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Debt Rattle June 29 2026

Jun 292026
 
 June 29, 2026  Posted by at 9:06 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  Add comments


Ivan Aivazovsky Palace rains in Venice by moonlight 1878


• Iranian Media Calls for Atomic Bombs as Official Says ‘We Are at War’ (Salgado)
• How Crazy and Radical the Democratic Socialist Program Really Is (Spencer)
• The Democratic Socialists of America New York Communist Program (CTH)
• Hakeem Jeffries Surrenders to the Socialists (Margolis)
• Joe Biden Barely Manages To Find His Way Offstage At Dem Gala (NYPost)
• Joe Biden: The Perfect Symbol of Today’s Democrat Party (Florack)
• USMCA Status – Canada in Recession, Mexico GDP Grows Double Expectations (CTH)
• Sadiq Khan Said There Were NO Grooming Gangs In London (MN)
• Police Believe There Are 4,000 Sex-Exploitation Gang Cases in London (Salgado)
• Becerra Details an ‘Assembly Line’ for Migrant Children (Salgado)
• The Supremes Help Ensure Border Security vs Liberal Justices (Von Spakovsky)
• Supreme Court Expected To Rule On Cook, Elections, And Trans Athletes (ZH)

 


 

 


 


Why Trump wants to make sure they don’t have nukes.

• Iranian Media Calls for Atomic Bombs as Official Says ‘We Are at War’ (Salgado)

The Tehran terrorists are not hiding their genocidal intentions toward America. The advisor to peace deal negotiator and Majles speaker Mohammad-Baquer “Death to America” Ghalibaf (or Qalibaf) declared on June 10 that negotiations buy time for the Iranian regime that is simply allowing temporary recovery for the next round of fighting. Citing Qalibaf, Mahdi Mohammadi declared that “you must never forget that you are at war … negotiations are a tool of the struggle.” He added, “We have no illusions about peace with America.” A couple weeks later, on June 28, a new report surfaced that Iranian state media is openly insisting the government should and will seek nuclear weapons.


The Hormuz Letter noted that Iranian media is justifying this nuclear advocacy by blaming President Donald Trump for threatening to wipe out the regime, threats which Trump, of course, did not end up enacting. The reality is that the murderous mullahs just want to justify the decision they always planned to make, which was to keep on with their endless jihad. And they were never really sincere about ending their nuclear program, either.

Speaking of which, the Middle East Media Research Institute translated Mohammadi’s interview on Iranian TV. Ghalibaf’s advisor bragged that the Iranian regime “control[s] the Strait of Hormuz,” where the regime continues to attack shipping up to this weekend. Mohammadi used some typical extravagant boasting, such as “the entire world is on its knees before the Islamic Republic,” and “[our] enemy is humiliated and defeated,” but he also made it clear where the regime stands on war versus peace.

“In your toolbox, you have missiles, UAVs, intelligence, and security capabilities, the Resistance” which means the many terrorist proxies like Hezbollah “your allies, and you also have the negotiations,” Mohammadi explained. “If you look at it this way, there is no problem [with negotiations]. But you must never forget that you are at war… the important thing is to get the concession at the beginning.” Continuing to elucidate why the Iranian regime pressed for major concessions even though they never wanted a deal, Mohammadi told the interviewer:

We should get something substantial right at the start, because we know — at least that’s how I see it — that the whole thing will fall apart. Fine, let it fall apart. The important thing is to get something substantial at the start. I have said this explicitly in the past. We need time and resources. We are at war. We will use the negotiations as a tool to buy time and acquire resources. We have no illusions about peace with America.

The real problem is that too many American politicians have illusions about peace with the terrorist Iranian regime.

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It truly is extreme, aka the only territory the Democrats confidently call their own.

• How Crazy and Radical the Democratic Socialist Program Really Is (Spencer)

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are on the rise. They just triumphed in New York, and are sending Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, along with Brad Lander, a former DSA member, to Congress, where they will join DSA stars Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Ditzville) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Islamic Rage). Another DSA luminary, Zohran Mamdani, is mayor of New York City, and it is looking increasingly as if the DSA has done an Invasion of the Body Snatchers move on the Democrat Party, occupying its body and replacing its soul. The DSA is now the Democrat mainstream.


Emboldened with all this success, the DSA is loudly and proudly proclaiming what it is all about, hoping to draw more suckers into the big top. The socialists are making it clear that their program is far more comprehensive and far-reaching than most people realize; they’re hoping to do nothing less than re-create Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China in the United States.

This is no exaggeration. The superlative investigative journalist Stu Smith recently published in City Journal a long expose of the DSA’s new platform. Smith revealed that “earlier this month, the Democratic Socialists of America’s top leadership met for an in-person meeting of their National Political Committee (NPC), the DSA’s governing authority. The result of the meeting was ‘Workers Deserve More!’, a rebooted platform for the organization featuring a host of radical proposals.”

The “Workers Deserve More!” document, as Smith describes it, a blueprint that, if implemented, would without any doubt lead to the total destruction of the United States. “The document commits DSA to scrapping the U.S. Senate, ‘abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state,’ defunding the Department of War, amnesty for all immigrants, and ‘replac[ing] the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.’”

Among the “carceral forces of the capitalist state” that would be abolished would be ICE and the police, so that criminals and terrorists would be streaming across the border and the American people would have no one to protect them. The idea of scrapping the Senate and making the executive and judiciary subject to Congress would be to place political power in the hands of the House, which the most populous (and far-left) areas of the country would control.

The “Workers Deserve More!” document also said that its goal was to “win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic.” You know, like the German Democratic Republic (that was the official name of Communist East Germany, one of the most repressive regimes the world has ever known) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).

In a series of X posts, Smith augmented his City Journal with more from the “Workers Deserve More!” platform, each bit more radical, and more destructive if implemented, than the last. The DSA would even move to implement a fully communist state: It would “establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people. Enact aggressive wealth taxes on the richest individuals and corporations to spend on public goods and infrastructure.”

Wealth taxes! Why, Gavin Newsom is already there. And that’s just another indication of how this socialist madness, that has failed in so many countries, is become mainstream in ours, where people should know better, but apparently (after years of miseducation) do not.

The DSA’s forthrightness is something of a departure from recent practice. Old Joe Biden, after all, ridiculed the idea that he was a socialist during the 2020 campaign, only to allow those who were running his regime to take a decisively socialist and authoritarian course. Barack Obama likewise campaigned as a calm, moderate, centrist, only to become the most divisive, far-left president the nation had ever had up to the time he took office.

Yet as the DSA grows in power and influence in the Democrat Party and the nation in general, it seems to be confident that Americans will love its plan. No one should be fooled, however. If we are unfortunate enough to inaugurate a DSA president on Jan. 20, 2029, all the aspects of the DSA program that are currently being covered up will return in force, and be inflicted upon the American people. There is no doubt about that at all.

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Can you imagine?

• The Democratic Socialists of America New York Communist Program (CTH)

Barbara Boyd discusses three Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani winning upset victories in New York congressional primaries, framing the results as part of a long-term cultural project rather than a purely economic platform. She argues the DSA’s internal education centers on communist theorist Antonio Gramsci and his strategy of revolution through cultural “hegemony,” citing a deleted Instagram post from a group tied to one winner that called for the “total eradication of Western Civilization.”


Boyd highlights a newly published DSA platform proposing major constitutional changes, then links Gramsci to the Council on Foreign Relations’ “post-Trump world” series, noting CFR fellow Charles Kupchan opens with a Gramsci quote and attacks reindustrialization and tariffs. She claims British imperial networks historically sponsored Marx and later Gramsci, using communism and counterculture against rivals, and urges promoting Trump’s “American System” economics and an optimistic national culture ahead of the midterms.

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“.. no one in the party is safe from this hostile takeover. Not even leadership. And what did Jeffries do? He congratulated them.”

• Hakeem Jeffries Surrenders to the Socialists (Margolis)

The Democrat Party has a socialism problem, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) just made it worse. Last week’s New York City congressional primaries delivered a troubling result for anyone who thought the Democrat Party had hit peak radicalism: it hasn’t. Far-left candidates Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, backed by Democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and linked to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), knocked out two Democrat incumbents. Far-left Democrat Brad Lander also won his primary.


At the watch party for the socialist winners, the crowd made its intentions clear. When Jeffries appeared on a TV screen, supporters broke into chants of “You’re next!” It’s clear the socialists are gunning for his seat, which means no one in the party is safe from this hostile takeover. Not even leadership. And what did Jeffries do? He congratulated them. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this post on X Saturday.

Seriously? The crowd at that watch party had just threatened to oust him on live television. Now he’s bending the knee to them, posting a glowing congratulation that frames “far-right extremism” as the threat to confront while saying nothing about the DSA affiliations, the far-left policy positions, or the fact that the winners’ supporters just signaled they’re coming for his job. He even treated these primary wins as equivalent to general election victories, which, in New York City, they essentially are.

I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised. When CNBC host Joe Kernen asked Jeffries on camera about the “You’re next!” chant and about the rise of socialist candidates in his party, he did what Democrats always do: he pivoted immediately to President Donald Trump.

No pushback. No acknowledgment of the problem. Just the standard deflection. This is a tell. Either Jeffries genuinely doesn’t see the socialist takeover of his party as a threat worth confronting, or he’s too afraid to say so. I’m not even sure which is worse. I’ve written before that this tension between the socialist wing and the rest of the party has serious implications for the midterms and 2028. Socialism may sell in deep blue cities, but it doesn’t play in the suburban districts Democrats need to win a majority. Every DSA-backed candidate who locks up a safe seat in New York City drags the national party brand further left and hands Republicans a hammer to use in competitive races everywhere else. And establishment Democrats are either unwilling to stop it or too afraid to.

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Elder abuse.

• Joe Biden Barely Manages To Find His Way Offstage At Dem Gala (NYPost)

Former President Joe Biden was back onstage at a Democratic Party gala to excoriate President Trump Saturday – but needed a little help figuring out just how to exit. Biden, who got pushed out of his reelection bid by fellow Democrats in 2024 following his debate disaster against Trump, defended his record and blasted his successor during his speech to the Maryland Democratic Party’s Fight Back & Win summit near Baltimore. He ripped Trump for the “deliberate distraction – destruction of NATO” and hammered Trump’s White House ballroom as a “vanity project.”


At his speech’s conclusion Biden delivered a familiar refrain about the nation’s ability to overcome challenges – then sought an assist to find out which way to leave the stage. He turned to the side seeking guidance, then pointed in two different directions to ascertain the best route. Once he had it sorted out, he walked away from the stage with his back to the audience. His appearance at event, held at the Live! Casino & Hotel in Hanover, Maryland, came just days after he appeared at the grand opening of the Barack Obama presidential library in Chicago.

At that event, a bewildered looking Biden was left awkwardly onstage at its conclusion. “Where’s my granddaughter?” he shouted while walking up to the podium as it ended. At other times, he was guided by former first lady Jill Biden. Biden, 83, relied on a teleprompter during his Saturday night remarks, squinting at times as he read his verbal blasts at his rival, who he defeated in 2020, only to relinquish the White House in 2024. He coughed loudly several times early on. “Have you noticed that Americans are saying the economy under the Biden administration is a hell of a lot better than under Trump?” he told party faithful in the deep blue state.


“It’s not just his vanity projects – tearing down the East Wing of the White House making room for his ballroom. Putting his name on the Kennedy Center. Building an arch in his own honor. Even hiring his own pool guy to fix the reflecting pool. Woah – what a loser,” Biden said to applause. He called it “simply stunning to me” that Trump made “billions of dollars” as he returned to the White House, saying “he has no shame.” Biden’s successive awkward exits come after a long history during his presidency of mangling stage directions, as he did famously at a G7 photo-op in Italy in 2024.

He made no reference to the ideological fight going on in his party after democratic socialists prevailed in three New York primaries. The former first lady has been upping her media profile as she promotes her new book, where she revealed she at first thought Biden might be “having a stroke” during his 2024 presidential debate disaster.Hunter Biden, meanwhile, has launched an active social media profile where he has been promoting his art and taking on his dad’s critics, at one point challenging Donald Trump, Jr. to a cage match while blasting the UFC fight staged on the South Lawn of the White House.

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“They’re fresh out of ideas, and fresh out of people to represent those ideas.”

There.s a contradiction somewhere in there.

• Joe Biden: The Perfect Symbol of Today’s Democrat Party (Florack)

Honestly, Joe Biden is an 83-year-old man who probably should be home with his grandchildren, not being trotted out in front of a partisan crowd in Maryland to read attacks off a teleprompter and then wait for someone to point him toward the exit. On a purely human level, there’s something genuinely sad about that picture. No, what this is about is the Democrat Party machine — the political apparatus, the party operatives, the media figures, the staffers, consultants, and loyalists who spent the better part of four years looking America dead in the eye and insisting that Joe Biden was sharp, capable, fully in command, and absolutely fit to serve another term as President of the United States.


And today, they insist on trotting him onto a stage to show the world just how wrong they were. These are the people who called you a liar — or worse, a conspiracy theorist — for suggesting that Biden wasn’t sure what planet he was on. The people who buried the story, spiked the footage, and escorted skeptical reporters right out of the conversation.

These are the same people who are now, with a straight face, putting this man back on a stage. Think about what that actually required. I mean, this is really the saddest part…. Think about the number of people involved in this process. Someone booked him. Someone wrote the speech. Someone set up the teleprompter. Someone stood offstage and waited to guide him out when it was over. And at every step of that process, not one person in that operation apparently stopped to ask whether any of this was a good idea — for the party, for the country, or for the man himself. The show must go on. The attacks on Trump must be delivered. The base must be fed.

The Democrat Party has a long and well-practiced tradition of putting the pursuit of power ahead of everything else, including basic honesty about the condition of the people they’re asking you to trust with the nuclear codes. We watched it happen in real time through 2023 and 2024—the insistence, the gaslighting, the furious pushback against anyone who raised questions. And then the debate happened, and the curtain came down, and suddenly everyone who’d been telling you Biden was fine remembered they needed to wash their hair.

But now he’s back. Squinting at the teleprompter. Coughing. Waiting for someone to show him the way out. What’s the reasoning behind this? It’s simple enough; they’ve got nothing else to offer. They’re fresh out of ideas, and fresh out of people to represent those ideas.

Think about that for a moment. The Democrat Party—the party that controls most of the major media institutions, most of the universities, most of the cultural apparatus of the country—their big move on a Saturday night in Maryland is to dust off an 83-year-old man who can’t find the exit and point him at a teleprompter. That’s the best they’ve got. That’s the headliner. The best symbol for the self-proclaimed party of young ideas is an 83-year-old with, sadly, the mental capacity of a wheel chock.

Are you kidding me? Where’s the next generation? Where’s the compelling vision they keep claiming they have? Where’s the candidate who walks into a room and makes people believe something? The answer is both simple and revealing. They don’t have one.

I’m to the point now of concluding that this 83-year-old mushroom brain is the ideal symbol for the party. They’ve spent so many years building a party around identity checklists, approved narratives, and the politics of grievance that they’ve completely lost the ability to produce a leader who can actually lead. What they can produce is someone who will, in an almost reliable fashion, say the right things in the right order to the right interest groups—and when that person can no longer reliably do even that, apparently the answer is to keep sending him out anyway, teleprompter and spotter included, because the alternative is admitting they have nothing at all to offer.

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Carney’s ideology is very expensive for his people. Do they know?

• USMCA Status – Canada in Recession, Mexico GDP Grows Double Expectations (CTH)

You might remember recent reports outlining how the economy of Canada has slipped into a recession, posting two consecutive quarters with a negative GDP outcome. There are multiple reasons for this shrinkage, but the dominant factor is, well, quite frankly, Canadian politics and economic policy.


Meanwhile, in Mexico the opposite is happening. Mexico’s economic activity grew 1.2% in April from the prior month, the national statistics agency said, compared with a revised increase of 0.6% in March and beating a forecast of a 0.9% increase in a Reuters poll of analysts. {source} It is not coincidental to see the Mexican economy performing well, while the Canadian economy is contracting. Despite their identical proximity to The United States, each nation is currently executing a fundamentally different set of economic policies.

The Canadian government has been exceptionally combative with the U.S.A, leading to friction, tariffs and economic back-and-forth measures between the two nations.The Mexican government has expressly understood the nature of their dependency, admitted it, taken no action to diminish it, and purposefully set out to align itself with the interests of America. Canada is combative. Mexico is collaborating.

It seems unlikely that the three nations can agree on major economic policies, as a trilateral partnership would need alignment in core areas like energy policy. Canada’s energy policy is fundamentally separate from those of the U.S. and Mexico, and this is an issue that can’t be resolved through a trade agreement alone. A large part of Mexico’s economy relies on remittances from Mexican workers in the U.S. sending money back to their families. As long as the U.S. job market stays strong—and it’s only getting stronger in the industries where many Mexicans work—Mexico will continue to benefit from America’s economic growth.

One datapoint that points to the USA-Canada disconnect comes in the auto sector. The Center for Automotive Research (CAR) reports that Canadian vehicle production dropped 15 percent year-over-year through April. It’s understood that factories in Canada built approximately 64,000 fewer vehicles through April than the year prior, while US production rose by roughly 44,000 units, or 1.2 percent. Auto manufacturing companies in Canada operate there as part of the business plan to sell vehicles into the USA. As Canada increases friction with the USA, which is setting up a dynamic of U.S. withdrawal from the USMCA, those auto manufacturers will increasingly shift production from Canada to the U.S. market.

It appears that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s response to this predictable auto-sector outcome, is to flip those production facilities into venues for Chinese EV production (BYD and Geely). However, Democrats and Republicans are united in alignment with President Trump on this issue and Chinese EVs will not be permitted entry into the USA. This is a very big point of friction. Right now, no company in their right mind would invest in Canada against the backdrop of a potential USMCA withdrawal by President Trump. This is creating a scenario where our old nemesis, the U.S Chamber of Commerce, is spending tens-of-millions in Washington DC to purchase the votes and support of congress to retain the trilateral deal.

Right now, every multinational corporation in the world is looking closely at the White House as the July 1st deadline approaches. Almost none of them can fathom what will happen if the U.S. announces the intention to fully exit the USMCA and triggers a six-month withdrawal process. Despite what many have falsely claimed, it was specifically written into the original trade terms that if any of the three countries announce an exit to the trilateral agreement, they can fully exit six months later. If the USA makes this announcement -whenever they make this announcement- a literal economic doomsday countdown begins for Canada.

Mexico would not really be too disturbed by the announcement as both USTR Jamieson Greer and his Mexican counterpart have been negotiating on a bilateral basis for over a full year. However, for Canada the ramifications are so astronomical, it is almost impossible to fathom what might happen when 80% of their total exports face an unpredictable future. The leverage President Trump carries are so formidable, the only thing that compares in scale is the ‘elbow’s up‘ ego of Prime Minister Carney. ‘Splodey heads is an understatement. Canadians are so unprepared it’s jaw dropping. Make that exit announcement and as soon as reality sits-in, the Canadian dollar could collapse.

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“.. the force’s existing load of around 2,000 sexual offences a month. ‘

• Sadiq Khan Said There Were NO Grooming Gangs In London (MN)

The London mayor who once insisted there was “no indication” of grooming gangs now faces explosive new scrutiny after a police review uncovered thousands of previously sidelined child sexual exploitation files. The Metropolitan Police has identified more than 4,000 potential child sexual exploitation cases across London that may require reopening. These stem from roughly 12,000 reports dating back to 2010, with about one in three previously closed after police or prosecutors took no further action.


The cases have now been referred to the National Crime Agency under Operation Beaconport for urgent assessment.

This development directly contradicts Sadiq Khan’s past public statements. In January 2025, appearing before the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee, Khan repeatedly dodged questions from Conservative member Susan Hall about the scale of grooming gangs in the capital. He claimed his understanding from regular police briefings was that there were “no reported cases and also no indication of the grooming gangs” she was concerned about. When pressed on how many such gangs operated in London, he asked her to clarify what she meant by the term.

Critics now describe the position as gaslighting. Hall called the scale “utterly disgraceful,” noting it represents 4,000 young girls raped and sexually abused while authorities looked the other way or actively resisted scrutiny. Khan’s team now claims he has always supported leaving “no stone unturned.” The gap between that line and his earlier blanket denials has not gone unnoticed. This London revelation fits a wider, years-long scandal of institutional failure and political cowardice. Earlier this year we detailed how even the BBC exposed the scale of grooming activity in the capital under Khan’s watch.

Separate investigations laid bare mini-mart operations where vulnerable children were plied with alcohol and cigarettes in exchange for sexual abuse. Illegal shops were caught handing out free vapes to kids in return for sexual favours. And the weary response from parts of the establishment often boiled down to telling victims and the public to simply “get over it.”

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Sadiq Khan says zero, the police say 4,000. No possible error or overlap. Therefore, time for Khan to go. Or the police. One of the two.

“Great Britain has become, or at least is well on the way to becoming, a sharia state. “

• Police Believe There Are 4,000 Sex-Exploitation Gang Cases in London (Salgado)

London’s Metropolitan Police have found evidence suggesting there are thousands of child sex exploitation gangs or offenders in London.London is reportedly majority Muslim now (which tallies with my experience there), but even if that is in reality an exaggeration, it’s obvious the UK capital has a serious problem with Islamic rape gangs. Just in London, there are up to 4,000 grooming gang cases that authorities have tried to cover up.


Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe, who released the bombshell report on grooming gangs that identified 250,000 British girls and women as victims, indicated that between 87% and 95% of such sexual criminals are Muslim men. In other words, the mass child exploitation and rape gang crisis in England is almost entirely a result of mass migration from Muslim-majority nations. That is not surprising given that Islamic sacred texts endorse pedophilia, rape, and sexual slavery. But the current mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is also Muslim. Now, some Muslims do not follow the encouragement to sexual crime in their sacred texts, but will Khan address the rape-gang crisis any more now than he did before? Somehow I expect not.

In fact, according to GB News, Khan previously and emphatically asserted there was “no evidence” that grooming gangs were operating in London. Scotland Yard’s new findings indicate how wildly false that was. Sir Sadiq Khan is facing fresh scrutiny over his previous claims about grooming gangs in London after the Met Police identified more than 4,000 potential child sexual exploitation cases that could now be reopened… Roughly one in three cases [of 12,000] are now flagged for potential reinvestigation after police or the Crown Prosecution Service previously decided to take no further action.

And yet before the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee in 2025, Khan asserted, “My understanding from speaking to the police, and she will appreciate, I have done on a regular basis, is and I choose my words carefully for the reasons she will understand there are no reported cases and also no indication of the grooming gangs that she is concerned about in London.” It is likely his critics who accused him of a cover-up were correct. Notably, on Saturday, a Somali-born man drove a car into a crowd in London. The overwhelming majority of victim-based crimes in the UK do not result in a charge. On the other hand, thousands of British citizens have ended up in handcuffs for social media posts.

Great Britain has become, or at least is well on the way to becoming, a sharia state. Many of the British people are opposed to it and awake to the danger, but unfortunately, just as in many states here in the U.S., the communists in charge of the government are willing to take many tyrannical measures to ensure they never lose power. And it is even more difficult to change leadership in a country with a parliamentary system as Britain has. The UK is held captive thanks to suicidal woke idiots and fundamentalist Muslims.

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Women or children, our societies make a mess of protecting both. There is a price to pay for that.

• Becerra Details an ‘Assembly Line’ for Migrant Children (Salgado)

Republican California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is calling attention to allegedly leaked audio of his Democrat opponent and former Biden HHS secretary urging staff to traffic illegal alien kids the “way you do an assembly line.”


The clip features two unidentified women discussing the comments of Xavier Becerra, who as head of the Department of Health and Human Services under the previous administration oversaw a gargantuan network of unaccompanied migrant minors passed off to barely vetted sponsors. We now know that many of these sponsors were unrelated to the children and exploited them, sometimes for sexual purposes. The allegedly leaked audio sheds some light on Becerra’s attitude, as he saw these vulnerable children as a sort of product, not as individual humans. Hilton indicated he has more information about to become public.

Some of the HHS employees were so bothered by the exploitation and trafficking of the young kids that they filed a complaint letter against Becerra, per the clip.

The leaked audio is reportedly from an internal meeting where Becerra seemed to be railing against his staff for — as he perceived it — moving too slow in passing unaccompanied alien minors (UACs) along. If the audio is of Becerra and staff, it contains the acknowledgment that the kids could be in a trafficking situation, but that isn’t supposed to be important.

“If Henry Ford had seen this in his plant, he would have never become famous and rich,” the alleged recording of Becerra states. “This is not the way you do an assembly line …We need to get discharges up. Every time we have to go to the Hill [Congress] and explain why we’re spending so much money when most people are struggling to spend a little bit of money for the kids on a daily basis, we try to explain how we’re spending more than $1000 a day for kids who may not even have the legal right to be here? Not me.”

While we cannot absolutely confirm the authenticity of this shocking audio, we can find evidence of Becerra callously refusing to address evidence that his agency was placing children with pimps and strip clubs. That interchange with a congressman appears to have come from Becerra’s 2024 testimony to the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity regarding UACs.

Rep. Thomas Tiffany (R-Wis.) cited evidence of trafficking in HHS’s UAC pipeline. “One of the little girls was forced into prostitution by someone who claimed to be her aunt, because there [were] no checks being done… It revealed that children were pimped out by their aunt, which it turns out the aunt wasn’t even related to the child’s so-called aunt. Are you familiar with that story that was in there?” Tiffany asked.

Becerra stuttered in response, “There are a number of, uh, incidents that are reported in that, uh, that Florida report. Some of them I can probably recall better than others. Some of them I would challenge and dispute, but, uh, that one I don’t remember.” So Tiffany pressed, “And do you remember the teenage girl that was in a house with unknown men with no private bedroom for her?” And “Are you familiar with the sponsors that utilize a strip club in Jacksonville as an address for where this child, where a child should be settled?”

Becerra didn’t have a good defense. Because for him, the children were not vulnerable kids needing protection; they were merely part of his assembly line to further the mass migration policies of the Biden administration.

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“.. she chastised the majority for its “illogical interpretation” of the law and its “fixation” on the word “in.”

• The Supremes Help Ensure Border Security vs Liberal Justices (Von Spakovsky)

You really have to hand it to Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. When it comes to trying to stop lawful immigration enforcement, they are willing to twist the law and themselves like pretzels to please the open-borders crowd.


There really is no other way to read their dissents in the three important immigration cases decided by the Court in the last two weeks. Their dissents are also very revealing because they spend a great deal of time criticizing the policies in each case, apparently forgetting that they are not policymakers but judges tasked with one job: determining whether the policy implemented by the executive branch (whether they like it or not) is within the authority granted by the Constitution or federal law.

They abandoned that role in each of these cases. Mullin v. Al Otro Lando was an easy case to decide. During the Obama administration, the number of aliens mobbing ports of entry overwhelmed immigration agents. The administration put in a metering system that only allowed a certain number of aliens to be processed and to claim asylum. Other aliens were prevented from crossing the border and the Trump administration continued that system. The aliens remaining in Mexico sued claiming they were unlawfully prevented from entering the U.S. and still had a right to assert asylum. Unfortunately, some lower federal courts issued injunctions agreeing with them.

But as the six-member majority of the Supreme Court said on June 25, the statute providing aliens with the ability to claim asylum only applies to aliens “arriving in the United States.” It should be obvious to anyone with any common sense – which seems to exclude the three dissenters – that you don’t arrive “in” a location until you actually arrive in the location. The Court held that under the plain text of the statute and the ordinary, everyday meaning of arriving “in,” aliens still in Mexico can’t claim a right to enter the country and claim asylum because they never arrived “in” the U.S.

But in a dissent by Sotomayor, joined by Kagan and Jackson, she chastised the majority for its “illogical interpretation” of the law and its “fixation” on the word “in.” She claimed the word “in” doesn’t really mean “in” and that anyone arriving on “our doorstep” is the same as being “in” the country. In addition to this illogical interpretation, she and her comrades spent much of their time discussing the supposedly terrible consequences of the majority’s decision, claiming it will cause “more people [to] die,” a totally outrageous claim that has no basis in fact.

But most importantly, the rightness or wrongness of the policy has absolutely nothing to do with the question that was before the Court. The issue was whether implementing this policy is within the authority of the administration under the language of the statute. It clearly is, something the three liberals refused to acknowledge.

Mullin v. Doe was a similarly easy case to decide, at least for the majority and anyone who can read plain English. In 1990, Congress gave the president, acting through the secretary of Homeland Security, the authority to provide temporary lawful status to aliens whose countries have been hit with natural disasters and other problems. Syrians were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in 2012 and Haitians in 2010. The Trump administration ended TPS for both groups in 2025, but federal courts once again issued injunctions telling the president he couldn’t do that.

But the TPS status has specific language barring all judicial review of any determination to grant or end TPS. The Court’s six-member majority enforced this provision, concluding that it wipes out all claims of statutory violations (which the Syrians made) although it does not bar constitutional claims (which the Haitians made). The Court dissolved the injunctions against the termination of TPS for both the Syrians and the Haitians. .

Read more …

A full agenda before summer recess.

• Supreme Court Expected To Rule On Cook, Elections, And Trans Athletes (ZH)

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide in the coming days whether President Donald Trump can remove Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook from her post – an extraordinary step that would mark the first presidential firing of a Fed official since the central bank’s founding in 1913 and directly test the institution’s independence from political interference.


The justices, who hold a 6-3 conservative majority, signaled skepticism during January arguments toward Trump’s authority to oust Cook. The Federal Reserve Act requires that governors be removed only “for cause,” a term Congress left undefined and without procedural details. Trump cited unsubstantiated allegations of mortgage fraud – which Cook has denied and called a pretext for her removal over monetary policy disagreements. Cook has remained in her role while the case proceeds. No president has attempted such a firing in the Fed’s more than century-long history.

This dispute is one of three pending cases examining the outer limits of presidential power under Trump. The others involve his removal of a Federal Trade Commission member and an executive order limiting birthright citizenship. The court has already delivered Trump victories in two immigration cases this week and has frequently sided with the administration in emergency rulings, though it rejected his sweeping tariffs in February.

Firing Federal Officials
The justices appeared ready during December arguments to uphold Trump’s firing of Democratic FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter over policy differences. Lower courts had ruled that Trump exceeded his authority. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the Court to overturn the 1935 precedent Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which has protected heads of independent agencies from at-will removal. While the Court has narrowed that precedent in recent decades, it has stopped short of overruling it. Conservative justices have expressed sympathy for the view that statutory tenure protections encroach on the president’s constitutional powers. The Court previously allowed Trump to remove Slaughter while the case continues.

Election-Related Cases
Two election disputes remain as Republicans seek to retain congressional control in the November midterms. During March arguments, conservative justices expressed skepticism toward a Mississippi law – challenged by Republicans and supported by the Trump administration – that permits mail-in ballots postmarked on or before Election Day to be counted if received up to five business days later. A lower court invalidated the provision. A ruling striking down the law could encourage stricter voting rules nationwide.

Trump issued an executive order in March restricting mail-in ballots across the country, but a federal judge in Boston blocked its implementation on Thursday. In December, the Court heard a Republican-led challenge – involving Vice President JD Vance – to federal limits on coordinated spending between political parties and candidates. Some conservative justices appeared open to the First Amendment arguments against the restrictions, while the liberal justices seemed inclined to preserve them. A lower court had upheld the limits.

Transgender Athletes
In January arguments, the conservative majority signaled it is prepared to uphold laws in Idaho and West Virginia barring transgender athletes from female sports teams at public schools and universities. The states argue the measures protect fair competition for women and girls; critics see them as part of broader efforts to restrict transgender rights.

Geofence Warrants
The Court also heard April arguments in a Virginia case examining whether law enforcement’s use of “geofence” warrants – which sweep up cellphone location data from areas near crime scenes to identify potential suspects – violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches. The Supreme Court’s term, which began in October, typically ends in late June or early July. With seven cases still unresolved and the next round of decisions expected Monday, the coming days will bring clarity on these high-stakes disputes.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Home › Forums › Debt Rattle June 29 2026

Viewing 2 posts - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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  • June 29, 2026 at 9:06 am #243676
    Raúl Ilargi Meijer
    Keymaster

    Ivan Aivazovsky Palace rains in Venice by moonlight 1878 • Iranian Media Calls for Atomic Bombs as Official Says ‘We Are at War’ (Salgado) • How Crazy
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle June 29 2026]

    June 29, 2026 at 10:03 am #243694
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Why neo-Crassus desperately needs to cling to HIS deal, by Pepe Escobar – The Unz Review
    History tells us that it was possible to design a war using Persian arrows specifically intended to destroy Crassus and the Roman legions.

    On this dark street, the sun is black
    The winter life is coming back
    On this dark street, it’s cold inside
    There’s no retreat from time that died

    Cream, Deserted Cities of the Heart

    One of my recent columns on How Iran engineered its multipolar breakthrough provoked some serious response by top old school U.S. Deep State intel operatives, now involved in global business. I was sent a consistent, detailed breakthrough about what they maintain is the main reason for President Trump to sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iran, which he is frantically spinning as his (italics mine) deal.

    As one of these sources bluntly put it, “the main point you are missing is that Trump was scared stiff by June 15 being only 60 days away from the final emptying of the world reserve oil supplies, leading to the complete destruction of Donald J. Trump. That is the only reason for his about face. If he waited much longer, he would by August 15 be so behind the eight ball that he would not be able to recover And that may happen anyway.”

    The source was referring to a detailed risk assessment where the hard data points to mid-August 2026 as “the moment the U.S. must legally halt the emergency dumping. When that tap closes, the global oil supply deficit will instantly widen by millions of barrels per day, creating a world crisis.”

    Even tough he may be acting now, nothing is secured for Trump. The sources comment that “first, he (Republicans) would lose the first week in November elections. Then the Democrats would impeach him. And then he would be destroyed by lawsuits, losing all his money.”

    Way beyond the destiny awaiting the self-styled neo-Crassus, the sources mostly insist that “the 60-to-90-day runway we are currently sitting on is not just a timer on the physical oil in the ground; it is the remaining fuse on the largest credit bubble in human history.”

    Which bring us, once again, to the Rosebud in this Orson Welles-sized epic: the Strait of Hormuz, which for all practical purposes remains virtually closed.

    The sources are careful to remind those willing to listen that

    “what we have now is a rebellion at the Strait of Hormuz. 20% of global oil goes through there, and Iran wants that power to protect itself. When it is cut off the price of oil according to Goldman Sachs will go to $700 a barrel. It does not today as the U.S. and allies are dumping their storage on the market to hold the price down. They have about 2.5 months supply to do this. Then everything explodes. You have here the rebellion of the slaves.”

    So welcome to the current ultra high-stakes structural chess match – of course totally gamed by Tehran right before the start.

    The “rebellion of the slaves”

    The sources comment that “while rumors of oil at $700 a barrel are frequently utilized in high-level geopolitical posturing to emphasize the gravity of the bottleneck, the actual analytical forecasting coming out of the major investment banking desks is more measured, though still deeply alarming.”

    Let’s start with Goldman Sachs: “In their official commodities research updates following the escalation, Goldman Sachs warned that a prolonged, total blockade of the Strait of Hormuz could rapidly push Brent crude above $100 a barrel and realistically test the $150 mark.”

    Crucially, the sources maintain that “a precise look at the operational data reveals that the system’s absolute breaking point – and the fuse on the derivatives bomb – will likely occur by mid-August 2026.”

    Enter the interplay between the physical depletion of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR); the true, practical limits of oil prices; and the terrifying, hidden two-quadrillion-dollar derivatives market. The sources analyse this interplay as a highly synchronized endgame.

    Let’s summarize it. As of late May 2026, only a month ago, the SPR has been drained to 365.1 million barrels, “the lowest operational level in over 40 years.”

    With the Strait of Hormuz virtually closed – including by the Trump blockade – the U.S. is currently drawing down an historic 1.41 million barrels a day (nearly 10 million barrels a week) to artificially suppress prices.

    Then comes “the critical policy number to watch”. It is not “zero barrels”, but actually 243 million barrels. Why? Because the Department of Forever Wars has certified that drawing the reserve below 243 million barrels explicitly impairs the American capability to wage war.

    Once again the sources refer to their analysis: at the current velocity of 1.41 million barrels a day, the U.S. would burn through its 122-million-barrel discretionary cushion in exactly 86 days.

    In their risk assessment, the sources chose to point to 60 days – accounting for potential infrastructure failures or increased military consumption. That’s how we get to mid-August 2026 as the breaking point.

    And that’s not all. The sources note that “prices could easily breach the historic 2008 and 2022 peaks if refined product shortages trigger cascading shutdowns across European and Asian industrial sectors. However, a multi-hundred-dollar figure like $700 is widely considered a theoretical maximum that would instantly destroy global demand and collapse the entire international financial architecture before it could ever be sustained.”

    Once again: Tehran gamed all that to perfection. Call it the tollbooth or transit fees for any tanker wishing to pass through their Persian Gulf territorial waters; what matters is that Tehran de facto bypassed Western sanctions. The sources comment that “Washington’s declaration that this is ‘unacceptable’ has done little to stop global shipping firms from quietly paying the fees to avoid seizure.”

    So when we have a scenario of the SPR being depleted compounded with the Strait of Hormuz still blocked, “prices will violently spike past the 2008 records, testing $150 to $200 a barrel.”

    At that threshold, “the physical economy experiences immediate demand destruction. Airlines grounded, shipping networks halted, and industrial manufacturing ceased. The price cannot physically sustain $700 because the global economic machine using the oil will disintegrate at $200, causing consumption to drop to near zero.”

    And here we come to the clincher: “The danger is not the price tag itself, but the fact that the price spike will trigger the structural collapse of the underlying debt infrastructure”.

    Trump, Crassus, arrows and drones

    Is the U.S. – and the global economy – out of the woods when it comes to a war that Trump himself green-lighted?

    It depends on where the current elaborate MoU kabuki between Pakistan and Switzerland will lead. Oil is still not free flowing out of the Strait of Hormuz. And the SPR continues to be depleted.

    Neo-Crassus – prone to apocalyptic vociferations and non-stop threats to bomb Iran – simply cannot afford to have the SPR running dry. Yet that’s the way things will go if Hormuz does not revert to total free flow sooner rather than later. And it’s Tehran that controls the flow, not War-a-Lago.

    Either neo-Crassus contains himself, or he may even become responsible for a global crisis linked to widespread sovereign debt implosion.

    Even brainwashed flocks of sheep across Western pastures are now becoming aware of how the mighty Roman Empire lost to the Parthians/Persians in the Battle of Carrhae in 53 B.C. Rome at the time marched towards Asia convinced that Parthia/Persia would collapse under the weight of their power.

    Carrhae was textbook asymmetry – or Decentralized Mosaic, to quote Persian tactics in the early 21st century. The Parthian army was commanded by General Surena – the General Soleimani of those times – who instead of engaging in conventional battle (think Iraq in both Gulf Wars) used the Parthian cavalry to surround the Romans and unleash wave after wave of arrows, the drones of the time.

    The Parthians never ran out of ammo, because camel caravans waiting behind the battlefield were delivering fresh arrows in no time. The barrage never stopped. The mighty Roman army lost their cohesion and was epically demoralized.

    Crassus had assumed the Parthians would eventually run out of arrows and be forced into close combat. That did not happen. Crassus himself ended up being killed in the middle of a failed negotiation.

    That serious strategic defeat shattered the myth of Roman invincibility – just like the 2026 war shattered for good all the myths around the greatest army in the history of the galaxies.

    History tells us that it was possible to design a war using Persian arrows specifically intended to destroy Crassus and the Roman legions.

    And in a mirror image, we just saw a war using Persian drones and a Decentralized Mosaic specifically intended to strangle the imperial armada led by a neo-Crassus openly running a low-brow extortion/protection racket and working on behalf of an organized crime syndicate linked to a death cult entity.

    His sorry carcass will keep encumbering the world for a little longer. May he not destroy the global economy in the process.

    https://www.unz.com/pescobar/why-neo-crassus-desperately-needs-to-cling-to-his-deal/

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