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Debt Rattle May 2 2026

May 022026
 
 May 2, 2026  Posted by at 9:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  30 Responses »


Johannes Vermeer The girl with the wine glass (Dame en twee heren) 1659


• Trump Issues Letter Rejecting Congressional Oversight For War (ZH)
• Trump’s ‘Assurances’ To Americans as GOP Members Start to Scramble (ZH)
• Iran’s Brutal Test Of Endurance (ZH)
• Indictment-O-Rama (James Howard Kunstler)
• The Comey Memos and the Appointment of Robert Mueller (CTH)
• Another DOJ Investigative Case Against James Comey Happening in Virgina (CTH)
• James Comey Knew EXACTLY What ‘86 47’ Meant (Robert Spencer)
• New Footage of Trump Assassination Attempt Released (Matt Margolis)
• The Real Reason the Democrats Hate President Trump’s Ballroom (Tim O’Brien)
• Remember That Half the Country Once Hated Lincoln (Stephen Kruiser)
• House Ends 76-Day Shutdown (Sarah Anderson)
• Hakeem Jeffries Denounces the Supreme Court as “Illegitimate” (Turley)

 


 

https://twitter.com/BoLoudon/status/2049927123083657272?s=20

 


 


Does a president need to ask permission for a ceasefire?

• Trump Issues Letter Rejecting Congressional Oversight For War (ZH)

Trump Letter: Doesn’t Need Congressional Approval As Ceasefire Has ‘Terminated’ Conflict


In an acknowledgement that his anti-Iran Operation Epic Fury has indeed hit 60 days, President Trump has issued a formal letter to Congress which argues he does not need their authorization for war. He is arguing the current ceasefire has in effect ‘terminated’ the conflict. Below are his main points via NBC [emphasis by ZH]:

• “On April 7, 2026, I ordered a two-week ceasefire. The ceasefire has since been extended. There has been no exchange of fire between the United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026. The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated,” Trump wrote in the letters, one of which went to the House and one of which went to the Senate.

• “Despite the success of United States operations against the Iranian regime and continued efforts to secure a lasting peace, the threat posed by Iran to the United States and our Armed Forces remains significant,” the president added in the letter, promising to keep congressional leaders updated on further developments in Iran.

• “I have and will continue to direct United States Armed Forces consistent with my responsibilities and pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct United States foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive,” the president wrote in his letter.

In fresh Friday words to reporters, President Trump says he is not satisfied with the latest proposal from Iran. He further stated that these negotiations “are not getting there right now.”

His main points via Newsquawk:
• Iran wants a deal, but i am not satisfied.
• Iran has no military left.
• Talks with Iran are by phone.
• Made strides in talks with Iran.
• Not sure we are going to get to a deal.
• Not happy with Italy or Spain on Iran.
• Iran leaders do not get along with each other.

Bessent Lists 5 Pressures Iranian ‘Rats’ Facing
US Treasury Secretary Bessent takes to X on Friday to again call Iranian leaders “rats” – which won’t bode well for restarting stalled negotiations. He’s busy boasting on the economic damage unleashed by the ongoing US naval blockade, writing: “It is very difficult for rats in a sewer pipe to know what’s going on in the outside world. Some color for the Iranian Leadership as they literally sit in the dark.” He then lists out the following:

1. The United States has complete control of the Strait of Hormuz.

2. There is a hard currency, i.e. U.S. dollar, shortage.

3. Food and gasoline rationing are in place.

4. The entire international community has turned against you.

5. The BLOCKADE will continue, until there is pre-February 27 Freedom of Navigation.

He also shared a WSJ article proclaiming that the Iranians have ‘failed’ to roll back the US military blockade, and that supposedly the clock is ticking on the government’s ability to rule…

Israel To Renew Bombing if Nuclear Issue Not Dealt With
The Netanyahu government is signaling that it will restart the bombing campaign if the nuclear issue is not resolved. It should also not be forgotten that ‘denuclearizing’ Iran by force has been a multi-decade priority of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the hardliners of Israel. These are the latest warnings out of the Israeli military establishment on Friday: An Israeli military official says that if Iran’s stockpile of more than 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% is not removed from the Islamic Republic, the entire latest war will be considered “one big failure.” Israeli officials have said that this stockpile is sufficient for 11 nuclear bombs.

And the Times of Israel underscores further, “The senior officer says that if, as part of negotiations between the United States and Iran, no agreement is reached to remove the uranium stockpile and halt enrichment in the country, the achievements in the 40 days of fighting will have been for nothing.” So this means that “If the nuclear objective is not achieved, then everything we did in Iran will be one big failure. The evil Iranian regime can pounce on the nuclear program,” the official emphasized. And then the threat…

The officer adds that “if the uranium is removed from Iran through diplomatic means, we have done our part.” However, if that does not happen, Israel would need to launch another operation in Iran to achieve the objective, they say. Already Israel has demonstrated its immense influence over the decision to go to war in the first place.

Read more …

Susan Collins (R-Maine) votes with Adam Schiff. Dump her!

• Trump’s ‘Assurances’ To Americans as GOP Members Start to Scramble (ZH)

The Iran war and Hormuz closure remains a game of geopolitical chicken, where each side believes it can inflict more pain on the other while being the one to outlast. But Iran, while being subject to a years long sanctions regimen and recent large-scale US-Israeli bombing campaign, does not operation on 4-year and 2-year election cycles. With next fall’s midterms staring Congressional Republicans in the face, there this increasingly uncomfortable trend: The average price of one gallon (3.8 litres) of gasoline in the United States has reached $4.30, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), up from less than $3 before the February 28 start of the US-Israel war on Iran.


President Trump addressed this in fielding questions in the Oval Office on Thursday,telling reporters that gas prices would “drop like a rock” as soon as the Iran war ended. “The [price of] gasoline and the oil will go down rapidly once the war’s over,” he stated confidently – “like a rock,” he added.

However, the war is about to hit 60-days on Friday and America’s overall strategy and timeline remains anything but clear. Instead, Trump is insisting the Iranians have “nothing” in terms of a military, and yet the crisis in global energy remains, and Operation Epic Fury is still on, the extended uneasy ceasefire notwithstanding…

Meanwhile, an interesting argument (below) from Hegseth this week, as Congress is supposed to vote on a formal war authorization once any foreign conflict hits the 60-day mark, per US law. And the first Republican Senator has ‘switched’ and broken ranks with GOP leaders on Trump’s Iran war and Congressional authorization: Centrist Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Thursday broke ranks with Republican leaders and most GOP colleagues by voting for a war powers resolution sponsored by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to halt military actions against Iran, the first Republican senator to change her position on curtailing President Trump’s military authority.

Rand was over there getting lonely defending the Constitution, but the longer the Iran conflict persists – and Americans feel it at the pump – the more Republican members will likely peel off: Collins joined Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in voting to advance a resolution to withdraw U.S. military forces from the conflict with Iran unless Congress votes to authorize the use of force. She and Paul voted with most Democrats for a motion to discharge the resolution from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but it still failed by a vote of 47 to 50. It marked the sixth time that Senate Republicans have defeated a resolution under the 1973 War Powers Act to halt further military operations against Iran.

Amid chatter that Israel could be preparing for renewed attacks on Iran, and as Trump is said to be mulling more limited strikes – but while at the same time the USS Gerald R Ford is returning to the United States after a record deployment – Iran is signaling it is ready for a long war and can endure the US naval blockade for a long time to come. However, there are also unconfirmed reports out of Pakistan that another draft peace proposal could be presented by Tehran as soon as this weekend. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has newly said Thursday the blockade is effectively an “extension of military operations” by Washington, despite the extended ceasefire declared by Trump.

Also on Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled that the US administration gameplan seems to be to drive Iran into economic ruin, in hopes of triggering some kind of uprising toward regime change. But this was the exact same ‘prediction’ and gameplan in the opening days of the war – which never materialized. One the one hand his below message on X seems to gloat over imposing widescale misery over the bombed-out country, while on the other claiming to help and support the Iranian people, saying they “deserve a new era”.

As we reported earlier, Iran’s currency on Wednesday collapsed to a record low, plunging to 1.8 million rial per dollar amid the prolonged US-Israel war and uneasy ceasefire, also as surging global energy prices hit the economy. The rial began sliding sharply two days prior to this after weeks of artificial stability. In the early phase of the war that kicked off on February 28, the currency held steady due to a near-total halt in imports and limited market activity.

“We think the price was worth it” vibes…

Read more …

The hardship will be dumped upon the people. Don’t let’s forget they killed some 40.000 of their own people even before the US got involved.

• Iran’s Brutal Test Of Endurance (ZH)

Iran’s economy is undergoing one of the most brutal stress tests in its modern history. Official annual inflation has surged to 50% according to central bank figures released shortly after the ceasefire, while the year-on-year rate reached as high as 67% through mid-April, according to the Wall Street Journal. The rial has crashed to a record low of 1.8 million to the dollar, roughly two million workers have lost their jobs, and the US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz continues to throttle the country’s oil exports and critical imports.


Reconstruction costs from bombed infrastructure are estimated near $270 billion – alarmingly close to the country’s entire annual GDP of roughly $341 billion last year. What was already a sanctions-battered, mismanaged economy now confronts a grinding “no war, no peace” stalemate. Tehran is wagering that it can hunker down and endure a protracted war – allowing it to outlast American pressure. The early data and on-the-ground reality suggest that wager is being tested to its limits.

The human impact is immediate and visible in everyday Tehran life. A 56-year-old housewife described to Najmeh Bozorgmehr of the Financial Times how a simple block of cheese rose from 5.2 million rials to 6.7 million rials (about $5.09) in a single week. Comparable jumps have struck rice, eggs, chicken, red meat, and other staples. A popular Peugeot 207 has climbed from 18 billion rials to 25 billion since the conflict began, while officials are preparing to authorize a 40 percent increase in government-mandated cement prices.

The cost of living has soared, with the annual inflation rate reaching 67% in the month through mid-April from the same period a year earlier, according to Iran’s central bank. The subsidized price of red meat, which was mostly imported through sea routes, has gone up to the equivalent of around $3.60 a pound, beyond the reach of most in a country where the minimum wage is around $130 a month. -WSJ

Business consultant Siamak Ghassemi publicly advised Iranians that anything short of a near-doubling of wages would fail to offset the cost-of-living explosion. One small petrochemical-dependent factory outside the capital has already dismissed nearly a third of its workforce. A clothing business owner reported recent costs running 150 percent above sales, bluntly concluding, “This is not sustainable.”

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“Pam Bondi’s era —which paved the way by restructuring the DOJ and navigating the Epstein disclosures— is over. We’re in the Blanche era now.”—Jeff Childers

Indict-O-Rama rolls lightly off the tomgue. Indictment-O-Rama sounds constructed.

• Indictment-O-Rama (James Howard Kunstler)

You might be pleased to know that today’s May Day street actions — rallies, marches, teach-ins, walkouts, demonstrations, and a broad economic blackout (”No Work, No School, No Shopping”) — planned and coordinated by hundreds of activist orgs, is styling itself as “Workers Over Billionaires.”


How do they figure that, exactly, considering the Lefty-left Resistance movement is entirely funded by. . . billionaires? You know. . . George and Alex Soros (the Open Society Foundations), Neville Roy Singham (the People’s Forum, Code Pink), Hansjörg Wyss (the Wyss Foundation), Reid Hoffman (Forward Majority Action, Crowdpac), Sir Chris Hohn (the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation), Alan Parker (Arabella Advisors, Environmental Law Institute) . . . .

Some 3,000-plus actions are planned today in cities all over the country. Last week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries framed the Lefty-left’s strategy as “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.” Will the party’s foot soldiers do his bidding and get frisky out on the streets today. . . a little lootin’ perhaps. . . a fire here and there? Is May Day, as promised by its sponsors, the gateway into another Summer of Love (mostly peaceful riots)?

We’ll have an idea by day’s end. Meanwhile, the Lefty-left’s business-class lounge, the Democratic Party, has suddenly caught a case of the jim-jams over this week’s 6-3 SCOTUS ruling on the racial gerrymandering of Congressional districts, which is: no more snake-shaped districts through the bayous, cotton fields, pine Islands, palmetto scrubs, and Cypress hammocks of deepest Dixieland for the purpose of creating majority-black seats. Observers forecast the loss of up to nineteen Democratic House members going into the 2028 election. It’s not clear how the Party’s billionaires might be able to fix this.

Also, this week, interesting developments in the Lefty-left’s retirement clubhouse. The law (the DOJ’s Eastern District of North Carolina) finally caught up with Jim Comey’s prank of one year ago when he posted on Instagram a curious arrangement of seashells on a Carolina beach saying “86 47.” The cryptic message — “cool shell formation,” Mr. Comey said in the caption — was universally understood to mean get rid of the forty-seventh POTUS, Donald Trump. Because the former FBI Director was well-versed in mob lingo from prosecuting gangsters, it appears he knew exactly what the code stands for: the instruction to go whack somebody. Hence, the question: was Mr. Comey issuing such an instruction to the Lefty-left rank and file?

Mr. Comey suddenly finds himself in a sort of brand-new crossfire hurricane. Turns out, an investigation (said to be at the “pre grand jury stage”) was launched lately in the DOJ’s Eastern District of Virginia concerning Mr. Comey’s use of a “cut-out” messenger, Columbia U professor and BFF Daniel Richman, for leaking a confidential conversation with President Trump to reporter Michael Schmidt of The New York Times back in 2017. This was Mr. Comey’s notorious disclosure in a Trump Tower consultation with the new president that a video existed of Russian whores peeing on a bed in the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel for Mr. Trump’s amusement. It was, of course, a kick-off for the FBI’s totally fake RussiaGate campaign.

It’s also widely expected that the former FBI Director will be one of the many former officials fingered in the DOJ’s RICO case out of the Southern District of Florida. The grand jury is already seated and hearing the evidence in a Fort Pierce federal courthouse. That case is predicated on the chain of legal attacks against Mr. Trump, running back a decade, amounting to an ongoing coup, a comprehensive campaign of legalistic chicanery disguised as legality designed to overthrow the chief executive.

Observers have started trying to pre-bunk the seashell case, saying there are six ways to Sunday that Mr. Comey can explain it away. Don’t be so sure about that. Mainly, what the DOJ has to demonstrate is Mr. Comey’s mens rea (Latin for “guilty mind”), a fundamental concept in criminal law that refers to the mental state or intention a person must have when committing a nefarious act, in order to be held criminally liable. Expect to see bales of written evidence on that.

The beauty of the seashell case is this: It’s quite straightforward and uncomplicated. There might be little room for Mr. Comey’s lawyers to create procedural delays, such as dragging out discovery issues. Which means that in this case Mr. Comey will get exactly the speedy trial that the US Constitution calls for. . . meaning, the courtroom showdown could take place before the midterm election.

Read more …

It’s all one big anti-Trump soup.

• The Comey Memos and the Appointment of Robert Mueller (CTH)

I apologize for the deep weed details, but this stuff will soon become critical. If James Comey is indicted for leaking the “Comey memos” suddenly the door opens wide to see how the Robert Mueller appointment was a coordinated ongoing ‘conspiracy’ effort to target Donald Trump. Back in June 2017 CNN (and other media) filed a FOIA suit to gain the Comey memos. As the lawsuit progressed through a lengthy battle -where the Mueller team did not want to turn over those memos- Mueller’s lead FBI agent, David Archey, made sworn declarations to the court. Those statements became known as the “Archey Declarations”. Inside those declarations agent Archey provided a specific outline of the FBI and the memos.


There are two sets of documents that outline a very specific picture. Robert Mueller’s lead FBI Agent David Archey made sworn declarations to the court. However, at the time of his sworn statement, Archey did not have knowledge of an inside FBI “whistleblower” who provided information to DOJ Inspector General, Michael Horowitz. There is a distinct conflict within the IG Horowitz report on James Comey (and memos) [Available Here] and the David Archey declarations. However, beyond the conflict there’s an even more alarming picture of how Robert Mueller was deployed, when all the information is overlaid in a timeline. A very clear picture emerges; very clear.

Note the date: Agent Archey states the “investigative team” came into full possession of the Comey memos: “on or by May 12th, 2017,”…

The “investigative team” would be Andrew McCabe, Bill Priestap, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and then James Baker as lead counsel for the group. The “Director’s staff” would be James Rybicki, who is identified by Archey as having “maintained” possession of the memos. This “small group”, particularly Comey’s Chief of Staff, James Rybicki, is the center of the team. This team is also confirmed by the IG Horowitz report. This team had the memos on May 12th, 2017.

Now we move into the aspect where the motives and ideology become clear as we look at the IG custodial record of the memos, as outlined by the Supervisory Special Agent in charge of Comey’s documents within the IG report, compared to the Archey declarations.The FBI Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) in charge of Comey’s document retrieval is the “whistleblower” who eventually went to the IG. I’ll explain why and how below; and to make understanding easier we shall use “SSA Whistleblower” to describe him.On May 10th, the Comey memos were not in Comey’s office [per IG report]. At the time of the search and review of Comey’s office there were no hard copies found by SSA Whistleblower.

Read more …

We should have 100 of these cases. So people can read every day what a piece of crap he is.

• Another DOJ Investigative Case Against James Comey Happening in Virgina (CTH)

In the first case against James Comey for allegedly lying to Congress, there was no dismissal; instead, the judge rejected US Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s involvement. After that, the statute of limitations ran out. However, if the report below is accurate, this would represent the third currently active investigation against former FBI Director James Comey, and Lindsey Halligan might get the last laugh.


The first investigative notice to Comey was in mid-March from the Sunshine State. Essentially the ‘conspiracy case’ being reviewed by Jason A. Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida The second investigative case was in North Carolina, where a grand jury released an indictment for threats against President Trump. Now, Bloomberg is reporting on a third investigation against Comey for leaking classified documents to his friend and special government employee, Daniel Richman.

BLOOMBERG – […] The investigation is tied to his dissemination of documents to Columbia University Law Professor Daniel Richman, the individuals added. If successful, it would be the Trump DOJ’s third time indicting Comey since last fall. […] It hasn’t been decided if the department will present an indictment to a grand jury in Eastern Virginia, where Comey resides, or if the case could be pursued in a different location—such as in Richman’s home of New York. It doesn’t really matter whether New York or the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA), either location would be the third state where the disgraced former FBI Director Comey would have to defend himself. Again, I remind everyone of ‘pressure points’ in Lawfare.

If the EDVA/NY case proceeds it is based around James Comey leaking his memos to his friend Daniel Richman. In addition to being a close personal friend to James Comey, Daniel Richman is part of the Lawfare network and close friends with Benjamin Wittes, another member of Comey’s tribe. The evidence of this leaking operation is solid, very solid. The only defense James Comey holds in this matter is to claim his memos were not ‘classified’ material.

In fact, several months ago I was told the reason Comey was not yet indicted was due to an internal debate within the DOJ as to the classification status of the Comey memos. To wit I replied, “there is a profound irony in this question the DOJ is asking itself.” You see, in the Mar-a-Lago documents case Jack Smith appealed the ‘classification’ ruling by Judge Aileen Cannon when she appointed a “Special Master” to review the documents and determine the classification status.

The DOJ/FBI Special Counsel, previously said to the Florida court they would not reveal the content of the Mar-a-Lago document information because it was “classified” under “national security” grounds. You might remember President Trump’s legal position was to make the content public because Trump said there was no classified material.To reconcile the issue, during discovery phase Florida Judge Cannon appointed a Special Master to review the “classified” documents. The FBI and Jack Smith balked at the demand and filed an appeal with the 11th Circuit to keep the Trump defense from reviewing what Jack Smith said were “documents marked classified.”

Smith didn’t want the documents made public or revealed to President Trump, so the DOJ/FBI position was that the documents were too sensitive (TSCI) with “national security” implications. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the “classification status” of the Mar-a-Lago documents was whatever the national security apparatus of the federal government (DOJ, FBI and Intelligence Community) said it was. The judicial branch could not interfere in the classification status applied by the executive branch.

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“.. the line between speech and crime is – it should be clear, but it’s fuzzy.”

• James Comey Knew EXACTLY What ‘86 47’ Meant (Robert Spencer)

James Comey, former FBI director, former deputy attorney general, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, is a friend of presidents and kings, an admired figure who presents himself as a voice of reason and morality, and a pillar of the Washington establishment — or, as the Mafia would put it, a made guy. Surely he would never do something so lawless and undemocratic as threaten the president of the United States, would he?


That’s what Comey contends in response to charges that he was issuing a veiled threat to the president when he posted on his Instagram account a photo of seashells arranged to say “86 47.” “86” is a well-known expression for getting rid of someone, and whether or not Comey meant that Trump should be gotten rid of by assassination, it was an extraordinarily irresponsible statement for him to make at a time when leftist calls for violence against Trump and his supporters are distressingly common.

Those calls have now resulted in three assassination attempts against Trump, and no one knows how many more there will be, but in this climate, only a fool would say that the president will finish out his term without any more attempts to kill him. Comey took the photo down on the same day that he posted it, and explained: “I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind, so I took the post down.”

However, the idea that the former director of the FBI actually “didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence” strains credulity well beyond the breaking point. That is clear from a potboiler crime novel, FDR Drive, that Comey wrote, or that was more likely ghostwritten for him.

In an unwittingly revealing May 2025 interview with NPR to plug the book, Comey explained that his novel was “about a right-wing podcaster who is trying to motivate his followers to engage in acts of violence against the targets of his vitriol. And it’s about my protagonist, Nora Carleton, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, trying to figure out, how do we stop the violence? And is there a way to hold this podcaster criminally accountable for what he clearly knows he’s doing? And that’s the trick because the line between speech and crime is – it should be clear, but it’s fuzzy.”

All right. So here’s the intrepid FBI director explaining that he wrote a book about a “right-wing podcaster” (after all, who else do leftists think is evil these days?) who “is trying to motivate his followers to engage in acts of violence against the targets of his vitriol,” but he is apparently doing so in a veiled manner, because Comey adds that “he clearly knows” what he’s doing. Comey’s novel, he says, is all about “the line between speech and crime.”

And then Comey would have us believe that he posted a photo on his Instagram account that many of his followers would understand as a call to engage in an act of violence against the target of his vitriol, but that poor, naïve Comey himself didn’t know what he was doing? Sell me a bridge while you’re at it, why doncha?

This becomes all the clearer when the NPR interviewer asks Comey about the “line between free speech and violent incitement and domestic terrorism, ideologically motivated violence,” and Comey says he has had to “grapple with that very issue throughout my career.” Yet he expects us to believe that he didn’t pause to ponder even for a moment whether posting “86 47” might constitute violent incitement and domestic terrorism.

That’s what he’s insisting: “I took a picture and posted it ’cause I thought it was a clever political thing. Never occurred to me that someone would try to say it was associated with violence. I actually still don’t see that. But I took it down because I don’t want – I mean, this is my Instagram account, for God’s sakes. I don’t want anything on there to be associated with violence, even if I don’t get it.” And he didn’t think anyone else would get it, either: “Yeah, I’m not worried, ‘cause there’s no world in which this is an actual threat.”

Of course. So here is a guy who published a novel about veiled calls to violence, claiming that he didn’t know what he posted was a veiled call to violence, despite the fact that it’s common parlance. Sure, Comey. I’ll bet you would still insist you were acting in good faith regarding the Russia hoax, too.

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“The video also includes footage from the day before the attack. Allen can be seen walking the same corridor where the shooting would later occur ..”

• New Footage of Trump Assassination Attempt Released (Matt Margolis)

The friendly fire theory just got buried — on video. For days, questions swirled about whether a Secret Service agent wounded at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner had actually been hit by fellow agents in the chaos. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro put that narrative to rest Thursday night. Pirro released new, high-quality security video from the Washington Hilton Hotel showing 31-year-old Cole Allen charging through a Secret Service checkpoint during the April 25 dinner, where President Trump was scheduled to speak. The footage, she noted, had already been submitted to U.S. District Court.


“Today, we are releasing video already provided to U.S. District Court showing Cole Allen shoot a U.S. Secret Service officer during his attempt to assassinate the President at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” Pirro said in her X post. “There is no evidence the shooting was the result of friendly fire.”

The new video is a significant upgrade from the grainy footage that circulated in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. When slowed to 35% speed, it captures something the earlier clips couldn’t clearly show — Allen, armed with a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, opening fire at close range on a Secret Service agent as he blows past the magnetometer. Multiple agents return fire almost simultaneously. The wounded agent took buckshot to the chest but was protected by his bulletproof vest.

The video also includes footage from the day before the attack. Allen can be seen walking the same corridor where the shooting would later occur, stopping in the hotel gym to chat with an attendant, and studying the layout. Prosecutors say this is part of a weeks-long pattern of deliberate planning — Allen allegedly researched the event, booked his hotel room nearly a month out, tracked Trump’s schedule in real time on the day of the attack, and even watched a live broadcast of the president’s arrival moments before making his move.

NBC News has more: Investigators believe the man charged with the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump shot a Secret Service officer who was wearing a ballistic vest, according to three law enforcement officials familiar with the case. Investigators have determined that the Secret Service Uniformed Division officer was not struck by friendly fire from another member of law enforcement, the sources told NBC News on Wednesday. […]

The officer, who was taken to a hospital, was released over the weekend. Allen was charged with discharging a weapon but has not been formally accused of assaulting a federal officer. A law enforcement source said work continues analyzing Allen’s devices, including desktop and laptop computers from his California home, as well as his phone, a laptop and hard drives recovered from his guest room at the Washington Hilton hotel. While Allen already faces federal charges of attempted assassination, prosecutors have signaled that additional charges may follow as the investigation continues.

Read more …

Because it’s Trump’s Ballroom

• The Real Reason the Democrats Hate President Trump’s Ballroom (Tim O’Brien)

In the grand scheme of things, a White House ballroom seems to be too trivial a thing to create the level of controversy this one has. There are many reasons the Democrats are attacking the project, but there is only one reason that drives all the hate you’ve been seeing. Sure, the preservationists might say the new ballroom is not in keeping with the way the White House has been designed and carefully modified over the years. Others might take issue with its look, saying it’s too oversized and dwarfs the main building. The aesthetics don’t work for them. Still others say it’s about the money—that taxpayers don’t need to spend a single penny on a project that was never needed in the first place.


These are all fair opinions if held sincerely, but the Democrats are never sincere, so when they express these concerns, it’s all just noise to hide the real reason they despise the idea of President Donald Trump building a new ballroom at the White House. They hate the ballroom because Trump is building it, and once it’s complete, it will be a lasting legacy of the 45th and 47th president, even if he never steps foot in it as president. It’s the Trump ballroom, and it will always be known as just that.That is why the Washington Post, the newspaper that brought you the Watergate investigation, is devoting as much ink and resources to a ballroom story as it did to make “Woodward and Bernstein” household names.

That Washington Post pull quote is pure propaganda. Sure, no one likes waiting in line, but they still have to do that no matter the size of the room. And no one likes going to a White House state dinner and then being crammed in so tight that they feel like they’re sitting in coach in a Spirit Airlines seat, either. Suppose a Democrat takes the presidency two, six or 10 years from now. They can try to erase Trump’s name from the project. They can rename it the Michelle Obama Dance Room and Aerobics Studio, the Lenin Grand Hall, or the Mamdani Mosque. It won’t matter. Everyone will still know it as the Trump ballroom, because it was Trump’s idea and he built it.

And that’s what bothers the Democrats most. Trump gets the last word and the last laugh. Trump has made many good arguments for building the ballroom. It’s embarrassing to be the world’s foremost superpower and be forced to erect tents on the White House lawn to hold events. As Trump noted immediately after the latest attempt on his life, a White House ballroom would provide necessary security for many events the president hosts or attends, which, for current logistical reasons, must take place off-site. By the way, the photo of Princess Diana and John Travolta below was taken in the White House East Wing entranceway, and it could only accommodate 150 people standing.

One of the funny things about the Democrat campaign against the ballroom in the wake of the latest assassination attempt on Trump is that many leftists are pointing out that the Washington Hilton, which hosted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, has the capacity for over 2,600 attendees, while the planned White House ballroom is designed to hold 650–1,000, and so they say the new ballroom is too small.

At the same time, they say the new ballroom is too big and will overpower the main house.

So, which is it: too small or too big? This is how you know how unserious the Democrats are when it comes to the ballroom. They mean nothing of what they say. All they know is that if Trump is doing it, they’re against it. And they’re willing to go to the wall to defeat it. But the truth is, Trump is several steps ahead of them. The project is well underway. The East Wing is demolished. The project must be finished now, no matter how much negativity the left tries to attach to it. F

rom a public relations and a political standpoint, that’s really all the left is trying to do. It’s the same thing they have been doing to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the same as what they did during those “summer of love” riots back in 2020. They start the chaos. Their billionaire funders pay for the chaos and orchestrate it, and they blame Trump for making them do it. If you want the chaos to stop, you have to get rid of Trump. It’s classic Democrat blackmail.

Since they can’t stop construction of the new ballroom in the end, they want to make enough of a mess of it so they can say that Trump made the mess. Then their narrative will be that they had to clean up after him.mIronically, the more they fight Trump on this, the more closely the ballroom will be associated with his name for decades or longer. Since the ballroom will be a very nice feature, that will only help Trump in a legacy sense. In the end, there will be a big, beautiful White House ballroom one day soon enough. It will be known as the Trump ballroom. And there’s nothing they can do about it.

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“President Trump is on the right side of history. He knows it. We know it. Now they just have to keep him safe. ”

• Remember That Half the Country Once Hated Lincoln (Stephen Kruiser)

Oh, the emotions in the United States of America here in the Year of Our Lord 2026! There’s despair. There’s anger. There’s…well, there’s mostly anger. Heck, I tend to be dead inside and the partisan political acrimony has even been getting to me. In a recent VIP column, I wrote that I was taking a brief break from my workday habit of perusing the Opinion sections of The New York Times and The Washington Post because I’m starting to worry about that kind of crazy being contagious.


That followed a week or two of me venting in various ways about the state of things in American politics. Then I remembered something very important: I’m rather enjoying President Trump’s second term. Seeing the Democrats rend their garments over everything that he does isn’t something I should let get me frustrated. It’s kind of a schadenfreude-filled bonus.

As I began to return to my typical Zen-like state, I decided it would be fun to trigger the lefties by writing a column that not only likened President Trump to President Abraham Lincoln, but likened today’s Democrats to the seditious secessionists (say that three times fast) of the Civil War era. I know I’m not the first conservative pundit to do this. Honestly, I’m surprised at how long it took me to get around to it. I have a lot of lefty trolls and a kajillion prog followers on X; I really should be thinking of triggering them more often.

Even though the circumstances are obviously different, finding parallels between what’s happening now and the America of the 1860s isn’t difficult for conservatives, mostly because we’ve all read history books. I am in no way saying that things are as severe right now — families aren’t killing each other from opposite sides of a war. I just can’t help but think that there are some similarities between the political climate then and now.

Today’s Democrats may not want to secede from the Union in the way that the South did back in the day. They’re far more insidious. The progressive dream that drives modern Dems involves the absolute shredding of any parts of the Constitution that pertain to real liberty. Free speech as we know it will be gone. Gun rights will be gone. Due process? See ya. Goodbye Electoral College, hello every president being elected by California, New York, and Illinois. The execrable 16th Amendment will, of course, be safe.

As I have written many times, they will still be calling it the United States of America, but it won’t resemble the country that we love. True, it’s not secession, but they’re still trying to break up the country in a different way. Now considered the greatest president in American history, Abraham Lincoln was unpopular with a lot of people when he was in office. See if this sounds familiar: during the presidential election of 1864, Lincoln faced intra-party opposition from Republicans who were dissatisfied with his handling of the war. The GOP has had its whiny turncoat problem since its earliest days.

While the Southerners pretended they had a new country, they were all still Americans in the eyes of Lincoln and the Unionists. Because they were. A note for the pedants out there: I know that the Southern states didn’t really make up half the population. I’m an opinion writer, not a journalist, and I sometimes take creative license to make a headline fit. Whatever the exact number, quite a lot of people had Lincoln Derangement Syndrome. You all get the sentiment, though.

When we are talking about support for a president, we’re never really considering the entire population anyway, just the electorate. Right now, a good chunk of that electorate really, really, loathes President Trump. The amazing thing about this second term is that he is not getting distracted by that at all. That’s one of the reasons that the Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers are getting more unhinged by the minute. They’re still spitting nails because they couldn’t put him in jail in 2023 or 2024.

President Trump shares an important quality with President Lincoln: resolve. We can throw vision in there for good measure as well. Both are essential for a leader in troubled times. We may not be at war with each other like we were in the 1860s, but these are most definitely troubled times. Once again, the trouble is coming from the people who are trying to destroy the Republic and are consumed with hatred for the president who is fighting to preserve it. President Trump is on the right side of history. He knows it. We know it. Now they just have to keep him safe.

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Does anyone still wonder why?

• House Ends 76-Day Shutdown (Sarah Anderson)

It only took 76 days.


On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives unanimously approved a Senate-passed bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which will soon end the shutdown that began on February 14 — the longest partial government shutdown in the history of the country. All it needs now is for Donald Trump to sign it into law.

The chamber approved the bill via voice vote and with “little fanfare,” according to CBS. It’s important to note that it does not fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). However, Republicans advanced a separate budget reconciliation package that will provide those agencies with funding for the next three years using only GOP votes. The shutdown only impacted DHS, including critical agencies like the TSA, Coast Guard (civilians), FEMA, Secret Service, USCIS, CISA, ICE, CBP, and more, leaving many of them struggling to pay employees.

Tens of thousands were furloughed, and many worked with delayed pay. Others quit. The shutdown led to long security lines at airports, as well as unpaid bills, delayed contracts, and cyber planning gaps, according to the White House. Shortly before the vote, we learned that active-duty Coast Guard members were using flashlights to see because they couldn’t pay their electric bills. Some were going into debt because they were not receiving payments for their reassignment moves. They were putting money on credit cards and taking out loans. We also had to cancel numerous national security exercises.

The shutdown was triggered by the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by Border Patrol agents in Minnesota earlier this year. Democrats in Congress refused to fund DHS until Republicans agreed to new oversight rules and restrictions on border agents. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson calls it a win for Republicans.

“We got the budget resolution passed. This is very, very important because that will ensure that border security and immigration enforcement will continue today and well into the future, despite Democrat attempts to re-open our borders and protect criminal illegal aliens from removal. The net result of passing our reconciliation bill is that ICE and CBP are funded for three years, and Democrats got absolutely nothing for their political charade and shenanigans out of that.”

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Let ’em try.

• Hakeem Jeffries Denounces the Supreme Court as “Illegitimate” (Turley)

The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais took 36 pages to explain why Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is about combating intentional racial discrimination, not allowing racial gerrymandering. However, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrapped it up in one word: “illegitimate.” Jeffries was not speaking of the case, but the Court. The man who would become the next Speaker of the House if Democrats retake power in November has joined other radicals in denying the legitimacy of the nation’s highest court.


Just for the record, the Supreme Court did not strike down Section 2, but said that neither the law nor the Constitution allows legislators to manipulate district lines to guarantee that candidates of a particular race will be elected. It was written not to give any race an advantage, but to prevent a state from creating a disadvantage to voters based on their race. The Act prevents any State from intentionally drawing districts “to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.” This is a matter upon which people of good faith can disagree. Many of the justices have been long opposed to racial criteria in areas ranging from college admissions to voting districts.

Chief Justice John Roberts stated it bluntly in 2006 that “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” Like others, Roberts abhors racial discrimination but declared in another case that “way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”You will find no such distinctions in much of the press where experts declared the death of equal voting laws in America. UCLA Law Professor Richard Hasen dispenses with any nuance and simply ran a Slate column titled “The Slaying of the Voting Rights Act by the Coward Alito.” For years, liberal law professors have been trashing conservative justices, including Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who called them “partisan hacks.”

However, the name-calling has mutated into a movement to scrap the Court or the Constitution, or both. Chemerinsky wrote a book recently titled “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.” There was, of course, no such movement during the decades with a liberal majority that set aside an array of long-standing cases. It was only when a stable conservative majority emerged that law professors declared the Court illegitimate or dangerous, with many calling for packing the Court with an instant liberal majority once Democrats retake power. I discuss some of these voices as the “new Jacobins” in my book Rage and the Republic, figures echoing the radical concepts or means used in France before what became known as “The Terror.”

Law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale have called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.” Last December, they published a column titled “It’s Time to Accept that the US Supreme Court is Illegitimate and Must be Replaced.” They insist that citizens must be rid of this meddlesome court: “remaking institutions like the US supreme court so that Americans don’t have to suffer future decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule that makes a parody of the democracy they were promised.”

Many Democrats realize that the public is rather attached to both the Constitution and its core institutions. That is why various Democratic politicians and pundits have been pledging to pack the Court once they are back in power. Some have suggested that, if they are going to change the political system and retain power, they will have to do it with the help of a compliant Court.

Democratic strategist James Carville stated matter-of-factly, “They’re going to recommend that the number of Supreme Court justices go from nine to 13. That’s going to happen, people.” He added recently, “Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.” To do that, you must first delegitimate the Court. You must attack both the individual justices and the institution itself. You need true rage to get a people to tear apart the core institution of a Republic on its 250th anniversary. Now you have the next possible Speaker of the United States declaring the Supreme Court illegitimate because he disagrees with its interpretation of the law.

What these figures do not mention is that the majority of opinions by the Supreme Court are unanimous or nearly unanimous. A comparably few cases break along strict ideological 6-3 lines. Indeed, just last week, it was President Donald Trump who was denouncing the conservative justices as disloyal and weak for, again, ruling against his Administration. It is not the voting record nor the underlying interpretations that are motivating this campaign of delegitimation. It is power. Former Attorney General Eric Holder explained it most clearly recently in pushing the packing plan after the Democrats retake power: “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power, if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”

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Debt Rattle May 16 2025

May 162025
 
 May 16, 2025  Posted by at 9:23 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Marc Chagall The soldier drinks 1912

 

• ‘Nothing’s Gonna Happen Until Putin And I Get Together’ (JTN)
• Putin-Trump Meeting ‘Imminent’ – White House Official (RT)
• Trump Team Has ‘Made The Impossible Possible’ – Putin Envoy (RT)
• Istanbul 2.0: Know When To Hold ‘Em, Know When To Fold ‘Em (Proud)
• Russia’s Top Negotiator Unveils Goal of Talks With Ukraine (RT)
• Ukraine Won’t Survive A Decade Of Conflict – Zelensky (RT)
• UK Sending Security Adviser To Work With Zelensky – Guardian (RT)
• Talk of Direct US-Russia Clash Contradicts Trump’s Policy –Scott Ritter (Sp.)
• Trump Tells Apple Not To Build In India (RT)
• Trump Touts 1.4 Trillion Investment In AI, Tech From UAE (ZH)
• Justice Thomas Destroys the Case for Nationwide Injunctions (Margolis)
• Biden’s Autopen Pardons May Just Get Invalidated (Margolis)
• DOJ Pardon Attorney Ed Martin To Review Biden’s Outgoing Pardons (JTN)
• DOGE Still Hard at Work Cutting Fraud and Waste (Salgado)
• Trump Admin Urges SCOTUS to Permit DOGE Access to Social Security Records (ET)
• The US Has Pushed The ICAO To Declare War On Russia (Helmer)
• “86 47” – Comey Posts-Then-Deletes Creepy Threat Aimed At Trump (ZH)

 

 

 

 

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US and Russia haven’t talked in 3 years. it takes a lot of groundwork talks first now to catch up, weeks, months of talking. That’s not what presidents do, they’re too busy. That said, the two should certainly meet asap. But Ukraine is just a side topic for that. And all the complaining about Putin not showing up for talks he initiated is empty blabber.

 

 

“And obviously, he wasn’t gonna go — he was gonna go, but he thought I was gonna go. He wasn’t going if I wasn’t there. And I don’t believe anything’s gonna happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together..”

“Why would he go if I’m not going?” “I wasn’t planning to go and I didn’t think he would if I didn’t.”

• ‘Nothing’s Gonna Happen Until Putin And I Get Together’ (JTN)

President Trump said Thursday regarding the Ukraine-Russia talks in Turkey that “nothing’s gonna happen until Putin and I get together.” The president made the comments as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Turkey for peace talks with Russia on Thursday regarding the ongoing war between the two countries, but Russian President Vladimir Putin chose not to attend and sent a lower-level delegation, Politico reported. “Look, nothing’s gonna happen until Putin and I get together, okay?” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One while heading to the United Arab Emirates.

“And obviously, he wasn’t gonna go — he was gonna go, but he thought I was gonna go. He wasn’t going if I wasn’t there. And I don’t believe anything’s gonna happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together. But we’re gonna have to get it solved because too many people are dying.” Ukraine’s high-level delegation includes Zelensky, his top aide, and foreign and defense ministers in an effort to show Trump that Russia is the country against making peace. Ukraine was frustrated with the lower-level Russian delegation and doubted whether there would be any negotiations at all.

“The Russian chair in Turkey is de facto empty,” a Ukrainian diplomatic official told Politico on the condition of anonymity. “Because it makes little difference whether Mr. Nobody, sent by Putin, and his insignificant colleagues sit in their chairs or not. They are not the ones making decisions. And the person who does — Putin — is either afraid to come or does not take the U.S.-led peace effort seriously. “Still, we are considering sending someone at the appropriate level to at least hear what these people have to say and whether they are able to decide at least anything. If they are willing to have a serious conversion, we may engage in it. Otherwise, we will have the right to conclude that this is a Russian charade, not meaningful work for peace,” the official added.

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“Deals are all about timing. When the time is right, that’s when the president is in the room with Putin..”

Sebastian Gorka is always around. His curent job description is ‘senior director for counterterrorism’.

• Putin-Trump Meeting ‘Imminent’ – White House Official (RT)

US President Donald Trump will meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to help Russia and Ukraine finalize a peace agreement, a deputy assistant to Trump, Sebastian Gorka, has said. The meeting between the two leaders is “imminent” he told a security summit organized by Politico. “Deals are all about timing. When the time is right, that’s when the president is in the room with Putin,” he stated, while maintaining that the right moment is “imminent.” He did not elaborate and did not provide any further details about a possible meeting between Putin and Trump. Trump is currently on a tour through Middle East, and has mulled going to Türkiye on Friday “if something happened.”

Moscow’s and Kiev’s delegations were expected to hold discussions there after Putin suggested resuming the Istanbul talks which were broken off three years ago. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky responded to Putin’s call by declaring that he would personally fly to Türkiye and demanded that the Russian president do the same. The Kremlin answered by saying that the Russian president had no plan to travel to the country. Trump then said on Thursday that Putin had no reason to go, since the US leader himself had not committed to going.Moscow has said that its core agenda for the Istanbul talks remains unchanged from 2022, as it believes that a lasting peace can only be achieved by addressing the conflict’s root causes, including Ukraine’s desire to join NATO.

Zelensky initially insisted on Putin personally coming to the talks before deciding to send a delegation led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to Istanbul. According to TASS, the meeting between the two sides is now expected to start on Friday. The Trump administration has been actively pushing both sides to engage in peace negotiations since he took office in January. The US president has recently expressed frustration over the slow pace of the process and demanded both sides engage in direct talks.

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Kirill Dmitriev is Putin’s ‘investment envoy’. Russia’s Witkoff.

• Trump Team Has ‘Made The Impossible Possible’ – Putin Envoy (RT)

US President Donald Trump and his team have “made the impossible possible” by bringing Moscow and Kiev to the cusp of their first direct negotiations since 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, has said. Dmitriev complemented Washington’s mediation efforts ahead of much anticipated talks in Istanbul on Thursday. The meeting is set to happen “against all odds/fierce resistance,” he said on X, adding that if “not derailed last-minute, this could be a historic step to peace. ”Dmitriev specifically named US Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as major contributors to the mediation effort. Putin suggested Thursday as the day direct engagement between Russia and Ukraine could happen in a televised address last Sunday.

Moscow has indicated that negotiations could continue from where they left off in 2022, when Kiev pulled out and tried to score a victory on the battlefield with Western military assistance. The U-turn came after then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Kiev to discard a draft peace treaty, which had been pre-agreed in Istanbul.At the moment of writing, there was no certainty that a new round of negotiations would commence as expected. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, who is currently in the country to meet Turkish President Recep Erdogan, said the Ukrainian government had yet to make a final decision on how to proceed. Zelensky announced his intention to go to Türkiye in response to Putin’s proposal, claiming that the Russian leader must reciprocate to prove his seriousness.

Zelensky and leaders of European NATO nations supporting him have threatened to impose new sanctions on Russia unless Moscow agrees to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire – an idea that Russian officials have called a ruse to give Kiev time to regroup. The initial deadline on Monday has been postponed until the end of the week, pending the outcome of talks.While Moscow has stated that it will seek a path towards lasting peace in Istanbul, which it says will require addressing the root causes of the conflict, Kiev has been vague about its goals. Some media reports have suggested that the Ukrainian delegation will focus on the proposed ceasefire first. Previously, Kiev insisted that no direct talks could happen without a truce.

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Former UK envoy Ian Proud has, like so many, also lost his thread. It’s not easy.

• Istanbul 2.0: Know When To Hold ‘Em, Know When To Fold ‘Em (Proud)

The biggest achievement of today’s Istanbul talks is that they are even taking place. U.S. engagement will remain vital to getting a peace deal over the line. Russia’s desire for a reset with Washingtonmay keep them on track. I have a sense of déjà vu as I contemplate these long-overdue peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul. In April 2022, Ukraine and Russia were close to agreeing a peace treaty, less than two months after war started. However, this came crashing down amid claims that western governments, in particular the United States and the United Kingdom encouraged Ukraine to keep fighting. It’s worth recapping very briefly what was close to having been agreed. By far the best summary of negotiations between both sides was produced by the New York Times in June 2024. Those negotiations ranfor almost two months. The talks started with Ukrainian officials being spirited over the border into Belarus on February 29, 2022 while the fighting raged around Kyiv, and eventually led to the now famous talks in Istanbul in March and April.

What has changed since then? Ukraine will enter the Istanbul talks in a weaker position that it held in 2022. Western support for Ukraine financially and economically is not as sound as it was then. No big ticket economic aid and assistance has been made available since the G7 agreement of a $50 billion package of loans, in June 2024. While European states scratched together new economic aid to Ukraine in April, this cannot make up for the reduction in US support. In territorial terms, Russia withdrew from Kyiv as a concession to the first Istanbul talks and lost ground in Kharkiv and in Kherson in late 2022. However, Russia has gone on steadily to gain further territory in the Donbas since the end of 2023. So while both sides have scores on the board, Russia now maintains the military upper hand on the battlefield and that seems unlikely to change. These two factors in particular were behind President Trump’s February assertion that Ukraine has no cards to play.

What has stayed the same? NATO membership is still off the table. The verified documents shared by the New York Times last June confirmed that Ukraine’s neutrality and non-membership of NATO was the central issue agreed upon in 2022. Ukraine was ready to become a “permanently neutral state” that would never join NATO or allow foreign forces to be based on its soil.There seems no route for Ukraine to resile from that given its currently weakened negotiating position and President Trump’s stated view that NATO membership for Ukraine is not practical. Although Germany’s new foreign Minister, Johann Wadephul recently repeated the line that Ukraine’s path to NATO is irreversible, most have agreed, privately and publicly, that Ukraine’s path to NATO is a fraught if not impossible one. Right now, just having the talks is a huge breakthrough

The Istanbul talks would not be happening had the Trump administration not pushed for it so hard. We don’t need to rehash the “did they or didn’t they” debate around why Ukraine abandoned the Istanbul agreement in April 2022. What is clear, is that Ukraine became entrenched, not only in not negotiating with Russia, but in excluding Russia from all discussions on peace in Ukraine from then onward. Having agreed in principle for Ukraine to accept neutral status Zelensky was pushing his own ten point peace plan. This included, among other things, Russia withdrawing its troops to the pre-2014 border, i.e. giving up Crimea and the Donbass and creating a Euro-Atlantic Security Architecture, by which he meant Ukraine joining NATO. Peace summits were organized in various countries that explicitly excluded Russia, culminating in the Switzerland event on June 15, 2024.

At this event, President Zelensky was dug in deeper on resisting any engagement with Russia until a full withdrawal of its troops from Ukraine, which was a completely unrealistic proposal. “Russia can start negotiations with us even tomorrow without waiting for anything – if they leave our legal territories,” he said. Even after President Trump was elected, European leaders clung to the line that “only Ukraine can decide what peace means.”’ I see no circumstances in which a Kamala Harris presidency would have cajoled President Zelensky to enter into negotiations. Tomorrow’s talks wouldn’t be happening unless the Trump administration broke a whole load of Ukrainian and European eggshells to get to this point. The biggest issue now is territory.

Even though he was wrongly derided at the time by mainstream media, Steve Witkoff correctly pointed out in his March interview with Tucker Carlson that the territorial issues in Ukraine will be most intractable. Russia’s decision in October 2022 to formally annex the four oblasts of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk changed the calculus. However, Russia does not have full territorial control of any of those oblasts, which are cut through the middle by a hotly contested front line. Resolving the line of control when the war ends is, by some margin, the most problematic challenge. This will be a hugely sensitive topic, and European allies will shoot down any major concessions to Russia, as they did when the idea surfaced that the U.S. might de jure recognise Russia’s occupation of Crimea.

The most obvious settlement is a de facto recognition of occupation, a Cyprus-style scenario, that does not stand in the way of Ukraine’s future membership of the European Union. Even that will require detailed agreement on issues around demilitarization of the line of control and enforcing any ceasefire. Sanctions are probably tricky, but also tractable. As I have said before, there is enormous scope to a plan that allows for the immediate lifting of the bulk of zero-impact measures, phasing out the remainder at points agreed to by both sides. The toughest issue remains the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets, mostly held in Belgium. Russia has shown a willingness to concede this funding to support reconstruction in Ukraine, including those parts that Russia occupies.

But there is texture here. Freeing up those funds for reconstruction would immediately remove the source of interest payments that are meeting Ukraine’s obligations on its $50 billion in debt to the G7, agreed to in June 2024. But the more general policy question arises, how much of the freed up funding would be spent in Ukraine itself and how much in Russian-occupied Ukraine, where most of the war damage has occurred? The U.S. must keep the pressure on to ensure the talks stay on track. A U.S. presence in Istanbul will be vital, to prevent, in particular, Ukraine from bailing on the talks. That’s why sending Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg makes sense.

The former is trusted by the Russian side while the latter has built relationships in Ukraine. Their presence serves to keep the process moving forward until a deal can be pushed over the line and the fighting can stop. Bear in mind that the 2022 talks ran for a month and a half and the circumstances have materially changed as I have indicated above. While there has been speculation that President Trump might drop into Istanbul, I am not sure that this is necessary if President Putin doesn’t himself attend. Knowing the Russians, I assess that Putin will want his own “‘meeting moment” with the U.S. President on terms that the Russian side can better choreograph. Indeed, that may be a prize for Russia’s engagement in the process, given its desire for a more comprehensive reset of relations with the U.S.

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Lots of talk of Putin sending a lightweight crew, but he didn’t. He sent those, led by Medinsky, who were stiffed by Zelensky (+ Boris Johnson?) 3 years ago. They know the territory better than anyone.

• Russia’s Top Negotiator Unveils Goal of Talks With Ukraine (RT)

Moscow seeks to engage Ukraine in direct negotiations in Istanbul to secure a lasting peace, Russia’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, told journalists on Thursday. The current effort represents a revival of the peace process he took part in that Kiev broke off three years ago, he added. Both Russia and Ukraine have sent delegations to Türkiye following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer last week to resume direct talks aimed at resolving the conflict. Moscow’s team is prepared to work constructively towards viable solutions. “It possesses all necessary qualifications and authority to conduct negotiations,” the presidential aide said in Istanbul. The Russian delegation also includes Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, Deputy Defense Minister Aleksandr Fomin and the head of Russia’s military intelligence, Igor Kostyukov. They are joined by several senior military and civil officials, as well as diplomats.

Here is Vladimir Medinsky’s speech in full:

“Dear colleagues. Last night, as previously reported, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a special meeting to prepare our delegation for the upcoming negotiations in Istanbul. The meeting was attended by the leadership of the Russian Security Council, the Russian government, the Minister of Defense, the Chief of the General Staff, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, as well as the heads of state security, intelligence, and the commanders of all Russian armed forces groups participating in the military operation [against Kiev]. Members of the delegation present here also took part in the meeting.

Foreign policy and security matters were discussed, with additional reports presented on the state of the economy and the defense industry. The Minister of Defense, the Chief of the General Staff, and all commanders of Russian army groups involved in the military operation [against Kiev] reported on the situation in the combat zone. A detailed joint discussion followed. Based on the participants’ reports, the president issued instructions and outlined the negotiation position for the Russian delegation in Istanbul.

We view these talks as a continuation of the peace process in Istanbul, which was unfortunately interrupted by the Ukrainian side three years ago. Our official delegation has been approved by presidential order and possesses all necessary qualifications and authority to conduct negotiations. The delegation is adopting a constructive approach, focused on finding viable solutions and areas of common ground. The aim of direct negotiations with the Ukrainian side is ultimately to secure lasting peace by addressing the fundamental root causes of the conflict.

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“..Zakharova has also stressed that there was never any talk of Putin travelling to Türkiye for the talks and branded Zelensky a “clown” ..”

• Ukraine Won’t Survive A Decade Of Conflict – Zelensky (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky has said that although he does not know how long the conflict with Russia will last, his country would not be able to survive another ten years of fighting. Speaking to the French newspaper Liberation, the Ukrainian leader conveyed his insistence on a personal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Türkiye to discuss an exchange of all prisoners and establishing a ceasefire.On Sunday, Putin proposed restarting direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, which were unilaterally abandoned by Kiev in 2022. The president stated that Moscow would send a delegation to Istanbul to engage with the Ukrainian side, stressing that Russia is set on “serious negotiation” that would contribute to a “long-term sustainable peace” and address the root causes of the conflict.

Zelensky, who had previously ruled out any negotiations with Moscow, welcomed the proposed talks in Istanbul and has personally traveled to Türkiye to potentially take part in the meeting. Ahead of the talks, he admitted to Liberation that Ukrainians have been growing tired of the conflict and that talks on ending the fighting have given people some hope. Asked if he should instead be preparing his citizens for another ten years of war, Zelensky stressed that “Ukraine wouldn’t survive” another decade of conflict. “I look at the morale of the population, what people want. I look at our economy… It’s costly for everyone,” Zelensky said. “In fact, this war can’t last very long,” he predicted. At the same time, the Ukrainian leader has dismissed the delegation sent by Russia to the talks as “props,” insisting on personally meeting with Putin. Moscow has slammed Zelensky’s position, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov calling Zelensky a “pathetic person.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has also stressed that there was never any talk of Putin travelling to Türkiye for the talks and branded Zelensky a “clown” with no right to dismiss professionals in any field as “props.” Meanwhile, Medinsky, who is leading Moscow’s delegation in Istanbul, has stated that Russia is ready for dialogue with Ukraine and is prepared for “possible compromises” in reaching a peace deal. “We are in a working mood,” the presidential aide said. On Thursday, after meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Zelensky stated that he would have “nothing to do” at the talks without Putin’s participation and said that Ukraine’s delegation in Istanbul would instead be led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov. He added that Kiev is engaging in the negotiations “out of respect for [US President Donald] Trump and Erdogan.”

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“..Powell’s advice is expected to focus on making sure that Zelensky does not do “anything that alienates Trump”.

So his job is to stoke up the fire whenever Trump mentions peace.

• UK Sending Security Adviser To Work With Zelensky – Guardian (RT)

London is reportedly sending an adviser to Istanbul to give its recommendations to Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky ahead of talks with Russia, the Guardian reported on Wednesday. On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to restart direct negotiations with Kiev to find a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict. While Zelensky had previously ruled out talks with Moscow, he welcomed the proposal and agreed to personally travel to Türkiye to take part. Moscow has barred Western European leaders from participating in the negotiations, accusing them of a biased approach to the conflict and trying to prolong the fighting. Nevertheless, the UK is reportedly sending Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s security adviser, Jonathan Powell, to meet with Zelensky ahead of the talks to provide “background advice” on how he should handle the meeting.

The Guardian reported that Powell’s advice is expected to focus on making sure that Zelensky does not do “anything that alienates Trump” and equip him to persuade the US president that Putin is the “obstacle to peace.” The meeting is set to become the first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine since Kiev unilaterally aborted peace negotiations with Moscow in 2022 after being advised to do so by London. At the previous talks, shortly after the pre-approval of a draft treaty, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson personally traveled to Kiev and persuaded Zelensky to abandon peace efforts and continue fighting, according to the head of the Ukrainian delegation David Arakhamia.

Ahead of Friday’s discussions, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov has stated that they will have to take into account the points that were already worked out by both sides in 2022, plus the “real situation” on the ground that has developed since then. In his announcement of the talks, Putin stated that Russia is set on “serious negotiations” with Ukraine and is seeking a “long-term, sustainable peace” that would address the root causes of the conflict. He also suggested that Friday’s meeting could yield “a new ceasefire” that could pave the way for a comprehensive peace settlement, depending on the decisions of “the Ukrainian authorities and their supervisors.”

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True enough, but I haven’t heard such talk recently.

• Talk of Direct US-Russia Clash Contradicts Trump’s Policy –Scott Ritter (Sp.)

There are “several plausible pathways” for the Ukraine conflict to escalate into a direct US-Russia war, claimed Gen. Gregory Guillot, head of US Northern Command, who labeled Russia as one of the US’ “principal adversaries.” Is this a veiled threat – or just the Pentagon beating the drums of war again? This statement signals brewing tensions within the Pentagon, military analyst and former Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter tells Sputnik. However, it’s just a “speculative pronouncement,” not reflective of Trump-era defense policy, according to the pundit. Ritter was struck by the fact that: • Guillot is speculating on a conflict beyond his remit, which belongs to US strategic command. • His stance contradicts Trump’s, who acknowledged Russia’s special military operation was provoked by NATO expansion:

“We had Trump say that there was justification for Russia’s actions, that they understood that the expansion of NATO served as a provocation,” Ritter stresses. What else rings the alarm bells of the Pentagon’s warmongering? Guillot also claimed the US could be drawn into a “direct military conflict” with Iran, China, or North Korea. He went even so far as to claim that “war with one adversary could quickly expand into war with an enemy coalition.”

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“..Trump’s latest directive to Apple to cease manufacturing in India oversimplifies the complexities of global supply chains and risks unintended economic consequences..”

i.e. $3,000 iPhones.

• Trump Tells Apple Not To Build In India (RT)

US President Donald Trump has advised Apple CEO Tim Cook to avoid expanding the company’s manufacturing operations in India, according to reports. “I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump was cited as saying in Doha on Thursday by CNBC. “I said to him, ‘my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India.’ I don’t want you building in India.” The US president added, “I said to Tim, I said, ‘Tim look, we treated you really good, we put up with all the plants that you build in China for years, now you got build us. We’re not interested in you building in India, India can take care of themselves … we want you to build here.’” Trump claimed that as a result of his conversation with Cook, Apple would increase its production in the US, according to CNBC.

Apple has been expanding its operations in India, where it is ramping up its local production. Reuters reported in April that Apple planned to manufacture the majority of iPhones sold in the US in India by the end of 2026. Earlier this month, local media reported that Apple told India’s Ministry of Communications that it planned to move the assembly of all iPhones to the country from China. Industry watchers believe Trump’s latest directive to Apple to cease manufacturing in India oversimplifies the complexities of global supply chains and risks unintended economic consequences. Establishing iPhone manufacturing in the US, where Apple lacks existing facilities, would require significant time and investment, Sonam Chandwani, managing partner at KS Legal & Associates, told RT.

On Tuesday, India approached the World Trade Organization (WTO) with a proposal to impose retaliatory duties against the US over American tariffs on steel and aluminum.The move comes after the US imposed a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports in March, which was an extension of measures initially introduced in 2018 during Trump’s first term as president. New Delhi is currently putting the finishing touches to a bilateral trade deal with Washington. US Vice President J.D. Vance announced last month that the two countries have agreed on terms for bilateral trade negotiations, calling it a roadmap to a final deal.

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AI is the only game in town.

• Trump Touts 1.4 Trillion Investment In AI, Tech From UAE (ZH)

After the several massive announcements and deals to come out of Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, developments during the last leg of the US President’s Gulf tour in United Arab Emirates actually seem a bit humdrum by comparison. But the visuals and spare no expenses official welcome and ceremonial events have certainly been interesting…

Among the more notable statements has been Trump’s touting a 1.4 trillion… yes that’s trillion… investment in AI and other tech sectors from the Emirates. The White House had previewed this longtime in the works deal as related to artificial intelligence infrastructure, semiconductors, energy and manufacturing.Further, Emirates Global Aluminum will “invest in the first new aluminium smelter in the United States in 35 years, which would nearly double US domestic aluminium production.”

According to more developments out of the UAE:
• The White House said that Trump and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani signed agreements that would “generate an economic exchange worth at least $1.2 trillion”.
• The agreements are said to include a $96bn deal with Qatar Airways to buy up to 210 Boeing 787 Dreamliner and 777X aeroplanes, and a statement of intent for $38bn in investments at Qatar’s Al Udeid Airbase and other air defence capabilities.
• A meeting is scheduled for later today of US, Turkish and Syrian officials to discuss details of Trump’s announced dropping of sanctions against Syria.
• Trump’s three-country tour of the Gulf state region will conclude in the United Arab Emirates on Thursday.

Amid lots of awards ceremonies, accolades, and a state dinner…Trump has also been filling in more details of fresh arms deals inked with Qatar. “Yesterday we signed an agreement for Qatar to purchase $42bn-worth of the finest American military hardware including THAAD missile batteries,” he said Thursday while speaking to US troops at Al Udeid airbase.The commander-in-chief further detailed that the deal includes “Pegasus refueling aircraft, Desert Vipers, light armored vehicles, amphibious combat vehicles, the MQ-9B and the Sky Guardian drones.” As for Qatar, the president says he’s still ready to accept a donated jet from the tiny oil and gas rich country, a flying palace of a future Air Force One, which Dems have been warning would be a violation of the US Constitution’s prohibition on foreign gifts. Certainly he’ll come back to Washington awaiting immense controversy and backlash from the corporate media and his political enemies.

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“So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunction?” he asked.

• Justice Thomas Destroys the Case for Nationwide Injunctions (Margolis)

During Supreme Court oral arguments in the Trump v. CASA, Washington, and New Jersey cases, Justice Clarence Thomas delivered a surgical takedown of the legal rationale for nationwide injunctions, using just one line. The case centers around whether lower courts can issue sweeping injunctions that block federal policies nationwide, even when only a handful of plaintiffs are before the court. Representing the United States, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that such broad orders violate established legal norms and Supreme Court precedent. “We believe that the best reading of that is what you said in Trump against Hawaii, which is that Wirtz in 1963 was really the first universal injunction,” Sauer told the Court. “There’s a dispute about Perkins against Lukens Oil going back to 1940. And of course, we point to the Court’s opinion that reversed that universal injunction issued by the D.C. Circuit and said it’s profoundly wrong.”

Sauer continued, listing key precedents that have rejected expansive injunctive relief. “If you look at the cases that either party cite, you see a common theme. The cases that we cite — like National Treasury Employees Union, Perkins, Frothingham, and Massachusetts v. Mellon, going back to Scott v. Donald — in all of those, those are cases where the Court considered and addressed the sort of universal — well, in that case, statewide — provision of injunctive relief.” He emphasized, “When the Court has considered and addressed this, it has consistently said, ‘You have to limit the remedy to the plaintiffs appearing in court and complaining of that remedy.’” That’s when Justice Thomas stepped in and cut through the legal weeds with a devastatingly simple observation. “So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunction?” he asked.

Sauer didn’t hesitate: “That’s exactly correct. And in fact, those were very limited, very rare, even in the 1960s.” He went on to explain that nationwide injunctions didn’t truly explode until 2007. “In our cert petition in Summers v. Rhode Island Institute, we pointed out that the Ninth Circuit had started doing this in a whole bunch of cases involving environmental claims.” Thomas’s concise question — “So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunction?” — hit the heart of the issue. With that simple question, he challenged the idea that such drastic judicial remedies were historically essential, even during one of the most tumultuous and morally urgent periods in American history: the civil rights era, a time when federal courts began issuing broader remedies to dismantle Jim Crow laws and enforce desegregation.

In other words, if the courts managed to confront segregation, enforce Brown v. Board of Education, and make tremendous progress for civil rights without needing to impose blanket nationwide injunctions, then why are they supposedly necessary today over what amounts to policy disputes? In just one sentence, Thomas accomplished what pages of legal briefs failed to do. He exposed the historical and constitutional weakness of the left’s favorite legal tactic.

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“When these people, like the January 6 Committee and particularly Adam Schiff, are charged and try defending their bogus pardon, then we will start to learn who was really running the White House..”

• Biden’s Autopen Pardons May Just Get Invalidated (Margolis)

Ed Martin, the new DOJ pardon attorney and head of the Weaponization Working Group, isn’t wasting time. This week, he announced a review of the shady “autopen” pardons Joe Biden’s team rushed through in its final days. “These deserve some scrutiny,” he said. That’s an understatement. As PJ Media has previously reported, Biden’s White House frequently used an autopen to sign executive orders and pardons, which raised serious doubts as to whether Biden was even involved in the process. In March, the Oversight Project dropped a bombshell memo detailing 32 instances where the Biden White House used an autopen to sign off on clemency warrants — pardons and commutations that impacted thousands, including preemptive pardons for members of the January 6 Committee. The report raises a chilling question: Were these acts of mercy issued by a president or by a rogue staffer who had no constitutional authority to do so?

“They need scrutiny because we want pardons to matter, and to be accepted, and to be something that’s used correctly. So I do think we’re going to take a hard look at how they went and what they did,” Martin said. The Blaze has more:”The Justice Department’s probe could spell trouble for controversial Biden pardonees such as Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, members of the Biden clan, and former members of the House Jan. 6 select committee — including Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), whom President Donald Trump and other Republicans have faulted for various alleged crimes and improprieties. For instance, Trump has suggested that Milley may have committed “treason.”

While previously serving as Trump’s most senior uniformed adviser, Milley called his communist Chinese counterpart, communist Gen. Li Zuocheng, on two occasions — four days before the 2020 election and on Jan. 8, 2021 — to reassure Zuocheng that he would provide him with actionable warnings should Trump decide to attack. Milley received a pardon just hours before former President Joe Biden left office. Fauci, the fifth director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, received a “full and unconditional” pass for possible federal crimes going back to Jan. 1, 2014 — around the time the Obama administration supposedly halted funding for dangerous gain-of-function research. “The American people were promised accountability, and I think Ed Martin is our best shot at it,” Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told The Blaze.

“These pardons are fake and invalid, and the president has already said that is his view.” He’s right. Martin’s investigation may be the first serious step toward cleaning up the mess that Biden left behind. “When these people, like the January 6 Committee and particularly Adam Schiff, are charged and try defending their bogus pardon, then we will start to learn who was really running the White House,” Howell added. “We need to answer the question everyone is asking: Who was running the government the last four years?” The presidential autopen has been around since the 1950s, but its use has always raised legal eyebrows. In 2013, Barack Obama became the first president to sign a bill into law with an autopen while vacationing in Hawaii. His office leaned on a 30-page memo from George W. Bush’s legal team claiming it was fine as long as the president authorized it. But Biden’s situation is far murkier. What no one seems to know is who was operating the autopen and whether Biden even knew it was being used.

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“On Biden’s last day in office, he pardoned his brother Jim, his sister-in-law Sara, his sister Valerie and her husband, John Owens, his brother Francis, Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, and members of the House Jan. 6 committee.”

• DOJ Pardon Attorney Ed Martin To Review Biden’s Outgoing Pardons (JTN)

Ed Martin, who is leaving his Trump appointment as interim U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., to become the Justice Department’s U.S. pardon attorney, said that he will review former President Biden’s outgoing pardons. “I do think that the Biden pardons need some scrutiny,” Martin told ABC News on Tuesday. “And they need scrutiny because we want pardons to matter and to be accepted and to be something that’s used correctly. So I do think we’re going to take a hard look at how they went and what they did. “If they’re null and void, I’m not sure how that operates, but I can tell you we’ve had already, I’ve had in my current position, or my position as US Attorney, we had been taking a look at some of the conduct surrounding the pardons and the Biden White House.”

In addition to the pardon attorney post, Martin will be the director of the department’s Weaponization Working Group. President Trump pulled Martin’s nomination for U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., because Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he would not support it, over Martin’s involvement in the defense of people who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to NBC News. Tillis is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was overseeing Martin’s nomination. His no vote would have effectively prevented Martin’s from getting a final confirmation vote. The DOJ attorney said that he doesn’t believe that Biden’s use of “auto-pen” for pardons is a problem, despite Trump suggesting that it makes them invalid. On Biden’s last day in office, he pardoned his brother Jim, his sister-in-law Sara, his sister Valerie and her husband, John Owens, his brother Francis, Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, and members of the House Jan. 6 committee.

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The amounts are less spectacular, but the work must be done.

• DOGE Still Hard at Work Cutting Fraud and Waste (Salgado)

The Department of Government Efficiency is still continually occupied investigating fraud, waste, and abuse in our federal government. Now, if only Congressional Republicans would agree on a budget that includes all these necessary cuts. On May 12, DOGE’s X account provided a contract update: “Since Friday, agencies terminated 242 wasteful contracts with a ceiling value of $646M and savings of $200M, including a $118k USDA contract for the ‘Democratic Republic of Congo youth climate corps coordinator’, and a $23.5k USAID contract for the ‘garden landscaping and pool services at official mission director’s residence’ of South Africa.” Obviously important uses of our taxpayer dollars. On May 14, DOGE added an update:

“Current year non-defense federal obligations are down 20.5% as compared to 2024. Cash outlays will follow as obligations come due. Persistent government wide contract reviews for wasteful spend, consistent with the DOGE Cost Efficiency Executive Order, are bearing fruit.” It seems review of federal contracts has been a DOGE priority lately. Earlier this month, DOGE shared, “Over the last two days, agencies terminated 522 wasteful contracts with a ceiling value of $285M and savings of $110M, including a $181k @USDA contract for a ‘technical climate advisor for central Africa’.” The grift is endless. DOGE has been investigating federal credit cards, too. Earlier this month, DOGE announced, “The program to audit unused/unneeded credit cards has been expanded to 32 agencies. After 10 weeks, more than 500K cards have been de-activated. As a reminder, at the start of the audit, there were ~4.6M active cards/accounts, so still more work to do.”

No wonder we are over $36.8 trillion in debt. Of course, DOGE also partners with multiple agencies, and the Department of Energy “has announced 47 deregulatory actions for an estimated $11 billion of savings to Americans. Previously, this quantity of deregulation would take years to initiate,” per DOGE. Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued his own proud statement on May 12, explaining his department “assembled a task force to work on the BIGGEST deregulatory push in modern history. The idea was simple: get a bunch of smart people in a room & work through the problem. We cut through the red tape to deliver 47 deregulatory actions on behalf of the American people!” What a novel idea — government actually working for We the People!

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Crazy that someone can block the elected government from scrutinizing its largest expenditures.

• Trump Admin Urges SCOTUS to Permit DOGE Access to Social Security Records (ET)

The Department of Justice urged the Supreme Court on May 13 to let the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have access to Social Security data after lower courts blocked that access.President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14158 on Jan. 20, implementing DOGE, an advisory body that recommends cost-cutting measures. The order directed the entity to “implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued in the new filing that the lower courts have overreached and are attempting to turn themselves into “the human resources department for the Executive Branch.”

The filing came after Ellen Lipton Hollander, a Maryland-based federal district court judge, issued an order on March 20 preventing DOGE from viewing Social Security Administration (SSA) records because such access “violates” the federal Privacy Act.The lawsuit was brought in February by labor unions and retirees represented by the Democracy Forward Foundation.“The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack,” the judge wrote in granting a temporary restraining order against the federal government.

DOGE’s team at the Social Security Administration has had “unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans, including but not limited to Social Security numbers, medical records, mental health records, hospitalization records, drivers’ license numbers, bank and credit card information, tax information, income history, work history, birth and marriage certificates, and home and work addresses,” Hollander wrote. Hollander directed DOGE to delete any personally identifiable data in its possession. On April 17, Hollander upgraded the temporary restraining order to a preliminary injunction. On April 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit voted 9–6 to maintain Hollander’s order while the appeal process continues. On May 2, the Trump administration filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court, asking the justices to pause the preliminary injunction.

In the May 13 filing, Sauer argued that the district court erred in preventing “the 11 members of the Social Security Administration (SSA) DOGE team—from accessing data … for purposes that are unquestionably lawful.” The district court “dictated to the Executive Branch which government employees can access which data and even prescribed necessary training, background checks, and paperwork for data access,” Sauer wrote. “When district courts attempt to transform themselves into the human resources department for the Executive Branch, the irreparable harm to the government is clear,” he wrote. When the courts “stymie the government’s initiatives to modernize badly outdated systems and combat rampant fraud—leaving those initiatives on a litigation track that may halt them for months or years—the irreparable harm is even clearer.”

Reviewing Social Security Administration data is important because the agency has “one of the largest documented histories of improper payments,” Sauer stated. In a brief in opposition filed on May 12, the lead respondent, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, said that after years of honoring “its data security obligations,” the Social Security Administration “now seeks to throw open its data systems to unauthorized (and often unvetted) personnel who have no demonstrated need for the personally identifiable information … they seek.”The April 17 preliminary injunction should be left in place because it is “narrow and, contrary to the government’s assertions, permits SSA to disclose both anonymized and non-anonymized data to DOGE Team members,” the brief said.The Supreme Court could rule on the government’s emergency application at any time.

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How to spell “inside job”.

Helmer is an expert on MH17.

• The US Has Pushed The ICAO To Declare War On Russia (Helmer)

On Monday, May 12, the United States pushed the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the aircraft safety watchdog, to vote behind closed doors to adopt a secret resolution convicting Russia of shooting-down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014. Unlike the Dutch show trial which in November 2022 convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian of the same crime, the ICAO reached its verdict without the appearance of an open proceeding or of openly tested evidence. It’s a put-up job.William Raillant-Clark, the ICAO communications chief at the Montreal headquarters, was asked to provide a text of the resolution and identification of the countries voting for, against, abstaining, and absent. Raillant-Clark replied: “In accordance with the Council’s Rules of Procedure, the vote was taken by secret ballot.” He refused to disclose the resolution itself; the numbers of votes without the names of the countries; or the reason for keeping everything but the conviction of Russia secret. He answered: “The Council’s considerations based on reason of law and fact, will be issued in the coming weeks.”

The spokesman was then asked for a copy of ICAO’s Rules of Procedure. He refuses to answer. The decision of ICAO to go to war with Russia, using its aviation safety mandate to cover up the evidence of what really happened to MH17, destroys the organization for the future. It follows the destruction of the global organization for the safety of nuclear power generation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW); the International Committee of the Red Cross; and the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres.

The downing of MH17 on July 17, 2014, with the deaths of all 298 passengers and crew, was a Ukrainian government operation, backed by the Obama Administration led by then-Vice President Joseph Biden, to start the economic sanctions war against Russia; US and NATO military preparations for the Ukrainian attack on the Donbass; it almost led to a NATO military intervention. Read the full story of what happened, and the subsequent faking of evidence in the Dutch trial, in the book. This new ICAO fatality, weaponizing aviation safety into war against Russia, was inflicted by the US, the dominant member state on the 36-member Council of the ICAO. Collaborating with the State Department’s delegate at the Council, Anthony Clare, the Dutch and Australian governments promoted the resolution and pushed for adoption by the allied states.

The list of permanent and elected member states on the ICAO Council can be viewed here. The ICAO session on May 12 does not appear in the advance schedule of meetings for the ICAO this month. The Council vote which took place on May 12 is not listed in the Council proceedings for the month. An internal notice of the Council for the May 12 meeting shows the text of the resolution is “restricted”. Raillant-Clark has refused to explain. As soon as the vote was taken, the Dutch Government and Foreign Ministry issued a press release. The Australian Foreign Ministry followed. The Netherlands and Australia, whose nationals comprised the majority of the 298 victims on board MH17, sponsored the ICAO resolution. Both governments are fighting Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield. The Dutch may now attempt to divert Russian state funds frozen in The Netherlands to pay compensation to the families of the victims.

Only after the two government releases had appeared, and Raillant-Clark was questioned personally, did ICAO reveal its press release.

The Russian government issued its response on May 13. “Russia,” the Foreign Ministry said, “is not part of the ICAO Council. In its press release, this body alleges that the responsibility for downing this flight rests with the Russian Federation. However, the text of the ruling, including its reasoning part, is not available. Therefore, this amounted to a blind vote – it is quite obvious that this decision does not hold water. Once again, the ICAO Council demonstrated its political bias. It takes its decision while guided by momentary considerations. This is not the way it must operate.” “Russia withdrew from these proceedings last year, on June 17, 2024, in view of the multiple procedural violations by the Council and the ICAO Secretariat, which made an impartial fact-finding effort all but impossible. That said, Moscow’s principled position remains relevant to this day – Russia was not involved in the MH17 crash, while all the claims to the contrary coming from Australia and the Netherlands are at odds with reality.”

“The ICAO Council is not an independent body. It includes 36 ICAO member states out of 193. They get their voting instructions from their respective capitals. Most of the countries represent the West and their immediate satellites. This makes the way the Council operates a matter of arithmetic. There was simply nobody to tackle this matter in a professional manner and on its merits.”

“There is nothing new about using the ICAO Council against countries which are viewed as being undesirable by the West. This can hardly come as a surprise to anyone these days. Suffice to recall the investigation of the landing of a Ryanair flight at the Minsk airport on May 23, 2021. At the time, the interested Western countries were not satisfied with the preliminary report by the Investigative Team. They used their majority within the Council to force the team to re-write the report to ensure that it condemns Belarus. Moreover, the ICAO Council ruled that it was competent to review the Great Britain, Sweden, Ukraine, Canada v. Iran case regarding the crash of a Boeing aircraft near Tehran after a vote held behind the curtain. There was also a recent example when the Council refused to take up Venezuela’s claims in its dispute with Argentina regarding unilateral restrictions in civil aviation.”

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NB: the chance that a former FBI director doesn’t know what 8647 stands for is zero.

• “86 47” – Comey Posts-Then-Deletes Creepy Threat Aimed At Trump (ZH)

Former FBI Director James Comey posted a photo of sea shells arranged into the numbers “86 47” on his Instagram account today, before shortly deleting the post.The immediately preceding post shows Comey lounging at the beach while pretending to read his own crime novel, his presence at the beach lending to the fact that this was not a hack. Many are blasting Comey for issuing a not-so-thinly-veiled threat at sitting President Donald Trump, including the President’s son and Congressman Andy Biggs:

And here is his explanation for the ‘shells’ and the deletion……you simply cannot make this shit up!!!

[..] As covered previously in a ZeroHedge piece titled “From Epstein To Diddy: Spotlight Shines On James Comey’s Prosecutor Daughter”, Comey’s offspring smell a little swampy as well. From the piece: In a thinly covered news story from December that’s suddenly relevant again (read on), New York Prosecutor Maurene Comey – whose father James Comey famously refused to prosecute Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information & then participated in the Russia collusion hoax – joined the prosecution against Combs. The younger Comey has previously worked as lead prosecutor on both the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell cases, as well as that of former Epstein cellmate Nicholas Tartaglione.
…
Maurene Comey became a US attorney in the Southern District of New York in 2015. In 2019, when she was just 30-years-old, Comey became one of the lead prosecutors in the Jeffrey Epstein case before he was found dead in his jail cell in August 2019. Two years later, she became one of three lead prosecutors in the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s partner in crime and daughter of suspected Mossad operative Robert Maxwell.

Before becoming a US attorney, Comey clerked for US District Court chief judge Loretta Preska of the SDNY – who notably oversaw a long-running defamation case filed by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre against Maxwell. Comey was also involved in the case of Nicholas Tartaglione, a former NYPD officer who was convicted of killing four men in 2016, and who was briefly Epstein’s cellmate in the Manhattan Metro Correctional Center. Tartaglione claims to have helped Epstein after ‘finding him unconscious’ (and totally not trying to kill him) prior to Epstein’s actual death. In 2016, Tartaglione suspected a man named Martin Luna had stolen money from him – for which “Tartaglione tortured Martin and then forced one of Martin’s nephews to watch as he strangled him to death with a zip-tie,” according to a statement by the US Attorney’s Office.

Two days after Epstein’s death, NY Times reporter James B Stewart, who had spent 90 minutes with Epstein a year prior, wrote “The overriding impression I took away from our roughly 90-minute conversation was that Mr. Epstein knew an astonishing number of rich, famous and powerful people, and had photos to prove it. He also claimed to know a great deal about these people, some of it potentially damaging or embarrassing, including details about their supposed sexual proclivities and recreational drug use. And so, whether this is just a case of ‘it’s a small world’ or something a little (or a lot) less innocent, James Comey’s daughter is now involved in a second case where high-profile celebrities and politicians may have been secretly filmed engaging in sexual activity with minors. Comey’s deep state tentacles make the cryptic Instragram post that much more unsettling. Might there be some hints in Comey’s shitty novel? Donald Barr’s Space Relations anyone?

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CHD
https://twitter.com/NicHulscher/status/1922833502430450150

Xifaxan

Missing link

Mad honey

Escape

Dance

Camel

Mercury and Aluminum

Pop
https://twitter.com/TansuYegen/status/1922749376956444819

 

 

 

 

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