Radical RelayBeta

A daily brief on markets, geopolitics, and Washington. Treasury yields and the curve, roll call votes and committee hearings, the Strait of Hormuz, and the storms that are news, with the figures taken from primary sources rather than lifted from the coverage. One email a morning.

Read a past issue before you decide.

What is in it

• The Big Picture. The morning in three or four sentences, every story linked to its source.
• Macro pulse. Treasury yields and the curve spread, the national debt, gold, Brent and WTI, the yen, and the Fed's next meeting, as live figures with thirty-day sparklines rather than commentary.
• Trending Cycles. Which stories are being picked up by more outlets this morning than yesterday, counted from the sources themselves.
• The Radar. Twenty-two standing desks, of which the day's most active run: Capitol Hill, elections, Ukraine, Iran and Hormuz, macro, the Trump orbit, housing, courts, AI, energy, immigration, Latin America, the Indo-Pacific, public health, crypto, labor, climate, space, Africa. Every link is coloured by one of six standing themes, markets, conflict, Washington, energy, tech and world, the same colours every day, and countries carry their flags.
• Capitol Hill, properly. Roll call votes, who missed them, what each chamber is doing this week, and the committee hearings worth watching, with witnesses, from the official record.
• Weather that is news. Hurricanes, typhoons, blizzards, heat and floods while they are under way, in the words and figures of the agencies warning of them, with a satellite frame or a map. Only on the mornings there is some.
• On This Day. The observances, the birthdays and the turning points, from the record rather than from memory.
• Two facts to close. One verified and specific thing about how America works, and one short history lesson from somewhere else in the world, tied to something in that day's issue. Neither ever repeats.

Where this comes from

Reporting. Around 120 RSS feeds from news organizations, trade press and independent newsletters, plus public posts from about forty analysts and reporters on Bluesky, chosen desk by desk. Everything is filtered to the last 30 hours, so nothing old gets presented as news. Every item links to the original, and the link is the point. Click through on anything that matters to you.

Numbers. Figures are pulled from primary sources rather than lifted from the coverage:

• National debt: US Treasury Fiscal Data
• Policy rate: Federal Reserve Bank of New York; meeting dates from the Fed's own calendar
• Yields, gold, crude and currencies: Yahoo Finance
• Mortgage rates, housing starts and sales: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
• Roll call votes and attendance: senate.gov and clerk.house.gov
• Floor schedules, hearings and witnesses: docs.house.gov, senate.gov and the Congress.gov API
• Storms and weather warnings: the National Hurricane Center, the National Weather Service and GDACS
• Satellite frames: NASA GIBS. Fronts: NOAA's Weather Prediction Center
• On This Day: Wikipedia's record for the date and the federal holiday calendar
• Earthquakes and tropical outlooks: USGS and the National Hurricane Center

AI, plainly. The writing in each issue is produced by Google's Gemini from the sources above. It selects and summarizes. It does not report, and it has no access to anything beyond what those feeds and APIs return that morning. After it writes, the software checks its work: any image or link it did not get from the sources is removed, a fact or headline that has run before is sent back, and the figures and charts are placed by the pipeline rather than retyped by the model. The software that runs all of this was also built with AI assistance. A person reads every issue before it goes out, but summaries can still flatten nuance or get something wrong, which is the other reason every item carries its source link. Treat this as a way to find the story, not a replacement for reading it.

Beta. Radical Relay is in beta. Sections come and go, the formatting is still being worked out, and a source or a check can fail on a given morning. A reply saying what looked wrong is the most useful thing a reader can send.

Who runs it. Radical Relay is written and reviewed by Palenque Herbert. If something is wrong, say so: hello@radicalrelay.us. Corrections are welcome and get read.

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