Frederick Carl Frieseke Girl In Blue Arranging Flowers 1915
The Terafab is going to become the largest and most valuable building on Earth by a long shot.
— Teslaconomics (@Teslaconomics) August 6, 2026
This is so much more than just another semiconductor fab.
It’s going to be @Tesla, @SpaceX, xAI, and Intel building what will become the most important AI manufacturing complex EVER… pic.twitter.com/NebcmBQOtY
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) August 7, 2026https://twitter.com/APompliano/status/2085559754965807444?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2085510570753556940?s=20
Both sides declare themselves the winner. As foreseen. Are they also both happy?
• Bessent: Today or Tomorrow the Strait will be Open (ZH)
Importantly, Reuters reports late in the day Friday that Washington plans to lift the naval blockade on Iranian ports once the Oman deal is finalized and announced, which Bessent earlier said could be as soon as ‘today or tomorrow’. If the US were to back down militarily in the Gulf, it would cede effective control of the vital waterway to the Iranians. Per Reuters: Progress is being made between Iran and Oman on the Strait of Hormuz and “we expect a deal soon,” a U.S. official told Reuters on Friday.Read more …
Once a deal is announced to restore commercial shipping without impediments, the United States will lift its blockade of Iranian ports, the official said. “There is progress between Oman and Iran on the Strait, and we expect a deal soon,” the official said. “Once the deal is announced to restore commercial shipping without ` impediments, the United States will lift the blockade of Iranian ports.” Iran’s FM is declaring ‘victory’ saying that in the “face of the word’s most expensive military” his country’s forces demonstrated their might and capability…
Iran's Powerful Armed Forces have shown their readiness, capability, and might in face of the world's most expensive military.
— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) August 7, 2026
When Muslims stand together, we can face every challenge by malicious outsiders head-on.
Time to rely only on ourselves and embrace true brotherhood.Iran has announced that under the ‘finalized’ Oman-Iran scheme and ‘deal’ for management of the Hormuz Strait that “enemy countries” (read: US and Israel) may only transit the waterway after lifting sanctions and paying compensation for the war. While this was not issued by the Foreign Ministry or top leadership per se, it does appear to represent Tehran’s overall position, after on Thursday it first declared that US and Israeli-linked ships will not be allowed Hormuz transit under the Oman plan:
Tehran Mayor says Passing through the Strait of Hormuz is subject to the lifting of sanctions and the payment of compensation: “The countries that have attacked Iran will not have the right to use this strait until compensation is paid. Governments that freeze Iranian assets or continue to impose sanctions and threaten the nation will be deprived of this strategic boon.”
While Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has appeared to back the Omani plan to reopen the strait, the US State Department has also newly warned on Friday that more ‘decisive action’ will be taken to cut off sources of Iran’s funding. Bessent has newly stated that… “I think shortly, maybe even today, tomorrow, we are going to see an agreement, a 30- to 60-day ceasefire, and the Strait will be open.”
This is somewhat surprising, but as we described below, it seems a final Washington exit is indeed in motion, even if it leaves Iran with greater leverage in the region. Like Trump’s latest comments Thursday night, Bessent seems in ‘mission accomplished’ mode with this newly published interview…
Bessent on Iran:
— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 7, 2026
We have them by the throat, and they've got 150–180% food inflation, not able to pay the troops.
I think shortly, maybe even today, tomorrow, we are going to see an agreement, a 30- to 60-day ceasefire, and the Strait will be open.
Energy prices should come… pic.twitter.com/C1vGuQUIRMThis really does sound like ‘it’s finally over’ talk…
Bessent on the Strait of Hormuz:
— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 7, 2026
The strait is never going back to the way it was because the Iranians have used, or tried to use it, as a choke point.
What we are going to see over the next two years, the strait is going to become irrelevant.
It is going to become just… pic.twitter.com/LP8evMbeJP
“I think it’s going to end pretty soon. I don’t think they can go much longer. “I think we’re doing fine.”
• Trump’s Muted Response To Hormuz Deal (ZH)
President Trump’s latest Iran comments came Thursday night, after a prior day wherein Iran and Oman unveiled their ‘finalized’ Hormuz management scheme, which most notably includes a ban on all US and Israeli vessels in the energy transit waterway. As we reviewed earlier, the White House has appeared to genuinely be searching for an exit strategy, but this stipulation alone may be too hard a pill for Trump to swallow, if accurate – given that it obviously leaves Iran in de facto control of the strait. Many pundits have pointed out it even leaves Iran with more leverage and power in the region than before the launch of Operation Epic Fury.Read more …
But this is why Trump’s comments to reporters in the Oval Office Thursday evening are surprising, given that instead of reacting angrily and outright condemning the Iran-Oman plan, his reaction was somewhat muted and meager. Doves who see this war as disastrous and hope for quick exit will welcome the development. “I think it’s going to end pretty soon. I don’t think they can go much longer,” the president said, while leaving his meaning ambiguous. Asserting once again that the US is involved in negotiations with Tehran (something the Iranians have been vehemently denying all along), Trump added that “I think we’re doing fine.”The only thing Trump truly got angry about Thursday was related to the domestic side of the conflict, after US major media published several reports saying the Pentagon is perilously low on missiles and interceptors, which have been drained after nearly six months of war. He blasted ‘treasonous’ ‘fake reporting’ and even threatened to jail ‘leakers’ over the reports (the inherent contradiction says a lot here).But again, Trump’s penchant for raging against ‘dishonest’ and ‘evil’ Iranian leaders has been curiously absent over the last several days as the US bombs have fallen silent – after he called off planned ‘harder’ strikes over the weekend (or the last big TACO moment, among many prior).
This relative quiet at the White House comes even after Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf openly mocked the United States and Trump’s theatrics and constant changes of course on X. He wrote Thursday: “Massive attack coming… wait, never mind, they want to negotiate.” That’s theater diplomacy on loop. Using bullying + broken promises + fake news as leverage is a failed strategy. Acknowledge the facts and fulfill your commitments. We don’t need more theater.
All of this change in Washington tone and posture suggests this could finally be the moment for a true offramp, as the US faces a ‘go big or get out’ realization, and as the prospect of slogging through months more of a developing quagmire becomes too politically and economically costly. This is potentially the declare ‘victory’ and get out moment. As former Congressman Ron Paul has put it: Just Walk Away!
Trump: I think the war with Iran will end pretty soon. I don’t think they can go much longer.
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 6, 2026
Q: Have you reached a deal to reopen the strait of Hormuz?
Trump: It’s sort of open right now. pic.twitter.com/J3lcPyuVwM
That guy in the photograph is the president. Who in Iran has no power. The Ayatollah does, but there’s no recent photos of him.
• The Iranian President’s Bizarre Meeting With the Supreme Leader (Athena Thorne)
As President Donald Trump continues to play Schrödinger’s Deal with Iran, those of us watching from the sidelines and wondering how long this will go on are also wondering something else: With whom exactly is the United States trying to make a deal? More to the point: Who is even running that country anymore? In Iran, the president is tasked with managing the country’s day-to-day operations, but he ultimately answers to the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah. Meanwhile, the Ayatollah is the ultimate head of state, and no deal can conceivably happen without his sign-off.Read more …
It is well known that Masoud Pezeshkian has served in the role of president for the past two years. Where things get fuzzy is trying to pin down who the Supreme Leader is these days and how much he is in control.“One of the most interesting and/or odd things about Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion has been the speculation about who is leading Iran after the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,” my venerable colleague Stephen Kruiser wrote back in March. “Once it was confirmed that his son Mojtaba would be succeeding him, rumors were running wild about the state of his health. No one was sure if he was all dead, half dead, a quarter dead, or fit as a fiddle and looking to relocate somewhere with fewer bombs. That’s still the case. It’s been quite a bizarre sideshow to the seriousness of the war.”
And to this day, no one has seen hide nor hair of the alleged Supreme Leader in public. I’m sure part of the reason for that is security, but still — he could at least release a video to assert himself. Perhaps he is grotesquely disfigured and hides himself away from the world’s cruel gaze, à la Phantom of the Opera. Maybe he’s nothing more than a brain in a jar hooked up to a gut sack. No one knows.
To this end, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian made multiple demands to meet with Khamenei last spring. After he threatened to quit if he did not receive an audience, the Ayatollah relented, and a meeting took place in May. Pezeshkian later “told a gathering of trade association representatives that he had spent two and a half hours with the new leader ‘in a cordial atmosphere,'” reports Iran International.
But the outlet is now saying that the president’s characterization of the meeting is nothing like what actually took place. Based safely in London, Iran International claims that sources say the encounter was more like something out of a political crime thriller: The meeting itself was a concession extracted under pressure. Khamenei’s office agreed to it only after repeated requests from Pezeshkian and his threat to resign, the sources said, and the president was informed that, contrary to standard practice, he would not be received at the leader’s usual residence.
Instead, his security detail delivered him to an undisclosed location somewhere in Tehran. There he was taken from his own vehicle and seated in the back of a commercial car with tinted windows, where, apparently, Khamenei was already waiting. The spot was dark enough that the two men could not see each other, and Khamenei’s guards did not permit a handshake. The conversation was carried entirely by voice.
Due to the security risks Khamenei was facing, and after having (allegedly) narrowly escaped a targeted bombing with his life, one can excuse a certain level of paranoia from the Supreme Leader. But what was with the darkened interior and the prohibition of a handshake? Did his arms get blown off or something? Iran International’s sources said the Ayatollah’s elusive behavior “angered Pezeshkian, who regarded it as humiliating. According to individuals in the president’s office, he later asked whether the person beside him had in fact been the supreme leader, since he had only heard a voice in the dark.”
“It is unclear whether the remark was an expression of anger or genuine doubt,” Iran International notes. Further, “Pezeshkian has since requested a second meeting, this time at the leader’s residence. The request has so far been denied.” Sounds like we might have a “President” Joe Biden situation on our hands, where an incapacitated figurehead is propped up by a shadowy cabal that runs the country in his name. One wonders how the U.S. can possibly finalize an existential deal with a country in such a state of leadership crisis.
“Apparently, the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO is increasingly being dismissed as unrealistic. Even the regime’s most hardline officials seem to have lost hope regarding Kiev’s accession to the Western military alliance, considering that such a move does not serve NATO’s current strategic interests.”
• NATO Won’t Accept Ukraine. Promises Are Fairy Tales (Lucas Leiroz de Almeida)
In a recent statement, Valery Zaluzhny – Ukraine’s current ambassador to the UK, former head of the country’s armed forces, now widely considered Zelensky’s top rival – asserted that Kiev will never join the Atlantic defense bloc. According to him, promises of membership are merely “fairy tales” that do not reflect reality.Read more …
Zaluzhny stated that he is very familiar with NATO’s internal structures and understands how the bloc actually operates. According to him, promises regarding Ukraine’s entry into the bloc are nothing new. Over the course of 12 years working alongside alliance officials, Zaluzhny says he constantly heard such promises, yet saw no particular reason to believe they would materialize now.While lamenting that the alliance will never truly accept Ukraine as a member, Zaluzhny criticizes the current situation of the Western bloc, asserting that NATO’s military doctrine is outdated, making the alliance strategically inferior to Russia. Zaluzhny believes it is urgent for NATO to undergo comprehensive military reform and revise its doctrine to align with contemporary realities. He believes Ukraine could contribute to this process but regrets that this will not be possible, given the alliance’s refusal to accept Ukraine as a member.
“I know NATO very well (…) or about 12 years, I personally worked to ensure that we adopted NATO standards, and every year I listened to fairy tales that we were about to join. Unfortunately, we will never join it (…) NATO will most likely remain in its current form and will spend another 12 years – just as Ukraine did – transitioning to the standards required to reach even half the level of the Russian Federation,” he said.
Zaluzhny, however, does not entirely rule out the possibility of Ukraine joining a Western military organization. While acknowledging NATO’s lack of interest in admitting Ukraine, he alleges that his country could eventually join a “European military security bloc.” This would only be possible, however, if EU nations and the UK agreed to move forward with creating a regional military alliance outside the NATO umbrella – something many analysts doubt will happen, given American influence over European decision-making.
In fact, there are some interesting points in Zaluzhny’s statement. He is correct in stating that Ukraine will never be accepted into NATO. The Kiev regime plays a very specific role in NATO’s war plans – precisely that of a proxy or external ally. NATO cannot include Ukraine as a member, as doing so would force the alliance to intervene directly in a war against Russia, which would obviously be a disaster, possibly even nuclear. In this sense, Ukraine’s role as a military proxy is only viable as long as the country remains outside the Western defense bloc.
He is also right to criticize NATO’s outdated strategy regarding Russia. In fact, NATO decision-makers have never moved beyond the military doctrines of the last century. This has been clearly reflected in the current disastrous anti-Russian military campaign, in which the Kiev regime, guided by NATO, is suffering substantial losses.
Zaluzhny, however, fails to point out how Ukraine is ignoring its own military tradition on the battlefield in favor of using precisely the same outdated NATO concepts. The military doctrine employed by Ukraine is not autonomous. Ukraine shares a military history with Russia rooted in their Soviet and imperial pasts. If the Ukrainians were following their own military doctrine, they would be using tactics similar to Russia’s -focused on preserving soldiers’ lives rather than conducting large-scale direct combat campaigns.
However, the Ukrainian armed forces follow NATO orders, which is why they use outdated warfare techniques unsuited to the reality of contemporary combat -characterized by high technology and the massive use of drones. So, in practice, Ukraine would have nothing to add to NATO regarding military doctrine, since the country already adopted NATO’s own doctrine when it agreed to act as a proxy.
A common argument used by proponents of Ukrainian accession is that the country could contribute to NATO with its real combat experience. In fact, the country has been facing Russia in a large-scale conflict for four years, gaining combat experience that no Western alliance nation possesses. The problem, however, is determining how much of the Ukrainian military apparatus will remain once the conflict ends. The regime has already lost nearly its entire original military contingent and is now relying on forced mobilization to keep its forces active. In this scenario, that experience may count for little, given that the soldiers involved in combat are mostly untrained men sent to certain death on the front lines.
If NATO didn’t want Ukraine before – when it had the second-largest army in Europe – it certainly won’t accept it now, when it is a failed state fighting with the help of its civilians snatched off the streets. The Ukrainian dream of membership seems increasingly unattainable.
“The US president reportedly told Republican donors “We need to elect JD [Vance],” despite publicly maintaining ambiguity..”
• Trump Makes Private Revelation About Successor – WaPo (RT)
US President Donald Trump has privately indicated that he wants Vice President JD Vance to succeed him in the White House, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. During a closed-door Republican donor meeting in the Oval Office roughly two weeks ago, Trump reportedly said, “at the end of the day, we need to elect JD.” The remark contrasts with Trump’s public refusal to endorse a 2028 successor. He has praised both Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, suggesting they could even run on the same ticket.Read more …
The newspaper said that despite the apparent declaration of support, the president continued asking aides after the donor meeting which of the two would make the stronger presidential candidate. Several advisers also cautioned that Trump frequently tells different things to different people and could still change his mind. Trump has since dismissed the WaPo report, telling a journalist on Thursday that it was “way too early to even be thinking about” officially endorsing anyone, according to the New York Post.Trump aides widely agree the president will delay formally endorsing a successor to avoid appearing to be a “lame duck,” WaPo wrote, adding that aides are only expecting an official endorsement after the 2026 midterm elections in November. Under the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution, a president is limited to two elected terms, whether consecutive or non-consecutive. Trump, who returned to office last year after serving from 2017 to 2021, is therefore constitutionally barred from seeking another term in 2028, despite occasionally joking about the possibility at rallies and on social media.
Neither potential contender has announced plans to run. Vance has repeatedly said he remains focused on serving as vice president and will decide whether to seek the presidency only after the midterm elections. Rubio, meanwhile, has recently reduced his media appearances to avoid fueling speculation about his 2028 ambitions, according to WaPo.
“At the same time, Trump stood firm that he believed the GOP would come out on top..”
• Trump Says He Could Be Last Republican US President (TASS)
President Donald Trump warned that the Republican Party may never get another president into the White House if the Democrats take control of Congress.”And I’ll tell you what, if they [Democrats] get in, I may be the last Republican president,” he said in an interview with Punchbowl News. At the same time, Trump stood firm that he believed the GOP would come out on top, but said the Senate will have to “get smart” for that to happen. The US midterm elections will be held on November 3. One-third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives will be up for election. Both chambers of the US legislature are currently controlled by the Republican Party.Read more …
It’s controversial because it’s Trump.
• US Appeals Court Halts Trump Ballroom Project, Supreme Court Next (BBC)
T h e T r u m p a d m i n i s t r a t i o n h a s b e e n o r d e r e d t o s t o p c o n s t r u c t i o n o n P r e s i d e n t D o n a l d T r u m p ’ s $ 4 0 0 m ( £ 2 9 7 m ) b a l l r o o m a t t h e W h i t e H o u s e . A f e d e r a l a p p e a l s c o u r t d e a l t t h e l a t e s t s e t b a c k t o t h e c o n t r o v e r s i a l p r o j e c t o n F r i d a y , t e s t i n g T r u m p ’ s p r e s i d e n t i a l a u t h o r i t y a n d p a v i n g t h e w a y f o r a S u p r e m e C o u r t s h o w d o w n o n a p p e a l .Read more …
“ W h e t h e r o r n o t a m a s s i v e b a l l r o o m s h o u l d b e c o n s t r u c t e d i s f o r C o n g r e s s t o d e c i d e a n d i s n o t a m a t t e r f o r E x e c u t i v e s e l f - h e l p , ” t h e p a n e l ’ s m a j o r i t y s a i d . T h e o r d e r u p h o l d s a p r e l i m i n a r y i n j u n c t i o n w o n b y t h e N a t i o n a l T r u s t f o r H i s t o r i c P r e s e r v a t i o n , w h i c h s u e d a f t e r t h e a d m i n i s t r a t i o n t o r e d o w n t h e E a s t W i n g l a s t y e a r t o b e g i n t h e p r o j e c t w i t h o u t c o n g r e s s i o n a l a p p r o v a l .
“Congress has not ceded unfettered authority to the Executive Branch to dramatically redesign, reshape, and reconstruct the White House , the People’s House, to fit a particular President’s desires,” the panel said. The three-judge panel, in a 2-1 decision, said: “Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence.” “The President has no, and claims no, constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people,” the opinion said.The administration appealed to the court after a federal judge twice blocked above-ground construction on the ballroom, while still allowing underground work to proceed.The ruling on Friday upholds that order blocking above-ground construction without congressional approval. The appeals court delayed implementation of its ruling for 14 days to allow the Trump administration to appeal to the Supreme Court. Construction at the site where the East Wing previously stood was previously ordered to stop, but a court delayed the ruling allowing construction to continue while the appeals court considered briefs and heard arguments last month, according to the BBC’s US media partner CBS.
President Trump has asserted that the new ballroom is needed to “accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits”, and has also said that it is “vital for National Security”. He doubled down on the need for the space after an assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April. The three-judge panel on Friday said that its ruling “has nothing at all to do with whether the proposed ballroom is desirable”, nor does it weigh in on whether the administration may ultimately construct the ballroom.
“What it does mean is that the Defendants may not do so during the district court’s expeditious litigation without securing Congress’s authorization, as the Constitution and laws require,” the order said.= The National Trust for Historic Preservation celebrated the latest ruling, noting that no above-ground construction can take place “unless and until” Congress takes action. “The White House, a global landmark that symbolizes American identity and the ideals of democracy, belongs to the American people,” said Brent Leggs, President and CEO of the National Trust. “The National Trust for Historic Preservation and its partners are proud to defend this irreplaceable monument on behalf of all Americans.”
No gracious exit for her.
• Hillary Clinton Blasts Trump’s ‘Tackied Up’ White House Decor (CNN)
Hillary Clinton blasted President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the White House in an interview posted Friday, telling podcast host Kara Swisher that Trump’s “tackied up” decor is “reminiscent” of dictator Saddam Hussein’s palaces in Iraq. “It’s sad to me — it’s sad that it’s so tackied up, and it’s a reflection of, you know, his narcissistic personality and his need to feel important, including sticking gold embellishments all over the walls of the Oval Office,” the former secretary of state told Swisher on her “Pivot” podcast.Read more …
“This is a man who, his mind apparently goes to, ‘Where can I add more gold?’ instead of, ‘How do I get out of Iran without looking like the loser that I am?’” As first lady, Clinton herself oversaw renovations to the White House Blue Room, but has emerged as a fierce critic of Trump’s massive overhauls to the White House complex, posting, “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it,” shortly after the administration began demolishing the White House East Wing to make way for the president’s proposed ballroom last year.“The next president is going to have a big decision. What do you do with a half-finished ballroom?” Clinton said in the interview, referring to it as a “carbuncle on the side of the White House.” Asked what she would do, Clinton replied: “I don’t know.” In a statement responding to her comments, White House spokesman Davis Ingle pointed back to the 2016 presidential election, when Clinton lost to Trump. “Hillary Clinton never had the opportunity to decorate the Oval Office as president because she suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of President Trump, which she has never recovered from,” he said.
Since returning to the White House in 2025, Trump has sought to leave his own mark on the building, affixing gold detailing on the surfaces of Oval Office and throughout the West Wing. In December of last year, he unveiled the “Presidential Walk of Fame” along the White House Rose Garden colonnade, complete with plaques featuring politically-tinged dings against his predecessors — partisan barbs White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed he wrote himself.
And he’s been publicly preoccupied with renovation projects throughout the District of Columbia, including scandal-plagued efforts to refurbish the National Mall’s reflecting pool and erect a 250-foot “triumphal arch” across the Potomac River. Speaking with Swisher in Friday’s interview, Clinton joked she’d be willing to take on the role of “Secretary of Taking Down the Gold” after Trump leaves office. “Wouldn’t that be a good idea? Secretary of cleaning it up, fixing up,” she said.
Just about power. Raw.
• Democrats’ Anti-Trump Lawfare Was Never About the Law (Matt Margolis)
Long before Donald Trump took the oath of office for his second term — heck, before he was even reelected — Democrat state attorneys general were already building the machine designed to stop him. Records show that at least 22 Democrat attorneys general joined a coalition called the Project for Federal Accountability starting in April 2024, roughly seven months before Trump defeated Kamala Harris. Seven attorneys general signed the agreement on April 28, 2024. Thirteen more joined in May and June.Read more …
The pact was called “Privileged & Confidential Common Interest Agreement.” It was built to do exactly what it sounds like: Keep the states’ coordination hidden from the public and from anyone who might dare oppose them in court. The signers said they wanted to pursue their shared legal interests “while avoiding any waiver of the confidentiality of those privileged materials.” Translation: Total secrecy while colluding against a sitting president who hadn’t even taken office yet.To me, the most significant part of this pact is that Biden was still in the race when the first signatures went on that agreement in April 2024. He wouldn’t drop out for nearly three months. The sitting Democrat president was telling the country he intended to serve another term, the party was acting like he was going to win, all while Democrat attorneys general were already plotting to stop Trump upon his inevitable return to office.
The coalition had already divided up legal research by topic, built a shared “brief bank” of pre-drafted briefs, and pored over the Project 2025 policy blueprint hunting for lawsuit targets. Trump hadn’t signed a bill. He hadn’t issued an executive order. He hadn’t taken any official action as president, because he wasn’t president yet. None of that mattered. The lawsuits were already being written. Since Trump’s second term began, Democrat attorneys general have sued his administration close to 100 times.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D-Calif.) has taken part in 82 of those lawsuits. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser (D-Colo.) has joined at least 75. Washington Attorney General Nick Brown (D-Wash.) has joined 70. Bonta insists the coalition’s work is “apolitical.” Seriously? He also said, “If (Trump) doesn’t want to get sued, all he has to do is follow the law,” adding, “I don’t think our cases are likely to be dismissed… Trump shows no sign of slowing down, so we will continue to sue him.”
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown (D-Md.) claims the early coordination was reasonable preparation once Trump’s nomination looked inevitable, but this confirms that the strategy was always about resistance, not the rule of law.Even people outside the conservative media world find this strange. Retired Connecticut judge Thomas Moukawsher mocked the coalition’s chosen name: “‘Federal Accountability?’ That’s just a little strange.” Former Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, a Republican who now often votes for Democrats, called the secrecy “not normal at all.”
You think?
California alone has burned through $19 million in taxpayer money on this litigation crusade, with another $25 million already authorized. New Jersey tucked $1 million into its fiscal year 2026 budget just to fund two new staff positions dedicated to the coalition’s work. That’s right, taxpayers are literally footing the bill for a legal ambush that was planned before Trump even won the election. Imagine all the other things California could have wasted more money on. Democrats can claim all they want that this is about accountability and the rule of law, but it’s just blanket resistance. And if you live in a blue state, you’re paying for it.
“They were settler colonialists.”
• Israel’s Critics Have a History Problem (Victor Davis Hanson)
We’re hearing a lot of charges since Oct. 7th that Israel has committed a litany of war crimes. Let’s examine them very carefully because I think they tell us more about the accuser than they do the accused. We’re told by a lot of representatives in our own Congress, mostly on the Democrat side, not all—Tucker Carlson, for example, Candace Owens, but also Zohran Mamdani and others have said that Israel is an apartheid state. In other words, it has racial enclaves.Read more …
But there’s nothing in the Israeli constitution that requires you to be Jewish. In fact, there’s 2 million Arabs living freely, voting freely inside Israel. In contrast, of the 22 member Arab nations, almost all of them require Islam as the national religion. And of the 30 Muslim countries, Arab and non-Arab alike, about 23 of them make it a crime to be an apostate from Islam. Does anybody ever say that these are apartheid states?Do you really believe that if you were of a trans community, you could start a movement in Iran? Could you have a Mormon chapter on the West Bank? Could you build a new cathedral of Christian worship in Istanbul today under [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan? You think there’s a gay rights parade going on in Gaza? No, no, these are apartheid. They eliminate and marginalize communities. Let’s look at another charge that we hear: settler colonialist. This means that Israel, uh, were interlopers.
Let me ask you something. In modern-day Israel, we have archaeological and linguistic evidence that Jews were living there 3,500 to 4,000 years ago. People who spoke early Hebrew, who practiced the Jewish faith, and lived on the land that is now Israel. If you want to talk about settler colonials, where did the Arabs come from? They swept in from Asia into the Middle East and North Africa and, as settler colonialists, conquered Byzantine and earlier Roman territories that had been Western for 700 years.
The greatest church in Christendom was Hagia Sophia, built in the sixth century A.D. by the Emperor Justinian. It was the largest and most revered church in Christendom for 1,000 years. And yet, in the 15th century, settler colonialists under the sultan came in and conquered and settled and took over Asia Minor from the Byzantines. And they slapped minarets on and culturally appropriated a Christian church and turned it into a mosque. They were settler colonialists.
Mamdani’s family are settler colonials. They were part of a British imperial project at the turn of the 19th to 20th century that put settlers from other areas of the British Empire into Africa to help advance their colonial control of the Indigenous people. And even today, Mamdani’s 1% Indian community controls 65% of the gross domestic product of Uganda. Settler colonialist. I could go on, but this is a ridiculous charge to lodge against Israel when, of all of these settler colonial powers, it has the longest pedigree in one place.
Now we hear about ethnically cleansing, ethnic cleansing. We’re told that the Israelis ethnically cleansed the Gazans and often people in the West Bank. I don’t know quite what that means, but before I try to translate it, we do know there’s a lot of ethnic cleansers. Erdogan, the president of Turkey, has threatened to send missiles both into Athens and into Israel. His government, not his own, but the Turkish government, of which he is a continual successor, ethnically cleansed all of the Greeks from Northern Cyprus and occupied it, and then sent settler colonialists from Turkey. I haven’t heard anybody complain about that.
Is there a protest I missed at Columbia? Did Ilhan Omar forget that, or does she just give a pass to a fellow Muslim country? While Oct. 7th was transpiring, far away in Muslim Azerbaijan, they were ethnically cleansing 150,000 Armenians from their ancestral home of nearly 1,000 years in the Nagorno-Karabakh Corridor. I didn’t hear a word from Ilhan Omar. I didn’t hear a word from [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]. I didn’t hear a word from Zohran Mamdani.
And then we come to genocide. Genocide. The Israelis, they say, committed genocide. And believe me, people who commit genocide, we know who they are, and they don’t vaccinate the targeted population. They don’t send food. They don’t allow medical doctors and suppliers to go into the targeted genocidal people.
But more importantly, when Israel was formed by 1950, there were 170,000 Arabs still in Israel. They comprised 12% of the population. Fast-forward to 2026. Guess what? Genocidal Israel saw the population of Arabs, who are now Israeli citizens, increase to 2 million, and the percentage of non-Jews in Israel who were Arab Muslims increased from 12% to 20%. Genocidal regimes don’t take the targeted victim and then increase the population, both in real numbers and percentages vis-à-vis their own demographics. They just don’t do that.
And if you talk about ethnic cleansing, Hasan Piker, a fierce podcaster and critic of Israel, was born in the United States, but he grew up in Turkey. His parents are Turkish immigrants. Turkey probably is the most genocidal regime of the last two centuries. It wiped out almost a million Armenians in the Armenian genocide. It went into Ionia in 1922 and destroyed, burned down, the Greek city of Smyrna, an ancient city that had a 2,500-year Greek pedigree, and then ethnically cleansed a million Greeks off the entire coast of Ionia. That’s genocidal.
“ . . it’s subversion and nothing about it is accidental. it’s a well worn playbook to use the democratic institutions of a high trust state to destroy a civilization.” —El Gato Malo on Substack
One way, or another, we’re gonna find you, we’re [gonna] gitchya gitchya gitchya. . . .
“This is a hill that somebody’s going to die on, and in America it’s not going to be Americans.”
• The Four Way Squeeze (James Howard Kunstler)
The days might still be long, but this is a dark season in our country’s politics. Everybody’s nervous and many are furious, and yet all that emotion goes nowhere, just eats you up while you watch and wait for signs that help is on the way. What would that help even look like? Maybe a concerted effort to bum-rush a whole lot of bad ideas out of American life and replace them with better ideas that are worth building a life around.Read more …
Of the two political parties that used to vie between the interests of property and of labor, there is almost nothing left — nothing coherent, anyway. Mr. Trump & Co. still stand outside a feckless Republican establishment that can only say “no.” That is bad enough, when it comes to vital matters like election reform and sound fiscal policy. But the President is methodically wearing them down with tactical work-arounds such as this week’s use of State Department visa control to prevent foreign visitors coming here just to drop birthright citizens.Things will get super-serious when the president has to manage the government’s functional bankruptcy, the bond market crack-up under our impossible debt-burden, and all its knock-ons. It’s coming for sure, and will require a stringent reorganization of American finance, probably even of our money itself. That will be a moment when the nation understands what leadership really means, not just endless deception and fakery.
Speaking of which, you have the other party, the Democrats. The Dems, unmoored from the interests of labor (whatever is left of it), are now strictly just the party of bad ideas and crime. The party is also, at this juncture of history, caught in a gruesome four-way squeeze that could easily drag it into extinction. Let’s count them.
First, is the basic basket of ideas that comprise the party’s platform, readily identifiable for some years now as the “Woke” catalog. Virtually all of them are ideas that a majority of the public rejects as insane. A wide-open border. We tried that for four years under the fake president “Joe Biden.” Didn’t work out so well. Added many millions to the free everything dole that actual citizens resentfully have to pay for. Took jobs away from said citizens. Got a lot of (mostly) women murdered and raped. Let in Gawd knows how many foreign terrorists.
“Woke” also includes the DEI products of manufactured race animus and gender confusion, especially as applied in school from K all the way to PhD. Apart from the sheer hatred and idiocy these things generated, they also led to the scrapping of merit and excellence as organizing principles for civilization. Americans increasingly reject all of that.
The second squeeze point is the Democratic Party’s criminal portfolio. The Covid-19 operation was basically theirs. It killed and injured millions, wrecked the integrity of medicine, and brought on the deliberate perversion of our election procedure. It gave us fake President “Biden” and the autopen gang that ran him. Along the way, the party weaponized the law and produced one hoax after another: RussiaGate, Impeachment, J-6, the 2024 Trump trials — treason, sedition, deprivation of rights under color of law, obstruction of justice and much more. These crimes are a huge burden for the party and they are in the process of being adjudicated, and a lot of the party’s heroes will end up in prison.
The third squeeze is the party’s widespread and atrocious racketeering operation. The process of uncovering it has been going on since Jan 20, 2025, but still has a long way to go in terms of courtroom action. The Somali Learing Center in Minnesota, fake hospices by the hundreds in California, Medicaid fraud in state after state. It was generally allowed to go on by state officialdom. We await the eventual indictments of Governor Tim Walz, Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Janet Mills and many other Democratic politicians.
The Democratic Party racketeering apparatus also included the money-laundering system that kicked back millions of dollars from a matrix of NGOs that washed taxpayer money into the party coffers. USAID was a major mechanism, and has been mostly shut down, but thousands of NGOs still exist and function as employment centers for young party “activists” who otherwise would have to work the espresso machines. A lot of that activism depends on funding from the likes of George Soros, the Tides Foundation, Bill Gates, Neville Roy Singham, and other criminally-tinged philanthropy outfits. Justice is coming for them now, too.
Which redounds directly to the fourth squeeze: the rise of communism and jihad as the Party’s new rallying cries while the other three squeezes work to put the party’s old guard out of business. Communism is the fad-du-jour among Democratic Party youth because the over-production of elites (i.e., college graduates) are increasingly closed out of cushy jobs in the besieged NGO matrix, threatened further by the advent of artificial intelligence, and have been trained-up by the lefty-left college faculties to fall in love with the utopian nostrums of Karl Marx.
Communism is the Party’s last resort and most of America will not buy it, no matter how heartfelt the youth faction appears these days. Americans believe in property rights. They want to own things. They don’t really enjoy being pushed around by kommissars. They want to keep Thanksgiving and Christmas.
As for jihad, it’s hard to imagine a less likely route to the hearts and minds of America. No matter how pissed off you are about Israel, jihad is not the answer to America’s problems. No, Dorothy, Kansas will not be joining the Ummah. You will not have to don the burka. Sharia will not replace English common-law. This is a hill that somebody’s going to die on, and in America it’s not going to be Americans.
Personally, I don’t see how the Democratic Party as currently configured survives this four-way squeeze. If President Trump can succeed in starting to reindustrialize the country — even considering A-I and robots — there will still be a need for human labor and labor will seek some kind of political representation. Maybe they can find it in the hollowed out husk of the thing that used to be the Democratic Party. Otherwise, fuggeddabowdit. The party is toast.
Why does this have to be so hard?
• Sen. Cassidy Backs Todd Blanche For AG, Likely Saving Nomination (JTN)
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., on Friday announced he would support Todd Blanche for confirmation to the post of Attorney General. His support likely saves Blanche’s nomination, which has been on thin ice for weeks. Both GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have announced they will oppose him. Speculation had abounded that Cassidy may join them in an act of revenge for President Donald Trump backing his primary opponent. But Cassidy threw cold water on that prospect in remarks on the Senate floor.Read more …
“This is not a referendum on President Trump. It is a decision regarding Mr. Blanche in very specific circumstances.” he said. “All considered, I will vote for Mr. Blanche.””Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this. But the choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche,” he added. “It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under President Trump, and who indeed may not be as good as Mr. Blanche.”Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas previously dropped their opposition to Blanche after he provided them with written assurances on the end of an abandoned “anti-weaponization fund.”
AfD and Marine Le Pen, and Europe is a whole different place. They’ll fight that.
• Germany Has Reached A New Low In Election Rigging (Amar)
Today’s Germany is a grim, unhappy place. Thirty-six years after West Germany’s take-over of the former East Germany (polite term: re-unification), which was supposed to herald a golden age of national fulfilment, citizens are in a very foul mood. According to Ipsos, one of Germany’s go-to pollsters, their morale is at a “historic nadir,” and they are “losing confidence about the country’s future.”Read more …
As of last month, fear of poverty and inequality was “clearly increasing,” with 37 percent of all respondents picking it as their number-one angst, followed by “migration” (31 percent), “inflation” (30 percent), worries over the healthcare system (26 percent) and “criminality and violence” (25 percent). Note that all top five anxieties focus on what is going wrong at home. That doesn’t mean, though, that Germans are optimistic about the world or Germany’s place in it: 24 percent of the Ipsos poll respondents fear “military conflicts between states.”If the mood is sour, it’s very good reasons: Germany’s abysmally, unprecedentedly unpopular and embattled chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is desperately trying to sell an absurd feel-good story about the German economy as an “anchor of stability.” But that only demonstrates how divorced from reality Germany’s rulers are: In the real Germany that their subjects must inhabit, industrial output is 17 percent below 2017. After the recent roll-out of a perfectly underwhelming “reform package,” business leaders have warned that much more is needed to prevent a “lost decade.” That would be, in effect, the second one in a row.
Meanwhile, Berlin is busy doing two things: cut down public spending on absolutely vital things such as education (next to inexpensive energy, the decisive resource for Germany’s prosperity already sacrificed to the proxy war against Russia) and raze the sorry remnants of social safety nets that have long been in tatters already.
That doesn’t mean Germany is not going into catastrophic debt. It is, as if there’s no tomorrow. The money is flowing in torrents. Just not for Germany’s citizens and tax payers but for Zelensky-regime Ukraine (to the tune of, officially, almost €100 billion and counting) and for an insane armament drive that signals a very unhealthy – if historically repetitive – urge to go to war with Russia. This year, €83 billion is earmarked for weapons; next year it will be €110 billion. And so on: €154 billion for 2028, €163 billion for 2029, and a grand crescendo with €184 billion in 2030.
This is the background of not only a severe national depression but also a search for alternatives. At this point at least, the AfD (Alternative for Germany), an anti-immigration party founded in 2013, is benefiting the most from this crisis. On the rise for roughly a decade now, its momentum has recently greatly accelerated.
A fresh poll for all of Germany has the AfD at 27 percent, outdistancing (again) all other parties, including those making up the radical-Centrist coalition currently in charge in Berlin (CDU – 21 percent, SPD – 12 percent). Perhaps even more importantly, the AfD may well win crucial regional elections in the key eastern Land of Saxony-Anhalt and looks set to do very well in two others – in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin – as well.
In sum, the AfD is probably on the verge of a historic breakthrough that will greatly weaken, maybe even ruin the traditional parties’ longstanding “firewall” strategy of freezing it out of political leadership positions no matter what the people say in elections, in effect half-disenfranchising its voters. This moment is likely to reset the whole German political system at the cost of the establishment parties which are still desperately defending their de facto exclusive hold over political offices, perks, and power.
So, what do you do when you are losing a (barely) fair fight? Easy, at least if you are part of Germany’s self-appointed guardians of democracy, civil society, and wholesome ‘values’ all around: You start playing even dirtier.
In the case of the threat the AfD poses to Germany’s establishment parties, the latter have always toyed with this option: Would it not be just oh-so-convenient to simply prohibit such a troublesome competitor under the pretext that it is so radical and dangerous it does not deserve a fair chance? The perverse dream of ‘saving’ what’s left of German democracy by abolishing the biggest opposition party is by no means dead. Some die-hard Centrist radicals, intriguingly including Germany’s militarist-in-chief minister of defense Boris Pistorius, can’t let go of it.
This has all been accompanied by a mainstream media cacophony of cries of “democracy in danger!” and “Nazis at the gates!” Crazy conspiracy theories included, such as the one recently spread – without being challenged – by a member of the co-ruling SPD party on a mainstream news channel: Let’s just blame the latest Islamist terror attack in Berlin on Russia trying to boost the AfD. In what alternative universe does that make any sense? Welcome to the often unhinged, notoriously shameless, and very ugly world of German mainstream discourse.
The problem with the let’s-just-prohibit-the-whole-lot approach is that having a party banned is, fortunately, very hard under German law. And although Berlin’s establishment parties don’t mind bending the rules to deploy nasty lawfare, they do want to be sure to win. If they try to prohibit the AfD and fail, the latter will only get even stronger, as everyone understands. Indeed, even prohibiting ‘merely’ a part of a party, say, a Land organization, is neither easy nor a sure bet.
But what if there were a way to kneecap the AfD without having to run that risk? What about, for instance, promising AfD candidates could be taken out and removed from elections without having to overcome the high legal hurdles that make full-fledged prohibition so scary? And that is where the Land of Lower Saxony (in the former West Germany and not to be confused with Saxony-Anhalt in the former East Germany) has taken on the role of trailblazer in democracy defense via democracy suppression.
Think of recent events there as a prototype or trial balloon. Based on a very recently passed, as it were, made-to-measure law, local election committees have begun to block AfD candidates from running by invoking especially produced reports from the Land branch of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Verfassungsschutz. This is unprecedented and scandalous, as critics are pointing out. In a ludicrously flimsy and absurdly unfair procedure that needs no courts – in this manner similar to EU sanctions-against-dissidents policy – German citizens are deprived of the passive franchise, the right to be elected.
SpaceX is building an AI data center for orbit, then reusing the same brain box on Earth.
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 7, 2026
Starmind AI1 packs NVIDIA Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs, solar power and Starlink laser links into one orbital system.
On the ground, Elon says they can remove the solar wings and radiators… https://t.co/sOn9GlqkGx pic.twitter.com/K9yOSH9QSI
Chamath Palihapitiya on the Tesla-SpaceX merger: "I still don't like the fact that Tesla's over here – and as I've told you, that will get merged in. that thing will look very cheap in a few years"
— Сarm1ne (@carm1nee) August 6, 2026
this is him and Gavin Baker explaining how you underwrite SpaceX at $2 trillion,… https://t.co/xMbMZf57V0 pic.twitter.com/KEeyDE2lVG
Before Elon Musk became the world’s richest entrepreneur, he spent years teaching himself the disciplines behind the industries he wanted to enter.
— X Ethan (@XEthanai) August 7, 2026
He studied physics, engineering, manufacturing, software, and rocket science by reading textbooks, speaking with experts, and… pic.twitter.com/5xAfALLhHC
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2085485219931447561?s=20The Covid Pandemic was planned. Their tests were fake. Their mask science was fake. Their social distancing was fake. Their vaccine science was murderous and fake. Their Media was fake. Their CDC and FDA were fake.
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) August 7, 2026
ARREST THEM BOTH NOW pic.twitter.com/8Fjlehi1k6
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