Balloon Juice

Texas Primary Results – This Should Be Interesting! (and NC!)

by WaterGirl| March 3, 20267:35 pm| 19 Comments

This post is in: 2026 Elections, Elections

Update at 7:45 pm:

I was thinking of Texas, but NC primary is today, too. NC peeps, what are the key primary elections there?

(MSNOW)

Republicans and Democrats are locked in epic primary battles to set the stage for November in the Texas Senate race. Sen. John Cornyn is running for a fifth term and faces serious competition from Attorney General Ken Paxton in the GOP primary. U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico are vying for the Democratic nod to face the winner of the GOP contest. If no candidate nabs a majority of the vote, a runoff will be held on May 26.

BJ peeps in Texas, is there a good site to watch the election returns?

MSNow seems to be the best of the ones that don’t require a login or turning off an ad blocker.

MSNow

Option A

Option B

Texas Primary Results – This Should Be Interesting! (and NC!)Post + Comments (19)

Open Thread: Warner Bros. Paramount’d

by Anne Laurie| March 3, 20267:14 pm| 30 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Media, Open Threads

Maybe I’m just a Cynic, but this whole saga reads to me like one of the We are no longer bound by your puny Rules!!! indicators that come just before a major economic crash. Per the WSJ, “Six Months, 9 Offers and $81 Billion. How Hollywood’s Nasty Takeover Was Won” [unpaywalled version]

For six months, the son of one of the world’s richest men kept hearing the same unfamiliar word: No.

Even before he closed a deal to combine his company with a much bigger one, David Ellison was already plotting to do it again. Once his Skydance Media took control of Paramount, he turned his attention to a Hollywood icon, launching an audacious takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery that would give the Ellison family control of a sprawling media empire.

His first offer was swatted away. So were his second and third. By the time Ellison made his sixth offer, Warner Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav stopped responding to his texts. Even when Warner officially accepted a rival offer from Netflix, Ellison refused to take no for an answer.

As the battle dragged on, Ellison sweetened his offers, ratcheted up the pressure, took the hostile bid directly to shareholders, threatened a bruising proxy fight, brought in President Trump allies to lobby, and treated the existing term sheet like paper waiting to be shredded.

On the ninth offer, the wealth and influence of the Ellisons finally won…

And once Netflix dropped its own $72 billion deal for Warner’s studios and HBO Max streaming business, the scion of software billionaire Larry Ellison was poised to become one of the most powerful people in a town that once derided him as a nepo-baby.

Ellison, 43 years old, as Paramount chief executive will now control much of our attention: the shows we watch, the news we consume and the screens we stare at all day long, with a family portfolio that will include HBO, CNN, CBS News, the historic Warner Bros. studio lot and crown jewels such as DC Comics and Harry Potter.

As much as Ellison and his team had been telling anyone who would listen that his business would ultimately prevail in buying a company five times its size, the reaction on Friday from Hollywood to Washington to Wall Street was astonishment…

On Friday, Paramount paid a breakup fee of $2.8 billion to Netflix.

At NYMag, “Paramount Wins, Everybody Loses”:

Backed by his billionaire dad’s bankroll and the full support of many in Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, Paramount CEO David Ellison won the battle for Warner Bros. on Thursday, successfully quashing a surprise bid by Netflix to take over the storied movie and TV company. Ellison is no doubt celebrating his victory over the streaming powerhouse, ditto Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders who stand to gain from Paramount’s sweetened offer. But for everyone else, this deal feels like a colossal dud, one that will result in a new company burdened with billions more in debt — almost surely leading to thousands of layoffs, fewer movies and TV shows getting made, and the creation of a combined CBS News–CNN operation likely to lean well to the right of where either is now.

In fairness, Netflix closing a deal for Warner Bros. would have had numerous downsides too. Many in the film business, including notable figures such as director James Cameron, were vehemently opposed to the streamer getting its mitts on WB given its business model to date has had no real use for theatrical distribution. And as the Writers Guild told Vulture in December, “The problem is the acquisition and pending consolidation of two media giants, not who the buyer is.” Industry consolidation in this century, including Disney’s purchase of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox entertainment assets or Amazon’s gobbling up MGM, has rarely been good for everyday people. A Netflix “win” wouldn’t have been great news for the average viewer or moviegoer either.

But as one Warner Bros. veteran told me late last year, the Netflix bid felt very much like the “least worst option,” and I think that’s exactly right. For all the downsides the tech giant’s now-dead deal would have had, Paramount’s winning is the worst-case scenario for Hollywood — and America.

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For one thing, workers in the industry, whether employees of Warner Bros. and Paramount or just creatives trying to set up new projects, will lose because Ellison won. Netflix would surely have ended up making some staff cuts, and while it had promised to let Warners keep making movies for theaters, I’m convinced the current Netflix film unit would have cut back on big-budget titles such as The Rip had the deal gone through, if only because Warners would have offered a consistent diet of such spectacles.

But while a Netflix-WB union would have resulted in a bit less money overall being spent on films, Par-WB figures to be a bloodletting. Just as Disney didn’t need 20th Century Fox to keep churning out as many movies once it took control of that studio, Ellison will quickly decide he doesn’t need to double his theatrical slate overnight. Or, as former New York contributor Nolan Hicks mused Thursday, “If anyone actually thinks the Paramount-WB combo is going to field a slate of [about] 40 movies a year, can I also interest you in buying the Brooklyn Bridge, which is also definitely for sale?”

Ellison’s supersize company will carry with it a supersize debt load — roughly $60 billion by some estimates. So in addition to scaling back on movie spending, Paramount-WB will need to slash costs like crazy. And unlike Netflix-WB, there are overlapping departments everywhere: two sets of cable-TV businesses, competing news divisions (CNN and CBS News), rival sports units, multiple marketing teams, competing sales staff, and on and on. Had the Netflix deal gone through, Warners was going to spin off most of its cable holdings, allowing those units to fend for themselves as NBCUniversal’s cast-offs at Versant are now doing. It wouldn’t have been easy, but folks at Warner-owned cable channels would have had a shot at keeping their jobs. The Paramount-WB cable combination will result in thousands of workers losing their jobs as back-office operations get smooshed together…

…[I]t’s hard to see much upside at all in the Paramount deal for Warners should it actually close. We will now have one fewer truly independent major studio making and distributing movies and TV shows. Thousands of workers will lose their jobs, and fewer creative voices will have a platform as the number of projects that get made shrinks still further. At best, less money will be devoted to covering the news and investigating wrongdoing; at worst, that news will be slanted further toward one political point of view. And at a time when the president of the United States and his cronies have embarked on a bid to make the country less democratic and less pluralistic, a media company that has shown a clear willingness to align itself with that mission is about to get dramatically bigger. If there were a worst-case scenario in what might happen to Warner Bros., this is it.

Paramount Skydance will combine Paramount+ and HBO Max into one streaming service, said company CEO David Ellison.
The announcement comes days after Paramount Skydance agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO’s parent company.

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— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost.com) March 2, 2026 at 12:45 PM

… He added that Paramount didn’t want to make changes to the HBO brand. “Our viewpoint is HBO should stay HBO,” Ellison said, noting that his favorite HBO product is “Game of Thrones.” If Justice Department regulators allow the deal to go through, it would place recent HBO Max hits, such as “The Pitt” and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” alongside Paramount offerings including “South Park” and “Yellowstone.”…

Ellison is the son of Oracle co-founder and Trump ally Larry Ellison. His firm, Skydance, bought Paramount over the summer, putting CBS, Paramount Pictures and more under his control. The $8 billion deal was approved by the Trump administration following a lengthy review and several concessions.

The deal to buy Warner Bros., valued at about $110 billion, will almost surely attract regulatory scrutiny from the Justice Department because — without divestments — it places major swaths of the film, television and news industries under one roof: Warner Bros. and Paramount studios, HBO Max and Paramount+, and CBS and CNN would all have the same parent company. Ellison expressed confidence on the call that the deal wouldn’t face hurdles with regulators…

the Ellison media empire, even if they do manage to build it out, is an extremely fragile asset for the reactionary cause in several ways
for one, the commitment to the cause of those principals that are younger than 80 is uncertain
for two, there's not much evidence they're good at this

— post malone ergo propter malone (@proptermalone.bsky.social) February 27, 2026 at 4:52 AM

yeah there's imo some real tension between the "they will have to consume what we give them" posture and the absolute explosion in content generation pathways

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— post malone ergo propter malone (@proptermalone.bsky.social) February 27, 2026 at 5:03 AM

this probably is cope: I think it is more likely that Team Ellison eats the $7b breakup fee for nothing when the WB deal is blocked than that the deal is consummated

— post malone ergo propter malone (@proptermalone.bsky.social) February 27, 2026 at 8:12 AM

In all probability a few years from now Ted will either scoop up WB for a significant discount and/or pick apart the useful pieces of the failed Ellison media empire for peanuts.

— foggydrinker.bsky.social (@foggydrinker.bsky.social) February 27, 2026 at 8:17 AM

Yeah, everyone is very much overlooking that Murdoch got rich doing media because, for better or worse, he was good at it.
Bezos/Ellison buying media companies as vanity projects is a very different thing

— Tuffy (@smtuffy.bsky.social) February 27, 2026 at 4:56 AM

PARAMOUNT DOWNGRADED TO JUNK BY FITCH; RATINGS ON NEG. WATCH

— Blurry TV Headlines (@blurrytvheadlines.numbergoup.com) March 2, 2026 at 6:33 PM

Private Equity gonna do to Star Trek, Batman, and HBO what they did to Toys R Us, Sears and RadioShack

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— Zeddy (@zeddary.bsky.social) March 3, 2026 at 11:54 AM

is it “because we got almost three billion dollars out of folding and faillison is likely to have to spin off properties we want within five years?”

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— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) March 2, 2026 at 6:33 PM

Just thinking about how, before buying Paramount, Ellison's time at Skydance was so mid-to-bad that Paramount executives had to tell him that his taste in movies is garbage. www.vulture.com/article/larr…

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— James Downie (@jamescdownie.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 8:43 PM

Paramount President Jeff Shell was fired by Comcast in 2023 over sexual harassment allegations. Now he's facing a lawsuit over insider trading related to recent Paramount deals (like their $7.7 billion deal to exclusive MMA broadcast rights).
really a wonderful collection of human beings

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— Karl Bode (@karlbode.com) March 2, 2026 at 1:45 PM

Paramount should enjoy its growing news monopoly while they have it because when Democrats win back power we are going to break up these anti-democratic information conglomerates. All of them.

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— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) February 27, 2026 at 1:01 PM

Open Thread: Warner Bros. Paramount’dPost + Comments (30)

Another Win for Democracy Docket

by WaterGirl| March 3, 20264:00 pm| 63 Comments

This post is in: Breathtaking Corruption, Breathtaking Criminality and Lawlessness, Justice, Open Threads, Politics

Another win for Democracy Docket!

The Department of Justice (DOJ) abandoned its defense of President Donald Trump’s retribution campaign against law firms that challenged his political agenda or represented his political opponents over the years.

This makes the big law firms that rolled over the administration look even more weak and cowardly and feckless than they did before.

Well, hang on, maybe I spoke in haste. They were completely weak and cowardly and feckless before; I’m not sure they could look worse. But somehow they do!

The Department of Justice (DOJ) abandoned its defense of President Donald Trump’s retribution campaign against law firms that challenged his political agenda or represented his political opponents over the years.

The DOJ dropped its appeals of four lower court rulings that found Trump’s executive orders sanctioning Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie* and Susman Godfrey were unlawful and issued specifically to punish the firms for exercising their constitutional rights.

Last year, Trump attempted to paralyze the firms’ ability to represent clients in dealings with the federal government by signing a series of orders that terminated contracts and stripped their lawyers of security clearances and access to government buildings.

In addition to firms, Trump also targeted individual lawyers through his orders.

The DOJ dropping its defense of the orders represents a major win for the rule of law. By targeting firms based on the clients they represented, Trump’s orders represented a direct assault on the country’s adversarial system of justice.

Some law firms — including Paul, Weiss — folded in the face of the orders and pledged tens of millions of dollars worth of pro bono legal work for causes favored by the White House in order to get Trump’s sanctions lifted.

Other firms successfully sued. The first to do so was Perkins Coie, which argued that it was being illegally targeted because it challenged the Trump campaign’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and for its work on voting rights cases.

“The government’s decision to dismiss its appeal is clearly the right one,” WilmerHale said in a statement. “As we said from the outset, our challenge to the unlawful Executive Order was about defending our clients’ constitutional right to retain the counsel of their choosing and defending the rule of law. We are pleased these foundational principles were vindicated.”

Several district court judges overseeing the suits gave impassioned defenses of the rule of law and warned that Trump’s orders risked intimidating attorneys or law firms that might represent the president’s political opponents.

In a March hearing on Perkins Coie’s complaint, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, said the government’s defense of Trump’s order sent “chills” down her spine. A DOJ attorney had claimed that the president could also issue a retaliatory order against Williams & Connolly, a major law firm that was representing Perkins Coie in its suit.

Talk about people and institutions rising to the occasion. Where would we be without Marc Elias and Democracy Docket?

I would love to hear from our legal peeps about whether and how this has affected the world of big law. Have the big firms that rolled over lost standing in the legal world?

I’m tired. You’re tired. We’re all tired. But we have to keep on fighting the good fight.

Another Win for Democracy DocketPost + Comments (63)

Underpants Noem (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker| March 3, 20262:00 pm| 150 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Clown Shoes, General Stupidity

The incompetent twatwaffle Donald Trump appointed to run the sprawling Department of Homeland Security agency appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It didn’t go well for her. Here’s a fellow Republican who voted to confirm her:

Tillis to Noem: “A 14 month old dog is basically a teenager in dog years. You decided to kill that dog bc you hadn’t invested the appropriate training, then you have the audacity to write a book & say it’s a leadership lesson! … Those are bad decisions not unlike what happened in Minneapolis”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 3, 2026 at 12:55 PM

Tillis is retiring, so he went full honey badger, later calling for Noem’s resignation and threatening to throw sand in the Senate’s procedural gears if she keeps stonewalling on answers Tillis has demanded about how DHS fucked up investigations in North Carolina.

***

In other news, the demented president embarrassed the country in front of a foreign leader again. In a press avail with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump wrongly claimed his own shitty father was born in Germany.

The odious Fred Trump was actually born in an outer NYC borough. It was Trump’s cathouse-running grandfather Drumpf who was born in Germany and then kicked out for being a draft dodger, after which he made his way to the U.S.

Sounds like Trump would like to tariff Spain into supporting his unpopular war, but oops, SCOTUS:

Trump: “Spain has been terrible. I told Scott to cut off all dealings with Spain. They said we can’t use their bases. We could use their bases if we want. We could just fly in and use it. Nobody is gonna tell us not to use it.”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 3, 2026 at 12:04 PM

But actually, Trump WON on tariffs, actually, despite SCOTUS plastering a big red L on his mottled orange forehead:

Trump: “We won on tariffs, actually. Somebody said, ‘You actually won the case.’ We won on tariffs. You had a decision that was wrong.”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 3, 2026 at 12:11 PM

Oh, and invading Iran is super popular — and gas prices are going to fall back to $1 a gallon real soon, just you wait.

Trump on going to war with Iran: “I have never had more compliments on something I did. So if we have a high oil prices for a little while, but as soon as this ends these prices are gonna drop I believe even lower than before.”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 3, 2026 at 12:09 PM

To sum up, what a pack of whiny-ass, buffoonish and incompetent losers.

Open thread.

Underpants Noem (Open Thread)Post + Comments (150)

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

by Anne Laurie| March 3, 20267:48 am| 266 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Stupidity, Trumpery, War

Eclipse of the Blood Moon…

am i planning on staying up until 5 am for the lunar eclipse? yes.
is it worth it for this view? yes.

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— Jasmine 🌌🔭 (@astrojaz.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 3:05 PM

Iraq War Veteran Crow: Trump announced the start of this war with Iran at Mar-a-Lago. He talked about the fact that service members were going to die. Then he literally walked behind the curtains to his private club and he hosted a million dollars a plate dinner and dance party that night.

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— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 5:56 PM

The MarkWayne Indicator strikes again!
(MarkWayne Indicator: If the GOP is shoving Mullin out to defend their latest atrocity… it means nobody with better thinking skills is willing to put themselves in the line of fire.)

— Anne Laurie (@annelaurie.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 6:58 PM

Hunt: “Did the president not run on not starting a war with Iran?”
Sen. Mullin: “He ran on ending wars. He's ended eight of them.”
Hunt: “He started this one.”
Mullin: “This isn’t a war.”

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— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) March 2, 2026 at 5:13 PM

When you are shoveling that much shit it helps to have a plumber on speed dial.

— Jason Barscheski (@jasonbarscheski.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 8:41 PM

MarkWayne, just following orders…

Very putinesque.

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— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 7:01 PM

My government has a real “we didn’t know starting a war would cause a war“ vibe going on which I realize I should be outraged about in the abstract but find myself mainly nonplussed by at this point.

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— Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast (@irhottakes.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 3:23 PM

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The gap between how cool he thinks he sounds and how he actually sounds would take light eight centuries to traverse.

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— Philip Bump (@pbump.com) March 2, 2026 at 8:17 AM

Hey is this good

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— Fubar ???? (@captainfubar.bsky.social) March 1, 2026 at 10:10 PM

Under our Constitution, the President does not get to unilaterally declare war. Speaker Johnson should call the House back immediately to vote on the war powers resolution. Trump must stop putting service members in danger until he has laid out the strategy to Americans and Congress has approved.

— Katherine Clark (@whipkclark.bsky.social) March 1, 2026 at 1:07 PM

This is an illegal war that could easily escalate in dangerous and unpredictable ways into a wider regional conflict.
Have we learned absolutely nothing from our decades of endless war and reckless attempts at regime change in the Middle East?

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— Rep. Jim McGovern (@repmcgovern.bsky.social) March 1, 2026 at 6:33 PM

Trump spent a decade selling "America-First" isolationism.
No more endless war, no sending Americans to die in the Middle East, he said.
He lied. Why? Follow the money. He's just another neocon shill for Big Oil & Middle East autocrats. Many of us tried to warn you.

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— Rep. Jim McGovern (@repmcgovern.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 12:02 PM

There’s that number.

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— Malaclypse the Middle (@malaclypse.bsky.social) March 1, 2026 at 6:39 PM

this isn’t an exaggeration, it’s literally word for mangled word

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— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) March 2, 2026 at 1:50 PM

American troops are dying in the Middle East for Trump's illegal war against Iran, but the president is more concerned with promoting his gold-encrusted ballroom.

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— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) March 2, 2026 at 1:32 PM

The American people want affordable health care and cheaper groceries, not another forever war in the Middle East.

— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) March 2, 2026 at 5:01 PM

The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia tells Americans to "avoid the Embassy until further notice due to an attack on the facility," and the U.S. State Department orders the evacuation of non-emergency personnel and family in Bahrain and Jordan.

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) March 3, 2026 at 12:57 AM

Replacement cost for three F-15Es is in the neighborhood of $300 million for those keeping track

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— Zeddy (@zeddary.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 11:16 AM

Attacking Iran looks like it will cost US consumers about 40 cents/gallon.

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— George Pearkes (@peark.es) March 2, 2026 at 7:11 AM

H/t YY_Sima Qian:

a thing historians will marvel about when they study this era is the extent to which the "war is a thing that happens to poorer, browner people" class went about systematically dismantling every aspect of the global political order that confined the costs of war to poorer and browner people

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— Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 10:32 PM

whether war, vaccines, or critical infrastructure there is contingent of the right that seems to believe that their security from the worst things that happen is some kind of metaphysical principle rather than the result of specific historical processes that could've gone otherwise and still could

— Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 10:37 PM

all seems like fun and games until the measles outbreak, incel mass shooter, or Shahed 136 drone hits your kid's school I guess

— Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 10:39 PM

And even then…

There’s a movement to draft Barron Trump, but I think a campaign such as this would be more effective if it impacted someone Donald Trump knew personally.

— Frank Conniff (@frankconniff.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 3:41 PM

Tuesday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (266)

On The Road – pat – Calendar 2020

by WaterGirl| March 3, 20265:00 am| 13 Comments

This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging

pat

I’ve been putting together calendars every year since 2013. This was put together in 2019, before Covid hit.

January

Bald Eagle in an oak tree next to the Mississippi, near the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, MN

On The Road – pat – Calendar 2020Post + Comments (13)

Open Thread: Flee While (If) You Still Can

by Anne Laurie| March 3, 20263:54 am| 173 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Republican Politics

THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT RECOMMENDS THAT AMERICANS LEAVE IMMEDIATELY FROM OVER A DOZEN MIDDLE EASTERN NATIONS DUE TO SAFETY RISKS.

— FinTwitter (@fintwitter.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 4:54 PM

The State Dept urges Americans to DEPART NOW from the countries below using available commercial transportation, due to serious safety risks.

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— Shipwreck (@shipwreck75.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 4:57 PM

End of the day, even his fellow oligarchs are just NPCs to Dear Leader. But Semafor would like us to remember the real victims here — “Exclusive / Riyadh becomes transit hub for worried rich fleeing Gulf”:

Riyadh has emerged as a key exit route for the super-rich and senior executives stranded in the Gulf looking for a safe passage out of the region.

Cities including Abu Dhabi and Dubai have become playgrounds for the wealthy over the past few years, attracted by the year-round sunshine, tax-free lifestyle, and perception of safety. That was shattered over the weekend as Iranian missiles and drones rained down on the two cities, along with Qatar and Bahrain, causing those that could to attempt to flee.

The Saudi capital’s airport is one of the few still operating in the region, forcing executives and their families stranded in other parts of the Gulf to take the long drive in order to catch private jets or commercial planes.

Private security companies have been booking fleets of SUVs to ferry people on the 10-hour drive to Riyadh from Dubai and then charter private planes to take them out of the region, according to people familiar with the matter. They have been evacuating a mix of people, including senior executives at global finance firms and high-net worth individuals in the region for business or holidays, the people said. The rush in demand is sending prices for private jets and SUVs soaring, these people said.

“Saudi Arabia is the only real option for people who want to get out of the region right now,” said Ameerh Naran, chief executive of private jet brokerage Vimana Private; private jets from Riyadh to Europe now cost up to $350,000, he said…

Riyadh’s emergence as a relatively safe spot in the region is a turnaround for the city, which has previously carried a higher risk perception than its neighbors. In prior years, regular rocket attacks by the Houthi militia in Yemen caused frequent closures of airspace. And in previous moments of crises or regional instability, like the Arab Spring or last year’s 12-day war between the US and Iran, the well heeled have typically traveled through other cities. Before that, strict religious rules and the legacy of terror attacks in the early 2000s gave a perception that the kingdom was unsafe.

But with few other options available, Riyadh has seen perceptions change.

“We’ve been approached by a mixture of clients including families, individuals, and corporations that want to get out of the region either because their fear for their safety, or for business reasons they just need to be able to travel,” said Ian McCaul, operations and future plans director at UK-based security firm Alma Risk…

"The trade was not that you were getting exposed to geopolitics when moving to Dubai."

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— Emma Yeomans (@yeomans.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 10:19 AM

From two drones according to the Saudi MOD. It doesn’t sound like major damage but highlights how vulnerable US assets and interests are at the moment.

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— Michael Hanna (@mwhanna.crisisgroup.org) March 2, 2026 at 7:38 PM

lmao even the KSA gets to learn where doing business with trump eventually leads

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— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) March 2, 2026 at 11:08 AM

Open Thread: <em>Flee While (If) You Still Can</em>Post + Comments (173)

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

When I was faster i was always behind.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

This blog will pay for itself.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

Let me file that under fuck it.

It’s the corruption, stupid.