Senator Lisa Murkowski's threatened Iran AUMF remained unfiled on 13 May 2026, the deadline she set on 9 May having passed and Pete Hegseth's Article 2 testimony on 12 May having rendered the instrument procedurally moot. Murkowski's earlier condition for filing had been a credible White House plan with defined objectives, success metrics, exit criteria and congressional reporting. None of those documents has arrived; what arrived instead was a cabinet officer telling appropriators under oath that none of them is required.
Iran's internet blackout reached 1,728 cumulative hours by 12 May, per NetBlocks data extending the 1,704-hour figure logged on 11 May . At the current round-the-clock accrual rate, the 2,000-hour milestone falls around 18-19 May, the week Trump returns from Beijing. Seventy-two days of near-total global isolation for roughly 90 million Iranians, with ATMs and hospital systems routed through the loyalist tier that still carries IRGC command and control, is now a domestic governance fact rather than a wartime emergency measure.
The Trump-Xi summit in Beijing on 14-15 May formally lists Iran as an agenda item alongside trade and Taiwan1. The agenda line is the only paper on which Iran appears this week; everything else (Hegseth's testimony, the blackout extension, the BRICS Delhi meeting, the $29 billion war cost) runs on the verbal track that the Day 75 unsigned streak now confirms as method.
