Oil just crossed $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022. The Iran war, Houthi attacks on Saudi oil facilities, and a trade war with Canada all arrived at the same pump price on the same Wednesday.
Oil crossed $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022. Welles Crowther, the Man in the Red Bandana who saved 18 lives in the South Tower, was awarded the Medal of Freedom. Canada, France, and the UK banned Israeli settlement trade. Ozempic cuts asthma attacks by 40%. Wednesday had range.
Oil crossed $100 a barrel today for the first time since 2022. The Iran war, the Hormuz disruptions, the Houthi attacks on Saudi oil facilities, and the Canada trade war all arrived at the same number on the same Wednesday. Here is Wednesday.
Oil just crossed $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022. Every driver, every airline, every manufacturer, and every central banker is reading that number right now.
The last time oil was at $100 was in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when supply shock and sanctions drove prices to levels that produced a global inflation surge. Today's $100 arrives from a different set of causes but with the same economic consequence: every input that uses energy just got more expensive simultaneously. Airlines will raise ticket prices. Shipping companies will raise freight rates. Manufacturers will raise the cost of goods. Grocery stores will raise prices. Every household that drives a car, heats a home, or buys anything that was transported anywhere is absorbing this number. The Fed meets in two weeks. Kevin Warsh described an inflation environment at Jackson Hole where the Fed has limited room. $100 oil removes what room remained. The Canada tariffs took effect Tuesday, raising the cost of 700 categories of goods. Ectopic pregnancy deaths have nearly doubled, a story later in this brief, connecting to healthcare costs. The Houthi attacks on Saudi facilities confirmed yesterday added a new supply pressure. All of those pressures arrived at the same number today. $100.
Welles Crowther was 24 years old on September 11, 2001. He saved up to 18 people in the South Tower before it fell. Two days before the 25th anniversary, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
President Trump posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Welles Crowther during a White House commemoration with first responders, Gold Star families, and the Tunnel to Towers Foundation ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks. Crowther was a 24-year-old equities trader and volunteer firefighter from Rockland County, New York, who was working in the South Tower when the planes hit. He had carried a red bandana his father gave him since childhood. He put it on to filter the smoke, went back into the building, guided survivors to the only working stairwell, made multiple trips, and carried people who could not walk. He saved as many as 18 lives before the South Tower collapsed.
His family did not know what had happened to him in those final hours until months after his death, when a survivor described being guided out by a young man in a red bandana. His mother recognized him immediately. The family has since established the Red Bandana Project, a social-emotional learning curriculum taught in schools. Trump said during the ceremony: "When asked why he always kept it, Welles replied: with this red bandana, I'm going to change the world." He did not know what he was saying. He was right. The anniversary is Friday. The 170,000 pages of toxic air records released Tuesday described what institutions did and did not do. The Medal awarded Wednesday described what one person chose to do. Both are 9/11 stories. They are not the same kind.
Canada, France, and the UK just banned trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Israel responded by closing the British Consulate in East Jerusalem.
The governments of Canada, France, and the United Kingdom announced Tuesday that they will ban goods and some services from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, joining Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Spain, which had already taken similar steps. The UK also tightened restrictions on arms exports to Israel, though the limited embargo does not cover F-35 fighter jet parts. Israel responded by closing the British Consulate in East Jerusalem.
Three of the United States' closest allies, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom, plus five other European nations, have now formally restricted trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The settlements are considered illegal under international law by most countries and international legal bodies, a position Israel disputes. The US has not joined the settlement trade bans and has not publicly condemned them. Israel closing the British Consulate in East Jerusalem is a specific diplomatic escalation: the consulate serves Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and closing it reduces the UK's direct diplomatic presence in the territory where the trade ban it just announced applies. The F-35 fighter jet parts exemption in the UK arms restriction is the detail that reveals the limits of the sanctions: the UK is restricting some arms exports to Israel while continuing to supply components for the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world. Both the restriction and the exemption are part of the same policy.
Ozempic is linked to 40% fewer asthma attacks. Scientists say dark energy may be an illusion. Both arrived today.
Semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, was linked to nearly 40% fewer asthma attacks and about 20% fewer COPD flare-ups in a large real world study, with researchers suggesting GLP-1 drugs may offer significant respiratory benefits beyond weight loss. Separately, new research suggests dark energy, the force thought to be driving the accelerating expansion of the universe, may not exist at all and that cosmic acceleration itself may be an illusion caused by the way we measure distances in space.
The Ozempic respiratory finding adds another unexpected benefit to a drug class whose mechanism keeps producing surprises. This brief covered August 20 when research found Ozempic works in the brain opposite to how scientists expected. Now it is linked to 40% fewer asthma attacks in a real world population, meaning people actually taking the drug for weight loss or diabetes experienced dramatically fewer asthma hospitalizations as a secondary outcome. GLP-1 drugs, the class that includes Ozempic and Wegovy, are beginning to look less like a weight loss intervention and more like a broad metabolic intervention with effects across multiple organ systems simultaneously. The dark energy finding is a different kind of surprise. Dark energy is the name cosmologists gave to the unknown force apparently causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate, a phenomenon confirmed by Nobel Prize-winning research in 2011. If today's research holds up, that acceleration may be a measurement artifact rather than a real physical force, meaning one of the most significant cosmological discoveries of the last 25 years may need to be revisited. Both findings are preliminary. Both are extraordinary.
LIV Golf just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Jon Rahm is owed $7.5 million. The Saudi money is gone.
LIV Golf filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New Jersey Tuesday, listing liabilities between $500 million and $1 billion against assets of no more than $500 million. Jon Rahm is listed as an unsecured creditor owed $7.5 million, Bryson DeChambeau is owed $5.7 million, Dustin Johnson is owed $5.5 million, and more than 30 golfers are listed as creditors in total. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund that bankrolled the league from its founding in 2022, stopped funding it earlier this year after spending more than $5 billion.
Chapter 11 is the section of the US bankruptcy code that allows companies to restructure their debts while continuing to operate rather than liquidating. LIV Golf is not closing. It is restructuring, with private equity firm BC Partners financing a planned return in 2027. The Saudi Public Investment Fund has agreed to provide $49.6 million in debtor-in-possession financing, emergency funding that keeps a company operating during bankruptcy proceedings, pending court approval. LIV Golf was founded to break the PGA Tour's dominance of professional golf, spent $5 billion of Saudi sovereign wealth trying to do it, and now owes those golfers millions while asking a bankruptcy court for the time to figure out what comes next. Jon Rahm described this as "LIV Golf 1.0" ending. The Saudi money that built it is gone. The golfers it recruited are unsecured creditors in a New Jersey courthouse.
New Hampshire's primaries gave both parties their establishment picks. The progressive wave that won Michigan, Minnesota, and Florida did not reach New Hampshire.
Former Republican Senator John E. Sununu, backed by President Trump, easily won the Republican Senate primary. Democratic Representative Chris Pappas won the Democratic Senate primary, defeating democratic socialist Karishma Manzur 65% to 33%. The AIPAC and Israel-criticism angle was prominent in the Democratic primary, with Manzur having been critical of the pro-Israel lobbying group. The November Senate race between Sununu and Pappas sets up one of the most competitive general elections on the midterm map.
The progressive primary wave Capital to Capitol has been tracking since August 5 produced its clearest establishment counter-result in New Hampshire. El-Sayed won Michigan. Flanagan won Minnesota. Nixon won Florida. Pappas won New Hampshire. The pattern is now specific: the progressive coalition wins states with strong labor movements and large urban progressive bases, but meets resistance in states with older, more moderate Democratic electorates. Manzur ran on Medicare for All, student debt cancellation, and a more critical posture toward Israel and AIPAC. She lost by 32 points. The November race between Sununu and Pappas is the most genuinely competitive Senate contest in New England: a swing state with no clear ideological gulf between its nominees, in a year where control of the Senate hangs on a handful of races.
Nigeria secretly held a three-month ceasefire with Boko Haram. The truce freed 360 abducted villagers. Nobody announced it until the New Yorker did.
A government that has been officially fighting a militant group for over a decade quietly negotiating a ceasefire that freed 360 hostages is an extraordinary story, and the fact that it was kept secret for three months says something specific about the political constraints on publicly acknowledging negotiations with a designated terrorist organization in a democratic system. Ceasefires with insurgent groups are inherently controversial: acknowledging a negotiated truce implies a form of recognition to the other side that governments fighting those groups rarely want to extend publicly. Nigeria kept it secret. The New Yorker published it today. 360 people who were held by Boko Haram are now free. All three of those facts arrive together in the same story, and the story that matters most is the third one.
Ectopic pregnancy deaths have nearly doubled. The connection to abortion access restrictions is documented and specific.
Ectopic pregnancy deaths in the United States have nearly doubled in recent years.
An ectopic pregnancy is one that implants outside the uterus, most commonly in a fallopian tube. It is not a viable pregnancy. It cannot be carried to term. Without treatment, it is life-threatening. The standard treatment is medication or surgery to end the ectopic pregnancy. In states with strict abortion bans or near-total abortion restrictions, ectopic pregnancy treatment has been complicated or delayed because providers face legal uncertainty about whether terminating an ectopic pregnancy falls under their state's abortion law exceptions. Medical organizations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have documented cases where treatment was delayed due to legal uncertainty. A delay in treating an ectopic pregnancy is a delay in treating a medical emergency. The doubling of ectopic pregnancy deaths is not a medical mystery. It is a documented policy consequence arriving in the same week that the FDA's incoming nominee, whose anti-abortion record this brief covered on August 20, is being positioned to lead the agency that regulates the medications used to treat ectopic pregnancies.
The thread underneath Wednesday
Oil crossed $100 a barrel today for the first time since 2022, driven by the Iran war, Houthi attacks on Saudi oil facilities, and Canada tariff supply chain disruptions, the pump price arriving as the inflation environment Warsh described at Jackson Hole loses its remaining room. Welles Crowther was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom two days before the 25th anniversary, the man in the red bandana who saved up to 18 lives in the South Tower and died when it fell, his story unknown to his family until a survivor described the young man with the bandana who guided her out. Canada, France, and the UK banned trade with Israeli settlements while the UK tightened arms export restrictions, and Israel responded by closing the British Consulate in East Jerusalem, eight US allies now having restricted settlement trade without the US joining them. Ozempic linked to 40% fewer asthma attacks in a large real world study, and dark energy may be an illusion caused by how we measure distances in space, two findings that challenge what we thought we knew about a drug and about the universe on the same Wednesday. LIV Golf filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy owing Jon Rahm $7.5 million and more than 30 other golfers millions more after Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund stopped funding the league following a $5 billion bet on breaking the PGA Tour. New Hampshire gave both parties their establishment Senate picks, with Pappas defeating democratic socialist Manzur by 32 points in the clearest counter-result to the progressive wave that won Michigan, Minnesota, and Florida. Nigeria quietly held a three-month Boko Haram ceasefire that freed 360 abducted villagers and nobody said anything until the New Yorker published it today. Ectopic pregnancy deaths have nearly doubled, a policy consequence documented by medical organizations that connects directly to the abortion access restrictions this brief has been tracking all month. The Smithsonian's Secretary Lonnie Bunch resigned after seven years, bringing the institution's standoff with the Trump administration to a leadership inflection point. The Supreme Court blocked Missouri's GOP-backed congressional redistricting map, leaving the state's November map in limbo. Operation Meridian, the largest missing-child operation in Ohio history, rescued 79 children, some as young as six. South Africa is making a last-ditch court bid to stop Nelson Mandela's personal items from being auctioned in New York. The TSA is restoring limited gate access for non-ticket holders 25 years after 9/11. Bangladesh's measles outbreak has now killed more than 1,000 children this year. The NFL season opened tonight at Lumen Field with the Seattle Seahawks raising their Super Bowl banner without their MVP Kenneth Walker III.
Eight sections, 62 days until the midterms. The 25th anniversary is Friday.
What to watch tomorrow: Watch whether any US official responds to the UK, Canada, and France West Bank settlement trade bans, because eight US allies have now taken this step without Washington and the silence has become its own answer. Watch the oil market tomorrow morning for whether $100 holds or pushes further, because above $100 is the threshold at which the Fed's September meeting calculus changes materially. Watch for any statement from the Smithsonian on Lonnie Bunch's successor, because the institution is in a standoff with the administration and who leads it next determines whether that standoff continues or resolves. And watch Friday's 25th anniversary commemoration in New York, where the release of the 170,000 pages of toxic air records this week arrives at the same moment as the first major anniversary ceremony, with 57,000 people enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program who will be watching. See you tomorrow.
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