Issue 007 · June 23rd 2026
the UNMUTED brief
both sides. two minutes. A quick read on what the right and the left (and others) are actually saying
This week: A Memorandum of Understanding, followed by a lot of misunderstandings. Are ALL data centers bad? Holyoke, Massachusetts has something to say about it. Oh, and that whole UFC on the White House thing (next time, can we do the WWE?). Plus what events we’re going to, and as usual, the death of many talking points.
Talking point that died this week
The Strait of Hormuz is open for business.
At this point, the Strait of Hormuz will be closed for the rest of our natural lives. Ugh.
The Room at UNMUTED - THIS THURSDAY, June 25
TAX THE RICH. The demand of this Generation. But will it solve affordability? Two emerging authorities come together to duke it out and get an answer. Next time at UNMUTED. And if you can’t make it, subscribe here to see ALL of our upcoming events
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TOPICAL-ISH TAKES
№ 01
The Octagon Meets the Pentagon*
* Sure, it was the White House, but don’t let facts get in the way of a good hook!
— The headlines you might be seeing —
UFC at the White House perfectly fits the America of today, love it or hate it · What the Snobs Miss About UFC Freedom 250 · A garish spectacle of American decline
Well, that happened. Trump turned the South Lawn into a UFC arena on his 80th birthday, the first private for-profit sporting event ever held on White House grounds. The Army Herald Trumpets opened it, fighters walked through the Armed Forces Full Honor Cordon, the military's highest ceremonial formation, usually reserved for heads of state and funerals for war heroes. Cage steps carried Crypto.com ads, winners were paid partly in a cryptocurrency traded on the Trump family's World Liberty Financial platform, and Trump-branded "coins" got promoted mid-broadcast.
→ The Right is saying
If you are as outraged by this as everything else, what is your outrage really worth?Yes, Trump might profit - and we don’t like it either. But how does a guy on a Senator's salary like Bernie Sanders retire a millionaire? Nearly everyone walks out of Congress richer than they walked in, and the same crowd clutching pearls now has never once asked how. On desecration: if a Democratic President ran a Knicks pickup game on that lawn, the same people would call it joyful and relatable. We've had motocross and Easter egg rolls and Marine-flanked primetime speeches (ask Biden at Independence Hall). If a UFC card moves you to the same fury as an actual war, your outrage is a costume.
← The Left is saying
It’s a buffet of everything wrong with America. Corruption. Destruction of norms. BAD TASTE! Fighters making baseless and inappropriate comments about former First Ladies. This is corruption with the filter off. As Sen. Andy Kim put it: Trump owns shares in both UFC and Paramount, Dana White gave $1 million to a pro-Trump PAC, and a sponsor dropped $35 million on MAGA, Inc. It's the first private, for-profit sporting event ever held on White House grounds, with million-dollar VIP packages and branding beside the Lincoln Memorial. Not to mention the destruction of norms. Active-duty troops as props to borrow the military's stature for a birthday party. The people's house is now an earned-marketing tool.
the UNMUTED question
№ 02
A Memorandum of Misunderstanding
— The headline you might be seeing —
Iran shuts Strait just three days after agreeing to reopen it under the deal · Trump's Iran Deal Looks Worse Than Obama's · Embrace the US-Iran MOU, But Understand It's Only a First Step
Trump and Iranian President Pezeshkian (is he really the President? do these people actually matter?) signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding to end the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. And it’s already suspended. To be clear, it's a framework, not a final deal: a 60-day window for further talks, with the hardest issue, the nuclear program, deferred and no enforcement mechanism yet decided. The centerpiece was reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Then reality intervened. On Saturday, days after the MOU, Iran declared the strait closed again, citing Israeli strikes in Lebanon and U.S. "bad faith." The U.S. flatly denied Iran even controls it. Iran's delegation went to Switzerland for talks carrying the closure as a bargaining chip, warning nothing advances until Lebanon is addressed.
→ The In Trump We Trust crowd is saying
A Memorandum of Understanding is NOT a deal - trust the process. It's a first step, and the entire point is that nothing is locked yet. Trump himself said it's explicitly not final: "It's a memorandum of understanding, and if I don't like it, we'll go back to shooting at them." The hard nuclear terms, the stockpile, the verification, all of that is what the next 60 days are for. "We don't trust words," Vance said. "We trust action and we trust conduct. (although to be fair, the conduct has already led to a renege on opening the Strait).
← Everyone else (pro-Israel, Democrat, anti-Iran, no new wars Republicans) is saying
WTF are we doing? It's a worse deal than Obama got, in exchange for a war. The 2015 JCPOA was 160 pages of verified, enforced limits on enrichment. This is 14 paragraphs that don't touch Iran's ballistic missiles, leave its proxies alone, and set no inspection regime. The strait reopening is just a return to the prewar status quo, which we're now paying for with sanctions relief. AND IT’S NOT EVEN HAPPENING. We launched a war whose stated purpose was eliminating Iran's nuclear capability and ended it by punting that exact question 60 days down the road. As one analyst put it, if the JCPOA was a roadmap to a bomb, this is a super highway.
The UNMUTED question
№ 03
Holyoke
— The headline you might be seeing —
Holyoke first in state to ban development of AI data centers · Green city vs. the AI gold rush · "Right-sized" project or Trojan horse? Council votes 9-4 to ban
And on we go with data center bans. Holyoke, Massachusetts, a former paper-mill city that rebranded as a self-declared "green community" in 2010 on the back of its cheap municipal hydropower, just became the first Massachusetts community to ban AI data centers outright, prohibiting any development over 12 megawatts in a 9-4 City Council vote on June 16. The trigger was a Boston firm's pitch for a 20-megawatt "micro facility," a reported $200 million redevelopment, on a vacant Water Street mill site - the idea being that the power was already not being used, and a micro data center was still valuable, for AI companies. The town wasn’t having it.
→ The F*ck AI crowd is saying
You don't negotiate with the AI gold rush. You shut the freaking door. Holyoke just protected itself, and it should be a model. A small "micro facility" is exactly how the bigger players get a foothold, use up the cheap power, and leave the city unaffordable. The concerns aren't hypothetical, there are real environmental concerns, and this is an environmental justice city where the people downstream on the Connecticut River pay the price. Councilor Juan Anderson-Burgos said it best: “Not in Holyoke."
← The Embrace the AI Future crowd is saying
Don’t let the facts get in the way of good politics. You banned a project nobody actually evaluated, on facts that didn't hold up. Environmental fears may be justified, but nobody even did the work to see if they were solvable: this is a small facility comparable to the university computing center that has run in Holyoke since 2012 without hurting the water or electric supply. Why not a moratorium to figure out the best way to approach this - instead of an outright ban? Not catchy enough? Congrats, you just forfeited a $200 million investment and the tax base of a working-class city over a project you could have shaped instead of killed.
The UNMUTED question
Worth leaving the house for this week in
NYC
Wed 6/24, 5:30 PM
State Capacity AI Hackathon
Henry Grunzweig (NY EDC) +
Tal Roded (LinkedIn) +
Madeleine Smith (Civic Roundtable)+
Austin Boral (Civic Roundtable) +
Jeremie Ponak (OpenPolicy)
Friend of UNMUTED. Work with AI to save America (or at least city government). Hackathon. Wonk + Nerd stuff. Love it.
Produced by Civic Roundtable, CUNY Public Interest Technology, NYCuriousityData
Hosted at TBD
Wed, 6/24 7PM
Erdogan’s Turkey: The Rise of Authoritarianism
Suzy Hansen (From Life Itself) +
Asli Karahan (Harvard Club)
Book talk. Foreign policy. A micro view of a Turkish neighborhood, to extrapolate the macro politics of Turkey. Interesting - text me if you want to go (978) 302 5849.
Produced by Harvard Club of NY
Hosted at Harvard Club of NY
Sun, 6/29, 6 PM
Leadership for a More Perfect Union
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Recount) +
David M. Rubenstein (very rich guy)
And if you don’t know DKG, now you know… America at 250 (yes, this will keep happening lol). One of the best non-fiction US history authors ever.
Produced by The New York Historical
Hosted at The New York Historical
That’s all for now. See you Space Cowboy…