Oil Trades Erupted Just 15 Minutes Before Trump’s Iran Announcement

Oil traders wagered bets worth $580 million just minutes before Trump announced he had “productive conversations” with Iran to end the war, suggesting that the president’s announcement was nothing more than a ploy to manipulate markets.

Fifteen minutes before the president’s unexpected announcement at 7:04 a.m. Monday, about 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate Futures contracts changed hands, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. Trading volumes for the two benchmarks skyrocketed at the same time, and the S&P 500 share went up shortly after the trade.

“The well-timed trades echoed the flurry of large highly profitable bets made on prediction market Polymarket on the timing of the US’s attacks in recent months on Iran and Venezuela,” the Financial Times wrote.

After pledging Saturday to destroy Iran’s power stations and energy infrastructure unless Tehran reopened the Strait of Hormuz, the president swiftly changed course and announced Monday he would postpone all U.S. strikes on such infrastructure for five days, following “very good and productive conversations” between the two countries.

“BASED ON THE TENOR AND TONE OF THESE IN DEPTH, DETAILED, AND CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS, WHICH WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, I HAVE INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD, SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS,” he wrote on Truth Social.

Tehran denied Trump’s claim, however, stating there had been “no direct contact with Trump,” since the U.S. began bombing Iran almost a month ago, raising serious concerns that the president is saying whatever he wants to prevent gas prices from going up amidst soaring costs nationwide.

Trump’s announcement came just hours before U.S. stock markets opened, and the supposed pause is due to last until the end of the energy sector trading week. The president’s decision caused skyrocketing oil prices to dip almost immediately, though they have risen since then.

The president’s seemingly fake talks with Iran and the newly revealed market chaos likely means his goal of reopening the Strait of Hormuz is—and always has been—out of reach.

An oil executive accused of being a “Never Trump” Republican will be filling Markwayne Mullin’s Senate seat in Oklahoma.

On Tuesday, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt announced that Alan Armstrong, executive chairman of the board of natural gas pipeline firm Williams Companies, will replace Mullin as the latter assumes his position as secretary of homeland security.

Armstrong has been called a “Never Trump” Republican by those on the far right, mostly due to his large donation to the campaign of former GOP Representative Adam Kinzinger following the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection. Kinzinger had criticized President Trump over his lies about the 2020 election being stolen and served on the House January 6 investigative committee with fellow Trump nemesis Liz Cheney. Later, Kinzinger endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2024.

“Has anyone told President Trump that the Governor of Oklahoma is bringing a Never Trumper who donated to a rabid anti-Trump Congressman who voted to impeach him after J6 to meet with him?” right-wing talking head Laura Loomer posted Sunday on X. “Hey @SenMullin what do you think about your Never Trump replacement? Now would be a good time for you to speak up!”

Armstrong is expected to be sworn in Tuesday afternoon.

This story has been updated.

With betting apps—sorry, “prediction markets”—like Kalshi and Polymarket, it’s easier than ever to profit off of deadly conflicts.

An anonymous user made nearly $1 million on Polymarket with dozens of eerily accurate bets about the ongoing Iran war, CNN reported on Tuesday.

The user bet with 93 percent accuracy on topics such as when U.S. and Israeli airstrikes would occur in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

This is not the first time that people who appear to have inside information have used sites like Polymarket to profit from violent acts.

A few days before the U.S. kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a raid, a user created a Polymarket account and wagered tens of thousands of dollars that Maduro would be in U.S. custody by the end of the month. They won more than $400,000.

Gambling, once tightly regulated in the U.S., has become easier to access than ever with the rise of betting apps. It has rapidly invaded sports, politics, and culture. Even CNN, which broke the Polymarket story, has a deal with rival group Kalshi to use its data in its news coverage.

Both Kalshi and Polymarket ostensibly ban insider trading, but with anonymous accounts and plausible deniability, the apps make it easy for those in the know to profit.

Sometimes the sites will even let slip that they’re fine with the practice. In November, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan told Axios it was “super cool” that his app “creates this financial incentive for people to go and divulge the information to the market.”

While some lawmakers and government watchdogs are looking to regulate the addictive, often unethical apps, Kalshi and Polymarket have an advocate in the president, a former casino owner. The Trump administration closed active investigations into the sites at the start of Trump’s second term, and Donald Trump Jr. has been hired as a board member of Polymarket and a “strategic adviser” of Kalshi. The war profiteering will continue until further notice.

President Donald Trump has once again voted by mail while railing against so-called “mail-in cheating.”

Trump, who has staunchly opposed mail-in voting as part of his delusions of mass voter fraud, voted by mail in a special election in Florida, according to The New York Times. The website for Palm Beach County’s Supervisor of Elections listed Trump’s voter status as “by mail ballot.”

Trump previously voted by mail in 2020.

Trump’s latest vote comes as the president has rejected a bid from his own party to end the partial government shutdown in order to pass the SAVE America Act, which would prohibit universal mail-in voting. Under the new legislation, voters would have to submit an application to receive a mail-in ballot.

In a statement, the White House pretended that the president’s mail-in ballot wasn’t at odds with his own legislation. “The SAVE America Act has common-sense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel—but universal mail-in voting should not be allowed,” the statement said. “As everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.”

Between naps at a crime-fighting task force in Memphis, Tennessee, Monday, Trump had claimed mail-in ballots were a threat to democracy. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” he ranted. “I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all.”

The Supreme Court appeared poised Monday to reject a Mississippi law that allowed ballots to be counted after Election Day, a decision that could further upend the democratic process. Last year, Trump signed an executive order banning ballots that were not “cast and received” by Election Day.

Former Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino—the man who oversaw President Trump’s violent immigration crackdown and thinks Latino immigrants are “scum,” “filth,” and “trash”—identifies as Native American. His family is Italian American, and he is not in any official tribal registry.

In several interviews with Bovino ahead of his retirement, The New York Times reported that Bovino listed his race as “Native American” on legal documents with Cherokee as his tribe, even gifting agents tomahawks as prizes for good work. Bovino told the Times that he has called himself Cherokee since he was 8 years old.

Bovino’s statement is tenuous at best, and the families he relentlessly brutalized and surveilled for over a year have a much more legitimate claim to American indigeneity than he does. The former Border Patrol chief continues to double down on all of the policies that led to federal agents killing two Americans in the street and his eventual firing, telling the Times he wanted “total border domination.”

“When you use terms like that, perhaps it scares some of the weaker-minded people. Domination. I want you to dominate that border. I’m not going to ‘control’ it. We’re going to dominate the hell out of that damn place,” Bovino said, and thinks that “all illegal aliens are criminals.”

Bovino oversaw the occupation of Minneapolis that led to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and had the gall to claim Pretti planned to “massacre” federal agents. Now he’ll be retiring to hunting and shitposting.

President Donald Trump was spotted struggling to stay awake even while his sycophants showered him with praise.

While attending a crime-stopping task force Monday aimed at curbing crime in Memphis, Tennessee, Trump appeared to doze off.

The 79-year-old president tried desperately to keep his eyes open while hearing about the rates of gunshot victims.

While Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ranted about Trump steering the United States off of a “perpetual course of decline,” the president’s eyelids fluttered and closed.

When he wasn’t drifting off into a dreamless daze, Trump’s remarks ranged from incoherent to problematic.

At one point, Trump joked about moving to Tennessee. “I love it. You never know what that is, you know, you just have a relationship with a state. It’s a lot safer than relationships with other things, I can tell you as a politician,” he joked. Earlier, Trump suggested that it had been Hegseth’s idea to wage war against Iran.

Trump has repeatedly been spotted dozing off during press conferences and signings, and even admitted that he’d grabbed some shut-eye during Cabinet meetings because they were “boring as hell.”

President Trump is already trying to throw Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth under the bus for the fruitless war on Iran.

“I called Pete, I called General Caine, I called a lot of our great people … and I said, ‘Let’s talk. We got a problem in the Middle East. We have a country … that for 47 years has been a purveyor of terror. And they’re very close to having a nuclear weapon. We can keep going and get that 50,000 up to 55 and 60, there’s no end. Or we could take a stop and make a little journey into the Middle East, and eliminate a big problem,’” Trump said Monday at an event in Memphis.

“Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up,” Trump continued. “And you said, ‘Let’s do it.’ Because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”

“Hegseth about to give his next briefing from under the bus,” liberal podcaster Jon Favreau wrote on X.

This quick comment is magnified by the chaos of Monday morning, which saw Trump announcing a five-day pause on bombing Iranian energy sites while claiming that he was close to a deal with the Iranian government. The Iranian government then denied speaking to him in any capacity at all, sparking rumors that Trump was engaging in market manipulation. And if the war is going as badly as it appears to be, Hegseth may be in trouble.

The U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to upend laws allowing ballots to be counted after Election Day amid President Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting, according to the Associated Press.

Members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed skeptical Monday while hearing arguments for a case from Mississippi, where an appellate court had struck down a law allowing ballots to be counted so long as they are postmarked on Election Day, and arrive within five days.

Thirteen other states, including New York, California, and Texas, as well as the District of Columbia, have similar laws. An affirmative ruling could also impact states’ collection of ballots from Americans overseas.

Justice Samuel Alito fretted that “a big stash of ballots” could arrive late and “radically” flip the results of an election. Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart, who was defending the law, observed that no one has been able to furnish a single case of fraud due to the delayed arrival of mail-in ballots. Justice Neil Gorsuch worried about a slippery slope in which votes could be counted up until a new Congress was sworn in.

Meanwhile, the liberal justices appeared to support the law allowing for votes to be counted after Election Day. Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that prompting states to alter their vote-counting procedures just a few months before the midterm elections could cause “confusion and disenfranchisement.”

“The people who should decide this issue are not the courts, but Congress, the states and Congress,” she said.

Justice Elena Kagan claimed that arguments forbidding the counting of late ballots could threaten absentee ballots and early voting—which seemed to concern Chief Justice John Roberts, the court’s conservative member most likely to side with his liberal colleagues.

The ruling is scheduled to be delivered in June, just a few months before the midterm elections that could see Republicans lose their grip on the House and Senate. The Trump administration is taking extensive efforts to limit voting power, including pushing for a law that would make it harder for many married women to vote. Meanwhile, anti-voting activists are circulating an unconstitutional executive order draft that could allow the president to hijack the country’s electoral systems ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents violently arrested a woman at an airport just one day after President Donald Trump called for them to help fill TSA staffing gaps.

Video of the incident on Sunday night showed two plainclothes agents dragging a sobbing woman away inside a boarding area of San Francisco International Airport. The reason for her arrest was not officially stated, and the agents refused to identify themselves or show an official badge. Meanwhile, airport authorities surrounded the agents to protect them while they kidnapped the woman—as a young girl traveling with her stood behind them crying during the arrest.

“I don’t know who you are!” one bystander shouted. “You could be someone kidnapping her!” yelled another.

Airport spokesman Doug Yakel insisted that the violent arrest had no relation to Trump’s directive.

“We understand federal officers were transporting two individuals on an outbound flight when this incident occurred,” he wrote in an email, perhaps including the little girl. “We believe this is an isolated incident and have no reason to suspect broader enforcement action at SFO.... We were not involved in or notified in advance of this incident. Airport operations continued without disruption, and there was no impact to flights or passenger processing.”

“I flew into San Francisco at 10pm last night & we got stuck on the tarmac for 30 minutes because of a ‘security’ issue. Can’t imagine it was anything other than this,” Utah State Senator Nate Blouin wrote on X. “Trump making things worse for travelers to target our neighbors. Gas prices up. Global safety down. Idiotic.”

Trump on Monday encouraged ICE agents to continue arresting people while deployed inside airports. “They’re now able to arrest illegals as they come into the country,” Trump said. “It’s very fertile territory.”

Even if this is an isolated event that has nothing to do with Trump’s ICE directive, it makes the fear attached to it a reality.

ICE commented on X Monday afternoon and corroborated Yakel’s statement that the event wasn’t connected to Trump’s directive.

“This arrest of ILLEGAL ALIENS occurred yesterday on March 22, 2026 — BEFORE ICE officers were deployed to airports to bolster TSA efforts,” DHS posted. “ICE officers arrested Angelina Lopez-Jimenez and Wendy Godinez-Lopez at the San Francisco International Airport. These illegal aliens had a final removal order of removal from an immigration judge since 2019. While being escorted to the international terminal for processing, Lopez-Jimenez attempted to flee and resisted law enforcement officers. ICE is working as quickly as possible to repatriate the family unit to their home country of Guatemala.”

But even if this is an isolated event that has nothing to do with Trump’s ICE directive, it makes the fear attached to it a reality.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump claimed Monday that the U.S. and Iran had moved toward a resolution to the American president’s disastrous war—but Israel is still dropping bombs.

Trump claimed Monday that U.S. officials had held productive conversations with Iranian officials and that he’d issued a five-day pause on strikes against their power plants and energy infrastructure.

Less than 40 minutes after Trump’s Truth Social post, however, the Israeli Air Force announced that it had launched a new wave of strikes in Tehran “targeting infrastructure of the Iranian terror regime.” Al Jazeera’s Suhaib al-Asa reported that Israel’s latest large-scale attacks on Tehran were “unprecedented,” and many densely populated residential and commercial neighborhoods were struck.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has not otherwise responded to Trump’s statements, hinting that these attacks may be the message itself.

Trump had threatened Sunday to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if the Strait of Hormuz did not reopen soon. Iran responded, warning that it would “irreversibly destroy” essential infrastructure, like energy and desalination facilities, across the Middle East if the U.S. struck.

It’s unclear how seriously one should take Trump’s claim that the U.S. is moving toward a “complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East.” Iran’s Foreign Ministry claimed there had been “no dialogue” between Tehran and Washington, and there is some speculation that Trump’s well-timed announcement was an attempt at market manipulation.