Today's briefing:
Two Supreme Court justices asked Congress for 230 million in security.
New State Department letter flags countries that wrongfully detain Americans.
US strikes Iran a ninth night as casualties reach 17.
Welcome to your weekly briefing.
Most of what we do never shows up on a budget line. The hours spent reading a venue before anyone arrives, the quiet call to confirm a principal is where they should be, the drill nobody asked you for, or wanted. It can feel like this half of the job is the first thing a client questions when the invoice lands. So how do you put a price on work that only proves its worth when nothing happens?
This week we watched two of the most protected people in America sit in front of Congress and try to answer exactly that. It is worth seeing, because the case they made for their own protection is the same one we make every day for ours. This week On the Circuit, we look at what protection really costs, and why the unglamorous half is the half that holds.
Don’t have time to read? Watch 👇
TOP STORY
The Cost of the Bench
On July 14, Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett sat in front of the House Appropriations Committee and asked for a Supreme Court budget of nearly 230 million dollars for the coming year. It was the first time sitting justices had testified before Congress since 2019, and the roughly 21 million dollar increase they were defending is driven almost entirely by security. More than 14 million of it would go to protecting the justices' homes and families.
For once, two principals described their own threat picture in plain terms, in public. Barrett talked about the day she carried a bulletproof vest into her house and had to explain to her 12-year-old what it was and why she needed it. She described a swatting attack on her home six weeks earlier, a fake emergency call that brought armed local police to the door, and credited her own detail with keeping the responding officers from storming the house. Kagan pointed to the murder of Judge Esther Salas's son, shot at the family home by a man who had come to kill her, and noted that judges have since received packages bearing the dead man's name.
The wider picture backs them up. The US Marshals Service recorded threats against nearly 400 judges last year and 276 more by the start of July this year. The Court began building out its own police force and home protection only about a decade ago, after Justice Antonin Scalia died with no detail nearby. In 2022 a man arrived outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh's home with a handgun and later pleaded guilty to attempted assassination. The new budget extends the build-out further, adding officers assigned directly to the justices and their residences, coverage that barely existed a decade ago.
Read together, the testimony amounts to a rare public account of what it now takes to keep a high-threat principal safe at home, and who ends up paying for it. For the full testimony detail, including the Salas and Kavanaugh case histories, read our Circuit Wire report from the day.
Our Take
Most of us will never brief a congressional committee, but we make a version of Barrett's argument every time a client looks at the residential line on a proposal and asks whether it is really needed. The honest answer is the one the justices gave. The protection that matters most is the protection you cannot see working, and it is the first thing to go when a threat feels abstract. A swatting call handled by a detail that kept armed officers calm at the door is worth more than any piece of hardware, and it stays invisible right up until the night it is not.
When we cost a residence, a family, a set of routines, we are pricing the gap between an incident that gets managed and one that gets reviewed afterward. Worth holding onto the next time that line gets questioned.
Sound even smarter:
The US Marshals Service logged threats against nearly 400 federal judges in 2025 and 276 in the first half of 2026, a caseload that has moved judicial protection from a niche concern to a standing budget fight.
The Court had almost no protective apparatus until Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead in 2016 with no security nearby. Most of its police force and residential protection has been built in the decade since.
READER POLL
A client wants to trim the residential detail to save cost. What do you lead with to keep it?
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MEANWHILE
The New Letter on the Map
On July 19 the State Department added a new letter to its Travel Advisory system. The D indicator flags countries where a foreign government has wrongfully detained a US national, and six now carry it: Burma, China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. It sits at the top of the advisory page alongside the familiar T for terrorism and C for crime, and it fills a specific gap. The existing K indicator covers kidnapping by criminal groups or militants. The new D covers the state itself holding a national for leverage, a different actor and a different response.
OSAC built the change with private-sector security teams in mind, particularly those managing dual nationals, whose exposure runs highest. The practical effect for travel-risk and duty-of-care planning is a faster screen, with detention risk surfaced at a glance rather than buried in advisory text. Programs written around the older K and T categories will need a line added for the new one.
Nine Nights
The United States struck Iran for a ninth consecutive night into July 20, hitting seven sites including Tabriz for the first time. Iran answered with missiles aimed at US positions in Jordan and Kuwait. The war has now killed 17 US service members and wounded more than 420, and Kuwait's main desalination plant, which supplies most of the country's drinking water, was struck for a second straight day.
Last month's ceasefire framework, which had guaranteed free passage through the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days, has effectively collapsed. Washington is enforcing a naval blockade of Iranian ports and says it has redirected six commercial vessels and disabled another, while Tehran claims it is defending an approved transit corridor. For any firm with people or cargo moving through the Gulf, transit delay, rerouting, and cargo risk are now standing conditions rather than temporary disruption.
SNAPSHOTS
🇾🇪 Yemen. The Houthis struck Saudi Arabia's Abha airport and warned airlines to avoid Saudi airspace after Yemen's government hit the Sanaa runway to block an Iranian aircraft. The UK Foreign Office advises against travel within 10km of the Saudi-Yemen border and warns insurance may be void for trips against its advice.
🇳🇬 Nigeria. A Level 3 advisory cites crime, terrorism, and kidnapping, with kidnap-for-ransom a standing exposure for corporate and expatriate staff outside the main cities.
🇳🇪 Niger. The State Department holds a Level 4 Do Not Travel, warning that terrorist groups are actively planning to kidnap foreigners and that US government assistance is sharply limited.
🇭🇹 Haiti. A renewed advisory keeps the country at Do Not Travel, with kidnappers targeting vehicles and convoys and roadblocks common and unpredictable.
EXTRA INSIGHT
FRAUD MECHANISM. Authorities in Singapore and Oman used INTERPOL's I-GRIP system to freeze a 6.6 million dollar transfer after criminals posed as a supplier to a commodities firm. The block worked because it happened while the money was still moving, a window that closes within hours, so how fast a fraudulent payment gets reported now decides whether it is recoverable at all.
REGULATION. The UK's Security Industry Authority stripped the BIIAB of its awarding recognition on July 14, the first time it has removed an awarding body, after unannounced inspections found training malpractice. From August 10 the body can issue no new licence-linked qualifications, so any UK operative training through a BIIAB-registered centre should confirm their provider has moved to one of the five remaining recognized bodies before booking.
NEW RESOURCE FOR PREMIUM SUBSCRIBERS
After the Incident: An After-Action Review of Three Security Breaches
A man walked through the front door of the White House. An intruder reached a Speaker's husband in his own home while a Capitol Police camera watched and no one was assigned to look. A bomber waited an hour in a concert foyer while a teenage steward wondered whether to say something. Each was pulled apart by a formal review, and each pointed at the same failure: intelligence that existed but never reached the post.
Our new premium piece walks through all three and asks the question the press conferences never do: did the fix actually hold? It comes with a downloadable After-Action Review template your team can run after any incident or near-miss, so the lessons end up in a corrective-action log with an owner and a review-back date, not in a memory that fades by the next rotation.
Premium subscribers get the full piece and the template. Not premium yet? Upgrade for full digital-archive access, subscriber-only tactical analysis, and every future briefing.
Most of us protect people in ways a client never sees, and that unseen spend is always the first to get questioned when a threat feels far off. Two of the most protected people in the country spent a morning this week explaining, in plain terms, why they need what they need. You make the same case more often than you think, usually to a client looking at a number on a page.
When that moment comes, do not soften it into an apology for being careful. Name what the protection buys, and let the number stand.
See you next week,
– On The Circuit
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PREVIOUS POLL - RESULTS
Q: Your client lives alone and out of the way. How often is a check in actually logged?
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ A. Set times, every day (69%)
🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ B. Only when something is scheduled (8%)
🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ C. Only when they request it (15%)
🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ D. Something else. Let us know (8%)
Your Comments:
Votes are still coming in from last week's edition and no written comments have landed yet. We will feature the best of them here next week.
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