, with my medical stuff going on, who’s to say I wouldn’t end up homeless again in a few months?”

“It’s frustrating, because I’m trying to do the right thing all the way through. That’s what it feels like, ‘you are doing what you are supposed to do and you get penalized for it,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Human Services said last week the agency does not track how many individuals lost benefits due to new work or other federal requirements imposed by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Individuals may roll on and off for a variety of reasons, including changes in their economic circumstances, job loss and job gains.

“We do not have data available at this time specifically tracking the information you have requested,” the spokesperson said. “As previously mentioned, there are many factors that affect an individual’s SNAP eligibility.”

Advocates with the Tennessee Justice Center, a Nashville-based nonprofit legal advocacy organization, said the steep drop in enrollment since the legislation’s adoption makes the correlation clear. 

“Tennesseans did not suddenly stop needing help putting food on the table,” said Signe Anderson,  senior director of nutrition advocacy at the Tennessee Justice Center. 

“What changed was the law. New barriers and paperwork requirements have made it harder for working families, older adults, veterans, and children to access the nutrition assistance that they are qualified to receive.” 

Tennesseans did not suddenly stop needing help putting food on the table.

– Signe Anderson, Tennessee Justice Center

Even as enrollment drops, the Department of Humans Services has taken alternative steps to expand eligibility for certain individuals, the department spokesperson said. 

The state last month adopted a new category, referred to as “broad-based categorical eligibility” that raises the income and asset limits for individuals and families to qualify for SNAP benefits.

Previously, families’ gross income limit was 130% of federal poverty guidelines. Under the newly adopted rules, the gross income limit was raised to 200% of the federal poverty guidelines. Under the former guidelines, families could not qualify if they had more than $3,000 in savings. The new Tennessee guidelines eliminate this asset test.

The federal government has long permitted states to adopt the broad-based categorical eligibility rules. Tennessee was the 47th state to adopt them, according to the Tennessee Justice Center. 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX – FROM OHIO CAPITAL JOURNAL

REPORT: AS FOOD CUTS PHASE IN, OHIOANS WILL DIE PREMATURELY

By: Marty Schladen March 23, 2026 3:55 am

New work requirements to get federal food assistance will cause 900 premature deaths in Ohio by 2040, according to a new analysis. 

If administrative costs dramatically increase state expenses and force Ohio to abandon the program altogether, those deaths will soar to 23,000, according to a report released Tursday by the Center for American Progress.

The numbers are similarly harrowing for other states. 

Passed last summer, President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act gave $1 trillion worth of tax cuts to the richest 1% of Americans over 10 years. It cut nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid spending over the same period. 

The bill also cut $186 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides food assistance to 1.45 million Ohioans and 42 million Americans.

SNAP benefits are modest and require pretty low income to qualify.

As a general matter, a single mother of two kids would have to earn $34,645 or less to qualify for assistance that amounts to just $6.28 per person, per day in Ohio.

The law passed by Republicans last summer achieves savings in the program through changes that already have been or will be implemented this year.

One is placing work requirements on groups of recipients that had been exempt. They include people between 55 and 64, veterans, the homeless, kids aging out of foster care and families with kids over 14.

When tried with Medicaid, work requirements failed in achieving their claimed goals, but they did succeed in reducing the number of people receiving benefits.

In February, SNAP work requirements took effect in Ohio, with previously exempt beneficiaries required to show proof they were meeting them on March 1. 

In Ohio, 63,000 adults stand to lose benefits because they’re between 55 and 64, or their kids are older than 14, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities using data from the Congressional Budget Office.

It’s estimated that at least 2.4 million Americans will lose federal food benefits over 10 years due to the work requirements.

And that doesn’t count veterans, the homeless, and people aging out of foster care who now face work requirements because the Congressional Budget Office didn’t include those populations in its estimate.

For many, losing food benefits will make chronic health problems worse.

“Research has consistently shown that access to SNAP is linked with many positive health outcomes,” the Center for American Progress report said.

“Beyond reducing food insecurity, which itself is associated with a lower-quality diet and multiple chronic conditions such as kidney disease and coronary heart disease, increased SNAP access has been associated with slower growth in diabetes prevalence.”

It added, “People who receive SNAP are more likely to report very good or excellent health compared with similar-income populations not receiving benefits. SNAP is also linked to better access to preventive care, fewer hospitalizations, and lower health care expenditures. Perhaps most importantly, research has shown reduced rates of mortality among SNAP participants.” 

Ultimately, losses in health result in preventable deaths.

Thursday’s report updated estimates from July made by medical school researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and New York University.

Where the original estimate was 93,000 preventable deaths by 2040, the Center for American Progress revised that number down to 70,000 because fewer Americans are now estimated to lose SNAP because of the work requirements.

In Ohio, that means at least 900 people will die who wouldn’t have if the new work requirements weren’t implemented, according to the report.

Changes starting in October could cause many, many more.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act also increases administrative expenses on states and penalizes them if they don’t keep error rates below what many experts say is an impossibly low threshold.

The Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown University Law School says that some states will face much higher burdens than others. 

It estimates that Ohio could face nearly $400 million in additional costs to maintain its SNAP program.

That 268% increase would be well in the top half of states — and it’s an open question whether Ohio’s gerrymandered legislature would pay the extra money or abandon the program.

Many Ohioans would die unnecessarily if it did — 22,900 by 2040, according to the estimate by the Center for American Progress.

That has governors calling on Congress to undo that part of the law.

“Changes in funding policies for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP), combined with disruptions caused by the 2025 federal government shutdown, could put SNAP in jeopardy across the country if states and territories do not receive relief,” the National Governor’s Association said in a Jan. 14 statement.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SEVEN – FROM GUK

‘MEGA-CONSUMERS’ OF FOOD AND ENERGY COST ENVIRONMENT $5.7TN A YEAR, STUDY FINDS

Top 10% generate climate and biodiversity damage bill that exceeds economies of most countries, say researchers

BY Jonathan Watts Thu 18 Jun 2026 11.00 EDT

The environmental damage bill racked up by the highest-consuming 10% of the world’s population has reached up to $5.7tn a year – larger than the economy of every country except the US and China, a study has found.

Mega-consumers in this group are concentrated in the global north, accounting for more than half the population of the US and 40-45% of people in the EU.

The damage tally, which one researcher described as “bonkers”, also exceeds global funding gaps for tackling the climate and biodiversity crises, highlighting how economic priorities remain skewed towards running down the Earth’s life-support systems.

The most destructive forms of consumption were linked to two main areas: food – particularly red meat, a primary driver of deforestation – and energy, including flights and heating and cooling homes, which typically rely on burning of fossil fuels, such as gas, oil and coal.

The $5.7tn figure, published in a paper by researchers at University of Oxford and University of Leiden, was calculated by using estimates of the monetary impacts of climate disruption, biodiversity loss, nutrient pollution and freshwater use.

The study found that the average annual environmental damage bill for someone in the global top 10% ranged from $2,300 to $7,500. This figure rose to $19,000-$63,000 for those in the US.

High-consuming households in emerging economies are catching up. The average environmental damage bill for the top 10% in China has overtaken that of the top 10% in Germany, the report says.

Biodiversity loss accounted for the largest share of the global damage bill, making up 47-56% of the total. The climate emergency was responsible for a further 36-45%.

The authors said the findings strengthened the case for addressing the biodiversity and climate crises together, rather than treating them as separate policy challenges.

The paper, published on Thursday in Communications Sustainability, cautions that the true environmental cost by this group is likely to be even higher. The calculations cover only four of nine planetary boundaries and reflect direct consumption alone, excluding the likely greater impacts of investments.

“If anything, these numbers are conservative. The bill leaves out the emissions tied to wealthy people’s investments,” said Paul Behrens, a British Academy global professor at the Oxford Martin school and a co-author of the study.

“Research has shown that a large proportion of a rich person’s carbon footprint comes from what they own, not how they live; meaning their stocks, bonds and other assets.”

A Greenpeace study last week estimated that the assets owned by the world’s richest 1% – often invested in greenhouse gas-intensive companies – were associated with a quarter of global emissions and caused nearly $1tn of climate damage each year.

The new report concludes that governments could target this high-consuming groups through taxes on luxury goods, wealth and carbon, reducing emissions and pollution while raising revenue to support sustainability transitions and reducing inequality.

“The scale of the damage bill illustrates the potential revenue if polluter-pays principles were applied to high-consuming groups,” the authors said.

Behrens said: “The top 10% are important not only because they cause the most damage but also because they hold the most leverage to reduce it.

“They often have outsized agency, not only individually as consumers but also as investors, employers, trend makers, and market shapers. Their power to cut emissions is even larger than their share of them.

“The people in the top 10% should be braver and more courageous in making sure we have a future we can … thrive in.”

ATTACHMENT TWENTY EIGHT – FROM MSN

TRUMP AGRICULTURE SECRETARY SHOCKED BY HER AGENCY’S OWN DATA AT LIVE HEARING

By Sarah K. Burris 4/6/26

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins struggled on Thursday during a House Agriculture Committee hearing when asked basic questions about her department's own data.

Rep. Angie Craig, a member of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party in Minnesota, probed Rollins about allegations of fraud involving recipients of SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps. Rollins tried to parrot conservative talking points, but got a little mixed up with the data coming from her own department.

CRAIG HAMMERED ROLLINS ON HOW MANY FARMS HAVE FAILED IN THE PAST YEAR

She then moved on to ask whether Rollins knows that "farmers say they can't afford fertilizer as a result of the president's war in Iran?"

Rollins claimed that it differed by geographic region, implying that some farmers have one demand while others have another.

A frustrated Craig asserted, "Oh, my gosh! Seventy percent is the answer."

Then she pivoted to SNAP benefits, with the committee's top Democrat asking whether Rollins knew the fraud rate among SNAP recipients.

Rollins said that the data is based on information that is "missing from the states that we can't verify. That's the whole point of this is with no ability to verify California, Minnesota—"

Craig cut in, "1.6 percent according to USDA."

Rollins claimed that Minnesota is reporting a low fraud rate, which she considers "an absolute joke."

"I'll say it again. The USDA's own data found 1.6 percent," Craig said.

Rollins tried to cut in and claim that Craig's data showed that. In fact, a 2025 fact sheet from the USDA confirms the data.

The release goes so far as to say that fraud "occurs relatively infrequently."

"I don't think you understand the difference between an error rate and a fraud rate. I honestly don't. It is one of the lowest programs — the lowest fraud rate in any program in America, is the SNAP program," Craig explained.

"You can't be serious," Rollins responded.

"Your own data says 1.6 percent," Craig said.

Rollins claimed that the reason it's so low is that states don't allow the federal government to "confirm" the information, presumably with their own investigations. That same 2025 fact sheet from Rollins' own office brags about the department's efforts to reduce "infrequent" fraud.

After a back and forth, Craig cut in, "Look, Madam Secretary, I'm asking you these questions because these issues are personal," Craig said.

Rollins accused her of not asking for legitimate answers.

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ATTACHMENT TWENTY NINE – FROM MSN

HOUSE AGRICULTURE COMMITTEE HEARING DEVOLVES INTO CHAOS

By Maria Teresita Armstrong-Matta

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins faced sharp questioning from Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) during a tense House Agriculture Committee hearing.

Rollins was repeatedly unable to answer basic questions about the farm economy.

Also Read: Candace Owens caught secretly joining Russian forum tied to spy recruitment

Craig documented the administration's record with data: the U.S. lost 15,000 farms in 2025, farmers face $28 billion in losses, and 70% cannot afford necessary fertilizer. Farm diesel prices hit $5.41 per gallon in May —up 95% year-over-year.

When Rollins blamed the Biden administration, Craig countered, "Joe Biden is no longer the president. Mr. Trump is. Your party controls Congress. You own these numbers."

When discussing fertilizer, Craig asked what share of farmers can't afford it this planting season. Rollins instead broke down fertilizers by categories.

"Oh, my God!" Craig cut in, adding, "70% is the answer."

Found by the Farm Bureau, which worked with more than 5,700 farmers to obtain the amount.

The hearing intensified over SNAP fraud rates when Rollins disputed United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA, data showing 1.6% fraud, prompting Craig to state, "I honestly don't think you understand the difference between error rates and fraud rates."

Rollins then accused Craig of grandstanding, but Craig warned the administration must understand family farmers are suffering, not thriving.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY – FROM MSN

SOUTH AFRICA’S FARMING FORTUNES ARE POSITIVE AT THE START OF 2026

by Wandile Sihlobo

We continue to see encouraging data on the state of the South African farming sector, particularly at the start of 2026. For example, the figures released on 9 June 2026 by Statistics South Africa show that the country’s agricultural gross value added expanded by 3.9% quarter-on-quarter (seasonally adjusted) in the first quarter of 2026, from 0.4% in the last quarter of 2025.

These robust growth figures also align with the strong trade figures for the first quarter. For example, in the first quarter of 2026, South Africa’s agricultural exports totalled $3.7-billion, up 11% from the same period a year ago, according to data from Trade Map. Better exports were a function of both higher export volumes across various products and higher commodity prices.

These encouraging data are notwithstanding the challenges posed by foot-and-mouth disease in cattle, African swine fever in the pig industry and floods in the northeastern regions of South Africa at the start of the year. Still, higher economic activity across field crops and horticulture sufficiently supported growth in the sector, overshadowing challenges in other agricultural subsectors.

Looking at the positives, if we zoom in on field crops, we are likely to continue seeing encouraging figures in agriculture over the coming quarters, given the ample harvest this year. In the current 2025-26 production season South Africa still has an ample harvest, with an expected record summer grain and oilseed harvest of 21.1 million tonnes, up 3% up year-on-year. This production figure comprises maize, sunflower seed, soybean, groundnuts, sorghum and dry beans. The better harvest is primarily supported by the La Niña rains during the 2025-26 summer season and by farmers’ decision to maintain decent plantings.

The benefits of the ample grains don’t end with the summer crops; they extend to other industries. The poultry industry is also performing well and benefiting from affordable feed (maize and soybean prices are down by 10% to 30% from a year ago). Notably, we also see robust volumes in fruits and vegetables, although in the second quarter of the year we may see a slight impact of the recent floods on growth figures.

Overall, the agricultural sector’s start of the year is encouraging from an economic activity perspective. Still, this overshadows some of the underlying challenges, such as the lingering impact of foot-and-mouth disease, which we hope will soon ease as vaccination progresses. The African swine fever in the pork industry is another challenge.

Looking ahead, higher input costs due to the war in the Middle East, along with the expected El Niño drought, will weigh on the sector heading into 2027. This year, the impact of these factors may remain limited. The season most exposed is 2026-27, which starts in October 2026 for summer grains and oilseeds. DM

ATTACHMENT THIRTY ONE – FROM MSN

EL NINO HAS HIT INDIA: HOW AGRICULTURE SHOCK IS LIKELY AS FARMERS BRACE FOR IMPACT

By India Today Science Desk

A patch of seawater in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of kilometres from any Indian coast, has just shifted the odds for every farmer in the country.

On June 13, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) declared the onset of El Nino.

In its June bulletin, the department said sea temperatures in the central Pacific had crossed the threshold that defines the phenomenon, and warned that it is likely to strengthen through the monsoon season.

EL NINO

India has learnt to fear those two words.

The IMD had already cut its forecast for the 2026 monsoon to 90 per cent of the Long Period Average, the benchmark for a normal season measured across the fifty years from 1971 to 2020.

It now puts the chance of a deficient monsoon at 60 per cent. For a country where most farms still drink only when it rains, that is a warning, not a footnote.

WHAT EL NINO ACTUALLY IS

El Nino is a periodic warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.

Scientists call it official once a stretch of that ocean stays more than half a degree Celsius warmer than normal for three months running, which is exactly what has now happened.

EL NINO

In a normal year, steady winds called the trade winds blow from east to west along the equator, herding warm surface water towards Asia. That warm pool gathers near Indonesia, feeding the rising, moisture-laden air that eventually powers India's monsoon.

Cooler water wells up in the east, off South America. This great east-west loop of air is the Walker Circulation.

During El Nino, the trade winds tire. The warm water slides back east. The engine that drags moisture towards India loses its grip.

WHY A WARM PACIFIC DRIES AN INDIAN FIELD

When the warm water shifts east, the rising air shifts with it. Over India, the opposite begins to happen.

The air starts to sink. Meteorologists call this subsidence, which simply means descending air. Sinking air warms, dries, and refuses to build rain clouds.

The monsoon winds weaken, carry less moisture, and the rain that does fall arrives unevenly. The IMD warns that the monsoon core zone, the rain-fed belt across central, western and eastern India where irrigation is thinnest, is likely to stay below normal.

THE CROPS THAT FEEL IT FIRST

Not every crop suffers equally. Pulses and oilseeds, grown largely without irrigation, are the most exposed.

A dry spell at the wrong moment can shrink a whole harvest. Coarse cereals such as bajra and jowar have stumbled in past El Nino years too.

El Nino has been declared, and India's farmers are bracing for a shock. The warming Pacific has weakened the monsoon before, and the IMD says it will likely strengthen as the rains advance. Here is how a distant ocean reaches into Indian fields. (Photo: PTI)

Rice is partly shielded, because nearly 70 per cent of its area is irrigated. But when output dips, food prices climb, and the household grocery bill becomes the place most Indians finally feel a distant ocean.

WHY THIS NEED NOT BE A DISASTER

History offers some comfort. Not every El Nino breaks the monsoon, and India is better defended than before, with more irrigation, crop insurance, and a steady push towards hardy millets that thrive on less water.

Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan says the government has built a war chest of seeds for resowing should the rains fail.

A positive Indian Ocean Dipole, a warming of the western Indian Ocean, could yet soften the blow.

The Pacific has tilted, and now it is official. India waits to see how hard.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY TWO – FROM BBC

HUNDREDS OF CATS STOLEN FOR FOOD IN VIETNAM RESCUED BY POLICE, WELFARE GROUP SAYS

By Jessica Rawnsley

More than 40 of the stolen cats have been reunited with their owners

More than 400 cats destined for slaughter have been rescued in Vietnam after authorities dismantled an alleged feline theft ring, an animal welfare group has said.

Nine people have been arrested in connection with what police described as a "criminal group specialising in stealing and collecting cats", according to the official newspaper of Ho Chi Minh City police.

Officers recovered more than 400 live cats and around 80 dead animals preserved on ice during raids on sites in Tay Ninh Province and Ho Chi Minh City last week. A further 21 cats were seized at a separate facility.

The consumption of dog and cat meat is legal in Vietnam, but vendors require permits that show the origin of animals.

Police said they tracked down the group on 11 June after investigating a spate of pet thefts in Ho Chi Minh City, according to local media reports.

The suspects admitted trapping and collecting cats across southern Vietnam over the past three years, police said. According to investigators, the suspects allegedly transported stolen cats to holding facilities before selling them on to traders, with transactions taking place every two to three days.

Around 40 of the stolen cats have since been reunited with their owners, Humane World for Animals said in a statement on Tuesday.

The organisation praised local authorities for "decisive action that has saved the lives of so many animals", but said "a number had later died as a result of their ordeal.

It added that it was providing food and other supplies for animals still being held by police as evidence while the case continues.

Police said the investigation was ongoing and urged residents who believe their pets have been stolen to come forward to help identify recovered animals.

An estimated five million dogs and one million cats are captured, stolen, trafficked and slaughtered for meat in Vietnam each year, according to Humane World for Animals.

The organisation says pets are frequently stolen from homes, with dogs often seized using poisoned bait tasers and iron pincers, and cats with spring-loaded snares.

While the consumption of dog and cat meat remains more common in Vietnam than other Asian countries, campaigners say attitudes are changing.

A 2023 survey commissioned by Humane World for Animals found growing public opposition, particularly among younger people and pet owners, with majorities backing bans on both the dog and cat meat trades.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY THREE – FROM UN NEWS

HUMANITARIAN AID

By Emilie Renoux & Suzanne Fenton 13 June 2026

The odyssey begins in Indonesia and ends, 15,000 kilometres later, in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Along the way, critical food aid destined for young Afghan students crosses nine countries, over land and sea, skirting geopolitical unrest and conflict zones.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan face hunger and poverty. The country suffers from repeated floods and earthquakes, declining humanitarian funding and two crises along its borders. 

Logjams and logistics

For many Afghan schoolchildren, the fortified biscuits distributed by the World Food Programme (WFP) are often the most nutritious food they will receive all day. But getting the supplies into the country is a logistical minefield.

Take, for example, the 397 metric tons of this key nutritional boost, intended for some 172,000 students, shipped from Indonesia’s Surabaya port, part of a US$3.5 million contribution from the Government of Indonesia to support WFP school meals in Afghanistan.

The supplies are first sent by boat to the southern Pakistani port of Karachi, but from there things get more complicated.

The original plan was for the shipment to be transferred to trucks for a 7,000 km trip through Pakistan but, amid tensions between the country and Afghanistan, the border was closed.

HUNGER CANNOT WAIT

A new route has to be found quickly because, as Corinne Fleischer, Director of WFP Supply Chain and Delivery, says, “hunger doesn’t wait for routes to reopen”. 

WFP shipping officers reroute the cargo to the port of Jebel Ali in Dubai, with a plan to ship it across the Persian Gulf to Iran and then move it on by road. 

However, geopolitics strikes again and, as instability spread across the Middle East, in effect closing the critical Strait of Hormuz since March, WFP is forced to rethink the plan once more. 

Inside WFP operations rooms, logisticians go back to basics, poring over maps to see whether the region’s geography might offer a solution. 

They find one: an entirely new land corridor from Dubai to landlocked Afghanistan across the Caucasus. It’s costlier, more complex and adds another 8,000 km to the journey, but it is the only remaining option.

NEW ROUTE, NEW HOPE

One overcast morning, a 21-truck convoy rumbles out of Dubai and heads out along the desert highways of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, up through Jordan, Syria, Türkiye and Georgia before boarding a ferry in Baku, Azerbaijan, and crossing the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan.

Days later, the trucks cross into Afghanistan through the remote Torghundi border crossing, before continuing on to Kabul. Every country the convoy passes through requires new customs clearances, security assessments, transport permits and coordination across seven borders.

Along the route, truck drivers face long waits at border crossings, signing paperwork and snatching moments of sleep beneath open skies.

“I remember the ferry line at Alat port [Baku]wherehundreds of trucks were waiting to cross– the line was close to 30kmlong,” saysHüseyin Sarraç Ulus,a Turkish truck driver whomade the roughly 3,000 km journey from Dubai to the Caspian Sea.

WORKING DAY AND NIGHT

“We drove around 11 hours a day and slept in the truck cabin most nights –it was not always comfortable,but we are used to it," he recalls. "We ate simple food like soup, bread, rice and tea. Butit felt good. Knowing the cargo was helping children made me proud to be part of the journey.” 

Inside a World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse on the outskirts of Kabul, Abdul Ahad Monib watches as the trucks slowly back into unloading bays.

“There was a feeling of relief when we saw the trucks arrive,” says Mr. Monib, a WFP Supply Chain and Delivery officer. “We followed every step of the journey closely – every delay, every border crossing, every change of plan. 

After weeks on the road, the biscuits reach the hands of girls and boys in schools across Ghor, Nuristan and Paktika provinces, in central, northeastern and eastern Afghanistan, respectively. 

“For the children, it’s a packet of biscuits that helps them stay healthy,” says Monib. “For us, it’s a logistics feat. No one sees the thousands of kilometres, the delays or the rerouting behind each packet. But that’s exactly the point – whatever the obstacles, WFP delivers.”

This story was first published on the WFP website.

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News Tracker: Past Stories on This Issue

From food lines in Somalia to clinics in Afghanistan, Hormuz crisis sends shockwaves through global aid networks

What began as a geopolitical crisis in the Middle East nearly 100 days ago is increasingly becoming a food security crisis elsewhere, with UN agencies warning of rising hunger in Africa and malnourished children being turned away from medical clinics in Afghanistan.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY FOUR – FROM NPR

A PLAN TO GET LIFESAVING FOOD TO HUNGRY KIDS WAS WORKING WELL — UNTIL IT WASN'T

By Jonathan Lambert June 13, 2026 7:07 AM ET

Yacine Lo's twins were clearly not well.

Diarra and Khadim, her girl and boy, should have been busily toddling around like almost-2-year-olds they were. Instead "they were very, very weak," she says. "It's very sad to see your kids that way. When my kids aren't well, I can't be well, I can't even eat."

Lo lives outside of Keur Mbar, a small rural community in western Senegal with high levels of poverty. As a result, malnutrition is common here, she says, and she knew the signs. She also knew where to go for help.

So she wrapped Diarra and Khadim on her back, and set off on foot to a clinic over 3 miles away. The route is flat but harsh. The vast, dusty landscape is only broken by the occasional acacia tree or the looming contortions of a baobab, which looks as though it grows by moonlight.

"It takes long," she says. "It's really very painful with your babies on your back under the hot sun."

Initially, the journey was worth it.

At the clinic, community health workers confirmed her suspicion and gave her a week's supply of a near-miracle food — Plumpy'Nut, the brand name of what's called a ready-to-use therapeutic food, or RUTF. It's a nutrient-dense paste made up of peanut butter, powdered milk, oil and sugar, fortified with vitamins and minerals.

Typically, in Senegal and other countries, a parent from a remote area would have had to travel even further to find a hospital or doctor who could provide this life-saving food. But for the past few years, Senegal, with the help of U.S. funding and nonprofit organizations, has been trying to bring care closer to kids like Diarra and Khadim.

Once a week, she'd make the journey back to the clinic for more Plumpy'Nut. Over time, the twins started improving, and her mood lifted.

"When you see that your kids are in good health, you are happy and feel good, because this is something natural, this is something human," she says. "But whenever your child is suffering, you suffer with them."

That suffering has increased over the past year and a half, she says, in the aftermath of the Trump administration's massive cuts to foreign aid. While Lo's son has recovered, Diarra still suffers from malnutrition and needs treatment. But these days, when she comes to the clinic, there's often no Plumpy'Nut.

"It's so frustrating," says Lo. When that happens, she trudges home empty-handed, hoping the key to her child's recovery will be there next time. "It's a big problem."

A SAFETY NET FRAYS

Such shortages are happening across Senegal, according to health officials.

The small rural clinic Lo relies on is one of over 500 across Senegal serving as a net that catches kids with malnutrition and offers this superfood.

U.S. foreign aid, through a variety of programs, supported those clinics and the food they delivered. The sudden cuts have sent a shockwave through the whole system, leading to staff and food shortages.

In a statement, the State Department did not address NPR's questions about the shortages. They did say that the State Department is currently programming $23 million in maternal, child health and nutrition resources in Senegal. But the shortages were evident during an April reporting trip by NPR, and the State Department did not respond to multiple requests for additional details on what that $23 million is funding.

"It's having a heavy impact," says Latsouk Faye, regional supervisor for food, nutrition and child survival in Diourbel. "Many people just abandon, they no longer come to the clinics. Malnutrition is coming back."

AN INNOVATIVE PARTNERSHIP

Roughly 1 in 10 children in Senegal are acutely malnourished, a condition that can lead to long-term health and cognitive deficits. If it becomes severe, it can be fatal.

"About half of the mortality of children under 5 is related to malnutrition," says Ndèye Astou Badiane, country director in Senegal for Helen Keller Intl, a nonprofit that addresses this issue. Identifying cases early and offering treatment is crucial to saving lives, she says. But historically, this kind of treatment was only available at hospitals or doctors' offices, which are often out of reach where malnutrition is highest.

So in 2022, Helen Keller and some other nonprofits partnered with the Senegal Ministry of Health to try something different — training and equipping community health workers to treat severe acute malnutrition.

Fatma Diouf is one such community health worker in Keur Mbar, where Lo's twins got treatment.

Walking around the village, Diouf seems to know everyone. She flashes a wide smile at kids playing soccer in the street and greets them by name. "I'm part of this community," she says, and got into this work to help it.

Her clinic is a squat, tan building with turquoise-painted doors and windows. Families with young kids come to her for screening, advice and treatment. She first brings them to the courtyard, where a large scale hangs from a small tree.

"We start by weighing the child, seeing whether he has a normal weight or not," she says. Then they run through a checklist of other signs of malnutrition. Swollen hands or feet can indicate severe protein deficiency. Lumpy skin, very thin arms and fever can be signs too.

If a child meets the criteria, and doesn't require more intensive care at the hospital, Diouf hands them packets of Plumpy'Nut. Three of these a day over the course of several weeks can bring a child back from the brink. Week after week as families come back, she watches as little ones regain their strength and become active, little kids again.

Since 2022, the program has grown to five regions across Senegal, screening hundreds of thousands of children. The Ministry of Health was behind the initiative, too.

"The impact has been very positive," says Mamadou Dieng, regional health director in Diourbel. "Many children who normally wouldn't be screened have been screened, and there has been a reduction in the mortality rate."

The Ministry of Health had plans to expand this model throughout the country. Aid cuts have thrown those plans into question.

USAID directly supported the program in its early days and helped fund nutrition program staff more generally across Senegal until 2025. The U.S. was also the biggest supporter of UNICEF, which buys and distributes the vast majority of RUTF in the country, contributing over $1 billion in 2024.

"So many activities that were supported by the American government have stopped all of a sudden," says Badiane, of Helen Keller. "It was really a severe shock."

"THEY THINK WE ARE DECEIVING THEM"

It's been a shock at Fatma Diouf's clinic, too.

"We get way less than we used to," she says. That means she's turning many families home empty-handed. Often, those families blame Diouf. "They think we are deceiving them," she says. "That I choose who to give the Plumpy'Nut [to] and just leave them aside."

The situation has been hard on Diouf. She recalls one child who came to the clinic during a shortage and began searching where Diouf keeps the product. After finding nothing, "[the child] just screams and refuses to go home," she says. "It really hurts."

Some of the Plumpy'Nut that ends up at Diouf's clinic is typically stored in a warehouse over an hour away, in the town of Diourbel. The heavy metal doors creak as Faye, the regional health official, opens them.

"This place used to be full," he says, able to store about 4,000 boxes — enough to feed over 4,000 kids for several weeks of treatment. "But since USAID left, since the start of the problem with Trump, UNICEF has become weaker," he says, gesturing at the empty space.

Overall, his district is getting about half of the RUTF it used to, he says. There's also fewer staff to shuttle the life-saving product from central storage facilities to smaller clinics, like Diouf's. Faced with prolonged shortages, he says many families have just stopped making the trip to the clinics.

That point is echoed by Dr. Arame Ndiaye, a pediatrician in Bambey, Senegal. "If families can no longer get RUTF, they are prone to abandoning" and not coming to clinics for care, she says.

Or even for screenings. From October thru December of 2024, more than 180,000 kids were screened for malnutrition in the area, according to data from the National Nutrition Development Council and Helen Keller. After the cuts, from July through September, fewer than 87,000 kids were screened. That represents just 30% of the region's population of children, far from the program's goal of reaching about 80% of kids.

The impact is evident. Tening Ngom is the primary caregiver for her baby nephew, Aliou, who has been getting Plumpy'Nut at Diouf's clinic.

"When he started getting the treatment, he recovered very well," she says outside her home, over the occasional bleating of her goats. But with this shortage, she says he often misses treatment.

"If they don't have [the product], he starts crying and he doesn't stop crying. He never stops crying," she says. In recent weeks, she says Aliou's health has deteriorated, and he's very weak again.

Health officials in Senegal interviewed for this story worry that this kind of relapse is happening more broadly.

Still, there are some glimmers of hope. Through a variety of sources, including philanthropic funds and some foreign aid dollars, the flow of RUTF is improving. But the supply is still unstable. And that net of community health workers who serve as links between families and this lifesaving treatment is fraying.

"Since the aid cuts, many [community health workers] are no longer getting paid," says Diouf. "For some areas, the number of workers have halved, but for others, there's no one."

Despite these challenges, Diouf keeps trying to reach out to families. Instead of offering RUTF, she and her colleagues make a home-grown substitute with local ingredients, like millet, maize and ground nuts. It's not as effective as the real deal, she says, but it's something.

Helen Keller is scrambling to fill the gaps too, says Senegal country director Badiane. They've had some success with the help of the Eleanor Crook Foundation, an American nonprofit. But she says neither the nonprofit nor the Senegalese government has the resources to easily sustain what's been lost.

"Senegal is a poor country," she says, and the government has many competing priorities for spending.

In March, Senegal signed a new, five-year, $90 million health aid deal with the U.S. government. In 2024 alone, the U.S. sent more than $230 million in foreign assistance to Senegal. While the details of the new deal are still being worked out, Badiane says that money for nutrition programs was left out. In a statement, the State Department said that the deal reflects Senegal's own strategic objectives.

In the face of these challenges, Badiane says her team is pushing hard to keep this community-based model of malnutrition care going. "It's an approach that's working," she says, for kids like Diarra, Khadim and Aliou and thousands of others. "We need to treat these children, and they cannot wait. They need RUTF."

ATTACHMENT THIRTY FIVE – FROM THE VATICAN NEWS

POPE LEO TO VISIT UN WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME IN ROME

Pope Leo XIV will visit the headquarters of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) on June 22, according to the Prefecture of the Papal Household.

By Deborah Castellano Lubov

"The Holy Father Pope Leo XIV, accepting the invitation from the Executive Director of the World Food Programme, will visit the organization’s Rome headquarters on Monday, June 22, to meet with participants at the annual session of the Executive Board, staff members, and their families."

The Holy See Press Office announced the visit on Tuesday, publishing a statement issued by the Prefecture of the Papal Household.

Last month, Pope Leo XIV's prayer intention for May was "so that everyone might have food," inviting Catholics globally to pray and work for this intention, as he highlighted how millions of brothers and sisters continue to suffer from hunger while so much food is wasted.

According to the World Food Programme’s 2026 Global Outlook, 318 million people will face food crises or even worse situations this year.

The agency warns that the conflict in the Middle East could push an additional 45 million people into facing dire hunger before the middle of this year.

Pope Leo visited the headquarters of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) on October 16, 2025, to mark World Food Day and the 80th anniversary of the organization’s founding.

In his address at FAO, he reaffirmed the Holy See’s closeness to the institution and called for a shared global commitment to end hunger and malnutrition.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY SIX – FROM WYFF (GREENVILLE, SC)

TWO SC FARMERS FACE OFF IN RUNOFF ELECTION FOR THE STATE'S AGRICULTURAL LEADER

Nate Stanley  Updated: 11:25 PM EDT Jun 11, 2026

GREENVILLE, S.C. —

One of two men will be the republican nominee for South Carolina's next Commissioner of Agriculture, one of the most consequential races in the 2026 election cycle.

The Commissioner of Agriculture is in charge of the state's farming, the largest industry in South Carolina. After the DHEC split, the agency took over responsibility for food service too, including all those food grades in restaurants. The agency also regulates the scales at grocery stores and even the regulation of gas pumps.

Hailing from the Upstate is Danny Lee Ford II, son of legendary Clemson football head coach Danny Ford, with land in the Upstate and a greenhouse in Travelers Rest.

"When you're going to a horse race, you look at lineage, and I think that's what a lot of people see in this race, and they know that when dad got out of coaching, he came to the farm, and so that's where I've spent a lot of my life learning and being mentored," he said.

His opponent is fifth-generation farmer Cody Simpson from the Midlands. He has the endorsement of President Donald Trump.

"I'm the only one, really, from any race, I guess you could say that has the relationships from the farmhouse to the state house all the way to the White House," he said.

"People are, unfortunately, under these threats of overdevelopment with solar, with data. Those entities, regardless of what you may think of them, they're taking our farmland out of production. I tell people often, for every acre that's taken out of production of ag, we're actually depending on another acre in some foreign soil," Simpson said.

"Dairies that I've talked about. I'd love to see them get contracts with all of our schools. So, all of our schools can have South Carolina milk. I think that would be a great thing and keep those in business. And so that's really my big push, is to see more of these producers produce for their local community," Ford said.

Both candidates are also flexing their experience to help South Carolina farmers.

"I've had 8 years in the regulations of hemp, and I've been involved with the Department of Agriculture. There are some great people down there at the department and have been there for a long time with Weathers. I want to keep those people in place and work a little bit more on expanding some of these local things that I'm talking about," Ford said.

"I've been around the state. I know the people. You need someone with executive leadership. Who has had this position, and also someone that understands our operations from the ground up. Who has the experience not only just behind a desk, but who's worked the fields of South Carolina," Simpson said.

Keep up with what's happening around our area by downloading the WYFF News 4 app on the App Store or Google Play.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY SEVEN – FROM ALABAMA REFLECTOR

TWO FARMERS VIE FOR GOP NOMINATION FOR COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRIES

By: Andrea Tinker June 12, 20264:06 pm

Republican voters will choose between two farmers to be the nominee for Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries.

Corey Hill and Christina Woerner Mcinnis will face each other in the June 16 runoff. According to the Alabama Secretary of State’s office, Hill received 150,598 (35.20%) votes to Mcinnis’ 149,179 (34.86%) votes in unofficial returns. The winner will face Democratic nominee Ron Sparks, a former agriculture and industries commissioner, in the November election.

A message seeking comment was left with Mcinnis Wednesday. According to her website, Mcinnis, who if elected would be the state’s first woman elected to the role, wants to expand the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to include rotisserie chicken.

Rep. Donna Givens, R-Loxley, filed a bill last year to allow SNAP recipients to purchase hot rotisserie chickens with their benefits, but the bill did not make it to committee.

Hill said in an interview Thursday afternoon that he has the advantage in the race because of his job as a farmer.

“One thing I think that gets me the edge is because we farm full time in Marshall County, we grow the food you eat, we make our living in production agriculture,” he said. “I think as a society we want our farmers to be successful, because we’ve got to have them in business, and I can bring to the table that experience and relationships with farmers, so when decisions have to be made about if it’s good for them, it will help them or hurt them, I’ve got that experience.”

Hill also wants to get a handle on data centers and solar farms in the state so farmers and producers keep their land.

“We cannot lose our prime farmland to data centers or solar farms, or even subdivisions, to some regard,” he said. “And the Ag Commissioner has absolutely no role in data centers, solar farms. We don’t regulate it, can’t inspect them, nothing to do with that, unless the laws change, but we’ve got to find a way to incentivize people to keep their land in production, or if they sell it, to sell it to a farmer to be in production.”

Meet the Candidates

Corey Hill

Age: 56
Residence: Douglas
Occupation: Farmer
Education: A.S. Business, Snead State Community College
Party: Republican
Previous political experience: Mayor of Douglas (2012-present)
Campaign fundraising: Raised $530,200 and spent $527,800 as of Thursday evening.

Efforts to reach Christina Woerner Mcinnis were unsuccessful.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY EIGHT – FROM YELLOWHAMMERNEWS.COM

ALABAMA AGRICULTURE COMMISSIONER RUNOFF SHARPENS AS MCINNIS FACES CANNABIS QUESTION, HILL PITCHES RURAL CRIME TASK FORCE

BY Sawyer Knowles May 28, 2026

The Alabama agriculture commissioner runoff sharpened Monday night as Christina Woerner McInnis faced questions over cannabis licensing while Corey Hill pitched a rural crime crackdown for farmers.

At the Shelby County GOP candidate forum, the moderator asked McInnis whether she or SoilKit AgriTech had applied for or become involved in a medical cannabis license through partnerships such as Flowerwood Medical Cannabis.

McInnis denied holding any active cannabis, hemp, or Delta-product licenses.

“Let me clarify, I do not have a cannabis medical license,” McInnis said. “I do not, because I work in Colorado. Do not have a cannabis recreational license. Do not have a hemp license, and I have nothing to do with the Delta products that are in gas stations now.”

McInnis did not directly address whether SoilKit had previously pursued a partnership with Flowerwood Medical Cannabis. She instead pivoted to a recent White House visit, where she said she met with President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

McInnis said Rollins warned her that foreign ownership of American agriculture is becoming a national security threat.

“China is here,” McInnis said. “They own one out of four hogs. They own 400,000 acres of our land, and we are not putting the next generation of farmers into the fields profitably and successfully.”

McInnis, a fifth-generation Alabama farmer and founder of SoilKit, ran throughout the forum on a five-point plan focused on protecting the farm bill, keeping China out of Alabama agriculture, bringing young farmers into the field, expanding Sweet Grown Alabama, and creating a voluntary grant portal.

Hill, the mayor of Douglas and a fourth-generation poultry and cattle farmer, used the forum to emphasize food safety, farmer profitability, and rural law enforcement.

His clearest proposal was restoring the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries’ rural crime task force, which he said once investigated farm thefts, stolen equipment, livestock crimes, and other rural property cases across county lines.

“Many of you don’t know, there was 10 guys on staff at the Ag Department that solved real crimes,” Hill said.

Hill said the unit recovered more than $10 million in property before it was shut down, including $1.2 million in Clay County the day before the program ended.

He acknowledged restoring the task force would require legislative action and funding, but said rural counties still need the help.

“Criminals have a network. They talk, they gossip, they know what’s going on,” Hill said. “Normally police know what’s happening. They just gotta prove it to make the case.”

Hill also said he would push for Alabama schools, hospitals, and prisons to buy Alabama-grown food when possible. He said the Sweet Grown Alabama program should expand further into seafood, including Alabama’s catfish industry.

“We’re the number two catfish state,” Hill said. “Why can’t we be the number one catfish-consuming state in the country?”

The Republican runoff for agriculture commissioner is June 16.

RESULTS

Corey Hill won the Republican nomination for Alabama Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries on Tuesday night, defeating Christina Woerner McInnis in one of the closest statewide primaries of the cycle.

Hill carried 53.30% of the vote to McInnis’ 46.70%, according to unofficial returns, with 158,033 votes to her 138,468 out of nearly 296,500 cast.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY NINE – FROM SUCCESSFUL FARMING

10 INNOVATORS WHO TRANSFORMED AMERICAN FARMING OVER 250 YEARS

BY ERIC HODSON PUBLISHED ON JUNE 13, 2026

Wisconsin Historical Society

In the 1700s, about 80% of the U.S. population was engaged in farming. Today, the USDA estimates it’s less than 2%. Despite such a steep decline, our country produces a plentiful supply of food, thanks in part to innovations made by inventors, entrepreneurs, scientists, and scholars over the past 250 years.

This year, America celebrates its semiquin-centennial — 250 years since the Declaration of Independence was signed. In honor of this historic anniversary, we are looking back at innovators who profoundly changed the path of American agriculture.

01of 10

ELI WHITNEY (1765–1825)

Whitney designed and built the first cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the South’s economy and forever changed the path of agriculture in the region. At the time, cotton farmers struggled with removing cottonseeds from fibers. It was slow, demanding work, all done by hand by slave laborers. It took them many hours to produce a single pound of fiber.

Whitney’s hand-cranked machine increased the efficiency of this process by combing the cotton as it was pulled through small holes while separating the fiber. His cotton gin produced up to 50 pounds of cotton per day, which would have taken workers hundreds of hours to accomplish by hand. In 1794, Whitney received a patent for the cotton gin but struggled to profit from it because his design was easily copied. Once cotton gins were introduced and widely used, U.S. cotton production doubled each decade after 1800. By the 1850s, the U.S. grew 75% of the world’s cotton while tobacco decreased in value and rice exports flattened.

02of 10

JOHN DEERE (1804–1886)

Deere began the iconic agriculture company bearing his name when he invented the first commercially successful self-scouring steel plow in 1837. Farmers typically used horse-drawn cast-iron plows to cut through and turn their sticky Midwest soil in the early 1800s. Their productivity was slow, as they had to stop every few feet to scrape the soil from their plows.

Deere solved the problem by replacing some of the cast-iron parts with steel cut from a broken sawmill blade he had bent, formed over a log, and then polished. His invention became a huge success. In 1848, he moved his business to Moline, Illinois, where the company produced 1,000 plows per year. Today, based on revenue, Deere & Co. is the world’s largest farm equipment manufacturer.

03of 10

CYRUS HALL MCCORMICK (1809–1884)

McCormick invented the first commercially successful mechanical reaper that changed how small grains were harvested. He received a patent for his horse-drawn mechanical grain reaper in 1834. Before this, small grains, such as wheat and oats, were harvested by hand. When using the mechanical reaper, small-grain farmers saw their productivity and efficiency soar. The machine gave a single farmer the ability to harvest 6 acres of oats per day, the same amount 12 workers with scythes could harvest. In 1847, McCormick moved to Chicago and formed what eventually became the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. During the 1850s, the company produced more than 4,000 reapers per year, and by 1858 had become the largest farm equipment maker in the U.S.

04 of 10

ANNA BALDWIN (1832–1888)

Baldwin patented the first machine designed to replace hand milking for dairy producers in 1879. At the time, producers were 100% dependent on manual labor to milk their cows, usually twice daily. One person working alone could milk about a dozen cows per day. Baldwin’s vacuum-based device connected to a hand pump that mechanically extracted the milk while a worker moved the pump handle up and down.

Unfortunately for Baldwin, her machine was not a commercial success, but it inspired successful milking machine innovations and designs. By the second half of the 19th century, there were more than 100 milking device patents in the U.S. In today’s dairies, automated robotic milking is widely accepted, has greatly reduced labor requirements, and improved cow comfort.

05of 10

GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER (1864–1943)

Carver was an agricultural scientist, inventor, and educator, who developed crop-rotation methods to conserve nutrients in the soil and discovered new uses for crops such as peanuts and sweet potatoes. His innovations gave modern agriculture a road map for improved soil health and conservation that had not existed.

Carver educated farmers about the benefits of rotating nitrogen-depleting cotton crops with nitrate-producing legumes and sweet potatoes to boost soil health and increase cotton yields. The National Inventors Hall of Fame said his efforts improved the living standards of poor farmers across the southern U.S., increased their cotton yields, and improved family diets with the growth and consumption of sweet potatoes.

06of 10

HENRY A. WALLACE (1888–1965)

Wallace was fascinated by corn hybrids and saw the potential they offered farmers. However, in 1926, there was no central place where farmers could buy hybrid corn. To change this, Wallace established the Hi-Bred Corn Company to make hybrid corn more accessible to farmers. In 1935, the company became known as the Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Company, the world’s first and largest hybrid seed company.

Wallace’s company systematically changed the trajectory of corn production. In 1933, 1% of all Iowa farmland was planted with hybrid corn. Ten years later, it was nearly 100%. During that time, yields jumped from 24.1 to 31 bushels per acre. However, his influence on agriculture was far from over. From 1933–1940, Wallace served as the U.S. secretary of agriculture. In this role, he started the first food stamp program, crop subsidies, and conservation programs. In 1941, Wallace became vice president under Franklin Roosevelt.

07of 10

BARBARA MCCLINTOCK (1902–1992)

McClintock proved in the 1940s and 1950s that genetic elements in corn could sometimes change position on a chromosome, causing other nearby genes to activate or go inactive. Her research focused on finding a way to visualize corn chromosomes and characterize their shape in the resulting hybrids, igniting the field of corn cytogenetics at Cornell University.

Her work fundamentally changed how scientists looked and thought about genomes. The transposable genes (jumping genes) she discovered created the foundation for most of today’s modern genetic engineering research and a better understanding in the scientific community of heredity. While her work was not initially widely accepted, advances in genetics proved her findings correct. In 1983, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of mobile genetic elements.

08of 10

NORMAN BORLAUG (1914–2009)

Borlaug was an agricultural scientist known as the Father of the Green Revolution, whose dedication to increasing food production was never-ending. He developed a high-yield, disease-resistant semidwarf wheat along with new cropping practices estimated to have saved more than a billion people around the world from starvation.

Borlaug received national and global recognition for his work that used science to help feed the world. These prestigious awards included the Nobel Peace Prize (1970), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977), the Public Welfare Medal (2002) by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Medal of Science (2006), and the Congressional Gold Medal (2006).

09of 10

PIERRE ROBERT (1941–2003)

Robert, the Father of Precision Agriculture, conducted early research on soil variability and the effects of variable rate application. He helped coin the term “Farming by Soil.” Robert was the first to develop and test a soil-map-based approach for variable-rate fertilizer spreading. His research showed variable-rate nitrogen applications could have positive impacts on corn grain quality and farmers could use variable- rate herbicide applications that would improve water quality without sacrificing weed control.

Robert’s research led to modern variable-rate fertilizer technology. In 1992, he created Minnesota’s first Extension program for precision agriculture and organized numerous workshops, field demonstrations, and on-farm field trials. Robert established the world’s first Precision Agriculture Center at the University of Minnesota in 1995, organizing six international precision agriculture conferences.

10of 10

Robert T. Fraley (born 1953)

Fraley, the founder of ag biotechnology, helped invent genetically modified seeds in the 1980s that helped farmers combat weeds, pests, and drought. His work revolutionized ag productivity. According to 2025 USDA data, more than 90% of U.S. corn, upland cotton, and soybeans grown today are produced using genetically engineered seeds.

In 2013, Fraley was named a World Food Prize Laureate for his contributions to enhance food production, promote food security, and reduce hunger. He worked for 35 years at Monsanto, leading scientists and overseeing researchers who worked on plant breeding, plant biotechnology, ag biologicals, ag microbials, precision agriculture, and crop protection products.

HOW THE STATE DEPARTMENT SHOULD PROCEED

The State Department should take three immediate steps to mitigate the suffering of millions.

First, the Strait of Hormuz needs a humanitarian corridor. The newly drafted United States resolution in the UN Security Council calls for such a passageway, relying on parties to the conflict to support that action and placing coordination in the hands of the United Nations to facilitate impartial and unhindered access. This is the right direction. Now other countries need to rally behind this move.

Second, the Trump administration should immediately reinstate humanitarian funding to Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen. The people on the edge of famine deserve compassion and life-saving aid.

Finally, it is time for the State Department to respond to the moment for what it is: a spiraling humanitarian crisis that already ranks among the worst in the twenty-first century. That means aggressively spending their $5.4 billion budget to save lives and alleviate needless suffering. And if the Defense Department is asking for money linked to this war, the State Department’s humanitarian bureau should too.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

HAS MIGHTY MOU COME TO SAVE THE DAY?

A week ago, inklings of an American/Iranian deal began trickling out of France, ventured with the help of some friendly friends in Pakistan – subsequently leading to the MOU eventually ratified today/

Hardly the be-all and end-all of all disagreements, the MOU (see transcript, ATTACHMENT “A” and rapid-fire takeaways thereafter from Time, The Hill, New York Times and CNN with, no doubt, many more to come)

ATTACHMENT FORTY – FROM TIME

TRUMP AND IRANIAN OFFICIAL SIGN AGREEMENT TO STOP FIGHTING, REOPEN STRAIT OF HORMUZ

by Richard Hall and Nik Popli Updated: Jun 15, 2026 1:51 PM ET Published: Jun 14, 2026 2:48 PM ET

President Donald Trump and Iran’s lead negotiator digitally signed a preliminary agreement to end the war between the United States and Iran, administration officials said Monday, setting the stage for a formal ceremony in Switzerland later this week that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz after months of disruption to global trade.

But even as both sides celebrated what they portrayed as a breakthrough, significant questions remained unanswered. The specific terms of the memorandum of understanding have not yet been made public, and officials indicated that some of the most contentious disputes—including the future of Iran's nuclear program and broader regional security arrangements—would be deferred to subsequent negotiations.

Senior U.S. officials told reporters on a briefing call Monday that Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran's parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator in the talks, had signed the agreement virtually on Sunday. A formal signing ceremony is expected to take place Friday, June 19 in Geneva. Trump suggested he would not attend, saying Vance would likely represent the United States.

Oil and crop prices fell in the wake of the deal’s announcement. The U.K., France, Germany and Italy said Sunday that they are prepared to lift sanctions on Iran.

Read more: Israeli Troops to Stay in Southern Lebanon Despite Ceasefire, Netanyahu Says

“I’m very happy to say the deal’s already signed,” Trump said Monday from France, where he is attending the Group of Seven Summit. “A lot of great things are going to happen to the Middle East right now, and very importantly, the oil is plummeting down, and the stock market is shooting up like a rocket today.”

“Hopefully it's going to be a good relationship, and we're going to get along, and if we don't, we go back to where we started, but I don't think it's going to be necessary,” he added.

Iran's deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, confirmed the agreement on state television and said Iran would begin implementing it after a formal signing later this week.

The agreement appeared to mark a major step toward ending more than three months of fighting that killed thousands, destabilized the Middle East and rattled energy markets around the world.

Trump said the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran militarized at the start of the war, spiking global energy prices, was already beginning to reopen and would be "completely open" by Friday without tolls. "They're doing a little hunting for a couple of mines that they've already found, but ... ships are starting to go out now," he said. "On Friday, it'll be completely open."

Yet on the background call with reporters, U.S. officials offered a more complicated picture of the timeline. One senior official said traffic through the vital shipping corridor would increase gradually and that normal conditions were still weeks away.

“We probably won't return to normal in two weeks, but we will see a significant increase in strait traffic," the official said. Another senior official on the same call said the Strait would be fully open by Friday.

Many details of the framework, including surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, were not immediately available. Some Democratic lawmakers said they couldn’t properly evaluate the deal until they saw the text of the memorandum of understanding. Democrats have repeatedly tried to rein in Trump’s war powers on Iran.

The senior officials said the memorandum would be made public within the next 24 to 48 hours, but Trump later suggested that the full text might not emerge until after the ceremony in Switzerland. "I think pretty soon… I would say sometime after Friday," Trump said when asked when the agreement would be released. "I mean, I want it to be released because it's a very powerful document."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a news conference Monday that "with an agreement, without an agreement," Israel would continue fighting to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. "As long as I am the prime minister of Israel, it will not happen."

The deal’s announcement came hours after an Israeli strike on Beirut, Lebanon, threatened to derail talks as they reached the final stage. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that Israel’s strikes came in response to “continued Hezbollah attacks on Israel’s territory, including a terror drone strike this morning.” They added: "Israel will not tolerate firing into its territory."  

“Ceasefires like this are inherently a little dirty. We’ve seen that in Lebanon, where you know there’s a significant reduction in the amount of fire coming from Hezbollah to Israel, and consequently coming from Israel into Lebanon, but it’s not zero,” a senior U.S. official said on background, implying that the fire traded would not derail the deal between the U.S. and Iran.

Trump issued rare criticism of U.S. ally Israel, saying the attack "should not have happened, particularly on a special day when we are so close to a Peace Deal with Iran." The Israeli army said it targeted a "Hezbollah command center" in Beirut after it launched "aerial targets" toward Israel.

Iran had insisted that an eventual deal with the U.S. to end the war would include a halt to Israel’s bombing campaign against Hezbollah and occupation of southern Lebanon. Israel’s refusal to accept such a measure has reportedly caused a rift between Netanyahu and Trump, culminating in an expletive-laden call between the two leaders earlier this month over Trump’s objections to strikes on Beirut.    

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi cautioned Monday that Iran remained deeply skeptical of U.S. intentions, even while acknowledging that a signing ceremony would likely take place this week. "We have a history of broken promises, non-implementation and agreements being torn up," Araghchi said after a meeting with members of Iran's parliamentary Economic Commission. "We are planning both the negotiation process and the implementation of any agreement on the basis of distrust, past breaches of commitments and previous experiences."

Araghchi said any agreement "may create economic opportunities" for Iran but warned against allowing the country's economy to become dependent on negotiations with the U.S.

Trump claimed in a Truth Social post Saturday that his agreement would prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Sunday that "[b]oth sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon." He added that "technical talks" would follow.

WHY LEBANON MATTERS TO AN EVENTUAL PEACE DEAL 

Iran’s demand that Lebanon be included in an eventual peace agreement has been one of the major sticking points in reaching a deal with the U.S. to end the war. 

Trump has continually pressed Netanyahu to resist launching large-scale attacks in Lebanon while he tries to negotiate with Iran, but the Israeli prime minister has largely rebuffed those efforts. The tensions between the two close allies reached a crescendo earlier this month when Trump pressured Netanyahu to call off an attack on Beirut. According to Axios, Trump called Netanyahu “crazy” on a phone call and accused him of reacting disproportionately to Hezbollah attacks. 

Intense fighting broke out in Lebanon since March 2, when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel to support its ally Iran in the face of a U.S.-Israeli surprise attack.

Despite a monthslong bombing campaign in Beirut and across the country, the occupation of much of southern Lebanon, and the widespread destruction of Lebanese villages along the border between the two countries, the Israeli army has been unable to deal a fatal blow to Hezbollah, a Shia militant group and political party that is allied with Iran. 

Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,700 people in Lebanon, including 132 health workers and 247 children, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. Around 1 million Lebanese people have been displaced by the war, and Human Rights Watch said Israel has committed “numerous violations of the laws of war in Lebanon with total impunity, including apparently deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on journalists, civilians, medics, financial institutions, reconstruction-related facilities, and peacekeepers, in addition to the widespread and unlawful use of white phosphorus in populated areas.”

Israel says 24 of its soldiers and four civilians have been killed over the same period. And Human Rights Watch has also accused Hezbollah of failing to take adequate measures to protect civilians. 

WHAT IS IN THE PROPOSED PEACE DEAL? 

Little is definitively known about the framework of the agreement, and each side has accused the other of dishonesty in public statements about its terms. 

Iranian state-linked news agency Mehr reported on Sunday that the agreement includes the suspension of U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil and the release of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets.

But senior U.S. officials said Monday that the Administration would only release frozen funds if Iran complies with the agreement. One official said the U.S. is also “prepared to release sanctions” against Iran and would “do some small gestures of that in the beginning if they make some small gestures to us that show that they’re willing to meet their commitments as well.”

Trump claimed in his Truth Social post on Saturday that Iran had agreed not to seek a nuclear weapon, and that despite Iran’s demand for reparations for war damages, no money would change hands.

He also said that the deal would lead to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and implied that the U.S. would acquire and destroy Iran’s highly enriched uranium.

“At the appropriate time, when all is calm, we will go in and get the Nuclear Dust, buried deep under the powerful sunken granite mountains, thanks to our beautiful B-2 Bombers and their brilliant pilots, and downblend and destroy it, whether in Iran, or the United States,” he wrote. 

But at least one senior U.S. official said that reopening the Strait to full traffic would take time—likely weeks, and the future of Iran’s enriched uranium has not been fully resolved.

The U.S. and Israel justified the launch of the war by claiming it was necessary to destroy Iran’s missile program and end its support for militant proxy groups across the Middle East. Those aims do not appear to have been achieved.

ATTACHMENT FORTY ONE – FROM BLOOMBERG

PAIN AU CHOCOLAT

Tracking the supply chain of a chocolate croissant shows how the US-Iran war’s impacts on food prices will linger, adding to years of inflation that have weighed on consumers.

By Eleanor Thornber, Maddie Parker and Nayla Razzouk June 18, 2026 at 2:00 AM EDT

Capital Croissant makes 10,000 pastries a week in its bakery in Ealing, West London, supplying luxury hotels and cafes across the capital with frozen croissants and pains au chocolat. Francois Bonnefoy started the company in November, calling himself “the owner and co-founder, but also the delivery driver, the packer — everything.”

Tracking the manufacture of Bonnefoy’s viennoiserie gives an insight into the possible rise of food inflation started by the war in the Middle East. The baker sits close to the end of an international supply chain that’s come under enormous pressure over the past few months.

The US and Israeli attack on Iran in late February and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz sent shocks throughout the global economy, pushing up prices for fuel, energy, fertilizers, and other agricultural and industrial products. Even though the US and Iran have now agreed to an interim deal that is expected to reopen the strait, the disruptions are still rippling through the food supply chain. That’s adding costs and friction at every level, and deepening the pain for consumers who have faced years of inflation.

“We didn’t expect rising energy costs and the wider consequences of war,” Bonnefoy says. “All our customers are suffering too.”

THE FARMER

In Orléans, on the eastern edge of the Beauce — the fertile grain-growing plain known as the breadbasket of France — sixth-generation farmer Eric Delorme tends to 200 hectares (494 acres) of crops. His products feed into local cooperatives, which in turn sell to the Moulins Viron mill that supplies bakers across Europe.

Delorme is expecting a lean year. Wheat is a nitrogen-intensive crop, meaning that farmers rely on fertilizers to improve both yield and quality. The Persian Gulf region is a significant producer of nitrogen fertilizers, and before the conflict began, the Strait of Hormuz handled around a third of global trade. Prices have jumped, and farmers have hurried to secure supplies. France’s agriculture ministry forecasts that corn plantings will drop 19% year-on-year.

“It’s going to change my production strategy and crop rotation,” Delorme says. His farm is producing 120 tons of wheat and corn less than it normally does this year, which means he’ll lose around €80,000 ($92,870) in revenue.

Transport costs have also gone up. Delorme’s farm uses about 48,000 liters of off-road diesel each year. The cost of the fuel has increased from €0.70 per liter before the war to €1.20 today, increasing his annual expenses by roughly €25,000.

By the time the US and Iran agreed to their interim peace deal, there were more than 40 vessels laden with fertilizer stuck in the Persian Gulf, according to tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg and Kpler. Flows of fertilizer through the Strait of Hormuz fell from 600,000 tons a week in late February to 60,000 tons in early June.

THE MILKMAN

Jonny Crickmore is a third-generation farmer in Waveney Valley, Suffolk; his family has been rearing cows on England’s east coast for 80 years. His business now produces its own cheese, kefir and butter, among other dairy products.

“Iran is like the punch in the face, isn’t it?” he says. “We’ve had 10 years of constant change and uncertainty — Brexit, Covid, Ukraine, Iran. Every time you get that shift, we all have to start again.”

European milk markets are already wrestling with oversupply after a period of high prices encouraged producers to expand herds and boost output.

Making butter is also far more complex than many consumers realize. Crickmore estimates it takes around 18 liters (19 quarts) of milk to produce a single kilogram (35 ounces) of butter, with every stage requiring specialist equipment.The site’s stainless-steel cream separator alone cost around £70,000.

“It’s a colossal amount of things that have to start with grass in a field, to rearing an animal, to eating the grass and milking that animal, to then carefully and cleanly putting that milk through pipes, tanks, cream separators, butter churns, extruders, a team of people wrapping and boxing,” Crickmore says.

Although prices of fertilizer and grains, which are key inputs, have largely retreated to preconflict levels, uncertainty remains over next year’s harvest. Higher energy costs and disruptions to global commodity markets could yet affect planting decisions and crop yields, feeding through to the price of livestock feed. For farmers such as Crickmore, this would mean higher costs long before milk is churned into butter or folded into a croissant.

Fertilizer prices have dropped significantly since their peak in mid-April, when granular urea — a key nitrogen fertilizer — hit its highest levels since 2022. The price has now fallen by around 45% and is back around prewar levels, though the spike came just in time for the spring planting season.

THE MILLER

In Chartres, southwest of Paris, the Viron family has been grinding French flour for six generations. Today, Moulins Viron sells worldwide, including to the UK, where it supplies Francois Bonnefoy’s Capital Croissant.

“For the whole-wheat and flour business, the main problem is energy,” President Alexandre Viron says. The miller's bills jumped 20% between January and May, an increase of about €20,000 a month.

The company should be sheltered from the rising price of diesel because it uses oil made from seeds to fuel its trucks. But, Viron says, “the price of this product is linked to gas oil. We can’t avoid the movement in prices.”

Transport is another concern. Fuel prices have fed through into rising freight costs, with some markets harder than ever to reach. Hiring a container to get the company’s flour to Jeddah, for example, cost $2,000 in 2025; it’s now more than doubled, to $5,000.

“It directly affects our business all over the world,” says Guillaume Masson, Moulins Viron’s export sales director. “Our baker customers can then reduce their consumption or even switch to a cheaper local flour. It is very worrying because this situation will not change as long as the shipping costs remain that high.”

Dry-bulk freight rates have soared 22% since the start of the war, according to figures from the Baltic Exchange Dry Index. They peaked in late May, but the measure is still well above pre-conflict levels.

THE CHOCOLATIER

Xoco sources cocoa from almost a million trees in Nicaragua and Honduras, supplying chocolate to bakeries and cafes, mainly in France and the UK — including Capital Croissant. The business has yet to experience significant disruptions from the war in the Middle East, but it’s felt the first ripples of its effects. The company uses a neutralizer, which regulates the acidity of water used to feed the crops, improving yields. The neutralizer, like many fertilizers, is made from nitrogen, and the war in the Middle East has driven up prices.

Frank Homann, who founded the business almost 20 years ago, says that neutralizer “has become more difficult to get, not necessarily more expensive, but more difficult to get.” This might have an impact on yields, he says. Transportation costs have also ticked up — not to alarming levels, but enough to keep an eye on. Before the war, shipping costs were about 25 cents a kilo; now they’re around 30 cents.

Cocoa prices crashed last year, falling from highs of nearly $13,000 a metric ton in 2024 to around $4,200 today. This offers some relief for chocolate buyers, who struggled during the boom, but little comfort for exporters who have to contend with low prices and rising input costs.

THE TRUCKER

GXO Logistics Inc. is a supply chain operator, specializing in warehousing, trucking and fulfillment, which serves a roster of UK customers across food and grocery.

Globally, the company occupies more than 200 million square feet of warehouse space and manages an extensive long-haul delivery fleet. Trucking companies with vehicles traveling hundreds of miles per day are very exposed to moves in the price of fuel. After the outbreak of the Iran conflict, an almost 30% spike in diesel caused a rapid rise in the costs of moving products from warehouses to retailers. Logistics companies also face rising transportation rates across the broader sector, including higher road-freight rates and increased costs charged to them by third-party carriers.

Martin Atkinson, GXO’s managing director for grocery in the UK, says he's seen many clients who are now looking for ways to reduce costs across the supply chain, requesting a smaller range of products and requesting wider delivery windows. “Businesses are rapidly addressing costs and complexity within their supply chains as volatility, fuel and labor increases persist,” he says.

European road freight contract rates surged to 140.1 index points in the first quarter of 2026, an almost 9 point increase from the previous year, according to the International Road Transport Union. The upward pressure has been driven by the surging price of fuel.

THE BAKER

Capital Croissant bakes its pastries then flash-freezes them, using a blast freezer that chills their core temperature from 24C (75F) to -40C. The whole site is kept at a constant 14C so the butter remains chilled while the pastry is being made. “Temperature control is critical,” Bonnefoy says. “In summer we need significant air conditioning.”

This makes energy costs one of the company’s biggest concerns. Like their suppliers, bakers have had to absorb increased delivery prices. There are also hidden expenses, which consumers may not even consider when they look at the price of their breakfast. “My waste collection company is putting on a 3% fuel surcharge,” Bonnefoy says. “I’m paying about £1,000 a month on waste disposal.”

Labor costs have increased because of a number of factors — including the rising cost of living in the UK — which have added to bakers’ challenges.

At the Little Bread Pedlar, an artisan bakery under the railway arches of Bermondsey in South London, deputy director Andrew Aveling says that the cumulative impact of increased costs is bearing down. “VAT, minimum wage, logistics, supply chains — everything's just been squeezed.”

Aveling says he’s faced some surprising challenges — one in particular that the conflict may worsen. The cost of packaging has increased worldwide due to rising energy costs and disruptions to the supply of key ingredients in plastics, including naphtha, a third of which comes from producers in the Middle East, according to Rabobank.

“There is a black market in plastic trays,” Aveling says. “We’ve had loads stolen. Then we’ve gone to cardboard boxes, which are really expensive. Old bakers think it’s a decadence, really. But now it’s the only way if we don’t have enough trays. Each time we’re paying nearly £1,000 just to get a pallet of them.”

82% of UK food and drink businesses say that they will have to raise prices because of the impact of the Iran war, according to a May report from the Food & Drink Federation. A third expect to reduce head count, and more than a quarter will pause or cancel planned investment.

LAST-MILE DELIVERY

Within two weeks of the war breaking out, Belgium-based logistics company Shippr contacted its clients to tell them it would impose a fuel surcharge on deliveries. The company operates across Europe, working with about 3,000 couriers to move food from producers — including the Little Bread Pedlar in London — to customers in cars, refrigerated vehicles and bikes. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz caused fuel prices to surge as much as 30% in Shippr’s core markets, and the company needed to offset that rise. For UK customers, the new fees represent a price rise of around 8% to 9%.

“We’re of course extremely exposed to short-term fuel shocks,” Romain Syed, Shippr’s co-founder, says. “We prefer to have a very clear and temporary fuel surcharge linked to the market evolution rather than silently watching the service quality starting to degrade.”

The delivery company has maintained to customers that the surcharges are temporary and will be lifted once fuel prices return to normal levels. But Syed says he doesn’t expect any change by the end of 2026, and is concerned that increased costs for customers will mean slower years ahead for Shippr signing new contracts. “What I’m scared of is that the economy will slow down again like after the Ukraine war,” he says. “And that is a nightmare for companies.”

The price of naphtha, a petrochemical product that goes into plastic manufacturing, has increased by 30% since the war began, but the impact on packaging for food has been wider. The Gulf States account for 8% to 9% of the world’s primary aluminium production, used in beverage cans and other packets. Cardboard manufacturing is energy- and chemical-intensive, and glassmaking is sensitive to the price of gas.

THE CAFE

A former Georgian stable block in London’s Beckenham Place Park, Homestead Cafe buys its pastries from Capital Croissant. The business has been growing healthily, but founder Lewin Chalkley says that he has one eye on the mounting cost pressures.

Having had a successful business close in the shadow of Covid-19, Chalkley is all too familiar with the knock-on effects of international crises. “Global events definitely feel closer to home now,” he said.

The site sells about 400 croissants a week. Three years ago, a pastry here would have set a parkgoer back £1.85. Now it costs £3.10. Still, Chalkley is wary that he can’t see the business being able to charge much more than that. Pricewise, “we’re right up at the top end for the size we’re selling,” he says.

“I don’t think people have a very good understanding at all of how the price of a consumer item is formed, or why it is what it is,” Chalkley adds. “There are a few things, like the price of a pint of beer or a cappuccino, that are fixed in people’s heads.”

UK food prices have risen 40% since 2019, driven by supply disruptions, extreme weather and conflict, according to Bloomberg analysis of figures from the Office for National Statistics. Prices for sugar, eggs and chocolate — all key ingredients in pastries — have increased by at least 60%.

“While the Strait of Hormuz is now reopening, it will take another six months, at least, for supply chains to normalize and, in some cases, longer for energy infrastructure to be repaired,” says Liliana Danila, chief economist at the FDF.

Food manufacturers often have long-term contracts with suppliers and retailers, she says, meaning that it could take as long as a year for spikes to be reflected in food prices. “However, higher costs are now baked into the system.”

The war in the Gulf is the second conflict to shock global markets this decade. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 disrupted energy supplies at a point when the world was emerging from the Covid pandemic and inflationary pressure was already high. The spike this time isn’t likely to be as high as back then, but the cumulative effect of several years of upward pressure is significant — and research shows that food prices rarely drop back to pre-crisis levels.

“It’s multiple years, one after another, with no relief and no sign of food prices going backwards,” James Walton, chief economist at the UK’s Institute of Grocery Distribution, says. “There’s a lot of shoppers out there who basically just feel they’ve done everything now. They’ve taken all of the steps they can reasonably take, and now they’ve got their backs against the wall.”

ATTACHMENT FORTY TWO – FROM EU SCIENCE HUB

CLIMATE CHANGE COULD EXPOSE OVER 1 BILLION PEOPLE TO FOOD CRISES BY 2100

An AI model predicting food crises from climate alone shows large gaps across socio-economic pathways: conflict and inequality could more than triple end-century exposure to food crises compared to sustainability and mitigation scenarios.

22 January 2026

A  JRC study published in Scientific Reports shows starkly different food-crisis futures depending on socio-economic pathways. The findings show that by 2100, conflict- and inequality-driven scenarios could expose over 1.1 billion people — including more than 600 million children, mostly in Africa and Asia — to severe food crises. 

In contrast, sustainable pathways could more than halve the exposure, highlighting how policy choices determine whether hundreds of millions face crises or far fewer are affected.

A NEW AI MODEL CAN PREDICT FOOD CRISES BASED ONLY ON CLIMATE

The projections are based on a powerful AI model – developed by the author – capable of identifying the onset of new, severe food crises based only on temperature and precipitation data. The model was trained and tested on a large dataset of historical acute food insecurity data for the period 2010-2022, obtained from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET). 

The high accuracy of the model corroborates the idea that climate plays a major, if the not the main role in food-security, not only through obvious direct effects – such as droughts reducing crop yields – but also through indirect, more convoluted pathways, by modulating, for instance, drivers of conflict, migration, and disease.  

By relying solely on widely available climate data, it provides a scalable tool for exploring long-term food-crisis scenarios, unlike traditional models requiring extensive socio-economic inputs.

CURRENT AND FUTURE YEARLY HUMAN EXPOSURE TO FOOD-CRISES

FEWS NET data show that exposure to severe food insecurity nearly tripled from just over 50 million in 2011 to almost 150 million by 2020. When projected onto future climate simulations and combined with demographic and poverty projections consistent with the IPCC Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), the AI model reveals sharply diverging food-crisis risks by century’s end.
Under a “Sustainability – taking the green road” pathway (SSP1), average yearly exposure drops by about 75% to ~42 million. In contrast, conflict and inequality futures raise yearly exposure respectively to ~280 million (SSP3) and ~229 million (SSP4). Compared with SSP1, these scenarios put five to seven times more people at risk, and even a middle path (SSP2, “business as usual”) more than doubles exposure.

CUMULATIVE END-OF-CENTURY RISK

Beyond annual risk, the cumulative exposure is staggering: more than 1.16 billion people experience at least one famine crisis this century under the inequality pathway (SSP4), whereas the sustainability pathway could spare about 780 million by 2099. The burden falls heavily on the young – most exposed individuals are children under five at their first crisis (about 630 million under SSP3–SSP4), and hundreds of millions of newborns face a crisis within their first year (230–270 million).

GLOBAL INEQUALITY

Future food-crisis risk is highly uneven across regions. Although the model detects emerging risks beyond today’s monitored areas, most projected crises occur in already vulnerable regions, especially Africa and Asia. 

Africa faces the widest geographic spread of crises, while Asia’s higher population density leads to comparable numbers of people exposed. Under conflict and inequality pathways (SSP3–SSP4), exposure rises steadily on both continents. Under more sustainable futures, however, trajectories diverge: Africa sees a marked decline in exposure after mid-century, while Asia’s exposure remains largely stable. This suggests that even optimistic pathways may deliver limited improvements for Asia’s food security compared with Africa.

CLIMATE CHANGE CREATES RISK, BUT POLICY MULTIPLIES IT

Climate change alone does not cause humanitarian crises: social and political conditions act as a multiplier. Societies with high inequality, limited development, or those suffering from ongoing conflict are far more vulnerable, even under the same climatic hazards.

The model also identifies emerging hotspots, especially in tropical and subtropical regions already under stress by warming climate and rainfall variability. This highlights that climate adaptation, peace-building, and inclusive development are as critical as emissions reductions.

By separating climatic triggers from socio-economic exposure, the study offers a new way to anticipate crises before they escalate, supporting early warning systems and guiding investments to reduce risk most effectively. 

Climate sets the stage, but human choices determine the scale of future food crises. Sustainable development and mitigation don’t just lower emissions, they dramatically reduce the number of people pushed into hunger

THE IRANIAN DEAL…

ATTACHMENT “A” – FROM NPR

Read the full text of Trump's preliminary U.S.-Iran agreement to end the war

June 18, 2026 12:31 PM ET

NPR has obtained a copy of the framework agreement to end the war with Iran. A source shared the text on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the preliminary deal.

Formally called a "memorandum of understanding," the text was signed Wednesday by President Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, as well as by the prime minister of Pakistan, which mediated between the US. and Iran.

The text is as follows:

ISLAMABAD MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America have jointly agreed, in good faith, on ......... 2026, at…….., on the following:

1. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, and their allies in the current war, by signing this MoU, declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final Deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and other provisions of this paragraph.

2. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America undertake to respect each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity and to refrain from interfering in each other's internal affairs.

3. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America commit to negotiating and achieving the final Deal, in maximum 60 days extendable with mutual consent.

4. Immediately upon the signing of this MoU, the United States of America will begin the removal of its naval blockade and any disturbances or impediments against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and will fully end the naval blockade within 30 days. During this period, the traffic of vessels will be in proportion to the numbers of pre-war traffic being restored by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America further undertakes to remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days after the final Deal.

5. Upon the signing of this MoU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles, and de-mining by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will be instated within 30 days. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman, to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz, in discussions with other Persian Gulf Littoral States, in line with applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.

6. The United States of America undertakes, with regional partners, to develop a definitive mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 Billion, for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The mechanism for the implementation of this plan will be finalized as part of final Deal within 60 days. All required licenses, waivers and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions will be granted by the United States of America.

7. The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions, IAEA Board of Governors resolutions, and all unilateral U.S. sanctions, primary and secondary, in an agreed upon schedule as part of the final deal. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America acknowledge the critical importance of the sanctions termination issue above mentioned and express their intentions to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.

8. The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America have agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpiled enriched material pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon, in accordance with the schedule mentioned in paragraph 7, with the minimum methodology to be down blending on-site, under the supervision of the IAEA. The two Parties also agree to discuss the issue of enrichment, and other mutually agreed matters relating to the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear needs, based on a satisfactory framework being agreed upon in the final Deal. The final Deal will confirm the provisions of this paragraph. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America acknowledge the critical importance of the nuclear issues above mentioned and express their intentions to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.

9. Pending the final Deal, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America agree to maintain the status quo; the Islamic Republic of Iran will maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program, and the United States of America will not impose any new sanctions, and will not deploy any additional forces in the region.

10. The United States of America undertakes that immediately upon the signing of this MoU, and until the termination of sanctions, the U.S. Department of Treasury will issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and derivatives, and all associated services including banking transactions, insurances, transportation, etc.

11. The United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use, the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the implementation of this MoU. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will mutually agree on the procedures related to the release of these funds during the negotiations. Such funds, whether retained in the original account or transferred, shall be made fully usable for payment to any ultimate beneficiary designated by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America undertakes to issue all necessary licenses and authorizations accordingly.

12. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America agree that an executive mechanism will be established to monitor the successful implementation of this MoU and the future compliance of the final Deal.

13. After signing this MoU, and subject to the beginning of the implementation of paragraphs 1, 4, 5, 10 and 11 of this MoU and the continuing implementation of these mcasures, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America will start negotiations regarding the final Deal exclusively on the other paragraphs.

14. The final Deal will be endorsed by a binding UNSC resolution.

ATTACHMENT “A.1” - FROM TIME

TRUMP AND IRANIAN OFFICIAL SIGN AGREEMENT TO STOP FIGHTING, REOPEN STRAIT OF HORMUZ

by Richard Hall and Nik Popli Updated: Jun 15, 2026 1:51 PM ET Published: Jun 14, 2026 2:48 PM ET

President Donald Trump and Iran’s lead negotiator digitally signed a preliminary agreement to end the war between the United States and Iran, administration officials said Monday, setting the stage for a formal ceremony in Switzerland later this week that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz after months of disruption to global trade.

But even as both sides celebrated what they portrayed as a breakthrough, significant questions remained unanswered. The specific terms of the memorandum of understanding have not yet been made public, and officials indicated that some of the most contentious disputes—including the future of Iran's nuclear program and broader regional security arrangements—would be deferred to subsequent negotiations.

Senior U.S. officials told reporters on a briefing call Monday that Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran's parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator in the talks, had signed the agreement virtually on Sunday. A formal signing ceremony is expected to take place Friday, June 19 in Geneva. Trump suggested he would not attend, saying Vance would likely represent the United States.

Oil and crop prices fell in the wake of the deal’s announcement. The U.K., France, Germany and Italy said Sunday that they are prepared to lift sanctions on Iran.

Read more: Israeli Troops to Stay in Southern Lebanon Despite Ceasefire, Netanyahu Says

“I’m very happy to say the deal’s already signed,” Trump said Monday from France, where he is attending the Group of Seven Summit. “A lot of great things are going to happen to the Middle East right now, and very importantly, the oil is plummeting down, and the stock market is shooting up like a rocket today.”

“Hopefully it's going to be a good relationship, and we're going to get along, and if we don't, we go back to where we started, but I don't think it's going to be necessary,” he added.

Iran's deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, confirmed the agreement on state television and said Iran would begin implementing it after a formal signing later this week.

The agreement appeared to mark a major step toward ending more than three months of fighting that killed thousands, destabilized the Middle East and rattled energy markets around the world.

Trump said the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran militarized at the start of the war, spiking global energy prices, was already beginning to reopen and would be "completely open" by Friday without tolls. "They're doing a little hunting for a couple of mines that they've already found, but ... ships are starting to go out now," he said. "On Friday, it'll be completely open."

Yet on the background call with reporters, U.S. officials offered a more complicated picture of the timeline. One senior official said traffic through the vital shipping corridor would increase gradually and that normal conditions were still weeks away.

“We probably won't return to normal in two weeks, but we will see a significant increase in strait traffic," the official said. Another senior official on the same call said the Strait would be fully open by Friday.

Many details of the framework, including surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, were not immediately available. Some Democratic lawmakers said they couldn’t properly evaluate the deal until they saw the text of the memorandum of understanding. Democrats have repeatedly tried to rein in Trump’s war powers on Iran.

The senior officials said the memorandum would be made public within the next 24 to 48 hours, but Trump later suggested that the full text might not emerge until after the ceremony in Switzerland. "I think pretty soon… I would say sometime after Friday," Trump said when asked when the agreement would be released. "I mean, I want it to be released because it's a very powerful document."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a news conference Monday that "with an agreement, without an agreement," Israel would continue fighting to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. "As long as I am the prime minister of Israel, it will not happen."

The deal’s announcement came hours after an Israeli strike on Beirut, Lebanon, threatened to derail talks as they reached the final stage. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that Israel’s strikes came in response to “continued Hezbollah attacks on Israel’s territory, including a terror drone strike this morning.” They added: "Israel will not tolerate firing into its territory."  

“Ceasefires like this are inherently a little dirty. We’ve seen that in Lebanon, where you know there’s a significant reduction in the amount of fire coming from Hezbollah to Israel, and consequently coming from Israel into Lebanon, but it’s not zero,” a senior U.S. official said on background, implying that the fire traded would not derail the deal between the U.S. and Iran.

Trump issued rare criticism of U.S. ally Israel, saying the attack "should not have happened, particularly on a special day when we are so close to a Peace Deal with Iran." The Israeli army said it targeted a "Hezbollah command center" in Beirut after it launched "aerial targets" toward Israel.

Iran had insisted that an eventual deal with the U.S. to end the war would include a halt to Israel’s bombing campaign against Hezbollah and occupation of southern Lebanon. Israel’s refusal to accept such a measure has reportedly caused a rift between Netanyahu and Trump, culminating in an expletive-laden call between the two leaders earlier this month over Trump’s objections to strikes on Beirut.    

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi cautioned Monday that Iran remained deeply skeptical of U.S. intentions, even while acknowledging that a signing ceremony would likely take place this week. "We have a history of broken promises, non-implementation and agreements being torn up," Araghchi said after a meeting with members of Iran's parliamentary Economic Commission. "We are planning both the negotiation process and the implementation of any agreement on the basis of distrust, past breaches of commitments and previous experiences."

Araghchi said any agreement "may create economic opportunities" for Iran but warned against allowing the country's economy to become dependent on negotiations with the U.S.

Trump claimed in a Truth Social post Saturday that his agreement would prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Sunday that "[b]oth sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon." He added that "technical talks" would follow.

Why Lebanon matters to an eventual peace deal 

Iran’s demand that Lebanon be included in an eventual peace agreement has been one of the major sticking points in reaching a deal with the U.S. to end the war. 

Trump has continually pressed Netanyahu to resist launching large-scale attacks in Lebanon while he tries to negotiate with Iran, but the Israeli prime minister has largely rebuffed those efforts. The tensions between the two close allies reached a crescendo earlier this month when Trump pressured Netanyahu to call off an attack on Beirut. According to Axios, Trump called Netanyahu “crazy” on a phone call and accused him of reacting disproportionately to Hezbollah attacks. 

Intense fighting broke out in Lebanon since March 2, when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel to support its ally Iran in the face of a U.S.-Israeli surprise attack.

Despite a monthslong bombing campaign in Beirut and across the country, the occupation of much of southern Lebanon, and the widespread destruction of Lebanese villages along the border between the two countries, the Israeli army has been unable to deal a fatal blow to Hezbollah, a Shia militant group and political party that is allied with Iran. 

Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,700 people in Lebanon, including 132 health workers and 247 children, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. Around 1 million Lebanese people have been displaced by the war, and Human Rights Watch said Israel has committed “numerous violations of the laws of war in Lebanon with total impunity, including apparently deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on journalists, civilians, medics, financial institutions, reconstruction-related facilities, and peacekeepers, in addition to the widespread and unlawful use of white phosphorus in populated areas.”

Israel says 24 of its soldiers and four civilians have been killed over the same period. And Human Rights Watch has also accused Hezbollah of failing to take adequate measures to protect civilians. 

What is in the proposed peace deal? 

Little is definitively known about the framework of the agreement, and each side has accused the other of dishonesty in public statements about its terms. 

Iranian state-linked news agency Mehr reported on Sunday that the agreement includes the suspension of U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil and the release of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets.

But senior U.S. officials said Monday that the Administration would only release frozen funds if Iran complies with the agreement. One official said the U.S. is also “prepared to release sanctions” against Iran and would “do some small gestures of that in the beginning if they make some small gestures to us that show that they’re willing to meet their commitments as well.”

Trump claimed in his Truth Social post on Saturday that Iran had agreed not to seek a nuclear weapon, and that despite Iran’s demand for reparations for war damages, no money would change hands.

He also said that the deal would lead to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and implied that the U.S. would acquire and destroy Iran’s highly enriched uranium.

“At the appropriate time, when all is calm, we will go in and get the Nuclear Dust, buried deep under the powerful sunken granite mountains, thanks to our beautiful B-2 Bombers and their brilliant pilots, and downblend and destroy it, whether in Iran, or the United States,” he wrote. 

But at least one senior U.S. official said that reopening the Strait to full traffic would take time—likely weeks, and the future of Iran’s enriched uranium has not been fully resolved.

The U.S. and Israel justified the launch of the war by claiming it was necessary to destroy Iran’s missile program and end its support for militant proxy groups across the Middle East. Those aims do not appear to have been achieved.

ATTACHMENT “A.2” - FROM THE HILL

SENATE REPUBLICANS RAISE ALARM OVER TRUMP’S DEAL WITH IRAN

by Alexander Bolton - 06/18/26 6:00 AM ET

President Trump’s deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting sanctions on Iran is getting strong pushback from Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill who warn that giving Iran’s theocratic regime access to billions of dollars in economic relief would be a major “blunder.”

Some Republicans are warning that the likely outcome of the more than 100-day conflict is not worth the cost to the nation: the lives of 13 American service members and more than $100 billion spent.

“Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave,” fumed Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in a social media post, calling the war and its outcome the “worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

“Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future. Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal,” he wrote on the social platform X.

“Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped,” he continued.

Most concerning to some Senate GOP critics is that the deal will immediately lift sanctions on Iranian oil exports and may lead to the unfreezing of Iranian assets around the world.

“History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea. I think the president is receiving some very poor advice on this deal,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

The deal leaves open the future of Iran’s nuclear program and does not clearly prohibit Iran from levying tolls on the Strait of Hormuz at some point in the future, according to senators who reviewed the deal.

It also leaves open the future of Iran’s missile program, which remains robust even after weeks of American and Israeli bombardment, according to intelligence estimates.  

A classified CIA assessment estimated that Iran still had 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile and 75 percent of its mobile missile launchers, according to a report by The Washington Post.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said the lack of significant Iranian concessions on its nuclear program, its weapons arsenal and its long-standing practice of funding militant proxies throughout the Middle East raises serious concerns. He pointed out the deal doesn’t prevent Iran from continuing to enrich uranium or toll the strait, and “it gives them a lot of money they can use to fund their proxies.”

The agreement would only guarantee that Iran does not impose tolls on the Strait of Hormuz for a period of 60 days. After that time, Iran will negotiate with Oman to define the future administration of, and maritime services through, the strait.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said it’s hard to argue that Trump’s decision to order joint missile strikes with Israel against Iran in late February produced an outcome to justify the cost in lives and munitions.

Tillis said the deal appears weak “on its face.”

“You got to do the balance of accounts: a hundred billion roughly, maybe more, spent today; 13 dead, 365 wounded, injured; our partners in the Middle East bombed, they’ve had casualties. There’s got to be a lot of return on that,” Tillis said, summing up the cost of the conflict.

He said Trump appears to have fallen well short of his objectives at the start of the war.

“We set out by saying we were going to drive down to zero their nuclear capability. Now we’re equivocating on that. We said that we were not going to make the mistake that Obama did by sending them a plane full of cash. I got to reconcile the numbers there,” he said.

“There’s a lot of work to be done to convince me that we’re on the right path,” Tillis added.

The Trump administration has conducted briefings with Senate allies such as Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) to highlight the benefits of the deal, such as the reopening of the critical Strait of Hormuz.

Moreno says that while Iran will benefit from the easing of sanctions on its oil exports, U.S. consumers will also benefit from lower fuel and fertilizer prices, which factor heavily into the cost of food and other goods and services.

“That helps us. Yes, of course it helps the Iranians also. It helps us lower energy prices,” he said.

Speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday evening, Moreno expressed his hope that the memorandum of understanding (MOU) would lead to a lasting agreement to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

“We’re on the verge of a historic possibility in a world that is not under threat by Iran, where we don’t live in fear of an Iranian regime with a nuclear weapon,” he said.  

But Republican critics of the deal aren’t taking much comfort in the prospect of lower oil and gas prices when Trump’s decision to start the conflict caused prices to spike upward in the first place.

West Texas Intermediate crude was priced at $67 a barrel before the conflict and surged up to $120 a barrel. It dropped to $76 a barrel on Wednesday.

“It’s an awful deal. It’s kind of JCPOA-plus,” Cassidy told The Hill, comparing the MOU to the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which former President Obama negotiated with Iran in 2015.

Trump withdrew from Obama’s Iran deal in May of 2018. At the time, the Trump administration said the Obama deal “enriched the Iranian regime and enabled its malign behavior.” The administration at the time also said it had delayed Iran’s “ability to pursue nuclear weapons” while “allowing it to preserve nuclear research and development.”

Cassidy said Trump’s new MOU with Iran “is going to leave Iran stronger, and it’s going to leave our allies weaker, and it may commit U.S. taxpayer dollars.”

The memorandum states the U.S. will work with “regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least $300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Cassidy said Iran now has leverage over the rest of the world through its demonstrated ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

“Now, Iran recognizes they can use their leverage over the Strait of Hormuz to extract from the other countries of the world whatever they want. And whereas before there was a credible threat that something would happen if they attempted to do so, I think that threat under this president seems to be exhausted,” he said.

Many Republican senators are skeptical that Iran will negotiate an end to its nuclear enrichment in good faith.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) warned last month that agreeing to a 60-day ceasefire to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran would be a “disaster.”

“The rumored 60-day ceasefire — with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith — would be a disaster. Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!” he warned in a post on X.

Wicker on Wednesday declined to comment on the deal.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s closest allies in the Senate, acknowledged Iran probably won’t agree to a deal to give up its nuclear enrichment program but argued it would be worth a try to reach a lasting deal to stop it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“It opens up the strait, it continues the suspension of hostilities, it creates space to see if you can get a deal — I doubt if they can — on the nuclear program, but why not try?” Graham said.

“If you can find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear ambitions, go for it. The MOU puts that in place,” he added.

GOP senators say there will now be a lot of pressure on the Trump administration to come up with a strong agreement to end Iran’s nuclear program in the next 60 days.

“When you say this is on the ledger for Iran, certainly helping them, what we need to look at then is what is the corresponding win for the United States?” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “I think we actually need to look at the agreement itself. I think we need to have it presented to us with an opportunity for us to ask those questions.”

Republican senators and a senior Senate GOP aide said they were not aware of any plan to brief the broader Senate on the details of the agreement and what to expect from the negotiations over the next 60 days.  

ATTACHMENT “A.3” - FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

IRAN WAR LIVE UPDATES: VANCE ISSUES BLUNT WARNING TO ISRAEL AS HE DEFENDS TRUMP’S DEAL

June 18, 2026, 2:31 p.m.

The vice president delivered a rebuke to Israeli critics of the agreement, warning them not to alienate their most important ally, as the administration sought to rebut mounting criticism of the deal.

June 18, 2026, 1:50 p.m. ET47 minutes ago

Erica L. Green, Max Bearak, Jonathan Swan and Rebecca F. Elliott

Here’s the latest.

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday delivered an extraordinarily direct rebuke to Israeli critics of the U.S.-Iran peace agreement, as he sought to defend the preliminary deal with repeated misrepresentations of its terms.

“Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” Mr. Vance said. He added, “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”

The agreement has faced mounting criticism from Israeli lawmakers, as well as some Republicans in Washington, who argue that it gives Iran economic relief while punting negotiations on its nuclear programs down the road.

Israel is not a party to the deal, and its fighting with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, had threatened to derail the U.S.-Iran talks to the increasing frustration of American officials. Mr. Vance’s barbed remarks from the White House came a day after President Trump himself admonished Israel over its military campaign.

Mr. Vance also reminded Israeli critics of the deal that, according to him, two-thirds of the weapons “that have protected your homeland” were American-made and paid for by Americans’ tax dollars.

A 60-day clock for the United States and Iran to negotiate the future of Iran’s nuclear program and other critical issues has begun, Mr. Vance said.

Responding to criticism about the sanctions relief that Iran is set to receive, Mr. Vance said Iran would have to “change their behavior” first — even though the deal lays out several benefits that begin “upon the implementation of this M.O.U.”

Those terms include the United States unfreezing assets and releasing restricted funds and both sides committing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway whose closure roiled global supply chains and prices. Iran also immediately receives waivers from the Treasury Department for the export of oil and other petroleum products that have long been restricted.

Other elements of the agreement, such as broader sanctions relief, would take place on “an agreed-upon schedule as part of the final deal.”

Mr. Vance claimed that lifting oil sanctions on Iran was “not a new benefit” for the country, even though before the war severe economic restrictions meant that Iran had to sell its oil at a steep discount to market prices. Lifting sanctions mean it will be now able to sell its oil for more, to a wider array of buyers and receive payment in more currencies.

Although President Trump and Mr. Vance have threatened repercussions for Iran if it does not satisfy U.S. demands, Iran retains significant leverage in its negotiations. Mr. Trump stressed on Wednesday that he was deeply concerned about avoiding “economic catastrophe” as a result of a prolonged conflict, and he faces difficult midterm elections with voters who broadly disapprove of the war.

Asked about Iran’s ballistic missiles, Mr. Vance told reporters that it was impossible to tell any country that they’re not allowed to maintain a self-defense capacity. He said the administration’s priority was to stop Iran from sowing regional chaos.

At the start of the war, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, described the destruction of Iran’s ballistic missiles as one of the key goals of the war. That objective has not been achieved. according to U.S. intelligence estimates.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

· Signing ceremony: A formal signing ceremony scheduled for Friday was in doubt after Iran’s foreign ministry suggested that it would no longer take place because the cease-fire was already signed. A ministry spokesman added that the negotiating teams would still be in Geneva.

· Lebanon: Israel is not a party to the agreement, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he does not feel bound by its terms, saying that Israel would maintain a troop presence in areas of southern Lebanon. Iran has said it would hold the United States responsible for ensuring that Israel complies with the deal.

· Rebuilding Iran: Mr. Trump has denied that the United States would invest in a rebuilding fund, but the prospect has still attracted criticism from some Republican lawmakers.

· NATO: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth berated NATO allies for refusing to join the U.S. war against Iran. In a 12-minute lecture to its defense ministers, he said that their “shameful” refusal had put U.S. forces’ lives at risk. Read more ›

June 18, 2026, 2:22 p.m. ET16 minutes ago

Shirin Hakim and Pranav Baskar

In his first statement after the U.S.-Iran peace agreement was signed, Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said that President Trump had made the deal with Iran “out of desperation” and warned that Iran would not submit to “excessive demands” from the United States in the second round of talks. Quoted by state media, Khamenei said that “the in-person negotiations that will take place in the future do not mean accepting the enemy’s view.” Trump has threatened Iran with more attacks if it does not meet U.S. demands on dismantling its nuclear program. Iran still has some leverage in negotiations, given the economic impact of the conflict and its unpopularity among American voters.

Credit...Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

June 18, 2026, 2:22 p.m. ET16 minutes ago

Ephrat Livni

Vice President JD Vance’s warning to Israeli critics of the agreement came after outspoken ministers in Israel urged the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in recent days not to succumb to pressure from the United States.

The far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, said on social media on Monday that the agreement does not ensure Israeli security and called for Israeli troops to remain in southern Lebanon, where they are fighting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, despite the deal demanding withdrawal. “We must not compromise,” he wrote.

Bezalel Smotrich, the hard-line finance minister, called the deal “bad for Israel” in a post on Monday and suggested Israel would have to continue the campaign against Iran’s government in “creative ways.”

June 18, 2026, 12:16 p.m. ET2 hours ago

Rebecca F. Elliott

Vance’s claim that temporarily lifting U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil is “not a new benefit” for the country is not true.

Before the war, severe economic restrictions meant that Iran had to sell its oil at a steep discount from market prices, mostly to refineries in China that were willing to risk running afoul of U.S. sanctions. Now, under its preliminary deal with the United States, Iran will be able to sell its oil for more, to a wider array of buyers and receive payment in more attractive currencies.

Where Vance is correct is that the removal of the U.S. blockade on Iranian oil will allow the country’s exports to return to prewar levels. It is unlikely that Iran will sell substantially more oil than before U.S.-Israeli strikes.

June 18, 2026, 12:14 p.m. ET2 hours ago

By Jonathan Swan

White House reporter

In an extraordinary moment, Vance delivered a pointed warning to the Israelis — especially to members of Netanyahu’s cabinet who are attacking Trump. He told them that Trump was their last strong ally remaining in the world. And he reminded Israel that two-thirds of the missiles shot down over Israel were eliminated by weapons produced by America.

“Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time, and he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower,” he said.

June 18, 2026, 12:14 p.m. ET2 hours ago

By Erica L. Green

White House reporter

Vance said he did not know whether he would travel to Switzerland on Friday for negotiations with Iran, which originally was slated to be a signing ceremony for the deal. He said the “plan is to go to Switzerland. I don’t know exactly when,” and added, “we think these technical negotiations are going to start sometime this weekend — that’s still the plan — but that could change.”

On Wednesday, the spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said that Iran’s president had “digitally” signed the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran, according to a report in official Iranian media, and that the expected signing ceremony would not, after all, take place in Switzerland on Friday.

President Trump signed the document for a second time on Wednesday night — after signing it digitally on Sunday — at the Palace of Versailles before departing France, where he attended the Group of 7 summit.

June 18, 2026, 12:10 p.m. ET2 hours ago

Jonathan Swan

White House reporter

Vance, asked about The Times’s reporting on classified intelligence estimates that Iran retains roughly 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile. Vance said that the total number of missiles matters less than the state of the missile launchers. And he claims that the United States had significantly degraded Iran’s capacity.

Even if one takes that answer at face value, Iran is still showing it can fire off missiles and its Gulf neighbors feel threatened enough that they urged the United States to sign the peace deal. So the administration’s goal of destroying Iran’s missile capacity fell far short.

June 18, 2026, 12:05 p.m. ET3 hours ago

Jonathan Swan

White House reporter

Vance said he planned to lead the U.S. negotiating team as a final agreement with Iran is worked out.

June 18, 2026, 12:01 p.m. ET3 hours ago

Jonathan Swan

White House reporter

A reporter asked Vance if Cuba was next — meaning was Cuba the next country where Trump would pursue regime change. After first joking that the reporter would have to “talk to Marco about Cuba,” he gave a vague nonanswer, saying, essentially, that it was important for Cuba to be stable.

June 18, 2026, 11:54 a.m. ET3 hours ago

Erica L. Green and Jonathan Swan

White House reporters

Vance, when pressed on where some of his claims about Iran’s commitments were written down, said: “Words don’t matter,” and added “we’re about verification.”

In reality, Trump’s advisers say privately that it’s hard to imagine Trump returning to military action against Iran, especially before the midterm elections. And the Iranians know that. So the U.S. has likely given up a substantial amount of leverage.

June 18, 2026, 11:49 a.m. ET3 hours ago

Catie Edmondson

Congressional reporter

While Vance briefed reporters at the White House, Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, released his own statement that he was “concerned that the memorandum of understanding negotiates away the victories of Operation Epic Fury in ways that are completely out of step with the president’s goals.”

Wicker asserted that the $300 billion fund for the reconstruction and economic development of Iran included in the memorandum, “though not funded by U.S. taxpayers, would make Iran’s payoff under President Obama’s 2015 deal look like a pittance by comparison.”

June 18, 2026, 11:45 a.m. ET3 hours ago

Jonathan Swan

White House reporter

Vance said the adnimistration felt “quite confident that we can temporarily lift those sanctions” on Iranian oil without getting Congress’s approval. He said they received an opinion to this effect from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

June 18, 2026, 11:43 a.m. ET3 hours ago

Erica L. Green

White House reporter

Vance has emphasized that the financial benefits in the the deal will only be available to Iran if they “comply fully” and “change their behavior.” But the memorandum of understanding doesn’t say that. It says that the United States will unfreeze assets and release restricted funds “upon the implementation of this M.O.U.”

June 18, 2026, 11:41 a.m. ET3 hours ago

Jonathan Swan

White House reporter

Vance said Congress should have received the formal signed copy of the memorandum of understanding this morning or later today and the White House planned to brief lawmakers soon.

June 18, 2026, 11:36 a.m. ET3 hours ago

Jonathan Swan

White House reporter

Asked about Iran’s ballistic missiles, Vance told reporters that it’s impossible to tell any country that they’re not allowed to maintain a self-defense capacity. He said the administration’s priority was to stop Iran from sowing regional chaos.

At the start of the war, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, described the destruction of Iran’s ballistic missiles as one of the key goals of the war. That objective has — objectively, according to U.S. intelligence estimates — not been achieved.

June 18, 2026, 11:32 a.m. ET3 hours ago

Jonathan Swan

White House reporter

Vance says it’s “worth trying” to see whether the Iranians might change their behavior. Vance also implores people to listen to the assessments of the Gulf Arab states. Between the lines: Vance is trying to direct his audience away from the very harsh criticism of the deal from Israel.

June 18, 2026, 11:30 a.m. ET3 hours ago

Jonathan Swan

White House reporter

Vance claims that Iran’s military and nuclear program have been “destroyed.” The New York Times reported last month — based on classified U.S. intelligence estimates — that Iran retains roughly 70 percent of its pre-war ballistic and cruise missile stockpile.

June 18, 2026, 11:27 a.m. ET3 hours ago

Jonathan Swan

White House reporter

Vice President JD Vance begins his news conference by trumpeting the fall in gas prices and the volume of oil going through the Strait of Hormuz.

June 18, 2026, 8:55 a.m. ET6 hours ago

Euan Ward

Reporting from Beirut

Israeli strikes continued sporadically in southern Lebanon on Thursday, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. The U.S.-Iran deal has called for an end to hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group. Although the pace and intensity of Israeli attacks has eased, the fighting has not stopped.

June 18, 2026, 8:53 a.m. ET6 hours ago

Adam Rasgon

Reporting from Tel Aviv

Gulf states are frustrated by the deal’s failure to tackle Iran’s missiles.

During the war in Iran, Persian Gulf nations were targeted by an onslaught of Iranian missile and drone attacks that hit airports, energy facilities, hotels, and military installations.

So when the preliminary deal struck this week between Iran and the United States left out a provision on missiles and drones, officials in the region felt a sense of frustration, according to analysts.

“They didn’t expect anything, but they’re still disappointed,” said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

On Wednesday, President Trump added to the concern by telling a news conference at the Group of 7 summit in France that Iran should be able to have some ballistic missiles because neighboring countries have them too.

Mr. Trump’s comments were in stark contrast with comments by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the early days of the war that the United States was attacking Iran to “eliminate the threat of Iran’s short-range ballistic missiles.”

“They’re not going to have these ballistic missiles and they’re not going to have drones to threaten us,” Mr. Rubio said at the time. The “objective of the mission,” he added, was to “deny them the ability to use ballistic missiles to threaten their neighbors, to threaten our bases, to threaten our presence in the region.”

Government officials from Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar did not reply to requests for comment.

In a statement, the government of the United Arab Emirates did not directly address the omission of terms regarding Iran’s missiles and drones from the agreement.

But the official said that the country supports efforts, including those of the United States, to protect people in the region from the consequences of conflict, and that the Emirates demanded total compliance with the deal.

Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University, said excluding Iran’s missiles and drones from the agreement showed that the United States “doesn’t have our best interests in mind.”

Mr. al-Saif said he has no doubt that Iran was already rebuilding its missile and drone capacities and that it would use the financial windfall it gets from the deal to acquire more of the weaponry. The agreement, which U.S. and Iranian officials have called a memorandum of understanding, says the Department of Treasury will issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and derivatives.

Without limits on Iran’s missile and drone programs, Gulf countries could resort to boosting their investment in air defense technology and increasing diplomacy with the Islamic Republic, according to Marc Sievers, a former senior American diplomat who served in several countries in the Middle East.

“Those are the main options on the table,” he said.

Mr. Ibish said Gulf governments would likely turn to Ukraine and South Korea for advice on countering missiles and drones.

Officials in the region, he added, were increasingly wondering whether they can rely on the United States as a security guarantor, especially after the Trump administration did not heed their warnings about going to war with Iran.

“The question is how do they see Washington fitting into their national security doctrine,” he said, referring to the Gulf countries. He said that they were slowly exploring the idea of “really moving on from reliance on the United States, if it doesn’t do anything to reassure them in the next 12 months.”

Finding a replacement solution, however, will take a decade or two, Mr. Ibish said, adding that the Gulf countries would have to stay close to the United States in the meantime.

Ismaeel Naar contributed reporting from Dubai.

June 18, 2026, 8:17 a.m. ET6 hours ago

Euan Ward and Leily Nikounazar

Iranian officials were projecting a united front over the preliminary agreement to end the war, after weeks of politial infighting as some hardliners sought to derail a deal.

Seyed Abbas Mousavi, a senior government official, said that there were only a “small number” of critics and called Iran the “clear winner” of both the war and negotiations. Esmail Baghaei, the foreign ministry spokesman, compared diplomats’ work to that of troops “behind launchers and in trenches,” and urged Iranians to give them the same support.

The aligned messaging was a contrast to the divisions that have opened up in Washington since President Trump signed it, including criticism from members of the Republican party.

June 18, 2026, 8:00 a.m. ET7 hours ago

Lara Jakes

Reporting from NATO headquarters in Brussels

Hegseth berates NATO allies for a ‘shameful’ response to the war.

Pete Hegseth Scolds NATO Allies

1:34

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday berated NATO allies for not assisting in American strikes against Iran and announced a review of U.S. forces in Europe as a result.CreditCredit...Virginia Mayo/Associated Press

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth berated NATO allies as “shameful” for their reluctance to assist in American strikes against Iran, suggesting on Thursday that the Pentagon would reduce the number of troops it keeps in Europe as a result.

He repeated President Trump’s previous description of the military alliance as a “paper tiger” and warned that U.S. support to NATO would not be “a one-way street.” Mr. Hegseth’s 12-minute lecture cast a chill over a meeting that had been designed to set a collaborative agenda for a summit of NATO leaders next month.

He scolded allies whom he described as having failed to step up their defense spending, as the alliance agreed to do last summer, under pressure from Mr. Trump. But Mr. Hegseth reserved his harshest remarks for countries that had resisted letting American jets or ships use bases in Europe on their way to attack Iran during the war that the United States and Israel initiated Feb. 28.

“Too many of our allies said no, or tried to drown us in arcane legal debates, or criticized us publicly for doing what they aren’t prepared or able to do themselves,” Mr. Hegseth told the other 31 NATO defense ministers gathered at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.

“It was shameful,” added Mr. Hegseth, who did not name the countries he was criticizing. “These allies, they put America’s sons and daughters — our sons and daughters — at risk by denying them the predictable access basing and overflight that never should have been in question at all.”

Asked about Mr. Hegseth’s remarks, NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, downplayed any acrimony and credited the Trump administration with putting pressure on Canada and European allies to invest $90 billion more last year in defense priorities.

“I am happy he does this because we need to speak the truth to each other,” Mr. Rutte told journalists after the meeting, which he said Mr. Hegseth attended for about two hours before leaving early.

Questioned over Mr. Hegseth’s description of NATO allies as shameful, Mr. Rutte responded: “I’m not going to comment on every word every ally is saying — I never do that.”

Mr. Trump has long questioned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s value, threatening at times to either leave the alliance that the United States helped create after World War II, or saying he would not defend its other members.

At the outset of the war with Iran, European leaders grappled with whether to support U.S.-Israeli attacks that many viewed as potentially illegal. France and Italy refused to allow American bombers to take off from bases in their countries, while Britain offered limited access to its bases in Cyprus and allowed only warplanes flying “defensive” missions to land in Britain. Spain blocked U.S. military jets involved in the Iran mission from using its airspace.

Mr. Hegseth then announced a six-month review of the U.S. troop presence in Europe “to ensure our forces are postured for America’s global needs.” He said that the review would seek to ensure that American access to bases and airspace was clearly understood, while putting the onus on NATO to ensure that Europe took primary responsibility for its own defense, instead of relying on the United States.

The United States is already planning to significantly reduce the aircraft and warships that it makes available for NATO operations in Europe. That could limit NATO’s ability to monitor Russian submarine traffic, for example, or launch long-range Tomahawk missiles deep into Russian territory.

Additionally, Mr. Hegseth said the United States would reduce what it pays in annual NATO dues if other members did not increase their annual defense spending as Mr. Trump has demanded. The United States pays about 15 percent of annual NATO administrative costs, amounting to about $790 million, about the same as Germany.

Mr. Trump demanded last year that all NATO members spend at least 5 percent of their national economic output on their militaries and defense-related projects, up from a 2 percent benchmark set in 2014. Three countries — Albania, the Czech Republic and Slovenia — still fell short of 2 percent as of last year, the latest official numbers available.

“We are going to keep a close eye on allies who are not doing that,” Mr. Hegseth said Thursday.

June 18, 2026, 7:07 a.m. ET8 hours ago

David M. Halbfinger

Reporting from Jerusalem

Trump’s Iran deal is disastrous for Israel, analysts there say.

Israel awoke to a frightening new reality on Thursday as it absorbed, with disbelief and largely in silence, the terms of President Trump’s preliminary agreement to end the war with Iran.

It accomplishes none of Israel’s war aims, analysts and officials said, and arguably leaves the country in worse shape on each of them.

Regime change? The government in Tehran is emerging from the war even more hard-line and emboldened, despite being decapitated at the outset of the conflict in late February. The deal’s requirement that American forces retreat from the “proximity” of Iran within 30 days means that Iran can boast that it has chased the U.S. military out of the region.

Ballistic missiles and proxy militias? The agreement does nothing to address Iran’s missile arsenal or its support of Israel’s enemies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

Worse still for Israel, by constraining its military in Lebanon — indeed, by requiring that Israel withdraw its forces from that country — the agreement seeks to handcuff Israel in a way that it was not before the war.

The hundreds of billions of dollars that Iran may receive in sanctions relief, unfrozen assets, or reconstruction aid could wind up funding more missiles in Iran and aiding Tehran’s militia allies around the Middle East.

And Iran’s nuclear program? The existential threat to Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has tried to eliminate throughout his career, and which was Mr. Trump’s primary reason for joining the wars on Iran, was left for a later stage of U.S.-Iran negotiations.

“It’s a bad agreement in which the Americans are paying with cash, and got, at the maximum, a letter of intent,” Yaakov Amidror, a hawkish former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said in an interview.

David Horovitz, the editor of The Times of Israel, called it “a catastrophic capitulation,” in the headline of a fiery opinion column.

And Nir Dvori, an analyst for Israel’s Channel 12 News, likened the deal to a “diplomatic Oct. 7” — a cataclysmic disaster for which Israel was wholly unprepared.

Mr. Netanyahu addressed the U.S.-Iran agreement only briefly on Thursday, saying “additional challenges lie ahead of us,” requiring “calmness, a firm stance on our security interests, and at the same time, maintaining the important connection with our American friends.”

The prime minister said Israel would stick to its ultimate goal: “Iran will not have nuclear weapons.”

He also vowed that Israel would restore security in the north, near its border with Lebanon. “That requires maintaining the security zone in southern Lebanon, and it requires that we not withdraw from it as long as Israel’s security needs demand it,” he said.

Otherwise, it was left to minor ministers and backbench lawmakers to try put the best possible face on the agreement.

Amichai Chikli, the diaspora affairs minister, speculated in a radio interview that Mr. Netanyahu would know how to say no to Mr. Trump about pulling out of Lebanon just as he knew how “to bring the United States into this war.”

But others more soberly grappled with the degree to which Mr. Netanyahu’s triumphalist rhetoric from early in the war had proved fantastical. He had repeatedly and confidently assured Israelis that the country and its alliance with the United States were “changing the face of the Middle East” to Israel’s advantage.

“We are remaking the region,” Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser, said on Thursday.

“Iran came out stronger, and I believe is now the regional hegemon,” he added. “They stood up to the U.S., the global superpower. They can have missiles, and there’s nothing in the agreement about the nuclear issue except we’ll talk about it. This is an Iranian victory over the U.S. and Israel.”

Even as they reeled from the terms of the agreement, Israelis across the political spectrum seemed also to be reckoning with Mr. Trump, the nature of his support for Israel, and the degree to which Mr. Netanyahu has tied Israel’s fortunes to the American leader’s good will.

On Wednesday at the Group of 7 summit in France, the president had again spoken of Mr. Netanyahu with disdain, suggesting he was excitable and prone to overreacting to Hezbollah’s attacks. He belittled him publicly as the “very small partner” in the relationship and said that Israel would have been annihilated if it had not been for him.

Mr. Trump suggested that Syria could do a better job than Israel of cracking down on Hezbollah in Lebanon without killing as many civilians. And he minimized the ballistic-missile threat from Iran — which forced millions of Israelis to run in and out of shelters throughout the war. He said it was only fair for Iran to have missiles because other countries in the region did as well.

The reactions in Israel evoked a bad divorce.

Hanoch Milwidsky, a lawmaker from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party, posted a video on social media of himself removing a red MAGA hat and replacing it with a blue one with the Hebrew words for “total victory.”

Ben-Dror Yemini, a columnist at Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s largest newspaper, wrote that Mr. Netanyahu had led Israel into “the most severe collapse in its history.”

“Trump reneged on every promise, turned Iran into a power, strengthened Hezbollah, and as a final flourish, gave Israel a kick and humiliation,” he wrote.

Dahlia Scheindlin, an American-born Israeli pollster, said it was “slowly sinking in” for Israelis that Mr. Netanyahu had staked the entire U.S.-Israeli relationship on his personal bond with a president prone to “temper tantrums” over “simple slights.”

“I think he was hoping that he could employ the tools that he has always employed with American presidents,” she said. “You know, tread carefully and strategically, but push the boundaries, and try to run circles around them if you can,” she added.

“I think that with a bit of a back-and-forth dance, it was largely working for him with Trump,” she said. “But he hit his limit.”

June 18, 2026, 6:48 a.m. ET8 hours ago

Nick Cumming-Bruce

Reporting from Geneva

Rafael Grossi, head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, said that with a preliminary deal signed between the U.S. and Iran to the end the war, negotiations on a nuclear agreement were entering a decisive phase.

The deal extends a cease-fire to allow negotiations on some contentious points, including Iran’s nuclear program.

“The I.A.E.A. will do only a process which is technically sound,” Grossi, who leads the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Thursday in a news conference in Geneva. “The parties are saying they want this agreement and they want the I.A.E.A. to verify it.”

June 18, 2026, 6:40 a.m. ET8 hours ago

Jenny Gross

Reporting from London

Six vessels passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, including an oil tanker that was subject to sanctions that took a route hugging the Iranian coastline. The number of ships was well below the recent rolling average, and it was down from 14 vessels that transited on Tuesday, according to Kpler, a maritime data company. On Thursday, three tankers carrying Saudi crude oil have transited through the strait, as well as one vessel carrying liquefied natural gas.

Dimitris Ampatzidis, a maritime risk manager at Kpler, said the figures suggested shipping companies were being cautious since the United States and Iran signed a preliminary deal to end their war. “Operators may be watching the cease-fire announcement closely, but they do not yet appear to be materially changing behavior,” he said.

June 18, 2026, 6:21 a.m. ETJune 18, 2026

Johnatan Reiss

The Israeli military said on Thursday that it would remain in the swath of southern Lebanon that it occupied after the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran to “remove threats and strengthen the defense of Israel’s northern residents.” The preliminary U.S.-Iranian agreement to end their conflict declared the “permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” but Israeli officials have repeatedly said that the country had no plans to withdraw its forces.

The Israeli military on Thursday published a map of its “security zone” in southern Lebanon, which showed that Israel has pushed further into some areas since it was first announced in April.

June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ETJune 18, 2026

Keith Bradsher

Reporting from Hong Kong

China, the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, may be slower than other countries to ratchet up imports after the Strait of Hormuz reopens. During the war, Chinese refiners cut imports by roughly a third and relied on vast crude stockpiles instead.

At the same time, Beijing restricted the export of gasoline and other fuels while refiners continued producing from those reserves, leaving storage tanks unusually full, said Muyu Xu, a senior oil analyst at Kpler. That could mean refiners have little incentive to quickly restore imports to prewar levels, even if oil prices fall further.

June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ETJune 18, 2026

Lara Jakes

Reporting from NATO headquarters in Brussels

The U.S. defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, excoriated NATO allies as “shameful” for being reluctant or refusing to allow American jets or ships to depart from bases in Europe as they prepared to strike Iran during the war.

“These allies, they put America’s sons and daughters at risk,” he said during a 12-minute lecture to the alliance’s defense ministers. American forces struck targets in Iran that “threaten European interests even more directly than they threaten us but too many of our allies said no, or tried to drown us in arcane legal debates, or criticized us publicly for doing what they aren’t prepared or able to do themselves,” he added.

June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ETJune 18, 2026

Lara Jakes

Reporting from NATO headquarters in Brussels

Belgium’s defense minister, Theo Francken, said the country was ready to deploy its minesweeping ship to ensure safe passage for commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz after the United States and Iran signed a preliminary deal to end their war. “It’s already deployed in the Mediterranean in a NATO mission, so it’s prepositioned, and then we’ll take the decision to bring it to the Strait of Hormuz as soon as possible,” he said at NATO headquarters on Thursday.

Francken made the comments at a meeting of NATO defense ministers, who said they were considering what support they could send to the Persian Gulf to stabilize the global economy.

June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ETJune 18, 2026

Lisa Friedman

Reporting from Rome

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant, Aramco, said a pipeline that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz was crucial for the kingdom’s economy. Iran blocked traffic through the waterway, a crucial transit route for oil and gas, after the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran started on Feb. 28. But the pipeline, which connects Saudi Arabia’s oil fields to export terminals on the Red Sea, can move 7 million barrels a day and helped bolster Aramco’s revenues. The company reported a 25 percent profit jump in the first three months of the year compared to the same period a year earlier.

“If it weren’t for this pipeline, we wouldn’t have a lifeline for us as a Saudi economy,” Al-Rumayyan said at an investment conference in Rome.

June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ETJune 18, 2026

Lisa Friedman

Reporting from Rome

Yasir Al-Rumayyan also said Saudi Arabia would likely expand storage capacity around the world, crediting vast stockpiles in the United States and China for helping keep the disruption of energy supplies from inflicting more serious damage on the global economy. “Aramco has storage facilities around the world especially in Asia, in Korea and Japan, and we are thinking seriously of ⁠having larger storage facilities all over the world,” he said.

June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ETJune 18, 2026

Alex Travelli

Reporting from New Delhi

India stands to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the lifting of restrictions on Iranian oil exports. As one of the world’s largest importers of oil and gas, India has been hit hard by higher prices and supply disruptions during the war.

Iran was India’s second-largest oil supplier as recently as 2009, accounting for 14 percent of imports. By 2019, under pressure from President Trump in his first term, India stopped buying Iranian oil altogether. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, discounted Russian crude briefly filled the gap until Washington moved to penalize India for those purchases as well.

June 18, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ETJune 18, 2026

Euan Ward

Reporting from Beirut

Fighting in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah has eased in recent days but has not ceased completely, making it uncertain whether the U.S.-Iran deal can produce a durable halt to their conflict. The agreement explicitly calls for an immediate end to military operations “on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” but neither Israel nor Lebanon signed it and it does not explain how they would be compelled to comply.

Since the deal was announced, Israel has stopped issuing near-daily evacuation orders for towns and villages across southern Lebanon, and the pace and scale of strikes has waned significantly.

June 18, 2026, 5:28 a.m. ETJune 18, 2026

Yeganeh Torbati

The deal gives Iran an economic lifeline while demanding few concessions.

A satellite image of Kharg Island, a crucial Iranian oil hub. The deal grants Iran waivers to begin exporting its oil even before the negotiation of a final agreement on its nuclear program.Credit...Planet Labs Pbc, via Reuters

An initial agreement by the United States and Iran to halt their war grants Iran major economic benefits while delaying the toughest concessions that Iran would eventually have to make on its nuclear program.

The agreement lifts the U.S.-imposed naval blockade of Iranian ports and, most crucially, grants Iran waivers to export its oil before the negotiation of a final agreement on its nuclear program. That will give Iran a critical economic lifeline. In recent years, its economy has been in a tailspin, with a collapsing currency and sky-high inflation.

The one major step to be taken by Iran is reopening the Strait of Hormuz to free passage for the next 60 days, though the agreement seems to leave open the possibility of charging fees after that period.

“On balance, the memorandum appears to favor Iran,” said Nicole Grajewski, who teaches at the Center for International Studies at Sciences Po in France and studies Iran’s foreign policy. “Tehran secures movement toward sanctions relief, a pathway for the restoration of oil exports, access to economic benefits and a reduction in military pressure while making relatively limited new nuclear commitments.”

But many of the most difficult concessions that the United States sought have been postponed, she said, though it is possible a future agreement could rebalance each side’s concessions and gains.

“But judged solely on the memorandum itself, the immediate and concrete benefits accrue disproportionately to Iran,” Ms. Grajewski said.

The agreement stipulates that the United States must begin lifting its naval blockade of Iran immediately and that Iran must allow commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, but it was unclear whether those steps had occurred. Nevertheless, the news that the two countries had agreed to the deal sent oil prices downward, with the average U.S. gasoline price hitting less than $4 per gallon on Thursday for the first time in months.

Critics are alarmed by the oil sales clause in particular because it also commits the United States to temporarily lifting banking restrictions to help facilitate Iran’s oil trade.

“Broadening authorization to financial transactions would crack the core architecture of U.S. oil and financial sanctions against Iran, arguably the most powerful economic leverage the U.S. holds over this regime, absent the naval blockade,” Miad Maleki, a former U.S. Treasury official and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote on social media.

The Trump administration has said that the interim deal maintains the United States’ leverage over Iran and that the final one will include verification of Iran’s compliance with nuclear restrictions. It has also said that removal of all sanctions depends on a fundamental transformation of Iran’s behavior, including ending its support for militant groups abroad.

“Do they actually think we’re going to release sanctions on the Iranian system if they’re still funding a terrorist organization?” Vice President JD Vance said in an interview with New York Times Opinion published on Thursday.

But while many restrictions on Iran will remain during the interim before a full deal, the country is likely to benefit to the tune of billions of dollars from resumed oil sales.

Those who favor diplomacy with Iran praised the memorandum, saying it offered the chance for a new page in U.S.-Iran relations.

“The measures in this agreement should not be read as concessions, but rather corrections to a decades-old policy of coercion that was an abject failure and made war inevitable,” Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, an advocacy group, said in a statement.

Iran’s collapsing economy has been a source of discontent for the Iranian people over the last decade. Since 2017, three large rounds of protests have kicked off over economic concerns and quickly led to protesters calling for fundamental changes to Iran’s system of governance. The last round, which began in December after a steep drop in the value of the rial, Iran’s currency, resulted in the demonstrations being brutally crushed by authorities.

Increased oil revenues would help shore up the rial’s value and ease pressure on the government’s budget, giving Iranian consumers and taxpayers some relief. But government corruption and mismanagement are also major causes of Iran’s economic woes and are likely to remain so in the immediate term.

Some analysts were puzzled over why a similar agreement could not have been made before a monthslong war that has killed Iranian civilians, destroyed parts of the country’s infrastructure and enabled Iran to exert leverage over the global economy.

“It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that these negotiations could have taken place without a three-month war,” said Holly Dagres, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute. “Much of what is outlined in the agreement — including the Strait of Hormuz, which has historically remained open — could have been addressed through diplomacy.”

And she pointed out that the agreement left the most difficult issues, including the precise limits to be imposed on Iran’s nuclear program, for later talks.

“I’m skeptical that the next 60 days of talks will produce concrete results,” she said. “This is merely kicking the can down the road.”

June 18, 2026, 3:55 a.m. ETJune 18, 2026

Kailyn Rhone

The average price of U.S. gas fell below $4 a gallon for the first time since the war’s early days.

The average price of U.S. gasoline fell below $4 a gallon on Thursday for the first time in months, after Iran and the United States signed a preliminary agreement to cease hostilities for 60 days and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline fell to a fraction of a penny below $4, down from $4.03 the day before, according to the AAA motor club.

Still, gas prices hovered just below $3 a gallon before the first U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February. They spiked to around $4.50 a gallon in May, as throttled energy supplies from the Middle East pushed up the price of crude oil, a crucial ingredient in gasoline.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, which helped mediate the deal, said in a post on X that the memorandum of understanding had been signed electronically by the U.S. and Iranian presidents. As a result, the agreement to begin reopening the strait and lifting the U.S. naval blockade would “enter into force with immediate effect,” he wrote.

Rising fuel costs have strained household budgets and pushed up prices across the economy. At one point in the early days of the war, oil prices spiked to nearly $120 a barrel — the highest level since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — contributing to a sharp increase at the pump.

How High Are Gas Prices Where You Live?

Here is a county-level look at where drivers are facing the highest costs.

Oil prices have fallen about 10 percent this week alone. Even so, gas prices remain about a third higher than before the start of the war.

“We’re getting close to the numbers we were before the war started,” President Trump said on Monday in France at the annual Group of 7 summit.

Other fuel prices are also beginning to ease. Diesel cost $5.13 a gallon on Thursday, down from more than $5.60 a gallon a month ago, offering relief to truckers, farmers and other big users of the fuel.

High gas prices have bled into Americans’ lives beyond the pump, including travel. For example, airfares were up nearly 27 percent in May, owing in part to surging jet fuel costs.

Economists caution that it takes time for lower oil prices to be reflected fully in the cost of gasoline. Regional differences remain significant, driven by variations in state taxes, distribution costs and refining capacity. Drivers in parts of the Great Plains and the South have been among the first to see prices drop below $4, with some areas approaching $3.50 per gallon. On the West Coast, however, prices remain well above $4 a gallon.

Aruni Soni contributed reporting.

June 18, 2026, 3:08 a.m. ETJune 18, 2026

The New York Times

Oil prices fall as the deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz takes ‘immediate’ effect.

Oil prices fell and stocks rose on Thursday after the United States and Iran said they had signed a preliminary agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Both sides said that President Trump and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran signed the deal remotely on Wednesday, setting the stage for a new round of negotiations that could begin as soon as Friday.

As a result, the agreement to begin reopening the strait and lifting the U.S. naval blockade would “enter into force with immediate effect,” he wrote.

Upon signing, the United States is expected to issue sanctions waivers, allowing Iran to resume oil sales on global markets.

Oil prices continue to drop.

· The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, fell about 2.6 percent to about $78 a barrel, as traders were cautiously optimistic that oil could start flowing again through the Strait of Hormuz. The price is approaching levels not seen since the early days of the war.

· West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, was also down, about 3 percent to around $74 a barrel.

Price of Brent crude oil

How much the international benchmark costs

020406080$100 per barrel

Iran War Live Updates: Vance Defends Trump's Iran Deal, With a Blunt Warning to Israel - The New York Times

Notes: Data shows future contract prices for Brent crude oil. Gaps indicate nontrading hours. Data is delayed at least 15 minutes.

Source: FactSet.

The New York Times

Stocks rise.

· The S&P 500 rose 0.8 percent when stocks resumed trading in the United States on Thursday.

· Stocks in Asia, where countries import vast quantities of oil and gas, were mixed. Stocks in Japan and South Korea jumped about 2 percent, while shares in Hong Kong were down more than 2 percent.

· In Europe, stocks were mixed. The Stoxx 600, a broad European index, slipped about 0.5 percent and the FTSE in Britain fell about 1 percent, while the DAX in Germany gained 0.1 percent.

Nikkei 225 index

How stocks in Japan are trading

55,00060,00065,00070,000

Note: Data delayed at least 15 minutes.

Source: FactSet.

The New York Times

Gasoline prices fall.

· Gas prices fell again on Thursday, dropping below $4 a gallon for the first time since the early days of the war, according to the AAA motor club. The price of gasoline is still about a third higher since the war began.

· Gas prices don’t move in lock step with crude, usually trailing increases or drops by a few days.

· The average price of diesel also fell on Thursday, to $5.13. It remains more than 35 percent higher since the start of the war.

How High Are Gas Prices Where You Live?

Here is a county-level look at where drivers are facing the highest costs.

What they are saying: ‘More relief,’ but with uncertainty, as shipping resumes.

· The memorandum of understanding signed by the United States and Iran will shift global supply chains, Bob Savage, the head of markets macro strategy at BNY, wrote in a research note.

· “We fully expect more relief rallies as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz resumes,” he wrote, adding that costs will rise. “Tolls, insurance and even the costs of reconstruction and diversification for suppliers will need to pass through the global economy and keep central banks vigilant.”

· Market participants are still “unsure,” though, when it comes to what the U.S.-Iran agreement means for physical trade, said Martha Tallas, a senior manager at Argus Media. “President Donald Trump’s cry to shippers to ‘start your engines’ is unlikely to be met with much revving,” she said “Wait-and-see seems to be the order of the day for most.”

More on the Fighting in the Middle East

Israel’s Reaction to U.S.-Iran Deal: The deal is disastrous for Israel, analysts said, because it accomplishes none of Israel’s goals and arguably leaves the country in worse shape. Leading figures from a right-wing Israeli broadcaster are openly attacking President Trump.

· Frustration in the Region: The preliminary deal struck this week between Iran and the United States left out a provision on missiles and drones, leaving officials in the region with a sense of frustration, according to analysts.

· Hegseth Berates NATO Allies: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a meeting of NATO defense ministers to criticize their reluctance to assist in American strikes against Iran, suggesting that the Pentagon would reduce the number of troops it keeps in Europe as a result.

· Bahrain Expels Citizens: Amid the war with Iran, Bahrain has stripped 69 people of their citizenship, including children, accusing them of disloyalty and rendering them stateless.

· U.S. Strike on Iranian School: Months later, U.S. officials have not publicly acknowledged responsibility for the deaths or released a report on their findings from an investigation into the strike that killed 175 people, mostly children. Trump said the investigation was ongoing.

ATTACHMENT “A.4” - FROM CNN (Takeaways)

US and Iran sign initial agreement to end war but tougher talks lie ahead

US vice president says 60-day period to reach a final deal is underway and each side is honoring its commitments so far.

Updated 2:25 PM EDT, Thu June 18, 2026

clipped thumbnail - vance-iran-agreement-mou - CNN ID 22729232 - 00:00:19;22

Some "gentlemen's agreements" with Iran "are written down," Vance says

0:31

Here's the latest

• Agreement signed: The US and Iran have signed an initial agreement, kicking off a 60-day period of negotiations on a final deal to end the war. Iran’s supreme leader authorized the signing despite holding a “different view,” he said in a statement read by state media.

• Side deals: Vice President JD Vance said the US has made “gentlemen’s agreements” with Iran on certain aspects of negotiations.

• Next steps: Vance expects technical talks to begin this weekend and said he plans to head up the US team. Meanwhile, the initial agreement allows for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and other key provisions.

• Spotlight on Lebanon: The text calls for the immediate end of war on all fronts, but Israel has continued strikes in Lebanon and vowed not to withdraw, potentially imperiling diplomatic efforts and causing tension with the US.

All

Catch Up

57 Posts

25 min ago

Trump says US expects "complete ceasefire on all fronts"

Alejandra Jaramillo

By Alejandra Jaramillo

US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Geneva Airport, after attending the G7 summit, on Wednesday, June 17.

US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Geneva Airport, after attending the G7 summit, on Wednesday, June 17. Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

President Donald Trump said Thursday that the United States expects a “complete ceasefire on all fronts” as he called on “everyone in the Middle East” to uphold their commitments.

“The United States is committed to PEACE, and we encourage everyone in the Middle East Region to maintain their commitment to allowing our negotiations to beautifully unfold,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“We expect a complete Ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Israel,” he added.

The United States and Iran signed an initial agreement that starts a 60-day negotiating period on a final deal. The text of the memorandum of understanding calls for “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” But Israel has once again vowed that it will not withdraw from Lebanon.

50 min ago

Iran's supreme leader confirms he authorized agreement with US, state media reports

By Aida Karimi and Mitchell McCluskey

A woman holds up an Iranian flag in front of a banner showing the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei during a street festival celebrating Eid al-Ghadir, in Tehran, Iran, on Thursday, June 4.

A woman holds up an Iranian flag in front of a banner showing the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei during a street festival celebrating Eid al-Ghadir, in Tehran, Iran, on Thursday, June 4. Vahid Salemi/AP

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, confirmed he authorized an agreement with the US, despite holding a different view on the deal.

In a text message read on Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB on Thursday evening, Khamenei said that US President Donald Trump had “out of desperation, resorted to various forms of pressure and leverage to bring about this outcome.”

“As a matter of principle, I held a different view. However, in light of the commitment given to me by the respected President, in his capacity as head of the Supreme National Security Council, on behalf of himself and the other members, to safeguard the rights of the Iranian nation and the Resistance Front—and given his explicit acceptance of responsibility for doing so—I authorized it,” Khamenei said.

Iran will now “await the fulfillment of the conditions that have been stated” in the agreement, the Iranian leader continued.

He added that any potential future face-to-face negotiations “do not signify acceptance of the enemy’s position.”

57 min ago

What's happening in the Strait of Hormuz now that agreement is signed

By CNN staff

After the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding, ships have begun to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to marine traffic data.

CNN’s Paula Hancocks explains what is next for the vital shipping route:

thumbnail paula strait of hormuz 2 vrtc.jpg

Is the Strait of Hormuz now open?

1:37

1 hr 30 min ago

US military announces end of blockade on Iranian ports

Haley Britzky

By Haley Britzky

The US military has lifted the naval blockade on Iranian ports, Central Command announced Thursday, though US Navy ships are remaining “in the general area.”

“Today, US forces lifted the blockade on all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports and coastal areas, in accordance with the President’s direction. American forces are not impeding the transit of vessels to or from Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman,” a CENTCOM post on X said. “All US military blockade enforcement efforts have ceased. Our great Naval Ships will remain in the general area to make sure that all aspects of the agreement are adhered to, obeyed and in full force and effect.”

The removal of the blockade — which has been in place since April — comes the day after President Donald Trump signed a hard copy of the US-Iran agreement at the Palace of Versailles. Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that the US was “honoring our end of the early part of the agreement” by lifting the blockade, and said the Iranians were also honoring “their end of the commitment” by not firing on any ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

The US Navy has had significant firepower in the Middle East for months now; in May, there were more than 15 destroyers and two aircraft carriers in the region, in addition to an Amphibious Ready Group-Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The blockade also extended outside of the Middle East region, resulting in American forces boarding some ships in the Pacific region.

1 hr 34 min ago

Vance says US-Iran technical talks will begin in coming days. Here's what to know

Elise Hammond

By Elise Hammond

Vice President JD Vance speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, Thursday.

Vice President JD Vance speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, Thursday. Eric Lee/Reuters

A 60-day period to reach a final agreement with Iran — as set forth in a newly signed memorandum of understanding — begins today, according to US Vice President JD Vance.

Vance answered questions about the framework and what will happen moving forward at a news conference that wrapped up last hour.

Here’s what he said:

The memorandum of understanding was “signed technically today, Iran time,” Vance said. That would set the deadline for a permanent agreement at August 17. The vice president said he is not worried about being blamed if the deal falls apart in the interim.

Vance notably confirmed the existence of “gentleman’s agreements” with Tehran on certain aspects of negotiations, saying in response to a question from CNN that some of the understandings are written down.

The Iranians are so far honoring their end of the agreement militarily, Vance said, and the US is also honoring its commitment to lift the blockade on Iranian ports. Time will tell whether Tehran will “comply with the next step” of the plan, he said.

The vice president said he plans to go to Switzerland for an in-person signing of the agreement, but he is not sure when. Technical negotiations on final details in the deal are expected to begin this weekend, he said.

A final agreement will address the long-term operation of the Strait of Hormuz, Vance said, and the US is working with regional allies to ensure security provisions in the waterway.

Vance declined to say who would fund the $300 billion that could be paid to Iran as part of a permanent truce. He speculated that there might be both governmental and private investors. Additionally, he said he doesn’t know how much money comprises frozen assets that Iran would be eligible to receive under the terms.

The vice president reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself, but urged the country to “respect this peace process.” He conceded that Israeli military operations in Lebanon have sometimes gotten in the way of achieving a breakthrough in negotiations.

Vance defended the Trump administration’s shifting stance on allowing Iran to obtain ballistic missiles, suggesting the US has significantly degraded Iran’s capability and that the US is allowing Iran to have “self-defense.”

Congress will be formally briefed on the US-Iran agreement “very soon,” as some lawmakers have expressed concerns about the framework.

CNN’s Kit Maher, Adam Cancryn, Aileen Graef, Betsy Klein, Michael Williams, Alayna Treene, Aditi Sangal and Morgan Leason contributed reporting to this post.

1 hr 30 min ago

Republican senators sound off on US-Iran agreement

Lauren Fox

Morgan Rimmer

Manu Raju

By Lauren Fox, Morgan Rimmer, Manu Raju and Ellis Kim

Sen. Ted Cruz arrives via the subway in the basement of the Capitol ahead of a vote on January 14.

Sen. Ted Cruz arrives via the subway in the basement of the Capitol ahead of a vote on January 14. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/File

A pair of Republican lawmakers lit into the Trump administration’s memorandum of understanding with Iran today.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz railed against the framework’s $300 billion economic fund for Iran.

“History demonstrates that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is an exceptionally bad idea, and I think unfortunately the president is receiving some really bad advice on this deal,” Cruz said, adding: “I don’t want to see us send a penny to the Ayatollah, and I hope that we don’t.”

He later issued a warning: “If we give billions of dollars to Iran, that money will be used to murder Americans, and so I don’t believe we should do that.”

Cruz faulted the president’s advisers before singling out several of the deal’s terms as “mistakes,” including “tens of billions of dollars immediately being released to Iran before they make a single nuclear concession” and Iran “having an ongoing role in administering the Strait of Hormuz and potentially charging fees or tolls.”

And Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who has blasted the deal on social media, argued that “Iran’s left stronger, we are left weaker, our allies are left weaker.”

Cassidy, who lost a primary and will retire from Congress, said that “Iran gets $300 billion to rebuild, which I’ll tell you some of it is to support things that we don’t care for.”

“I think that we have 13 Americans dead. We spent anywhere from $25 to $100 billion in munitions, and turns out we’ve lost the credible threat of attacking them again. There’s a lot of stuff in there that’s bad,” Cassidy continued.

One Iran hawk — Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, who is retiring at the end of her term — raised questions about the deal Thursday.

“I think there are many of us that just really want to fully understand what the administration is thinking, where they’re going to go with this,” she told reporters. “I want to know, what are the follow-on repercussions?”

This post has been updated with additional comments from lawmakers.

2 hr 21 min ago

Israelis "have to respect this peace process," Vance says

Aditi Sangal

By Aditi Sangal

Buildings damaged by Israeli strikes are seen through shattered glass from the Jabal Amel Hospital in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, on Thursday, June 18.

Buildings damaged by Israeli strikes are seen through shattered glass from the Jabal Amel Hospital in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, on Thursday, June 18. Hassan Ammar/AP

Vice President JD Vance said that Israeli military operations in Lebanon have sometimes gotten in the way of achieving a breakthrough in negotiations with Iran, which has been a source of frustration for President Donald Trump.

Trump gets “frustrated” sometimes when they seem to be “on the cusp of a major breakthrough in the agreement, and then all of a sudden, there is a major explosion that goes off in a civilian population center in Beirut, and a lot of people who have nothing to do with Hezbollah lose their lives,” Vance said. “That’s not acceptable. That’s the sort of thing that we’ve asked for closer coordination, so that we ensure it doesn’t happen.”

His comments come as Israel has once again vowed that it will not withdraw from Lebanon despite the first bullet point of the US-Iran agreement calling for “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” Israel has continued to carry out strikes in southern Lebanon, where it says it is targeting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

“The Israelis — just like everybody else — have to respect this peace process that is fundamentally good for them and good for the entire region,” Vance said.

Vance also addressed reports of Israeli government leaders being unhappy with the agreement, saying “it does bother me” to see them personally attacking Trump.

“If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world,” Vance said in a message to the cabinet members. “Over the last three months, two-thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars.”

This post has been updated with additional comments from Vance.

2 hr 20 min ago

US tried to accommodate Iran's request to delay text's release, Vance says

By Isaac Tellechea

US Vice President JD Vance said that the confusion around the signing of the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran came down to “accommodating” an Iranian request to delay the release of the document’s text.

“I think dealing with a fractured Iranian system, where communication isn’t great, is just sometimes something that we don’t fully appreciate or we don’t fully understand,” Vance said at a White House briefing on Thursday.

Vance said that he didn’t “really understand” why the Iranians requested not to have the document’s text released, but speculated that Iran might have wanted a translated version of the text complete before its release.

“This is pure conjecture, I’m just guessing at this,” Vance said. “I wonder if part of it is that they wanted to have a Persian translation, a Farsi translation that they felt good about.”

Vance said that the US delayed the text’s release as an attempt to “show good faith to the Iranians.”

2 hr 29 min ago

Pakistani leader cancels trip to Switzerland as US-Iran agreement is signed, source says

Sophia Saifi

By Sophia Saifi

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will no longer travel to Switzerland for a signing ceremony of the US-Iran agreement because the deal has already been electronically signed and is being implemented, a Pakistani official source told CNN on Thursday.

A source affirmed that the negotiators had secured a political breakthrough between Iran and the US “at the highest level.”

The next phase of the agreement will proceed through “separate technical-level tracks on multiple issues under this comprehensive framework,” the source added.

Pakistan remains engaged in diplomatic efforts on the issue, they said.

2 hr 32 min ago

"Praise Jesus," Vance says about Pope Leo's positive comments on US-Iran agreement

Aditi Sangal

By Aditi Sangal

Vice President JD Vance said he’s glad to hear Pope Leo’s comments on the US-Iran agreement.

“My response to that is, praise Jesus. I’m glad that the Pope has positive things to say about our MoU. I think that the Pope is fundamentally accurate, and it’s going to be good for the entire world. But we got to keep working at it to make sure that the Iranians honor the commitments that they’ve made,” Vance said at the White House press briefing.

Pope’s comment: “I hope that it truly is a solution to the war, that the war really is over, and that we can move forward,” Pope Leo said to reporters Wednesday at the papal retreat of Castel Gandolfo just outside Rome.

1 hr 59 min ago

Senate Armed Services chairman expresses deep concern over Iran agreement

Ted Barrett

By Ted Barrett

US Senator Roger Wicker arrives to a US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing regarding the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2027 and the Future Years Defense Program, on Capitol Hill, on May 19.

US Senator Roger Wicker arrives to a US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing regarding the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2027 and the Future Years Defense Program, on Capitol Hill, on May 19. Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters

GOP Sen. Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed deep concern and was critical of the Iran agreement in a new statement on Thursday.

Wicker said that he’s concerned the agreement “negotiates away the victories of Operation Epic Fury in ways that are completely out of step with the President’s goals.”

Wicker went on to say, “Specifically, the $300 billion fund for the reconstruction and economic development of Iran – though not funded by U.S. taxpayers – would make Iran’s payoff under President Obama’s 2015 deal look like a pittance by comparison.”

He added, “I believe it would be an error to force Israel to stand down against Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terrorist organization that continues to attack Israel on its northern border. I also oppose the U.S. lifting any sanctions on Iran, or unfreezing Iranian funds, in exchange for Iran’s mere agreement to negotiate for another 60 days.”

2 hr 20 min ago

Too early to know who will back the peace agreement's $300B fund for Iran, Vance says

By Adam Cancryn

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday declined to say who would fund the $300 billion that could be paid to Iran as part of a permanent truce, telling reporters it’s too early in the negotiations to definitively say.

“There is a great desire from the Arab world and from outside the Arab world to actually get involved in Iran if they behave properly,” he said during a White House press briefing. “But again, this is so far in advance because it assumes a transformation in Iranian behavior.”

The administration has faced sharp criticism from skeptics even within the GOP over the potential fund, though Vance and President Donald Trump have insisted that the US would not be paying into it.

On Thursday, the vice president speculated that there might be both governmental and private investors in countries like the United Arab Emirates eager to work with Iran should the US strike a deal that lifts sanctions on the country.

“What we’re saying is that if you behave and if the Emiratis themselves want to build a power plant, then we will do the sanctions relief necessary to make that possible,” Vance said.

2 hr 27 min ago

Vance says he does not know the amount of frozen Iranian funds

By Morgan Leason

Vice President JD Vance speaks to reporters in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Thursday, June 18, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Vice President JD Vance speaks to reporters in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Thursday, June 18, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Vice President JD Vance said Thursday he doesn’t know how much money comprises frozen assets that Iran would be eligible to receive under the terms of the peace agreement.

“The amount of money, I honestly don’t know. I’ve heard numbers north of $100 billion. I’ve actually heard numbers north of $200 billion,” Vance said during a briefing Thursday.

Vance said due to the number of foreign banks involved in sanctioning Iran during the war, the amount is difficult to quantify: “Most of it is not in United States accounts, most of it’s either in the Gulf or in Europe or somewhere else, but I don’t know the exact amount of money. It’s a lot.”

As part of the 14-point deal, the US promises to “make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

But, the US and Iran must also “agree on the procedures related to the release of these funds during negotiations,” making it unclear how and when these frozen assets will be released. Vance said the money would be contingent on good behavior by Iran, including taking steps to destroy its stockpile of enriched material.

Vance discredited claims that Qataris have already released billions of dollars in Iranian assets.

“That’s just not true. It would be impossible for the Qataris to do that without our buy-in, and certainly without us seeing it,” he said.

1 hr 58 min ago

US will be able to track if Iran funds terrorist proxies, vice president says

Kit Maher

By Kit Maher

People walk on a sidewalk in front of a mural showing portraits of the late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, right, the slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Basij paramilitary forces, in Tehran, Iran, on June 8.

People walk on a sidewalk in front of a mural showing portraits of the late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, right, the slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Basij paramilitary forces, in Tehran, Iran, on June 8. Vahid Salemi/AP

Vice President JD Vance said the United States is confident it will be able to track whether Iran funds terrorist proxies in the region with their immediate ability to sell oil.

“We actually see where the money moves now, because of what we’ve done with the financial sanctions. We actually know where the money is going to move, and so we have great confidence that we’re going to be able to see if they try to fund terrorist organizations,” Vance told reporters at a White House briefing.

Vance also dismissed the idea that Iran would “transform” its economy — which he said was “in a free fall” — by “selling a few million dollars worth of oil.”

“They have sky-high inflation, and fundamentally about a trillion dollars of damage to their industrial base was caused over the last three months. The idea that selling a few million dollars worth of barrels, or a few million dollars worth of oil, is going to fundamentally transform the Iranian economy. That’s just not true,” Vance said.

“We felt that it was reasonable that, if we’re going to allow everybody else to sell their energy during this period of negotiation, we would allow everyone to sell their energy. That’s all we’re doing,” he added.

2 hr 41 min ago

Vance says he doesn’t think "public messaging has been chaotic" on Iran

Aileen Graef

By Aileen Graef

Vice President JD Vance said he doesn’t think public messaging from the White House “has been chaotic” regarding the agreement with Iran.

“Well, I don’t think our public messaging has been chaotic. I think dealing with a fractured Iranian system, where communication isn’t great, is just sometimes something that we don’t fully appreciate, or we don’t fully understand,” Vance said during a White House press briefing Thursday.

He said there was some disagreement about when to release the text of the memorandum of understanding, which was signed digitally Sunday. (Trump later signed a hard copy during a dinner at Versailles on Wednesday.) Vance said the Iranians did not want the text released until Friday.

“We were definitely saying to them, ‘We understand your desire not to have the text out until Friday, but you know, we live in a democratic system. The American people want to see the text of this deal,’” he said.

2 hr 19 min ago

Vance plans to go to Switzerland for Iran agreement signing, but he’s not sure when

By Michael Williams

Vice President JD Vance said he plans to go to Switzerland for an in-person signing of the agreement with Iran, but the precise timing for that visit is still up in the air.

“Our plan is to go to Switzerland,” Vance said during a White House press briefing Thursday. “I don’t know exactly when.”

He added that technical negotiations to hammer out final details in the deal are expected to begin this weekend.

Vance said he was “certainly planning” to lead the US negotiation team.

1 hr 58 min ago

Thune concedes US-Iran pact doesn't completely disarm Iran's nuclear program

Manu Raju

Ted Barrett

Alison Main

By Manu Raju, Ted Barrett and Alison Main

Senate Majority Leader John Thune speaks as Senate Republican leaders hold a press conference at Capitol Hill on June 2.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune speaks as Senate Republican leaders hold a press conference at Capitol Hill on June 2. Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he believes the newly formed Iran agreement, which has drawn bipartisan scrutiny, is good for the US, while conceding it falls short of the Trump administration’s stated goal of completely disarming Iran’s nuclear program.

“There’s an economic impact that I think is beneficial. The long-term obviously issues are still unresolved, and that’s something they’re going to be working on, but at the end of the day, that you know, the objective here is to ensure that they don’t have a nuclear weapon, and I think that’s still the objective,” Thune said.

The memorandum of understanding sets out expectations for addressing Iran’s nuclear program during future technical talks, though some lawmakers from both parties are wary Iran will uphold their end of the deal.

He told reporters that he expects administration officials to begin briefing lawmakers on the deal “probably early next week,” reiterating that a request has been put in with the White House for more information.

Pressed on the $300 billion fund laid out in the memorandum to assist Iran’s “economic development,” Thune said, “I don’t think there ought to be any financial incentives or any financial relief given to Iran absent their commitment to end their nuclear program.”

2 hr 19 min ago

Some "gentlemen's agreements" with Iran "are written down," Vance says

Betsy Klein

By Betsy Klein

Vice President JD Vance confirmed the existence of “gentlemen’s agreements” with Iran on certain aspects of negotiations in a remarkable answer to CNN’s Kristen Holmes.

Some of those gentlemen’s agreements, Vance told Holmes in the White House briefing room Thursday, “are written down.”

“The MOU, the gentleman’s agreements, the final deal — words don’t matter, ladies and gentlemen. We’re about verification,” he said.

The deal is structured, Vance added, because the US does not “trust words — we trust action, and we trust conduct.”

Iran has promised not to enrich uranium and has promised to allow inspectors in to destroy its highly-enriched uranium stockpile, and if they do so, he said, “The deal contemplates a number of benefits if they do those things.”

2 hr 51 min ago

Vance: US will take "holistic" approach to assess if Iran is complying with agreement

By Adam Cancryn

Pro-government Iranian demonstrators wave flags from Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah in Tehran, Iran, on Sunday, June 7.

Pro-government Iranian demonstrators wave flags from Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah in Tehran, Iran, on Sunday, June 7. Vahid Salemi/AP

Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that the administration would take a “holistic” approach to determining whether Iran is abiding by its peace agreement, including keeping a close eye on whether the regime continues to fund attacks or seek nuclear materials.

“Are they funding terrorism? Are they leading to attacks of other people? Are they trying to get centrifuges to redevelop their nuclear weapons program?” he said during a White House press briefing. “There are all these questions that we’re going to ask about whether they’ve actually change their behavior.”

Vance added that the US also expected Iran to eventually allow nuclear inspectors into the country, contending that the administration could return to combat operations if needed at any point.

“We maintain economic, diplomatic and military leverage that nobody else in the world has,” he said. “So if the Iranians want to change, great, we’re going to help them. If they don’t change, we still got all the cards.”

2 hr 19 min ago

Final US-Iran deal will address long-term operation of Strait of Hormuz, Vance says

Alayna Treene

By Alayna Treene

Vessels at the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from Musandam, Oman, June 15.

Vessels at the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from Musandam, Oman, June 15. Stringer/Reuters

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday told reporters that a final deal with Iran will address the long-term operation of the Strait of Hormuz, saying that a more lasting deal with Iran must ensure the critical waterway is “never used as a choke point for the global economy ever again.”

“We believe international waterways should be free of tolls,” Vance said, adding that the memorandum of understanding signed by the presidents of the US and Iran this week “contemplates that the Omanis, the Iranians and the Gulf Coast coalition together will figure out a proper security framework for the straits in the future.”

Vance added that the Trump administration is working with regional allies to ensure such a provision is reflected in a final deal.

“And if that’s not reflected in the final deal, there’s not going to be a final deal,” the vice president said.

2 hr 18 min ago

Congress will be briefed on Iran agreement "very soon," Vance says

Betsy Klein

By Betsy Klein

US Vice President JD Vance speaks during a press briefing at the White House, on June 18.

US Vice President JD Vance speaks during a press briefing at the White House, on June 18. Eric Lee/Reuters

Vice President JD Vance said the Trump administration plans to formally brief lawmakers on the memorandum of understanding signed with Iran “very soon,” as criticism of the agreement has poured in from both sides of the aisle.

“We do plan to brief Congress very soon,” Vance told reporters in the White House briefing room, adding that lawmakers were expected to receive “the formal copy of the signed document” today.

“We’re going to ensure that the team briefs Congress, of course, answers their questions,” he added.

Vance said the administration has informally briefed members of Congress over the past week and will continue to do so, but that the formal briefing will be scheduled soon depending on when lawmakers are in session.

Some Senate Republicans have publicly criticized the agreement, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who warned that plans to develop a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran are a “mistake.” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has also suggested the agreement is “a mixed bag at best,” while Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana called it “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina had also expressed some reservations about the agreement but said Wednesday that after discussions with Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, he believes the signing “will be beneficial to the United States.”

3 hr 3 min ago

Vance says he’s not worried about being blamed if Iran deal falls apart

By Michael Williams

Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that he is “not at all” worried about being blamed for any potential collapse of the agreement with Iran, after President Donald Trump joked that he’d blame his vice president if it falls apart.

“No, not at all,” he responded when asked during a White House press briefing if that prospect concerned him.

“I think the president was joking, as he often does,” Vance added.

During a press conference at the end of the G7 summit on Wednesday, Trump said he would take credit if the deal works out, but that if it doesn’t, “I’m blaming JD.”

“You better be careful, JD,” Trump said.

3 hr 5 min ago

Vance defends Trump administration's shifting stance on Iran's ballistic missile program

Betsy Klein

By Betsy Klein

Missiles fired from Iran are pictured in the night sky over Jerusalem on June 14, 2025.

Missiles fired from Iran are pictured in the night sky over Jerusalem on June 14, 2025. Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images

Vice President JD Vance defended the Trump administration’s shifting stance on allowing Iran to obtain ballistic missiles, suggesting the US has significantly degraded Iran’s capability and that the US is allowing Iran to have “self-defense.”

“We destroyed a substantial number of their ballistic missiles, and their … ballistic missile launchers themselves. It’s not just the bullets, but it’s the actual gun, and that’s what we were extremely effective at in destroying,” Vance said Thursday in the White House briefing room.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he supports Iran having access to “some” conventional ballistic missiles, which, he said, “aren’t the problem,” even though he has previously called to eliminate the threat of Iran’s ballistic missile program.

As part of a finalized deal, Vance said, the US expects that Iran is “not going to be able to build the kind of missiles that can broadly threaten the entire world.”

He continued, “What we want to see is Iran not funding regional instability, funding regional terrorism, and of course trying to rebuild their nuclear weapons program.”

1 hr 56 min ago

Sixty-day period to reach final agreement with Iran begins today, Vance says

Aileen Graef

By Aileen Graef

Vice President JD Vance said the 60-day period to reach a final agreement with Iran as set forth in the memorandum of understanding begins today.

“I would say the 60-day period officially started today. It was signed late, and it may have even been signed technically, you know, because of the time shift, I think it’s signed technically today, Iran time,” he said during a press briefing a the White House Thursday.

The clock starting today would set the deadline for an agreement between Iran and the United States as August 17.

2 hr 18 min ago

Unclear if Iran will negotiate in good faith, but it's "worth trying," Vance says

By Adam Cancryn

Vice President JD Vance speaks to reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, on Thursday, June 18.

Vice President JD Vance speaks to reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, on Thursday, June 18. Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday insisted that the US holds significant leverage over Iran in its negotiations toward a permanent truce, even as he allowed that it’s unclear whether that will be enough to convince the regime to make major concessions.

“They certainly recognize that the United States has great leverage,” Vance said during a White House press briefing. “Will that ultimately lead to a change in behavior? I don’t know.”

The vice president argued that the administration needed to try to reach a deal regardless, in hopes of a breakthrough that could markedly improve Iran’s relationship with the US and the overall dynamics in the Middle East.

“People say the Iranians will never change their behavior. Well, maybe that’s true, and if so they don’t get any of the benefits of the bargain,” Vance said. “But isn’t it worth trying?”

2 hr 17 min ago

Iran and US honoring their commitments so far, Vance says

Kit Maher

By Kit Maher

Vice President JD Vance kicked off a White House briefing Thursday by noting that the Iranians are so far honoring their end of the agreement militarily.

“On the military side, the Iranians, for the second night in a row, did not shoot at any ships in the Strait of Hormuz. So far, they are honoring their end of the commitment,” Vance said.

Vance also said that the United States is honoring its commitment to lift the blockade.

“On the blockade, CENTCOM’s allowed north of a dozen ships to go through our naval blockade, and so we’re also honoring our end of the early part of the agreement,” he said.

Vance said time will tell if Iran honors its other commitments in the memorandum of understanding.

“Now we see whether they are willing to comply with the next step of the president’s peace plan,” he said.

3 hr 25 min ago

Here's what has unfolded after the US-Iran agreement was signed

Aditi Sangal

By Aditi Sangal

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signs the document of U.S. Memorandum of Understanding in Tehran, Iran, on June 18.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signs the document of U.S. Memorandum of Understanding in Tehran, Iran, on June 18. Iran's Presidential website/WANA/Reuters

We’re bringing you a view of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran and Lebanon after the US-Iran agreement went into effect.

• Strait of Hormuz: At least seven vessels have traversed the waterway so far on Thursday, data from Marine Traffic shows. Four cargo ships, a French-flagged LNG tanker and a Cook Islands-flagged bitumen tanker all exited the strait toward the Gulf of Oman.

• On the ground in Iran: President Masoud Pezeshkian touted the agreement as a “historic document,” calling it a “message from a strong Iran.” Iranian newspaper headlines struck a victorious tone, with some saying US President Donald Trump’s military plans had failed. But among the people, caution and skepticism still reign. Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf will be Iran’s primary negotiator in the delicate next phase of talks with the US.

• Israel’s approach: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is aiming to influence the final Iran deal, according to an Israeli source, using right-wing media figures and friendly senators to exert pressure on Trump.

• In Lebanon: Israel has once again vowed that it will not withdraw from Lebanon. The first bullet point of the US-Iran agreement calls for “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” but Israel has continued to carry out strikes in southern Lebanon, where it says it is targeting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

• About the $300 billion fund for Tehran: The agreement obliges Washington and its allies to ensure financing of a $300 billion fund for Iran. US Vice President JD Vance said last week this would be funded by Gulf nations. But it’s unclear which Gulf states would participate, as none have publicly committed to it. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said he has “no details” about the fund, and that due to Iran’s attacks on Gulf states during the war, there has been “a significant loss of trust.”

CNN’s Nadeen Ebrahim, Aida Karimi, Tal Shalev, Mustafa Qadri, Oliver Sherwood, Sarah Tamimi and Oren Liebermann contributed to the report.

3 hr 49 min ago

Trump's Iran deal solves problems of his own making

Analysis by Mostafa Salem

US President Donald Trump attends the G7 summit in France on Wednesday.

US President Donald Trump attends the G7 summit in France on Wednesday. Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

Donald Trump could get Iran to dispose of its enriched uranium, promise never to build a nuclear weapon, and unblock the crucial maritime corridor of the Strait of Hormuz — but these problems arguably only existed due to the US president’s actions over his two terms.

In his first term, Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal negotiated between Iran and the Obama administration, and ordered the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian commander widely regarded as the architect behind Iran’s regional proxy network. Iran retaliated by accumulating a stockpile of near-weapons-grade enriched uranium and allowed its armed proxies to intensify their threats against Washington’s allies in the region.

The Islamic Republic then began advancing nuclear technology that could be rapidly weaponized if needed despite a religious ruling by the country’s highest authority forbidding it from building an atomic bomb.

In the agreement now signed between Iran and the US, Tehran has pledged to discuss diluting the very near-weapons-grade uranium stockpile it built up in response to Trump’s withdrawal from the Obama-era nuclear deal.

Hanging on the wall behind Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian as he signed the agreement was a portrait of the late Supreme Leader, killed on Trump’s orders, alongside his son and successor — a signal by Iran that war has changed nothing.

In the new agreement, Trump secured a pledge from Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the vital chokepoint carrying roughly one-fifth of global daily oil supply. As with the uranium stockpile procurement, the strait’s closure was a reaction to Trump’s own decision to launch military strikes on Iran.

While the US hails these pledges as Iranian concessions, Tehran is celebrating, and critics wonder what tangible gains Trump secured from a war – and deal – that has only solved crises of his own making.

3 hr 44 min ago

Trump allows Russian oil sanctions waiver to expire following Iran agreement

By Adam Cancryn

A man stands as a tugboat guides the Russian oil tanker Anatoly Kolodkin at the oil terminal in the port of Matanzas, Cuba, on March 31.

A man stands as a tugboat guides the Russian oil tanker Anatoly Kolodkin at the oil terminal in the port of Matanzas, Cuba, on March 31. Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images

The Trump administration quietly allowed its waiver on certain Russian oil sanctions to expire after the president signed an agreement with Iran that has eased global energy prices.

The Iran pact, which President Donald Trump signed Wednesday at Versailles, extends the US’ ceasefire for 60 days and will allow oil tankers to begin freely transiting the strait again.

Trump on Wednesday told reporters that he was weighing reimposing sanctions on seaborn Russian oil, which were initially lifted in March to help mitigate the worldwide energy crisis sparked by the US’ war with Iran.

“We’re seeing how far the price of oil comes down, it’s really tumbling,” he said at the G7 summit in France.

The US Treasury Department later declined to extend the sanctions waiver, allowing it to expire at midnight on Wednesday.

The administration could still temporarily lift the sanctions again at any time. In response to a request for comment, an administration official referred to Trump’s noncommital G7 comments.

But Trump earlier this week signed onto a G7 statement calling for stronger sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine. The president has also repeatedly touted the recent drop in oil prices, which have dipped below the $80-per-barrel mark in the days since Trump clinched his agreement with Iran.

4 hr 7 min ago

Israel vows no withdrawal from Lebanon as countries prepare for new round of talks

Oren Liebermann

By Oren Liebermann

An Israeli Merkava tanks drives along a road past destroyed buildings in southern Lebanon, near the Israel-Lebanon border, on June 17.

An Israeli Merkava tanks drives along a road past destroyed buildings in southern Lebanon, near the Israel-Lebanon border, on June 17. Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

After the signing of the US-Iran ceasefire agreement, Israel has once again vowed that it will not withdraw from Lebanon.

The Israeli and Lebanese governments are preparing for a new round of talks in Washington next week.

“We will restore security to the north,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, in his first public remarks since the text of the US-Iran agreement was published. “This requires maintaining the security zone in southern Lebanon, and it requires that we not leave it as long as Israel’s security needs demand it.”

The first bullet point of the US-Iran agreement calls for “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” but Israel has continued to carry out strikes in southern Lebanon, where it says it is targeting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

An Israeli drone strike killed three people in the town of Kfar Tebnit on Thursday morning, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency. Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health says Israeli strikes have killed more than 3,900 people since the beginning of the Iran war.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets and drones at Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, killing one soldier on Wednesday.

Israel and Lebanon are set to hold their next round of diplomatic talks in Washington next week. The talks, scheduled to take place between June 23 and 25, will involve ambassadors from both countries as well as talks at the military level, according to an Israeli official.

4 hr 35 min ago

Kuwaiti and Iranian foreign ministers discuss US agreement in first call since war began

By Sarah Tamimi

Vessels in the Strait of Hormuz near the beach of Bandar Abbas, Iran, June 8.

Vessels in the Strait of Hormuz near the beach of Bandar Abbas, Iran, June 8. Amirhosein Khorgooi/Wana News Agency/Reuters

In their first known call since the start of the war, the Iranian foreign minister spoke with his Kuwaiti counterpart to discuss the agreement signed by Tehran and Washington, according to the foreign ministries of Iran and Kuwait.

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Jarrah Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah expressed his country’s hope that the memorandum would “contribute to enhancing stability in the region, ensuring the security and freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, and addressing outstanding issues through the achievement of sustainable solutions,” the statement from the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry said.

Kuwait’s top diplomat stressed the importance of “adhering to the principles of good neighborliness” and respecting the sovereignty of states, as well as refraining from interference in internal affairs.

For his part, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi emphasized the need for continued dialogue with Gulf states to “enhance mutual cooperation and resolve existing ambiguities,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in its statement.

Kuwait was among the Gulf nations targeted by Iranian attacks following the ceasefire announced between Iran and the United States in April. The latest attack occurred last week, when Iran said it had launched strikes targeting US air bases in Kuwait and Bahrain early on Thursday.

4 hr 20 min ago

Israeli drone attacks kill three in southern Lebanon, state media reports

By Mustafa Qadri and Sarah Tamimi

Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported today that three people were killed in Israeli drone attacks in two separate incidents.

Two people were killed when a car was targeted by an Israeli drone in the town of Kfar Tebnit in the south. In a separate incident, a man was killed in a drone strike in the southern town of Zebdin, according to NNA.

Yesterday, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a deal aimed at ending the war with US President Donald Trump. Among the key stipulations in the 800-word document are the cessation of hostilities on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

The 14-point document promises Iran a lot of money, not only by lifting sanctions so the country can sell its oil to the world, but also potentially giving Tehran access to billions in frozen assets and $300 billion in funds for reconstruction and economic development.

6 hr 3 min ago

At least 7 vessels have traversed the Strait of Hormuz so far on Thursday

By Oliver Sherwood

Seven vessels have traversed the Strait so far on Thursday, data from Marine Traffic shows. Four cargo ships, a French flagged LNG tanker and a Cook Islands flagged bitumen tanker all exited the strait towards the Gulf of Oman.

The other vessel, the Panama flagged Starway, entered the Strait heading toward the Persian Gulf. Capable of carrying over 46,000 tons of oil, Starway turned off it’s AIS transponder, effectively hiding it from view, a tactic that has become more common since the strait’s initial closure in March.

A vital waterway: Reopening the Strait of Hormuz is a key part of the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran, which Tehran effectively closed during the conflict.

Under the agreement, traffic is supposed to return to pre-war levels while Iran and Gulf neighbors work out a new arrangement for the strait — meaning Iran could be allowed to impose fees.

5 hr 12 min ago

Iran's man in charge: who is the negotiator leading Tehran in the next phase of US talks?

By Nadeen Ebrahim

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf speaks during a press conference in Tehran, Iran, on November 27, 2024.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf speaks during a press conference in Tehran, Iran, on November 27, 2024. Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters

As Iran’s primary negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf will lead the country in the delicate next phase of talks with the US after months of war.

The 64-year-old emerged as one of Iran’s most senior civilian figures after a US-Israeli wave of assassinations targeting top Iranian leaders including former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Ali Larijani, who before his death was a key architect of Iran’s military and diplomatic strategy.

As the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) grew in power in the wake of the US-Israeli strikes, its former air force commander Ghalibaf, a conservative pragmatist, rose with it. He now sit at the negotiating table with American leaders who ordered the killing of his peers.

“When he was originally tasked to participate directly in the negotiations in Islamabad, it did seem that the reason has more to do with the US needing someone more senior than the foreign minister to attend so they can justify sending Vance at a time when (Jared) Kushner and (Steve) Witkoff’s credibility with the Iranian negotiators was extremely limited,” Ali Ahmadi, a fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and Middle East Institute Switzerland, told CNN.

Ghalibaf met US Vice President JD Vance in Islamabad in April – the highest-level face-to-face meeting between Iranian and American officials since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

“During that period, we held three rounds of trilateral negotiations conducted face-to-face in the presence of mediators,” Ghalibaf said in an interview with Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB on Wednesday.

Nonetheless, there was very little trust.

“In Islamabad I told Mr. Vance directly: ‘We entered these negotiations with complete distrust of you’,” he said.

Ghalibaf now has to juggle several tasks. He must sell the agreement with the US to hardline factions of the IRGC, who continue to be suspicious of a deal with Washington, while also having the backing of reformists such President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

“He has a lot of credibility in the Iranian political system and has emerged as a voice who supports diplomacy,” Ahmadi said, “But he is more trusted by conservatives than reformist figures like Pezeshkian and Araghchi.”

7 hr 16 min ago

Iran's president calls agreement with US a “message from a strong Iran”

By Mustafa Qadri and Aida Karimi

Iran’s president touted his country’s agreement with the US as a “historic document” Thursday, calling it a “message from a strong Iran.”

“This is a historic document and a message from a strong Iran: peace will be achieved through mutual respect,” Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said on X after signing the memorandum of understanding.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran remains committed to global peace, while preserving its dignity and independence, and to progress and regional cooperation.”

The 14-point document lays out terms for an extended ceasefire and continued peace talks between Iran and the US. It promises Iran a lot of money – by lifting sanctions so Iran can sell its oil to the world, but also potentially giving Iran access to billions in frozen assets and $300 billion in financing.

But at less than 800 words in English, it leaves a lot of details for later, including the touchy subject of Iran’s nuclear program.

7 hr 26 min ago

Netanyahu aiming to influence Iran deal through right-wing media and senators, source says

Tal Shalev

By Tal Shalev

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference in Jerusalem on Monday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference in Jerusalem on Monday. Ronen Zvulun/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is aiming to influence the final Iran deal, according to an Israeli source, using right-wing media figures and friendly senators to exert pressure on President Donald Trump.

Netanyahu has been skeptical of Iran’s intentions throughout the talks with the US, believing they were never willing to negotiate in good faith. Netanyahu still assesses there will not be a final deal between the US and Iran, the source told CNN, and that Tehran will not genuinely agree to restrictions on its nuclear program.

Now that Trump has signed the memorandum of understanding with Iran and triggered 60 days of negotiations, the Israeli leader is trying to leverage right-wing media figures, such as pro-Israel podcaster Mark Levin, to get his message out. On Wednesday, Levin said the deal “doesn’t make any sense” and called the reconstruction fund for Iran a “slush fund.”

CNN has reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office for comment.

Netanyahu will also try to rely on pro-Israel senators to try to persuade Trump. But even those like Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who pushed for more strikes on Iran, have changed their tune. Graham said yesterday that the deal with Iran “will be beneficial to the United States.”

Netanyahu has also told Trump that Israel does not see itself as bound by the deal, which requires an “immediate and permanent termination” of the war in Lebanon. Israel has already scaled back its operations there under US pressure.

7 hr 24 min ago

The MOU has evoked mixed feelings in Iran. Here, Iranians share their thoughts with CNN

By Aida Karimi and Charlotte Reck

The international community might have breathed a sigh of relief at the settling of oil prices and the promised ceasing of military operations across the Middle East after Tehran and Washington signed the memorandum of understanding, but in Iran, caution and skepticism still reign.

“So, the “Great Satan” can be forgiven, negotiated with, and invited to invest, but Iranian kids are still in prison or worse for what they did during the protests,” an 80-year-old former political prisoner told CNN of the agreement Iran struck with the United States.

The man, whose son is currently facing trial following his arrest during the January protests, added: “If yesterday’s ultimate enemy is now a business partner, maybe it’s time to stop treating your own people as the enemy.”

A young female activist from the holy city of Mashhad also expressed concern that the 14-point peace plan might be a temporary pause rather than a resolution to the conflict, “Both sides get time to regroup, rearm, and reposition while ordinary people are left living with the uncertainty,” she explained.

But some are hopeful that light is seeping in through the cracks opened by the conflict, daring to imagine a different future.

“100 days ago this would have seemed impossible,” 38-year-old Faraz from Tehran reflected. “The idea of the Islamic Republic discussing US and regional investment in Iran, while officials talk about negotiations to improve people’s lives and build the country, shows how much the landscape has shifted.”

“It’s evidence that deeper change is already underway. If this path continues, the biggest winners won’t be politicians or factions – they’ll be the Iranian people,” Faraz said.

8 hr 38 min ago

“A Glorious Defeat!” Iran's newspapers declare victory after agreement signed

By Nadeen Ebrahim and Aida Karimi

A man reads a copy of the Iranian daily newspaper Hamshahri bearing an image of the US president and a headline that reads "Gone with the wind" at a kiosk in Tehran on Thursday.

A man reads a copy of the Iranian daily newspaper Hamshahri bearing an image of the US president and a headline that reads "Gone with the wind" at a kiosk in Tehran on Thursday. AFP/Getty Images

Iranian newspaper headlines on Thursday adopted a victorious tone following the signing of the US-Iran agreement to end the war, with some saying that US President Donald Trump’s military plans had failed.

Javan, a prominent Iranian daily newspaper close to the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), described the United States as having suffered “a glorious defeat,” writing that while Israel and the US entered the conflict with ambitious goals, Iran emerged stronger than its opponents expected.

On the front page of the state-affiliated newspaper Hamshahri, Trump is seen biting on a crumbled piece of paper. The headline reads, “Gone with the Wind,” a common Persian idiom referring to something being wasted.

Kahyan, an influential and conservative newspaper, went with the headline: “The Strait of Hormuz is our deterrent weapon; our lever of power is not negotiable.”

Another, Sazandegi, focused on potential economic gains after the US-Iran agreement, writing the number “300” in large letters, in reference to the potential $300 billion reconstruction fund outlined in the agreement.

8 hr 39 min ago

US-Iran deal calls for a $300b fund for Tehran. But no Gulf states have committed to it yet

By Nadeen Ebrahim

The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani attends the G7 summit, in Evian-les-Bains, France, on Tuesday.

The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani attends the G7 summit, in Evian-les-Bains, France, on Tuesday. Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

The US-Iran ceasefire agreement obliges Washington and its allies to ensure financing of a $300 billion fund for Tehran. US President Donald Trump said this week that the Islamic Republic will need the money after “we blew them up.”

US Vice President JD Vance said last week that the Iranians “could have access” to the fund, which he said would be funded by Gulf nations. But it’s unclear which Gulf states would participate, as none have publicly committed to it.

Speaking to Al Arabiya English on Wednesday, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said that he has “no details” about the fund, but said that due to Iran’s attacks on Gulf states during the war, there has been “a significant loss of trust.”

“We were just in the beginning process of building our relationship with Iran as a result of the Beijing understanding… that was only really starting to gather momentum and potentially opening up on economic cooperation and things like that.”

“I think we have since then regressed,” he said, adding that trust has to be rebuilt before any kind of economic cooperation is discussed. “We are quite early days now.”

In a meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the G7 summit this week, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said there are likely to be “huge opportunities” in Iran after the agreement, but didn’t specifically comment on the fund.

“I am sure there are going to be huge opportunities,” he said, adding that after negotiations Iran is going to be open to “all kinds of investments.”

8 hr 46 min ago

Iran uranium dilution deal may buy time, but experts warn bomb risk remains

By Davis Winkie

A satellite image shows an overview of the Natanz nuclear facility complex in Isfahan Province, Iran, on March 1, 2026.

A satellite image shows an overview of the Natanz nuclear facility complex in Isfahan Province, Iran, on March 1, 2026. Vantor/Getty Images

Although the technical details regarding the fate of Iran’s enriched uranium remain to be worked out, experts warned that the “minimum” agreement to dilute Iran’s stockpile would require vigorous monitoring to block weapons development.

Iran and the US agreed to, at minimum, ensure the uranium “is down blended on site under the supervision of the [International Atomic Energy Agency].” But the mechanics of the arrangement, to include potential removal from Iran, remains subject to negotiation.

Kelsey Davenport, who heads nonproliferation policy work for the Arms Control Association, wrote on X that in the years since President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 nuclear deal, “Iran has gained irreversible knowledge about enrichment [and] the production of centrifuges.”

Eric Brewer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative nonprofit has argued that “allowing Iran to hold on to even 5% enriched material” — a low enrichment level that could be a target for stock dilution — “is more dangerous now … because of all of … [Iran’s] expertise.”

“The US shouldn’t take a deal that doesn’t include removing … most, if not all of the [uranium],” Brewer previously told CNN. “You’ve got to get it out.”

If Iran is allowed to keep downblended enriched uranium, the key to preventing a covert bomb program is intense monitoring.

“An effective agreement in 2026 needs to … ensure that any move to divert material or deviate from a deal’s limits will be quickly detected,” Davenport wrote on X.

But even that will only be able to slow the Iranians if they renege on the deal and someday go for the bomb, Davenport said. “Even starting from zero — no enriched uranium, no centrifuges — Iran’s breakout would likely be less than 12 months.”

Read the 14-point US-Iran peace plan here.

Davis Winkie’s work at CNN is supported by a partnership between Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners (JFP). CNN retains full editorial control of the reporting.

7 hr 41 min ago

Pakistani prime minister signs MOU as mediator

Sophia Saifi

By Sophia Saifi and Charlotte Reck

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) as a mediator. Pakistan PMO

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) as a mediator Thursday, in the country’s capital Islamabad.

The MOU, which will trigger a 60-day window to negotiate the final terms of a deal, has also been signed by US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Pakistan has played a crucial mediation role in the US-Iran talks and, along with co-mediator Qatar, was due to host an official signing ceremony in Switzerland Friday ahead of the commencement of technical talks. However it is unclear whether that ceremony is still going ahead now that the MOU has already been inked.

9 hr 22 min ago

Oil is now $35 below its war-time high and a supply glut is looming

Hanna Ziady

By Hanna Ziady

Commercial vessels and oil tankers prepare to transit through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday.

Commercial vessels and oil tankers prepare to transit through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday. Shady Alassar/Anadolu/Getty Images

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, has settled below $80 a barrel for the past three days, flirting with its pre-war levels in a welcome sign for global energy markets – and consumers.

Brent slipped 2% to around $78 a barrel Thursday, having settled the previous day almost $35 below its war-time high of $114.44 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, is also at three-month lows around $74 a barrel.

Crude prices could fall further to pre-war levels if transits through the Strait of Hormuz resume, Neil Wilson, a strategist at investment bank Saxo said in a morning note. Crude was trading around $70 a barrel before the war began at the end of February, though prices were closer to $60 a barrel at the start of the year, before tensions between the United States and Iran started to build.

The downward move in oil prices comes as the International Energy Agency on Wednesday predicted a potential global oil supply glut if the peace deal in the Middle East holds.

“This may provide a welcome respite to the market and an opportunity to replenish depleted inventories, or to build new strategic reserves, as countries review their energy strategies and policies in response to the crisis,” the IEA said.

The Paris-based energy watchdog now expects global oil demand to plunge by 1.1 million barrels a day this year, almost three times its previous forecast a month ago, in the face of higher fuel prices and supply disruptions.

8 hr 55 min ago

Now the US-Iran agreement is in effect, here's everything we know

By CNN Staff

The 14-point peace plan intended to cease military operations in the Middle East and initiate a window of negotiation for a more robust, long-standing deal has been signed by the US and Iran.

If you’re just joining us, here’s what to know about developments in the region.

· Iran and the United States have signed the MOU. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has signed the agreement according to photographs published by Iranian state media IRNA.

US President Donald Trump signed a hard copy of the plan, brokered by co-mediators Pakistan and Qatar, in Versailles, France Wednesday.

· Oil prices are settling. Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, has remained below $80 a barrel for three days, nearing its pre-war levels.

· Oil tankers are moving, but not through the Strait of Hormuz. At least three Iran-flagged tankers lugging roughly five million barrels of oil have sailed from Iran since the agreement to end the US blockade was reached Sunday, according to analytics firm Kpler.

The vessels moved past the Gulf of Oman and did not sail through the crucial waterway, which has been effectively closed since the beginning of the conflict despite 20% of the global oil supply previously passing through.

· The agreement has drawn criticism. With the 14-point peace plan aimed at ending the war and reinstating traffic flow through the Strait of Hormuz signed, some analysts are skeptical about how advantageous the agreement is for the US, suggesting that Iran will emerge stronger.

Former US negotiator and CNN global affairs analyst Brett McGurk told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins the US has “caved” to Iran’s demands on unfreezing Iranian assets and lifting sanctions.

· Tensions between Israel and Lebanon remain high. The agreement between Iran and the US, which went into effect Wednesday, states that all military operations will cease, including in Lebanon.

Israel has rebuffed this aspect of the framework and continued to carry out strikes in southern Lebanon.

· Key mediator signed MOU. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed the agreement, which will trigger a 60-day window for negotiations to reach a final deal, in his country’s capital of Islamabad Thursday.

9 hr 31 min ago

US gasoline price edges below $4 for the first time since March

Chris Isidore

By Chris Isidore

A customer pumps fuel at a gas station in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday.

A customer pumps fuel at a gas station in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

American fuel stations are now charging less than $4 for a gallon of regular gas, marking the first time that gasoline has dropped below that threshold since March 30.

The US national average dropped to $3.999 per gallon on Thursday, according to AAA, down nearly 3 cents from the day before. Indiana has the cheapest average price at $3.40, one of 28 states where the average price is below $4. GasBuddy, another tracking service, puts the price early Thursday at about $3.98, after falling below $4 on Sunday.

Read more here.

6 hr 42 min ago

At least 5 million barrels of Iranian crude have put to sea since US-Iran agreement, analytics firm says

By Ross Adkin

At least three Iran-flagged tankers carrying around a total of five million barrels of oil have sailed from Iran since it reached an agreement with the US on Sunday that ended a blockade of its ports and promised waivers on sanctions on its crude, according to analytics firm Kpler.

“We have identified at least three laden, Iran-flagged crude oil tankers that have moved past the Gulf of Oman–Arabian Sea US naval blockade boundary,” Kpler told CNN on Thursday. None of those vessels had sailed through the Strait of Hormuz since the ceasefire announcement, it added.

Another tanker carrying approximately two million barrels of crude “appears to be approaching the same boundary based on the latest available AIS data,” Kpler said.

In the months before the US and Israel launched their war with Iran on February 28, Tehran was exporting up to almost 2.25 million barrels of oil per day, according to analysts.

Kpler said other Iran-flagged tankers could have sailed past the blockade line since Sunday.

“One important caveat is that a number of Iranian-linked tankers remain dark,” Kpler said. “As a result, these figures should be viewed as the minimum observable activity rather than a complete picture of all outbound Iranian tanker movements.”

The regime makes about 50% of its revenue from oil sales, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

This post has been updated with additional details about the tankers’ movements.

10 hr 45 min ago

Initial talks between US and Iran still planned for Friday, Switzerland says

Helen Regan

By Helen Regan

An aerial picture from May 10, 2024, shows the Burgenstock resort above Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, that will host talks between the US and Iran.

An aerial picture from May 10, 2024, shows the Burgenstock resort above Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, that will host talks between the US and Iran. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images

Initial negotiations between the United States and Iran are still expected to take place in the Swiss mountain resort of Bürgenstock on Friday, Switzerland’s foreign ministry said, after the US and Iran signed a copy of their agreement.

“As things stand, the plan is still for the US and Iran, along with mediators Pakistan and Qatar ⁠and other involved countries, to meet tomorrow at Bürgenstock for initial negotiations about implementing the agreement,” the ministry said in a statement on Thursday, according to Reuters news agency.

“No further information is currently available regarding the schedule and details ⁠of this meeting.”

The ministry told CNN on Wednesday that a signing ceremony would take place at the resort overlooking Lake Lucerne, rather than in Geneva as originally planned. Around 2,000 soldiers will secure the site, and a no-fly zone over the Bürgenstock mountain will be imposed from June 18 to June 20 to ensure security, the Swiss government said.

12 hr 8 min ago

Germany deploys ships to Red Sea for possible Strait of Hormuz mission

Helen Regan

By Helen Regan

Boris Pistorius speaks at the NATO defense ministers' meeting in Brussels, Belgium on Thursday.

Boris Pistorius speaks at the NATO defense ministers' meeting in Brussels, Belgium on Thursday. Malin Wunderlich/picture alliance/Getty Images

Germany’s Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius said his country is deploying two ships to the Red Sea in preparation for a possible military mission in the Strait of Hormuz.

“As we speak, our ⁠minesweeper Fulda and the supply ⁠ship Mosel are sailing through the Suez Canal towards the Red Sea,” he told reporters Thursday ahead of a meeting ⁠with his NATO counterparts in Brussels, according to Reuters news agency.

Before any participation in minesweeping operations, approval would need to be granted from Iran and Oman, he added. The mission would also depend ⁠on developments ⁠in further talks between Iran and the United States, Reuters reported.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that European allies had committed to helping the US clear the Strait of Hormuz for safe passage, though he declined to specify which countries have pledged their aid.

“All of them,” Trump said when asked which nations had offered to help rid the waterway of Iranian mines. “The ones that have that kind of equipment have, but every one of them have committed to being involved.”

12 hr 53 min ago

"Dawn of peace has arrived": World leaders react to signing of US-Iran agreement

By Pamela Avila

After the official signing of the 14-point peace plan between the United States and Iran, world leaders have welcomed the diplomatic efforts.

Here’s what some have said:

French President Emmanuel Macron, who hosted President Donald Trump at a dinner during the G7 summit, said the agreement “paves the way for lasting peace” and will lead to a decrease in energy prices.

China’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, also welcomed the US-Iran agreement, saying in a phone call with his Iranian counterpart that the “dawn of peace has arrived,” according to Chinese state media.

Pakistan, which has played a mediation role in US-Iran talks, endorsed the agreement, too, according to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. “The signing of this agreement at the highest level of the respective governments demonstrates the commitment of both sides to a diplomatic resolution of the conflict,” Sharif said.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said he “welcomes” the memorandum. The memorandum will “degrade” Iran’s nuclear capability and “restore the freedom of navigation,” Rutte said Thursday.

Several US democratic senators criticized the agreement, saying it’s a good deal for Iran — but not the US.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the agreement “will be regarded as one of the biggest American disasters, and it’s because Trump started this war,” adding “he didn’t know how to finish it.”

Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, Sen. Elizabeth Warren said, “I understand how the Iranians win in this MOU, but I sure don’t see how this helps one single American family.”

And California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff said, “This looks like a great deal for Iran and a terrible deal” for the US. “It’s an agreement to reach an agreement on things in the future, but little incentive for Iran to actually come to agreement on those terms.”

CNN’s Sylvie Zhuang, Sophia Saifi, Hira Humayun, Camila DeChalus, Morgan Rimmer and Lauren Fox contributed reporting.

13 hr ago

"Trump struck a good deal" with Iran, says NATO Secretary General

Lex Harvey

Jessie Yeung

By Lex Harvey and Jessie Yeung

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte speaks during a pre-ministerial media conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, on Wednesday.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte speaks during a pre-ministerial media conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, on Wednesday. Omar Havana/AP

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said he “welcomes” the US memorandum with Iran.

“I really welcome the deal. I think President Trump struck a good deal,” Rutte told reporters in Brussels ahead of a meeting of the NATO Defense Ministers Thursday.

The memorandum will “degrade” Iran’s nuclear capability and “restore the freedom of navigation,” Rutte added.

The 14-point peace plan signed by the US and Iran ends the fighting and paves the way to reopening the Strait of Hormuz. It also includes a pledge by Iran not to procure or develop nuclear weapons, though broader questions about Iran’s nuclear program remain unanswered.

Rutte said Thursday while restoring navigation in the strait does not fall under NATO’s jurisdiction, “if NATO can play a role, then of course we are always willing to help.”

13 hr 6 min ago

Iran could emerge stronger after Trump agreement, expert warns

By CNN staff

Political science professor Robert Pape tells CNN’s Laura Coates the deal with Iran is not just a win today. He says, “Iran is going to gain power over the next two months,” and warns Iran will “have even more leverage because the oil inventories are going to run dry.”

Expert warns Iran could emerge stronger after Trump agreement

01:53

13 hr 4 min ago

Trump agrees to at least $300 billion for Iran's reconstruction. How much is that?

By John Liu

The 14-point memorandum of understanding President Donald Trump struck with Iran commits to the development of a $300 billion fund for Iran’s reconstruction and economic development.

Few details about the plan have been released – most notably, who will pay for it.

For now, Trump has said the US wont pay anything, and suggested that the money may come from Gulf States and Iran’s frozen funds.

To put the figure into perspective, here is what $300 billion will buy you:

Roughly equivalent to NASA’s budget for 12 years – its 2026 budget is $24.4 billion.

Roughly the size of the world’s 50th largest economy – similar to Finland’s $317 billion last year.

Roughly equivalent to China’s military expenditure last year – around $336 billion, according to think tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s estimate.

Slightly lower than the national budget of countries like Türkiye ($339 billion) and Canada ($345 billion) last year.

13 hr 44 min ago

US agreement leaves Iran "exponentially stronger," former Israeli consul general says

Chris Lau

By Chris Lau

Vessels in the Strait of Hormuz near the beach of Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Wednesday.

Vessels in the Strait of Hormuz near the beach of Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Wednesday. Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA/Handout/Reuters

The 14-point agreement with Iran that President Donald Trump signed has left the US and and Israel worse off, a former Israeli Consul General in New York told CNN.

“I fail to see even one of the 14 points that makes America, Israel, indeed the entire region, better off than than we all were on the 28th of February (when the war started),” Alon Pinkas told CNN’s Victor Blackwell on Thursday.

Pinkas said that before the war, Iran was isolated under sanctions that choked its oil exports, dealing blows to its economy.

But according to agreement, Iran will now be allowed to export oil, gain access to frozen assets, and receive reconstruction funding of $300 billion, Pinkas said.

“They have become exponentially stronger,” he said.

14 hr 11 min ago

Israeli soldier killed in Lebanon, IDF says

Lex Harvey

By Lex Harvey

An Israeli soldier was killed in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement.

Master Sergeant Alexander Filin, 29, was killed in combat, the IDF said. Seven other soldiers and officers were injured in the same incident and evacuated to hospital for medical treatment, the IDF said early Thursday.

The agreement between Iran and the US, which went into effect Wednesday, ends all military operations, including in Lebanon.

Israel has carried out widespread strikes in the country which it says have targeted the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

Israeli attacks have killed 3,756 people and injured 11,632 others in Lebanon since March 2, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health reported on Saturday.

14 hr 3 min ago

The connection between the US-Iran agreement and 1919's Treaty of Versailles

Brad Lendon

By Brad Lendon

German delegates talk in May 1919 during the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in France. The agreement, which severely punished Germany, ended World War I but sowed the seeds of World War II.

German delegates talk in May 1919 during the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in France. The agreement, which severely punished Germany, ended World War I but sowed the seeds of World War II. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

When President Donald Trump signed the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran on Wednesday, he did it in the very same place where another American president signed a treaty that historians say led to his political downfall and set the stage for the rise of Adolf Hitler and World War II.

Almost 107 years ago, on June 28, 1919, then US President Woodrow Wilson signed the Treaty of Versailles to end World War I at France’s Palace of Versailles. Also signed by key US allies France and Britain, the treaty officially ended four years of fighting with Germany and its allies.

But the treaty was plagued with problems even in its formation. Rather than negotiations, the terms were dictated to Germany.

They included accepting responsibility for starting the war, loss of more than 26,000 square miles of territory, almost $5 billion in reparations, the forfeiture of its overseas colonies and strict limits on the size of its military forces.

Germany’s representatives to the treaty conference protested vigorously and signed the treaty only under threat of an allied invasion that would begin within a week. Hitler tapped into resentment toward the treaty to gain support among the German public, and once he took power — he disregarded the pact and rebuilt Germany’s military.

14 hr 10 min ago

Trump has signed the Iran agreement, saying "that was not easy." Here's the latest

Deva Lee

By Deva Lee and Pamela Avila

Trump signs framework agreement to end war with Iran

00:32

President Donald Trump officially signed the US-Iran agreement on Wednesday, concluding his trip to Europe for the G7 summit.

“This was not easy,” Trump said while signing the memorandum of understanding at the Palace of Versailles in France.

After Trump signed a hard copy of the plan, the US sent a photograph of the agreement to the Iranians, according to a US official. Then Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian also signed the memorandum.

The agreement says the US will issue waivers so Iran will be able to export oil and spells out provisions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. It also commits the US and regional partners to developing a $300 billion reconstruction fund. Read the full document, annotated, here.

Here are the other key developments:

Iran’s key negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, warned that “if the United States does not honor its commitments, there is no way Iran will honor its own commitments,” according to the media arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Ghalibaf repeatedly said Lebanon was one of the main topics tied to the negotiations. “We told the mediator that the issue of Lebanon and the blocked/frozen funds were among the main axes of the negotiations,” he told the Iranian state broadcaster. Trump said the US sent Israel a copy of the agreement, and again criticized Israel’s military actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon, saying: “they could do better.”

The memorandum was signed in both English and Farsi upon Iran’s insistence for the purposes of transparency, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told state broadcaster IRIB.

Trump said he doesn’t view the 60-day negotiating window for technical negotiations — as outlined in the agreement — as a firm deadline.

The US president downplayed the importance of destroying Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, arguing that it’s less important than preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Trump said that if an agreement wasn’t reached with Iran, the US could have continued the war for up to another two years. He also said that if Iran doesn’t adhere to the agreement, the US will return to bombing it.

Continuing the war might have had severe economic repercussions, Trump said, because it would “ruin the world market.” That “would have been the wrong thing to do,” he said.

Trump does not plan on holding anyone in the administration accountable for a deadly strike on an Iranian school. “Mistakes are made,” he said. The strike killed at least 168 children and 14 teachers, Iranian state media reported.

CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo, Kaanita Iyer, Christina Sierra, Kit Maher, Hira Humayun, Aida Karimi, Kristen Holmes, Annie Grayer and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.

14 hr 20 min ago

US "caved" to Iran's demands in peace plan, CNN analyst says

Lex Harvey

By Lex Harvey

Former U.S. negotiator: U.S. "caved" to Iran with Trump agreement

03:04

The United States “caved” to Iran’s demands in their agreement, said Brett McGurk, a former US negotiator and CNN global affairs analyst.

“I think we have conceded significantly to what the Iranians have long demanded from us … in terms of releasing frozen funds and waiving their oil, petrochemical, and banking sanctions, which is a massive concession,” McGurk, former Middle East & North Africa Coordinator for the National Security Council, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian both signed the 14-point peace plan aimed at ending the war and boosting the flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

“The Iranians will hold us to every word in this document,” McGurk said. “They’re real commitments that the US has signed onto in exchange for very few commitments from Iran.”

Iran’s parliament speaker and key negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned “if the United States does not honor its commitments, there is no way Iran will honor its own commitments,” according to the media arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Subscribers can read more of McGurk’s analysis here.

14 hr 12 min ago

Photos published by Iranian state media show president signing memorandum with US

Lex Harvey

By Lex Harvey

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signs memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran, on June 17, 2026.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signs memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran, on June 17, 2026. IRNA/Ahmad Moeini Jam/IRNA

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has signed the memorandum with the US, according to photos published by Iranian state media IRNA.

The photos released by IRNA showed Pezeshkian holding a document written in Farsi, with what appeared to be his and Trump’s signatures at the bottom.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signs memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran, on June 17, 2026.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signs memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran, on June 17, 2026. IRNA/Ahmad Moeini Jam

President Donald Trump also signed a hard copy of the plan in Versailles, France. The US then sent a photograph of the signed agreement to the Iranians, according to a US official.

The 800 word, 14-point plan is aimed at expanding the ceasefire and resuming the flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

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