Hamas Fighters, Balance Sheet Deep in the Hole
Plus: Belgian teens busted for ant smuggling, Abrego Garcia’s wife speaks out about abuse.
Two Belgian teens, Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx (whose surname has a Scrabble score of 34), were charged by Kenyan authorities with smuggling. No, not drugs. Not people. Not gems. Not even elephant ivory. They were charged with smuggling ants—5,000 of them to be exact.
The ants are valued at 1 million shillings ($7,700)—that's $1.54 per ant. There is a market for Messor cephalotes, known as the largest harvester ant in the world, especially the queens, which can be an inch long. They are said to have an herbaceous scent and contain notes of cantaloupe, licorice, and asparagus. AntsRus sells a Queen and her a colony of ants for £99.
Yas Queen. Nah, Belgian teen
Welcome to the Gist List — a news roundup, interesting things you should know, and my thoughts leading up to today’s podcast episode.
Here’s what’s on my mind:
💸 Hamas is having some cash flow problems.
🤑 Republicans have a “big beautiful” identity crisis.
🐠 Immigration enforcement goes fishing for trouble.
🏀 Why might a top college basketball player go undrafted into the WNBA?
🇸🇻 Abrego Garcia’s wife addresses resurfaced restraining order.
⚖️ The price two IRS agents paid in going after Hunter Biden.
The Gist List
A Depleted Hamas Is So Low on Cash That It Can’t Pay Its Fighters (WSJ)
It’s a sad day indeed when terrorist organizations can’t just do it out of pure amateurism—the love of the game. Yes, even Hamas, a paragon of financial responsibility, is subject to the pressures of the market.
The situation has gotten so dire that their March revenue streams got cut off when Israel blocked humanitarian aid supplies (which Hamas was treating like their personal Costco membership instead of, you know, feeding hungry, displaced people). They are also unable to get cash into the country to pay Hamas combatants their princely stipends of $200–300 per month, causing some real recruitment problems.
Republicans consider increasing taxes on the rich in break from party orthodoxy (The Hill)
The horseshoe has come full circle—now Republicans will soon be chanting, “Tax the rich!” You heard that right: the party of trickle-down economics is considering bumping the top tax rate from 37% to 39.6% for households earning over $1 million as part of President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
The whole idea is to fix America’s budgetary issues: deficits, the child tax credits, and the like. But with the President wanting to extend his expiring 2017 tax cuts, something has got to give. Moderates aren’t too pleased that Medicaid is on the chopping block and tax hikes are not exactly “on brand” for Republicans. Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News, “I’m not a big fan of doing that. I mean, we’re the Republican Party, and we’re for tax reduction for everyone.”
Newt Gingrich also spoke out, saying, “Some people are proposing a top income tax rate which would be higher than Clinton, Obama or Biden. That would be madness and would defeat the bill.”
The real question isn't just how many millionaires we can shake down to fix our deficit—it's whether the GOP can come to an agreement within the party.
Ph.D. student’s international student visa revoked over apparent fishing license violation (Deseret News)
Here's a story that'll make you question whether our immigration system has gone fishing for problems: Suguru Onda, a Japanese Ph.D. candidate at BYU and father of five, had his student visa yanked faster than a trout on a hook. His grave offense? Not Yakuza membership, not running an evil ant-smuggling ring, but allegedly catching too many fish during a church outing back in 2019. A charge that, like a catch-and-release rainbow trout, was ultimately let go.
His attorney, Adam Crayk, points out that student visas are typically revoked for crimes of "moral turpitude"—you know, the greatest hits: guns, drugs, and violence. This computer science student's digital footprint, however, doesn’t even include politically charged posts.
Even stranger, why are they searching for visa violators at BYU—a school where students agree not to so much as drink a cup of coffee without risking their good academic standing? It’s not exactly a den of thieves.
Why the WNBA did not draft Sedona Price (AP)
Why did a top college basketball player go undrafted in the WNBA? This story from the AP leads with the idea that it may be because she's an activist, holding truth to power:
"Sedona Prince has gotten a lot of attention for her social media posts, drawing attention to gender equity questions at the NCAA Tournament in 2021, and her status as a lead plaintiff in a landmark antitrust lawsuit standing up for college athletes."
Impressive stuff. Not so impressive and buried in the story, however, is a report of a fight Prince had with an ex-girlfriend; each party alleged the other had hit them. Not mentioned are three other women who allege violence or sexual assault. She has also pushed her super senior status and has been in college for 7 years. This story from ESPN gives us a bigger picture.
Exclusive: Abrego Garcia's Wife Responds After Restraining Order Revealed (Newsweek)
The wife of the Maryland man deported to El Salvador speaks out about a resurfaced request for a protective order from 2021. Jennifer Vasquez Sura told Newsweek that after having survived domestic violence in a previous relationship, she sought this order out of an abundance of caution. She said, “… I decided not to follow through with the civil court process. We were able to work through the situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling … Our marriage only grew stronger in the years that followed. No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect.”
While this may be the case in their relationship, letting Abrego Garcia maintain his sympathetic aura, it does throw the case into a new light—even if it remains true that the government had no legal justification for his removal. And, if the shoe were on the other foot and this were the wife of an NFL player in a similar situation, taking her husband back, would our reaction be any different?
Paying a Heavy Cost for Going After a Tax Cheat Named Hunter Biden (Real Clear Investigations)
I can never pass up a good story from my friend Nancy Rommelmann. IRS agents Joe Ziegler and Gary Shapley paid a hefty price for going after Hunter Biden’s tax crimes—professional retaliation, a defamation suit and marriage problems—only to have President Biden pardon Hunter in the end.
Nancy reports:
Back home in Atlanta, Ziegler remains incredulous that anyone would think he did what he did for political reasons.
“Why blow up your life, get a divorce, ruin your reputation? Why do all of this?” he asked. “To be honest with you, I want change. I want policy change. I want political change... If you’re Joe Biden, if you’re Hunter Biden, if you are a celebrity, if you are whoever, you are going to get treated the same exact way as someone else. I do feel there is a lot of preferential treatment with the Department of Justice, and specifically the IRS. And I think that we need to stop that.”
Yesterday on the show: The Fight For The Whitehouse in 2024
In their new book "Fight," which chronicles the 2024 election, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes detail the disarray within the Democratic camp during Biden's final months and Kamala Harris's precarious ascent.
There’s more where that came from. Listen to The Gist, and upgrade to Pesca Plus for the ad-free version.
Do you have a story you want us to discuss or an opinion you'd like to share? Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com or share your thoughts in the comments. We might give you a shoutout in our next newsletter or on the air.