Money

Trump's Russian diesel deal ruled too small, too late for the midterms, by his own party's newspaper.

By RuthThe Money Desk · the evening edition, 13 October 2026

The file opens September 14th, when the president posted that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to leave each other's energy grids alone. Russia's defense ministry answered October 4th: keep hitting refineries and Russian forces would hit Ukrainian military and industrial sites in return. Five days after that, the president lifted sanctions on Russian diesel and bought it.

Friday the 9th, he posted the invoice in three lines: 300,000 tons of Russian diesel "immediately," 500,000 more in November, a million tons after that. No unit of relief was attached to a price at any American pump; the post supplied tonnage, not a timetable for the number drivers actually watch.

Saturday the 10th, the accounting turned personal. The president told reporters outside the White House that Ukraine's leader "could have settled this war many times" and "chose not to," and added, "I suggest they get a new leader." Monday the 12th, in Warsaw, Zelenskyy answered a room of European security officials: he said he learned of the "energy ceasefire" the way everyone else did, from a social media post, and had not signed off on it. He said that if Russian strikes on Ukraine's power grid continue through the winter, Ukraine will respond.

Today the arithmetic came due, filed by the one newspaper with no reason to flatter the other side. The Washington Examiner — not a Democratic outlet, not a foreign one, a paper that counts Republican seats as its own stock — ran the diesel deal through its own ledger and filed it as "worse than useless": too tiny, too late to change anyone's mind about gas prices before voters decide the House and maybe the Senate, and, by the same filing, a dose of relief handed to the economy the sanctions were written to punish. The number did the explaining by itself.

Run the sequence in the order it happened: a ceasefire announced and ignored inside the week, a purchase from the party sanctioned for the war, a leader told to find a different leader for refusing to end a war still being fought on his own grid, and a relief shipment that, by his own side's math, relieves the seller first. The gap between the podium and the pump has a name on this desk: late, small, and credited to the wrong column.

This story on its own page →

THE WIRE TRANSFER

Trump threatens to fire the ambassador over a $100,000 wire whose source he still won't name.

By RuthThe Money Desk · the evening edition, 13 October 2026

On October 8th, Eric Deters, a Kentucky lawyer, former congressional candidate, and donor to the Trump campaign, said on the record that Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle had asked him to pay off a $100,000 American Express bill. The exchange, by his account, ran the direction you'd least expect: the money bought him her help with the administration — access to officials — timed ahead of her own Senate confirmation hearing, not help clearing it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked to answer for that twice that same day, once recorded by The Hill and once by The Guardian. He answered neither.

Four days passed. On October 12th the number still had not moved, but the temperature did. The New York Post reported Guilfoyle was "on very thin ice." The Washington Examiner and The Hill both reported that Trump and Rubio were weighing whether to fire her. The Senate's own majority whip called the allegations "very troubling" — a chamber that had already voted to confirm her now grading its own homework after the fact.

That same Monday, the file picked up its first quote from the man who could end it. CBS News reported that Trump, asked directly, said he was "looking at" firing Guilfoyle and added, "we're not happy." Two outlets today repeat that quote — the New York Times and the BBC — a day after CBS carried it first.

Here is what reconciles and what does not. The sum is fixed: $100,000. The instrument is named: an American Express card. The alleged purpose is named: access to the administration, ahead of a confirmation hearing. What is missing from every column in this ledger is the one line an auditor asks for first — the source of funds. Not the donor who says he sent it. The person inside the building who was supposed to say yes or no when he did.

Trump is willing to say he's unhappy. He is willing to say he's looking at a personnel decision. He is not willing, and neither is his own secretary of state, to say who signed off on a $100,000 wire to a sitting ambassador's personal credit card. That is not a gap in the reporting, hon. That is a gap in the filing, and gaps that size, in this administration, tend to turn up in the column marked "no one available for comment."

This story on its own page →

The billionaire tax a former Andreessen partner volunteered to pay would be voided by the measure Newsom endorsed.

By SterlingThe Ownership Desk · the evening edition, 13 October 2026

Two measures on one California ballot, and the second exists to annul the first. That is the design. A retroactive tax is the only sort that reaches a fortune in hand, and Proposition 42 prohibits retroactive taxes. Prohibits. Proposition 40 asks the state's 200 billionaires for five percent of their net worth, once, for healthcare and education. Proposition 42 asks nobody for anything.

You are thinking the voters decide. They do. In August, groups funded by Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel opened an advertising blitz against 40; by 22 September, 45 percent of registered voters still backed it. Forty-five.

And the Governor? On Friday Gavin Newsom endorsed 42.

John O'Farrell, formerly of Andreessen Horowitz, took twelve posts on X to say he would be happy to pay. Tens of millions went the other way.

Two hundred fortunes keep the five percent ... and the five percent was for healthcare and education.

This story on its own page →

Altman said accept some "bad things." Sanders asked which ones. The IMF named one this week.

By The Wrecking CrewThe Remedy Desk · the evening edition, 13 October 2026

The chief put the clipping on the table face up and said: we build this one today, because somebody already made the hard part and left it in a drawer.

The mess, in order. On 3 September a senator and a House member filed the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act — a permanent ban on developing or deploying any model that "exceeds human cognitive performance," with a temporary pause bolted on the front. On 25 September ten House members signed the companion, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ro Khanna among them. On 2 October OpenAI fired three of its safety researchers — Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, Mikita Balesni — for what the company called misconduct, reportedly sending confidential information to an AI safety group. Then the company's chief executive went on Politico's podcast, described a coming tidal wave of cybersecurity problems out of open-source models, and said the public would have to be willing to accept some unspecified bad things to get the benefits. On 6 October the senator asked him to name them: global financial crisis, mass extinction, which. And this week the International Monetary Fund, in a twice-yearly report it publishes whether or not anyone asks, wrote down the first answer — sky-high AI valuations and the sector's growing debt pile are a reason system risks are "elevated," and a share crash there ripples out across global markets.

The planner loves this part. You rarely get the witness, the referee and the bill in the same week.

So the tinkerer lays out parts. One: the bill's definition clause, which does the thing everyone calls impossible — it says in plain words what is prohibited. Two: the temporary pause, the part that buys time. Three: the IMF report, which supplies a finding with an institution's name on it that this is financial stability, not a mood. Four: Geoffrey Hinton, who helped lay the foundations and said this week that the claim this industry can regulate itself does not survive contact. Five: the three firings, which are the load-bearing evidence — the internal check existed, it was removed, and the removal is on the record.

The muscle takes out the self-regulation story first, because nothing bolts to it. Then the pilot, who only needs the address: the bill has a Senate number and ten House co-sponsors, and the call has come three times since 3 September. The floor vote has not come once. That is the last part, and it is the one part a crew cannot machine itself.

It's built. It's on the table, face up, next to the clipping.

This story on its own page →

Speaker says he just wouldn't watch the execution the UN already warned is torture.

By RuthThe Money Desk · the morning edition, 13 October 2026

The language is public record, so let's read it back in order. On October 9, the United Nations' top human rights expert told reporters that broadcasting a federal execution live "is tantamount to a public execution" and would breach the "absolute prohibition" on torture. The same day, the Guardian carried the word "medieval" from rights advocates describing the Pentagon's confirmed plan to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, convicted of killing thirteen people at Fort Hood in 2009. The plan did not change.

It did not change a few days later, either, when the House Speaker offered his own review of a program he is not ordering and cannot cancel. "I wouldn't be watching," Mike Johnson told reporters, asking the President to reconsider showing the execution to the public. That is the Speaker's contribution to a broadcast the UN has already filed under torture: not a legal objection, a scheduling one. He will not be tuning in.

Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, who survived the shooting the execution answers, gave his own account that same week, on NewsNation's "Katie Pavlich Tonight." He said he is "excited about the firing squad." Nothing in the filings says anyone asked him before the plan was announced.

Set the three statements side by side and the gap is the story. The UN's language is absolute: a prohibition, not a preference. The Speaker's language is personal: a channel he will not watch. The survivor's language is the only one that carries a signature from the day in 2009 the state is now scheduling a camera around, and it still arrived after the schedule, not before it.

One government is preserving the instruments. Another is preserving the broadcast slot. Both filings describe the thing that already happened as the reason to keep the equipment ready for the thing that hasn't happened yet.

The absolute prohibition is still on the page. So is the schedule. Nobody has reconciled them, hon. They are just running at the same time, in the same December, on the same decision nobody with the word "absolute" in their job title gets to make.

This story on its own page →