Given President Donald Trump’s public opprobrium after the FBI uncovered troves of highly classified government documents on his Mar-a-Lago property, it’s hardly surprising that the White House’s purge of bureau figures has come for those agents involved in the 2022 raid. More surprising, however, are reports that among those fired by Director Kash Patel this week were multiple agents involved in extensive counterintelligence investigations, including ones concerning Iran, with whom the government is essentially at war. While the bureau has defended the firings as a routine non-issue, critics say the dismissals are a sign of partisan chaos at the FBI during a fraught moment of heightened national security.

‘Unflattering media coverage’
Patel’s firing of more than a dozen FBI employees, including agents, analysts and support staff, comes after the director “lashed out” upon learning that Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith had sought his phone records as part of his investigations into Trump, said CBS News. Most of those fired worked in some capacity on Smith’s investigation, including many who worked on cases involving Iran. Some also believe these firings are Patel’s way of distracting from “unflattering media coverage” following his Olympics escapades, said The New York Sun.

‘Weaponizing’ the DOJ
While Patel hasn’t commented on the specific agents dismissed or their involvement in Iran-related operations, he has made clear that the firings come as part of the White House’s broader federal purge of “weaponized” holdovers from previous administrations. Smith’s subpoenaing of his phone records was “outrageous and deeply alarming,” said Patel to Fox News. 

Administrative justification for turmoil at federal agencies has been ongoing, but it’s not “weaponizing” the Department of Justice to “demand accountability for those who weaponized” the Department of Justice, said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in the fall. This recent round of dismissals is merely the “latest example” of expunging agents who worked on Trump investigations, a process that has been underway “since the start” of the current Trump administration, said The Washington Post. Broadly, Patel’s instinct to fire staff amid scandals “appears designed to ingratiate him” with Trump, said MS Now.

Satellite warfare has been a threat for some years, and the latest “devastating” development is the “possibility of Russia detonating a nuclear weapon in space,” said the Daily Mail. Russia’s plans to deploy them there could be “catastrophic,” said a Canadian military leader on Ukrainian news site Ukrinform. 

Frying electronics 
Simulated blast tests by nuclear experts at the Pentagon suggest that a nuclear attack from space would destroy thousands of Western satellites. And these satellite networks are “critical to everything from banks synchronizing their transactions to navigation tasks that ranged from guiding planes and ships to ensuring a pizza delivery driver finds the right address,” said the Daily Mail. 

An anti-satellite nuke would “combine a physical attack that would ripple outwards, destroying more satellites,” with the nuclear component being “used to fry their electronics,” said The Associated Press. It could “render low-Earth orbit unusable for satellites for as long as a year,” and the effects would be “devastating,” said Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) to the AP. The U.S. and its allies could be “vulnerable to economic upheaval” and “even a nuclear attack.” The scenario is the “Cuban Missile Crisis in space.” 

Satellite killers 
If Russia were to deploy such a “satellite-killing weapon,” it would violate the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, said The New York Times. This kind of space weaponization from Russia and China is “one of the primary reasons” the U.S. Space Force was established, said the AP.  It was launched in 2019 to protect U.S. interests in space and defend its satellites from attacks by enemies. It’s “far smaller” than the Army, Navy or Air Force, but it’s growing. 

Now, other countries are “scrambling to create their own rocket and space programs to exploit commercial prospects and ensure they aren’t dependent on foreign satellites,” said Fortune. Canada, for example, currently cannot disable a potential Russian nuclear bomb in space. So “my only advice as a military officer is to put pressure” on Moscow so that they don’t follow through with the plan, said Brigadier General Christopher Horner, the commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force, because that would be an “incredibly terrible thing.” 

Moonlight brightens the skies above the High Tatras Mountains in Slovakia. This month’s full moon is known as the Worm Moon, named after the earthworms that start to emerge in spring.
Grzegorz Momot / EPA / Shutterstock

Andrea Nguyen’s 2006 debut, “Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors,” is an intermixture of the personal and the practical. She opens the book with the following scene: “We heard the plane coming in low, and I was scared. Mom grabbed me, pulling me underneath the staircase as a bomb exploded nearby. I shrieked, believing the end was near.”

The rare turned common
That opener took place in Saigon in April 1975, when Nguyen was 6 years old. Two weeks later, her family was loaded on a plane that landed in Southern California. Life, and with it, the family’s cooking, was upended.

One makes do, and new traditions are born. Western noodles, like fresh fettuccine, and butter were luxury items in Saigon. Thus, noodles with butter went from a rare novelty to a kitchen staple. Nguyen shows the reader how to dress just-boiled noodles with umami-laden Maggi sauce, then warm garlic in melted butter, adding the noodles and tossing. Cabbage also receives special status in the family’s new home, because “cool-season crops such as cabbage and cauliflower are difficult to grow” in Vietnam.

Icons dissected
This is not only a Nguyen tale. Classics from the diasporic Vietnamese repertoire are included too, like an exemplary version of bo kho (beef stew). Salmon, shrimp, catfish and chicken are braised in recipes using the bittersweet burnt-caramel sauce known as nuoc mau. Pho is here; bun (rice noodles) are as well, alongside grilled pork and punchy herbs, and in comforting soups with crab or beef. In Nguyen’s text, you will be guided by sure hands.