Abdul Archives - The Automatic Earth

Maria Bartiromo is a Hero. She told President Trump that Fox News was burying the 2020 stolen-election story…and they fired her for it. That’s courage. Real reporters don’t take orders to stay silent. pic.twitter.com/5159MjR1BE
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) September 4, 2026

https://twitter.com/AmericanRisingQ/status/2095916946785006024?s=20 https://twitter.com/BasilTheGreat/status/2095432450818158674?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2095916766731915627?s=20

Even CNN likes it. But the Dems need bad jobs reports to make a chance at the midterms.

• HUGE Jobs Report for August! Democrats Most Hurt. (Matt Margolis)

America’s economy just handed Democrats their worst Friday of the year, mere weeks before the midterms. The Labor Department’s August 2026 jobs report dropped Friday morning, and it left the doom-and-gloom crowd on the Left with nothing to say. Employers added 162,000 jobs last month, crushing what economists were predicting and delivering exactly the kind of number Democrats have spent all summer insisting Donald Trump’s economy couldn’t produce. The new jobs were actually triple the expectations. It gets worse for the left.

The report didn’t just beat expectations for August; it rewrote the story of the entire summer. The Labor Department revised July’s initial estimate of a 23,000-job loss up to a 21,000-job gain, and it revised June’s payroll numbers higher, too. The “stalling economy” narrative Democrats have been pushing for months just collapsed under its own weight.
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/2095854855013232777?s=20
Unemployment held steady at 4.1% in August after falling in both June and July. The labor force participation rate climbed to 61.6% in August, up from 61.4% in July, proof that more Americans are entering the job market Democrats swore was dying under Trump.

President Trump and Republicans TRIPLED expectations for the August Jobs report 🔥

CNBC: "Up 162,000…that’s basically 3x what expectations are!” pic.twitter.com/MPloI2JTk2
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 4, 2026

The White House wasted no time taking a victory lap. “America added 162,000 jobs in August — triple economists’ expectations,” White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai said in a post on X. “The private sector has now created over one million jobs under President Trump, whose reindustrialization agenda continues to drive manufacturing and factory construction job growth. America is in the middle of a historic investment boom, and the August jobs report is the latest data point showing how Americans are benefitting from the Trump administration’s pro-growth policies. The best is yet to come with even more job, wage, and economic growth in store for everyday Americans.”
“Senate Republicans are fighting to ensure Americans keep more of every paycheck. Meanwhile, Democrats want to raise taxes on tips and overtime, squeezing waiters, hairstylists, bartenders, and other hardworking Americans trying to make ends meet,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee National Press Secretary Bernadette Breslin.

NEC Director Kevin Hassett on the blockbuster August jobs report: "There is a lot of policy success underneath it… Tariffs are making people onshore activity; the expensing is making people want to invest like crazy, and that's creating construction jobs and also beginning to… pic.twitter.com/4zzAPxZaFY
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 4, 2026

Economists with no reason to flatter Trump were stunned, too. “Wow. A huge August jobs report,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote on X. “The US economy added +162,000 jobs in August. On top of that June and July were revised higher by a total of +55k.” Even CNN is admitting the obvious.
“We’re seeing that this rollercoaster job market, it bounced back and raced back to life in a big way last month,” CNN’s Matt Egan reported. “And this should ease some of those concerns about the labor markets. So the U.S. economy adding 162,000 jobs last month — that more than doubled the consensus forecast, which was for a gain of just 65,000. In fact, this is the most jobs that the economy has added in a month since March.”

CNN touts President Trump and Republicans' August Jobs Report

CNN: “The US economy adding 162,000 jobs last month. That more than doubled the consensus forecast. This most jobs the economy has added in a month since March.” pic.twitter.com/qOyT1TN1Si
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 4, 2026

Democrats built their entire economic message around the idea that Trump’s policies were failing everyday Americans. This jobs report just blew a hole straight through it. Wages are up. Participation is up. Job creation tripled what economists projected. And now even CNN can’t pretend otherwise. This is exactly the kind of economic news Democrats didn’t want anyone to see, especially right before the midterms. The best is yet to come, and they know it.

162,000 Job Gains with All Upward Revisions

• Outstanding U.S. Jobs Report Stuns Expectations (CTH)

The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) has released the August jobs report . The pundits and analysts are stunned as the results of +162,ooo jobs added is three times their expectations. The prior months also had strong upward revisions as June was revised up by 11,000, from +20,000 to +31,000, and the change for July was revised up by 44,000, from -23,000 to +21,000. With these revisions, employment in June and July combined is 55,000 higher than previously reported.

PRESIDENT TRUMP – Great jobs number just announced, breaking all estimates (except mine!) by double and triple – And you haven’t seen anything yet! EMPLOYERS ADDED 162,000 JOB IN AUGUST. Lower the interest rates because the U.S.A. is a much stronger credit than it was just a short time ago! A STRONG COUNTRY MEANS A LOWER INTEREST RATE – IT’S A BETTER CREDIT…Very simple! We should have the LOWEST RATE of any country in the World, like “the old days.”

Without the United States agreeing to allow them their big surpluses, and we could stop that immediately, they would no longer be considered financially ELITE! LOWER THE RATE OR I’LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT, which the U.S. Supreme Court, in its ridiculous and very costly Tariff decision, strongly acknowledged “the President” has an absolute right to do. IT’S BETTER THAN TARIFFS! The Fed Board, with its great new leader, must get smart – BE PATRIOTS for a change. High interest rates put the U.S.A. at a very unfair disadvantage, and I won’t allow that to happen! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Manufacturing jobs gained 16,000, while information systems (AI impact?) saw drops in computing infrastructure providers, data processing, web hosting, and related services (-8,000), in publishing industries (-7,000), and in broadcasting and content providers (-5,000).

Good question: “Why move gold out of Canada in March?”

The moves are mostly on paper, BTW.

• Zelenskyy Heading to Canada (CTH)

My dear friends, I don’t want you to share this outline because it is very deep in the weeds; but sometimes you can get so far into the rabbit hole that you just need to transmit the signal and let others figure it out. So, here’s some sketchy stuff that doesn’t make sense, but then again… You might remember my mentioning that something was odd after Zelenskyy visited London in early June and then a series of unexplained events started happening. Well, maybe what I am about to share connects to that, or maybe it’s just my imagination.

It all started when I took the announcement of De Nederlandsche Bank transferring gold from Canada and the USA, then overlaid their reported timeline with other stuff I have been tracking. According to the announcement: “Between March and August 2026, approximately 86 tonnes of gold were transferred from the combined total of approximately 313 tonnes held in the United States and Canada to London.” {source}
Now, mind you the official public notice just happened yesterday, Sept 2nd. Between March and August 2026? A very interesting set of dates, considering the Dutch claim their move was due to uncertainty with the USA and Canada economic and trade positions, yet those economic/trade positions were not tenuous until very late August. Why move gold out of Canada in March?
Here’s the interesting timing. Do you remember when Canada reported a 0.0% GDP growth in the first quarter, and technically that put them into a defined recession. That narrative was not in the interests of Mark Carney who was -perhaps not coincidentally- repeatedly visiting the EU after taking up the leadership position for the “new, middle-power world order.” In fact, the Canadian GDP result was widely reported and a sore spot for Carney’s govt.
March -when this Dutch gold movement began- just happens to be the end of the first quarter, and when the first quarter data was revised the GDP result went up ever-so-slightly from 0.0 to 0.1%. {source} The second quarter (Apr, May, June) the Canadian GDP was then reported as 0.8% {source} which was enough to erase the ‘recession‘ talking points and give Mark Carney some political breathing room.
The total Canadian economy is not that large at approximately $2.51 trillion. [For Comparison, Texas is $2.9 trillion.] As best as I can determine, the amount of gold moved out of Canada was 7.6 metric tonnes {source} and {source}. Again, this movement took place in March – August. The value of the 7.6 metric tonnes is roughly $1.1 billion dollars.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Normally, a gold reserve shift from one country to the next doesn’t affect nominal GDP of the exporting country because technically the Canadians don’t own it, the Dutch bank owns it (central bank of Netherlands). However, depending on how the central bank of Canada and the Central bank of the Netherlands handles it, there are ways to position the transfer as an export; a central banking scheme.
Mark Carney was previously the head of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England where De Nederlandsche Bank transferred the gold. Mark Rutte is from the Netherlands. He previously served as the Prime Minister of the Netherlands before becoming NATO’s General Secretary. We have all watched Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney proclaim his devotion to the European NATO alliance, and we’ve watched the EU-NATO alliance embrace him as their foil against the geopolitical reset underway by U.S. President Donald Trump.
All of the timing, the events, the moves and statements, the visible appearances and the odd shifts in narrative all seem to align in one direction. Is it just a coincidence that at the exact time when Carney is feeling the economic heat from Canadian economic outcomes, the central bank from the home country of the NATO head Mark Rutte, De Nederlandsche Bank, shifts gold from Canada to London, and that coincides with just the right amount of value ($1.1 billion) to shift Canadian GDP statistics, and give Carney political breathing room domestically?…
…. a timing that coincides with Zelenskyy traveling to London and then mysteriously showing up at the G7 in Paris, only to follow the group to the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, while Ukraine is not a G7 or NATO member?
…. that coincidentally is followed by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announcing a newly formed Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), a new multilateral financial institution {source}, that essentially serves as another form of a central bank that he can control?
…. which is soon followed by a London announcement {source} for the U.K to build the mechanics of the war machine that will supply Zelenskyy?
I’ll leave it up to you to decide if this summary sounds remotely plausible.
SUMMARY: After taking the position as the lead against Donald Trump, former central banker Mark Carney embraces the EU-NATO alliance who are challenged with diminished EU economic outcomes; while EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen proclaims EU citizen savings in banks must be put to better use; while gaining economic breathing room from allied interests of Dutch NATO head Mark Rutte as the De Nederlandsche Bank shifts gold from Canada to London; giving Carney the domestic political capital to confront NATO nemesis Donald Trump; while the rest of the enterprise assembles the war machine for the EU-NATO alliance -sans Trump- to support Zelenskyy by expanding conflict with Russia; thereby avoiding their own domestic political vulnerabilities.
TODAY – OTTAWA — “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is planning to visit Canada as soon as next week. A non-government source says the exact timing of the visit is being adjusted, possibly due to the funeral of Norway’s King Harald, scheduled for Sept. 9 in Oslo. […] Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Kyiv a year ago, while Zelenskyy last visited Canada in Halifax last December amid ongoing efforts to end Russia’s full-scale invasion.”
There are Trillions at Stake

Is there anything more woke than the UN?

“.. one of its relief agencies in Gaza funded employees who participated in the 2023 terrorist attack in Israel.”

“This is going to fund groups that hate America and everything America stands for. So, the Democrats don’t think there’s one penny of fraud in the federal government, and there’s significant fraud.“

• Trump Ambassador Vows NATO-Like Reforms To UN: ‘Clean This Place Up’ (JTN)

Mike Waltz

The U.N. ambassador outlined a major push to overhaul U.S. funding and structure of the U.N., including workforce cuts, peacekeeping reductions, and defunding UNRWA over its ties to Hamas, which could reshape how American tax dollars support international institutions going forward. President Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations is vowing to force a massive reform at the global agency, pledging to slim it down through privatization and create more accountability in the wake of revelations that one of its relief agencies in Gaza funded employees who participated in the 2023 terrorist attack in Israel.

“The charge from the president is to clean this place up and get it working for the American people,” U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz said Thursday night in a wide-ranging interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show that focused on ending abuses and fraud in American foreign aid. “What President Trump has done with NATO, we’re looking to do to the United Nations,” he added. Waltz sharply criticized the Biden administration for turning a blind eye to fraud across America’s multibillion foreign aid system and specifically for re-funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) despite evidence of close ties to the terror group Hamas.
Trump ended funding for UNRWA after taking office in 2025, and the USAID inspector general revealed last month that more than 100 workers funded by UNRWA have been identified as having participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas atrocities in Israel. Waltz said those revelations are a wakeup call for the world that the U.N. is not serving its charter, and the Trump administration has already forced significant changes in recent months.
“We forced them to take their first budget cut ever in their 80-year history. They are going to fire 3,000 U.N. bureaucrats out of the headquarters building in New York. We’re going to get more of our aid dollars,” he said. “…And then there’s 90,000 U.N. peacekeepers around the world. We’ve cut 25% of them. So we put the U.N. on a diet.” Waltz said the next round of reforms that the U.S. will force as the largest contributor to the U.N. will be modeled after Trump’s effort to make European allies pick up a greater share of the NATO burden.
“The American people are generous people when it comes to tsunamis or earthquakes, like we just had in Venezuela, or other types of famine. But we need to know that it’s not filtering through a bloated bureaucracy; that it’s actually getting to people in need,” he said. “We’re making it leaner and more focused.”
“I think people rightly ask why we’re even involved at all. I say two things. Number one, you need one place in the world where everyone can talk, and if we just walk out, I don’t want to see the U.N. in Beijing or Brussels or somewhere else, we need to get in there and fight and win for American interests,” Waltz added. “And then number two, there’s a burden sharing component to it. I don’t want to see U.S. troops in places like Gaza or, you know, dealing with the gangs in Haiti when the U.N. is willing to go in there and we can push that agenda. I think that’s something that’s in line with the president’s America First foreign policy.”
Waltz succinctly summarized Trump’s policy toward the U.N. “So, diplomacy first, words before bullets, and burden sharing are two of the reasons we’re still trying to keep this place up. But ultimately, that’s the charge from President Trump: Help it realize its potential, and the U.N. should be helping him craft these peace deals around the world,” he said. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer agreed during the show on Thursday that the U.S. should continue to cut funding for the U.N., particularly as it relates to USAID funding, which has already seen cuts under the Trump administration.
“That was the first thing they cut when [Elon] Musk started DOGE [the Department of Government Efficiency]. That was the very first entity,” Comer said. “And remember how bad the Democrats and the media acted. They clutched their pearls and went on MSNBC and screamed bloody murder. But now we’re seeing that this was going to fund, you know, terrorist activity. This is going to fund groups that hate America and everything America stands for. So, the Democrats don’t think there’s one penny of fraud in the federal government, and there’s significant fraud.” Comer went on to say that in addition to cutting the U.N. workforce, the Trump administration has also cut “left-wing activists” from the federal government workforce.
“A lot of your deep state actors are left-wing activists. A lot of the employees in the EPA and other government agencies are left-wing activists,” he said. “One of the greatest accomplishments, I think, of this administration and this Congress is that there are 350,000 less federal employees today than there were when Donald Trump took office the second term. And if you look at the federal government, you look at spending, the biggest expense in just about every government agency and every division of every cabinet is personnel. So, we have shrank the government, even though I don’t think a lot of people realize that, and that’s a step in the right direction. We’ve got a long way to go, but there has been progress in the last two years.”
Former USAID Inspector General Jonathan Schofield, who spent 25 years working to root out fraud in the federal government, said his agency would actually travel to investigate fraud stemming from USAID funding. “They’re not sitting in the embassy. They’re going out. They’re doing field visits and interviews and conducting investigations that have had tremendous results,” he said. “So, that is something that I think is a very, very important first step to remember in terms of how it is that foreign assistance can be protected moving forward. We have the answer. You have a really solid, experienced cadre of professionals who know how to address it.”
And fraud is still being found across government spending. Most recently, the Health and Human Services department is investigating more than $80 million spent in California on refugee programs and other public disbursements that went to supporting terror organizations, according to Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum.
“The theme of this was that there was so much money being granted to overseas assistance without any oversight, without any audit, without any forensic review of what was going on,” Roman said. “Contractors were just trying to cough the money up from the U.S. government and spend it willy-nilly before their fiscal year ended, and this culture of largess, of no accountability, ended up being given to individuals and organizations which were contrary to what I think would be where America would want to spend its funds.”

Finland-Russia border is 1,340 kilometers (830 miles) long.

• Finnish President Comments on Russia (Andrew Korybko)

He argued that it’s not plotting to test NATO’s resolve, its resilience to immense hardships “should never be underestimated”, suggested that the conflict will end without Ukraine recovering its lost territories, praised the CIA chief for visiting Russia, and called for “someone in Europe” to follow suit.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb bucked the trend of fearmongering about Russia in his interview with Bild. Instead of claiming that it’s plotting to test NATO’s resolve like American media reported was the reason why the CIA chief recently paid an unannounced visit to Moscow, he described such talk as part of Russia’s “information warfare” against Europe. Stubb insisted that his intelligence doesn’t indicate any such plans and argued that Russia wouldn’t attack the world’s most powerful military bloc anyhow.
He also pointed to the unlikelihood of Russia “suddenly mobilizing” forces for a two-front conflict with Ukraine and NATO even though he still believes that a mobilization directed towards Ukraine will occur this fall despite United Russia Chairman Dmitry Medvedev recently denying that there’s any need to. Another of the surprisingly solid points that Stubb made about Russia had to do with its resilience to immense hardships and warned that this “should never be underestimated” by its foes.
He also suggested that Ukraine won’t recover its lost territories upon describing victory for it as simply “surviving, remaining independent, and remaining a sovereign state” but still urged its allies to continue supporting it for their unspecified sake of their own security. Wrapping everything up, Stubb praised the CIA chief’s recent unannounced visit to Moscow for expanding bilateral dialogue in “different formats”, which led to his clarion call for “someone in Europe” to “resume dialogue with Russia” too.
Stubb’s last point echoes what he intriguingly told local media a week prior about how “At some point, dialogue will have to be established on the European side, and perhaps the most important role in this will be played by countries that share a border with Russia.” This followed reports that Britain, France, and Germany – collectively known as the E3 – are preparing to resume dialogue with Russia. It was thus analyzed here that the E3 and the Intermarium might open up rival dialogues with Russia.
The Intermarium refers to the modern-day revival of interwar Poland’s vision of an anti-Soviet alliance between their country, the Baltic States, and Finland, all of which border Russia in the present. Therefore, the abovementioned analysis concluded that Stubb might lead the Intermarium’s dialogue with Russia since regional leader Poland’s government is irreparably divided between the conservative president and the liberal prime minister, which makes it unlikely to agree on this ultra-sensitive issue.
Stubb also expressed interest earlier this year in serving as the EU’s envoy for talks with Russia back when this role was first discussed among the bloc’s members, but the problem is that Putin suggested shortly thereafter that this should be “someone who has not badmouthed us”. As it turns out, Stubb was recently condemned by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as a terrorist for justifying Ukraine’s attacks against civilian infrastructure, which might disqualify him from this role.
At the same time, Putin might calculate that it’s better for dialogue to occur with Stubb if he initiates it on behalf of Finland, the Intermarium, or the EU as a whole than to rebuff him in that scenario, so the possibility of him entering into some sort of talks with Russia in the future can’t confidently be ruled out. While all EU leaders apart from Slovakia’s Robert Fico are adversarial to Russia, Stubb is the most pragmatic among them, so he might ultimately be tasked with this role or play it on his own initiative.

“The Democrat agenda is to legalize crime and criminalize the middle class.” —Stephen Miller

• Insurrection for Real (James Howard Kunstler)

Norm Eisen, Democratic Party Lawfare Ninja Supreme

Not to put too fine a point on it: but whenever a lawfare ninja of the Democratic Party utters the phrase “our democracy,” you must know that they are completely full of shit. For sure, they do not mean anything remotely related to an American commonweal, as understood by people of sound mind and good faith. What they mean by “our democracy” is the state as a racketeering operation run for the sole benefit of their party members, along with the ruthless power to annihilate their opponents and critics.

The war-cry “our democracy” only signifies how degenerate they have become. Though they yearn to win control of Congress in these midterm elections by any means necessary, the party’s actual prospects are not so great, having nominated a pack of obvious morons and reprobates such as Abdul el-Sayed (MI), James Talarico (TX), Angie Nixon (FL), Troy Jackson (ME), and Peggy Flanagan (MN) for the US Senate.
Now, it appears that President Donald Trump is determined to clean up our fraud-ridden election process this year, one way or another. Hopes are nearly dead for Congress passing a comprehensive election reform law, the SAVE Act, so he has looked to other measures. One is a procedure for the US Postal Service to match and track mail-in ballots to real persons with actual addresses listed on state voter rolls. The matter is still working through courts. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has pledged to send about 1000 election monitors to polling places around the country as “observers,” which could obviate arrant shenanigans like the broken toilet ploy in Fulton County, GA, 2020.
Mr. Trump could go further, as discussed here recently, and declare a National Security Executive Order with more exacting rules such as requiring proof of citizenship and photo ID at the polls, and reporting election results no later than the day following the election. The Democratic Party is fighting desperately to prevent any changes to current procedure with so much room for fraud. The effort is led by chief lawfare ninja Norm Eisen, who is associated with several activist NGOs: the States United Democracy Center (founder); State Democracy Defenders PAC; Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW); the Brookings Institution; plus his own pro bono litigation practice, Norma Eisen PLLC.
Eisen enjoys many millions of dollars in backing that have enabled him to file hundreds of court cases against Trump administration actions, including the recent suits against the US Postal Service mail-in ballot plan. His own NGOs are backed by hundreds of other NGOs both here and globally, many of which have been involved in color revolutions in foreign countries. Eisen himself has played a part in many episodes of the long-running color revolution here in the USA, including RussiaGate, the 2020 fake impeachment, and the Jan-6 House Committee. All that could be described in totality as a seditious coup attempt — and it’s all currently under investigation by several federal grand juries.
Likewise, lawfare ninja Marc Elias, who operates his election activities through Democracy Docket (founder); the Free election Fund; the Democracy Forward Foundation (board chair); We the Action; plus his own firm, the Elias Law Group. He was formerly a lawyer with the DC law firm Perkins Coie, through which he served as general counsel to the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. He shepherded the Steele Dossier into the Intel apparatus and around the news media.
All that is a prelude to a disturbing roll-out of events that anyone paying attention can see coming this fall. The Democratic Party has massive resources not just to stall and obstruct pre-election reform, but to mount a vicious resistance after the fact if it doesn’t produce their desired result. They could go as far as to repudiate the election, refuse to accept its results. If the president does issue that NatSec EO prior to the election, blue state officials could refuse to hold elections under new rules. Thirty states have already refused to comply with DOJ demands to submit their official voter rolls for evaluation. Some of the aforementioned activist NGOs have promised post-election street actions (demonstrations that could easily turn into riots).
In the face of that, you can foresee the necessity of the president having to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1878 (10 U.S.C. §§ 251–255). The act provides an exception to the Posse Commitatus Act, also 1878, which forbids the use of the US military to act as police inside the USA. Under the Insurrection Act, the president can federalize states’ national guard units to enforce federal law or protect constitutional rights when ordinary civilian means are not enough.
The Act has been used before in our history about thirty times by fifteen presidents, including the Great Railway Strike of 1877 (Pres. Hayes); the Pullman Strike of 1894 (Pres. Cleveland); the Little Rock School Desegregation resistance of 1957 (Pres. Eisenhower sent in the 82nd Airborne). Pres. Lyndon Johnson invoked it three times: the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965; the Detroit riots of 1967; and the riots that followed the Assassination of Martin Luther King, 1968. Pres. George H. W. Bush used it in 1994 to quell the Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles.
If Mr. Trump invokes the Insurrection Act around any violence or organized election rebellion this year, he will invite the Democrats to label him an autocrat, a tyrant, a wannabe king, as they have been taunting him and goading him with for years. Let’s suppose that will be enough to inflame the party’s activists. I think you can see how this lays the groundwork for something that looks like a new civil war. The repudiation of election results by blue states would be enough.
Know this: it won’t work. It will result in charges of sedition and many Democratic officials will be arrested and charged, probably some governors. It will be a really ugly episode in our history, but we’ll get through it. Of course, it will be the end of the Democratic Party.

Becoming so anti-Israel that you’re pro-Muslim. It’s a trap that’s been set for you too.

• Bad News, Abdul. Tucker Carlson Wants to Be Your Bestie (Tim O’Brien)

It would be a mistake to call Tucker Carlson a man without a country. I think he has a country. It just doesn’t appear to be the U.S., and it’s definitely not Israel. As a once-loyal listener of his podcast after Fox News canned him, it would be an understatement to say I was disappointed in the strange turns that he and others I used to like have taken in recent times.

Seemingly overnight, there is a whole clique of former “child stars” of the MAGA movement who abandoned any pretense of conservatism and what MAGA continues to stand for. Carlson and Candace Owens are two of the most obvious, but there are also Megyn Kelly, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). I once felt comforted that all of them were largely on the same team as me. That was until I learned they were never on my team in the first place. That was until I learned they are nothing more than posers and opportunists.
They are always on the lookout for the next big thing (NBT), and for Carlson, it would seem the NBT is being anti-Israel, anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, anti-conservatism, and, given who he aligns himself with these days, anti-American. You can’t support Abdul El-Sayed and expect people to believe that you have America’s best interests at heart.El-Sayed hates America, and he clearly has no use for Christianity and Christians, at least after they’ve voted for him. Carlson still professes to be a Christian, doesn’t he?
Still, there’s something very high schoolish about El-Sayed that some people find attractive. He can’t really grow a nice beard, he’s kinda short (but he’s always in the gym to compensate for that), he dances to Taylor Swift, and he resents traditional American values, which is juvenile when you see it in him. It would seem Carlson is into that sort of political bad boy, which may explain why he now wants to be El-Sayed’s new BFF, now that Hasan Piker and El-Sayed were forced to break up by the Democrat establishment.
Though, when I was in the hallway talking to Jennifer at her locker, she told me that Ashley’s sister heard from Brittany’s brother Zach that he heard that Hasan and Abdul plan to get back together after the general election. Zach told Brittany, who told Ashley, who told Jennifer that Hasan is Abdul’s one true love, and that Abdul might be just using Tucker for the time being. At least that’s what Jennifer told me, but you have to promise not to tell anyone. And don’t tell anyone I told you.
Meanwhile, on his podcast, Carlson heaped high praise on El-Sayed. In an interview Carlson was conducting with Saagar Enjeti, the two talked about the El-Sayed campaign for the Senate in Michigan. Carlson and Enjeti were talking about how El-Sayed has very obviously and very disingenuously moved to the middle to run in the general election against Republican Mike Rogers. You can bet your last dollar that he will revert back to his Islamic socialist roots if elected. But that’s not how Carlson framed it.
Enjeti said the quiet part out loud when he pointed out that El-Sayed is doing a bit of “shape shifting.” Anyone with an eye for politics can see that should El-Sayed win in November, he’d enter the Senate to the left of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), and he’d be just as radical an Islamist politician as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). Carlson is not dumb. He sees everything you’re seeing, so when his take doesn’t seem grounded in the same reality you see, it’s not because he can’t see it. It’s most likely because he either doesn’t want you to see it or, more than likely, he wants you to question it. He wants to establish reasonable doubt in your own mind about whatever it is he chooses to talk about.
And so, when Carlson praises El-Sayed, it’s not to help the duplicitous Senate candidate get more Democrat votes; it’s to take a bite out of the Republican and independent voting blocs in Michigan. Carlson is nothing if not strategic. Enjeti commented to Carlson about the El-Sayed campaign, “I watch his campaign now, it’s America First…. When he talks about Israel, he says, ‘Israel is committing a genocide, but ultimately I want to make sure that you don’t pay more for healthcare. I don’t want your tax dollars going abroad to fund this barbaric military.’ He stands in front of a giant American flag. It’s almost Trumpian in terms of a lot of those problems.”
Carlson chimed in on cue, “Well, it is literally Trumpian.” It’s probably no coincidence that since Rogers is a well-known supporter of Israel, Carlson would not vote for the Republican candidate if he lived in Michigan. “I wouldn’t vote for Mike Rogers at gunpoint,” Carlson said to Enjeti. So, there you have it. Carlson appears to, at least for now, be on Team Democrat, Team Radical Islam, Team Anti-Israel, Team Socialist, and Team “We’re Pretending to Distance Ourselves From Hasan Piker for Now but Not for Long.”
One thing he seems not to be is on Team America. We can only speculate as to why, but to do so at this point is a waste of time. There are roughly two months before Election Day. That’s just about how long I expect Carlson’s crush on El-Sayed to last. You have to know this about Carlson: He’ll be all-in with you before the election, but afterward, he’ll change colors in a millisecond. That’s just what he does. Why would he change now?

She wants to look at fraud. They don’t (dare).

• Now We Know Why Fox News Fired Maria Bartiromo (Matt Margolis)

Thursday afternoon, PJ Media reported that Maria Bartiromo was no longer employed at Fox News after more than 12 years on the air. The network’s statement gave no hint as to why she and Fox parted ways. “Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with Fox News Media,” the statement read. “We thank Maria for her work over the last 12 1/2 years and wish her all the best on her next chapter.” Vague corporate language like that usually means somebody’s hiding something. And now subsequent reporting reveals not only that Fox did indeed fire Bartiromo, but also the reason why.

According to a report from the media newsletter Status, Fox dismissed the longtime anchor after learning she had secretly told the White House that network bosses ordered staff not to cover President Donald Trump’s July speech on election interference in the 2020 election.Dylan Byers of Puck News reports the same thing, citing multiple sources.
“NEW: The Maria Bartiromo backstory, per multiple sources familiar…. Maria Bartiromo wanted to pursue a story related to China and 2020 election voting conspiracies… a major sensitivity for the network given its Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits. A Fox Business executive sent…
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) September 3, 2026
He also reveals that Bartiromo was fired on August 9 and has since retained Bryan Freedman as her lawyer. In the speech, Trump laid out a case that China had compromised voting machines, bribed American journalists, and run a fake ballot scheme designed to inflate Joe Biden’s vote total in 2020. Trump also said the intelligence community had evidence the meddling was coming, then evidence that it happened, and buried both Apparently, Fox News had other plans for how much of that story would get coverage. The network privately issued written guidance telling senior employees to steer coverage away from Trump’s claims, and most of the staff fell in line.
Bartiromo didn’t fall in line. According to the story, when Trump or a White House aide asked her why Fox wasn’t covering the story, she admitted her bosses had blocked it, then forwarded them the internal text message proving it. According to Status, handing over that confidential communication violated the terms of her employment agreement with Fox. I’m sure we’ll hear more on this in the coming days.
Democrats have spent years treating any Republican who questions the 2020 election as an enemy of democracy, despite the documented irregularities in the battleground states that year. They gave themselves a pass for disputing Bush’s 2000 win and Trump’s 2016 win. But 2020’s results could not be questioned, and anyone who did paid a price. The only acceptable narrative surrounding 2020 was that it was the safest and most secure election in history, and anyone who questioned that was undermining our democracy. Ironically, even Joe Biden has acknowledged foreign interference in the 2020 election. But the only election interference he would admit to was the kind in which it was implied that it was done to help Trump.
“The Biden administration targeted Russia with sweeping sanctions and diplomatic expulsions Thursday, punishing Moscow for its interference in the 2020 US election, its SolarWinds cyberattack and its ongoing occupation and ‘severe human rights abuses’ in Crimea,” CNN reported at the time. The idea that Putin wanted to help Trump never made sense. Still, Biden continued to promote it, gave no real evidence, and did not mention China. Now, China wanting to help Biden? That made sense, yet the media refuses to entertain the idea that the 2020 election was anything but secure.
Update:

Bryan Freedman, Maria Bartiromo's attorney, is releasing a statement saying that she has *not* been fired by Fox News, and calls recent media reports contradicting that information "absolutely and unequivocally false." pic.twitter.com/7RuH6pVjNi
— Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) September 4, 2026

Suicide? Euthanasia? Europe kills its own car industry. And we ask why.

• Volkswagen Agrees to 100,000 Job Cuts and Streamlined Model Production (CTH)

Volkswagen is a case study in self-destruction as a result of EU ‘climate’ politics and German auto company decision-making. The decision to chase climate policy created European legislation that set quotas, limits and fines on automakers who did not shift to electric vehicles. German automakers then chose to purchase carbon credits from China, who then use those sales to further discount exported EVs into the German market.

Simultaneously, Volkswagen opened up operation in China allowing their technology to be captured by Chinese auto makers who turned around and duplicated the technology at a much lower price. Once the manufacturing was at full speed, China stopped purchasing Volkswagen autos. The partly state-owned German automaker Volkswagen announced today their survival as a company now requires the elimination of 100,000 jobs in Germany with the closure of plants in Emden, Zwickau, Hanover and the Audi site in Neckarsulm.
Volkswagen will not be the last German company to suffer this fate as Mercedes is now 20% owned by Chinese EV company Geely. The German auto workers do not have a choice. They no longer have a solid consumer base for their vehicles, and China continues to export low price EVs into the European market. Every euro in tariffs against Beijing is offset by the euros the auto companies spend purchasing Chinese carbon credits to avoid European fines. They cannot get out of the spiral.
GERMANY – The car company Volkswagen has approved controversial plans to shed 100,000 jobs in a battle for survival as it faces fierce competition from Chinese rivals. After the latest round of talks this week, the company announced a further 50,000 job cuts and agreed a staggered end to current production at four German plants: Emden, Zwickau, Hanover and the Audi site in Neckarsulm between 2031 to 2034. There are no specific plans beyond that.
The agreement came as a surprise after a meeting of shareholders, unions, and state representatives on the supervisory board in what was seen as a considerable test for the German carmaker’s chief executive, Oliver Blume. He had gone as far as to arrange an emergency meeting if the package was rejected in preparation for a potential showdown with unions. (more) In a directly related report, U.S. auto manufacturers are now urging congress to outright ban Chinese cars from the American market. There are a few auto consumers who don’t like this approach, but it is entirely appropriate.
One of the things Europe will find out is that as soon as China has dominated their auto market, those cheap EVs will no longer be cheap. Once Beijing captures the market, they will slowly start to increase the price extracting the maximum profit in the long-term strategy. China would do this in North America if we do not protect the auto sector. Ultimately, this is why Prime Minister Mark Carney is going to create a serious problem by allowing the import of Chinese EVs and letting them set up a manufacturing base in Canada.
It’s not just about cars. If you lose your auto industry you erode your manufacturing base, your steel and aluminum production, your capacity to retain industrial engineering skills and many other ancillary aspects – including military. The auto industry represents much more than just the production of consumer cars. Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa and Australian markets have already fallen victim within this geopolitical scheme. Canada is on the cusp of the problem. Readers here are well aware of the scheme {GO DEEP}, and yes, it will take some form of legislative action to protect North America from this problem.
WASHINGTON DC – DETROIT — Major automakers operating in the U.S. are increasing pressure on Congress to permanently ban the domestic sale, import and manufacturing of Chinese connected vehicles, hardware and software. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents the vast majority of companies selling vehicles in the U.S., urged congressional leaders in a Thursday letter to make a move before the end of Congress’ current session on Jan. 3.
“Right now, Chinese automakers are dumping subsidized vehicles with connected software and hardware around the world,” John Bozzella, CEO of the group, said in the letter seen by CNBC. “This hasn’t happened inside the U.S. yet, but given the scale and urgency of this threat, we urge you to enact a Chinese vehicle, software and hardware ban before adjourning this year and make this policy the law of the land.” Midterm elections are also coming up in November, which could affect Congress’ momentum.
Bozzella’s comments come amid bipartisan efforts in the House and Senate to address Chinese vehicles, including legislation advanced by the Senate Commerce Committee that could bar Mercedes-Benz from the U.S. market because Chinese investors hold nearly 20% of the German automaker. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which includes Mercedes-Benz, said in the Thursday letter that it wants to work with lawmakers to “achieve a balanced policy so all our member companies continue to succeed and thrive inside the U.S.” (read more)
“Not on my watch”…

“.. we are suddenly, as a nation, dangerously dependent – dangerously dependent – on other nations for all sorts of things that we need..”

• Transcript – Secretary Rubio Extemporaneous Remarks (CTH)

Speaking without a prepared script or teleprompter, here is the transcript from Secretary of State Marco Rubio speech to the Foundry School.

“We either reindustrialize our national economy, moving completely away from the ‘service driven’ narrative of years past, or we will forever consign ourselves to economic servitude. This is also the American ideological perspective that undeniably affirms our baseline reason for cutting ties with Canada.”
[TRANSCRIPT] – SECRETARY RUBIO: “Thank you. Thank you, all of you, first of all, for being here today. Thank you – Jacob Helberg’s doing a phenomenal job. Everybody at our department is doing a great job, and I’m very proud of the work the State Department is putting in into these and other initiatives.
One of the things we really wanted to do in our time here, and one of the reasons behind many of the reforms we undertook, is to allow us to have a State Department that could move at the speed of relevance, which is something we used to say all the time. Now it’s become almost a cliche, but it really is important – because world affairs are moving so quickly, economic developments are moving so quickly, and so much of that is internationalized, and it involves what we do around the world as well.
And so, I’m very proud of everybody at the Department of State and all the work that they’re doing to be a part of this initiative, along with our partners in the other agencies, because this truly is an interagency challenge that we’re facing.
What is the challenge that we’re here to talk about today? Let me put it to you this way: I think we made a terrible mistake in this country – not – many years ago, under people that were in charge at the time, especially at the end of the Cold War. And that was the idea that the ability to make things no longer mattered. And no matter – it didn’t matter any longer where things were made. They were to be made in the most efficient place at the lowest possible cost. That meant more profits for the company, lower costs for the consumers, and that was the way the world would work. There was this fantasy, really, that the whole world would become a free enterprise, democracies, and that everyone would look us.”
“That ran into reality – the reality that that is not how human events have ever worked, that the nation-state still does matter, nationalism is still real, national borders still matter, and that countries are going to always act in their best interest. But the result of it is that it deindustrialized America. We lost our ability and our capacity to make things, and not just big things – not just the kinds of big machinery and things that we normally identify with industry – but even some of the most basic components that are necessary, that underpin economic life, especially in the 21st century.
And we woke up to the reality just a few years ago that we are suddenly, as a nation, dangerously dependent – dangerously dependent – on other nations for all sorts of things that we need, not simply for our economic vibrancy but, in many cases, for our national security and our very survival as a prosperous nation-state. And so now we are involved in this endeavor across the board to try to reverse those mistakes. And it will be the work of multiple administrations, but it starts here and it starts now with this one that is receiving attention at its highest level.
One way is just the basic ingredients that go into all this, and it’s why you’ve seen such a focus on access to not just critical minerals as raw material but also to the ability to process them. But the other is – has to be the ability to actually make things once again. And we have to understand that re-industrialization, that 21st century industrial activity is going to look different than it did in the 20th century. It’s going to involve far more skills. It’s going to involve – not just are our workers going to have to be better educated in what they’re doing, but in many cases, given the evolution and the rapidly changing dynamics of the modern world, they may have to be retrained multiple times in their career.
One of the crown jewels that have powered American innovation and, ultimately, powered American economic influence and power around the world has been our system of higher education. It has produced extraordinary research; it has produced extraordinary breakthroughs. I think the sad part about it is the number of things we have innovated or created, but then they’re made somewhere else. And so, I think in the 21st century, this partnership with higher education is important, and it’s important for two reasons.
First of all, why build it when – why build a new wheel when we already have a wheel? We just need to repurpose that wheel to become the place where 21st century American workers go to become empowered with the skills they need to succeed. But I also think it’s important for higher education, and we’ve got some great partners here today that are already part of this initiative, and, of course, we want this partnership to grow to include other schools as well.
But I think it’s also important for higher education because, increasingly, young Americans are asking: Is the college degree worth it? Is the college route worth it? Because we have to borrow money or we have to spend money or we have to do all these sorts of things and, in the end, I get a degree, and all that degree does is either a) qualify me to get another degree or b) it may not even really lead to a job necessarily that’s different from the one I could have gotten otherwise.
And I think this speaks to that, because it also – in addition to being good for our country – is an opportunity to say to students: If you come here and you go to school and you follow this curriculum, you will leave here not just with a paper credential but with the skills that make you immediately employable in a high-paying job, in a good-paying job with long-term stability. And so this partnership is critical because what I hope it means, what I hope it symbolizes – and not just symbolizes but what I hope it is evidence of – [..]
[..] is how government partnering with non-government entities like our higher education system and the private sector, the combination of those three pillars – the private sector that needs the workers and knows what they need from the workers; the higher education system that can equip young Americans with the skills they need to fill those jobs; and government that ensures not just that it’s acting as a convening body, but ensures that our national policies reflect these priorities. These three pillars working together drive us towards this outcome that we want, and it’s very important.
So, I think today is a great way to kick this off. We have great partners on board already. We hope to attract more. I want to thank all of you for being a part of it. And I – the last thing I want to say about this is that we understand that for this to work, this is not a two-year project. This is not a two-and-a-half-year project. This is a project that will involve sustainment for the long term. Multiple American administrations are going to have to make this a priority, which is why it’s so important that you see evidence that, at the highest levels of our government, now and for the future, you have that commitment.
And it’s why it’s exciting for us to have the Vice President here today to speak about it, because I think the evidence is not just the importance this administration gives it, but our acknowledgement that this is an issue that’s going to require long-term and sustained attention. This has to be an endeavor that goes on beyond the next two years. It has to go on for a generation. And I think having the Vice President here today with us is evidence of that commitment.
And so now I want to introduce and welcome to the stage here at the Institute of Peace, a beautiful building that the State Department’s using a lot – and we thank you all for coming – the Vice President of the United States of America, JD Vance.” (Applause.)

Tesla is now worth MORE than all other publicly traded automakers combined

Tesla: $1.511 Trillion
Everyone else combined: $1.446 Trillion

Toyota, BYD, GM, Hyundai, Mercedes, BMW, Ford, Ferrari, Volkswagen, Porsche…all of them combined

And Tesla still stands taller… nothing… pic.twitter.com/Vo3WKzDtPG
— X Freeze (@XFreeze) September 4, 2026

https://twitter.com/johnkim77/status/2095680548114927801?s=20

The future of transportation https://t.co/qS2Ub7ymmo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2026

The Cybercab motor uses no rare earth metals, but maintains the same range!

This was extremely hard to achieve. https://t.co/2SrdikvrUM
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2026

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Debt Rattle August 6 2026

Aug 062026

August 6, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:07 am Finance Tagged with: Abdul, Ceuta, Comey, Hadestown, Influence Operation, leverage, Oman, redistricting, Russiagate 32 Responses »

SalvadorDali Girl At The Window 1925

• Iran-Oman Route ‘Agreed To’ as Iran Warns Against US ‘Interference’ (ZH)

• Iran Set To Emerge With More Hormuz Leverage Than Before The War (ZH)

• What the Situation on the Ground in Iran Actually Looks Like (VDH)

• Declassified FBI Document Blows Up Everything About Russiagate (Margolis)

• The Democrat Establishment Is Freaking Out Right Now (Matt Margolis)

• ‘Common Sense vs. Complete Insanity’ (Ben Whedon)

• Ukraine Shot Down Zero Missiles In Huge Russian Overnight Salvo (ZH)

• How Zelensky’s 40-Day ‘Influence Operation’ Against Russia Fell Apart (RT)

• EU Sets New Russian Gas Record Despite Ban Plans – Data (RT)

• Obama’s Exclusive Fundraiser for the Democrats’ Redistricting War (Thorne)

• Actor Fired for Opposing Transgender Athletes in Women’s Sports (Turley)

• Spanish Immigration Crisis Exposes Cracks in European Union (JTN)

https://twitter.com/BoLoudon/status/2084784902575165779?s=20

ELON MUSK: SpaceX expects $100 billion+ in ARR this year and $1 trillion in revenue by 2030.

“We are expecting to reach 100 billion-plus ARR in December of this year. And it’s probably also worth mentioning that our internal projections for reaching a trillion dollars in… pic.twitter.com/vxhkEnLGZZ
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) August 4, 2026

https://twitter.com/WallStreetApes/status/2084756194426855834?s=20 https://twitter.com/Crazyunfill94/status/2084245771369738332?s=20

Are we at the point where the words are picked to make Iran’s leaders feel they can sell them?

• Iran-Oman Route ‘Agreed To’ as Iran Warns Against US ‘Interference’ (ZH)

A statement from Iran’s Foreign Ministry warns that the United States and military ‘interference’ remain the biggest obstacles to a final Hormuz deal to reopen the strait:

Esmaeil Baqaei: The geographical coordinates of the route proposed by Iran and Oman in the Strait of Hormuz have been agreed upon. If some third parties do not obstruct this process, the joint statement between the two countries is in the final review and drafting stage. The understanding between Iran and Oman, in itself, cannot guarantee the safety of the Strait for passing ships, because the factors that create insecurity in the Strait of Hormuz, particularly those stemming from the United States, such as the naval blockade and other aggressive and threatening actions against Iran and its interests, still exist.
Latest details from Financial Times: “Initially, Iran would send ships, including oil tankers, through the waterway to ensure it is free of mines before the strait opens to other shipping, FT reports citing sources. Ships would not be charged fees during the temporary arrangement, the people added.If a deal holds and the strait reopens, the US would lift its naval blockade on Iranian ports and reinstate a waiver to allow Iran to sell oil and petroleum-related products, one of the people said.
Iranian pundits and state media continue touting this as a ‘victory’ over the US-Israeli war of aggression: Ali Akbar Dareini, a Tehran-based researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies, has said Iran is aiming to “stabilise” its control over the Strait of Hormuz, which is its “biggest military achievement of the war”. “Negotiations are aimed at stabilizing those achievements,” Dareini told Al Jazeera. “You do not negotiate to give away your achievements but stabilise them.” Once Iran opens up the strait, Dareini said Iran is still likely to put in place a mechanism to “ensure that peace will prevail”.
“Iran wants to make sure that there will be innocent passage … But there will not be hazardous passage, there will not be war,” he said, arguing that Tehran needs to ensure the US and its allies do not transport military equipment that could be used for attacks against it. This also as Yemen’s Houthis continue a ‘siege for siege’ blockade of Red Sea passage, targeting Saudi-linked vessels of Yemen’s coast, as we described. Thus far on Wednesday, the White House has remained mostly quiet on what seem to be Iran and Omani-driven talks for terms of the Hormuz Strait’s reopening. Tehran, however, has not remained quiet – as US bombs have fallen silent over the past couple days:
IRAN SAYS NEW HORMUZ ROUTE TO BE VALID FOR 2-4 MONTHS: IRNA
IRAN: NEW OMAN DEAL TO CLOSE TEMPORARY HORMUZ SHIPPING ROUTES
GHARIBABADI SAYS IRAN RECEIVED MESSAGES FROM US: IRNA
IRAN: US SAID IN MESSAGES IT’S READY TO RETURN TO ITS PLEDGES

And via Israeli media, though without official confirmation from Washington: Approaching an agreement on opening the Strait of Hormuz, N12 reports, citing American officials; The signing of the agreement is possible as early as tonight. Meanwhile, much of all of the above depends on what ‘mood’ Trump is in:
US military-intelligence leaks to media are designed to dissuade Trump from escalating his war (we’re out of missiles & interceptors, Iran isn’t; Iran won’t break, etc). Whereas Israeli intel leaks to media are designed to rile Trump into escalating the war by calling him a pussy https://t.co/Uu3wfmZX8r
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) August 5, 2026

“.. talks between Iran and Oman over the Strait of Hormuz “have nothing to do with the United States”

• Iran Set To Emerge With More Hormuz Leverage Than Before The War (ZH)

President Trump said late Tuesday that talks with Iran are “moving along very nicely” – in a highly fluid and ambiguous situation where it appears the two sides are only interacting indirectly at best.

But the Iranian side has continued to insist that there are currently no peace or ceasefire talks happening, but only the Iran-Oman negotiations which focus on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and setting terms of how it will be managed. Consistent with this narrative, Al Jazeera freshly cites Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB which reports that talks between Iran and Oman over the Strait of Hormuz “have nothing to do with the United States”. But Washington is presenting it as a US-Oman deal for the strait’s reopening, even if it fundamentally remains an Iranian-Omani proposal.
Trump in his latest comments echoed his Treasury Secretary from the day prior, saying, “It could happen. Tomorrow or the next day.” This was on the heels of traveling to Los Angeles yesterday for a fundraising event hosted by the Republican National Committee. “A lot of progress has been made.”He told Fox that the White House is now having “very good discussions” with Iranian officials as part of an “all-day negotiation” and that the Strait of Hormuz reopening “is going to be open very soon.””If they back out again, they are going to get hit really hard,” the president told the outlet. He had said the same by close of last week, but by the weekend reversed course and decided to refrain from attack Iran again.
According to Bloomberg, “The US, Iran and Oman are preparing to announce a 60-day agreement on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz” – but the Iranian side has not affirmed this.So as it stands, Tehran says it is driving the Oman talks and that Washington has been sidelined, while the White House claims that it has directly involvement in shaping the outcome.mBut all sides do seem in agreement that the technical details and mechanics of the deal are currently being worked on. According to the latest outline of what this is expected to look like via CBS:
Under the current proposal, ships entering the Strait would use the channel closest to Iran, with Iran coordinating inbound traffic, while vessels leaving the strait would use the Omani side, with Muscat managing outbound traffic. The proposal also includes a “service fee,” with the revenue split between Iran and Oman.According to the source, the broad outlines have largely been agreed upon, with the remaining discussions focused on implementation and timing. Axios reported something similar, in which the US is nearing a Hormuz deal. Axios added that no tolls or fees would be charged during the 60-day period and the parties would work on clearing naval mines from the median lane of the strait within 30 days.
As for the claim of ‘no tolls’, this could once again be just semantics, given the Iranian and Omani sides have consistently signaled the need for fund collection under the headers of safe navigation, logistics, and environmental protection.There has also been some progress on agreements for third-party demining operations. But as Rubio reminded the world yesterday, Washington still insists resolving the nuclear issue – something which the Iranians still say can only be broached after the conflict is ended and there is peace.

Victor Davis Hanson.

• What the Situation on the Ground in Iran Actually Looks Like (VDH)

We’re hearing more and more every day about Iran and [President Donald] Trump as the midterms now are only about 90 days away. There’s kind of a narrative that is emerging, left and right, that we are bogged down. I’ve heard the word Vietnam evoked. Donald Trump may have contributed to that because, although in that 150 days, we’ve been operating in the Gulf, we’ve only bombed Iran about 50 or so days, and we’ve been discussing it for 100 days.

So the narrative has emerged that Donald Trump promises to hit them hard, they back down, and they say they want talks. They do not want talks. They want to delay, delay, delay, delay. Donald Trump then sporadically hits them. They come back to the table. We have no idea who we’re dealing with because the Iranian Revolutionary Islamic Guard seems to be playing the bad cop, and the moderate elected—“moderate elected”–officials, seem to put a happy face on things, and they either have no power or authority, or they’re in league with the hardcore to give them time and run out the clock.
So, what are the relative pressures? Everybody’s getting very angry over this on, off, on, off, on, and we’re concentrating too much on what Donald Trump says. We know what each side is doing. Donald Trump has 90 days before the midterms. If he should lose the midterms, his team is convinced, A, that there will be an impeachment circus for the next two years, and B, anybody around him will be hauled before Senate and House committees. But mostly in the House because I don’t think the Republicans will lose the Senate. And they will be inquired into, they will be researched, they will be berated, and it will cost them a fortune, and that will be a circus.
And so, Donald Trump doesn’t want that. To avoid that, he has to have gas getting near $3 a gallon, the world price around $65 a barrel, the Strait of Hormuz open, and all that requires him either to have a new Iranian government or a debilitated Iranian government or a negotiated settlement. What is Iran trying to do? Iran is trying to talk, hit the Gulf, close the Strait, talk, repeat, wash, rinse, spin, wash, rinse, spin, drag it out, see Donald Trump lose the House, have the House Left and its new Islamicist socialist base cut off funds for [the Iran conflict], and then wait out the clock and get a democratic socialist type of president that would follow the Obama regimen and pretty much appease them and let them do what they want.
So, what’s going on? What’s the big picture? I think we’re missing what’s actually happening every day. There is still an embargo on Iran. No tankers can come in with merchandise, food, material goods, industrial goods, and no Iranian oil is getting out. We have bombed now most of the rail links that go into the former Soviet Union and on into Russia and on into China. So, they are not getting imports, and they are not exporting. They may have some airlift capacity in regional airports where China or Russia are sending in material, but it won’t be much.
But more importantly, they are debanked. Assets are frozen. The economic embargo continues. They are losing in revenue about $500 million per day, and that loss is geometrically increasing, not just arithmetically. In other words, as you start to damage their infrastructure, their bridges, and we have, their roads, and you start to inflict enormous damage on the military, and they draw scarce resources from the domestic economy to fix it, the people are getting more anguished and poorer and poorer, and the country is getting worse and worse.
We don’t see that because of what? We don’t see that because there’s no ground troops. It’s not embedded. We don’t know what’s going on. mSo, while the Left keeps saying to all of us that time is running out for Donald Trump, we’re in a Vietnam quagmire, the war is lost, we need to just look at not what the Left says, not what the right says, not even what Donald Trump says, not what Iran says. Just look dispassionately and disinterestedly at two things. What is the actual state of affairs in Iran?
We have tragically lost 18 soldiers and probably spent $40 billion. But at that cost in blood and treasure, we have debilitated, neutered, deindustrialized, and pretty much destroyed the military, industrial, and nuclear complex industry of the largest state, in terms of economics and population and area, if you combine all those factors together, in the Middle East, and the bully, and the most anti-American. And so, while the Left thinks time is running out, the actual data show us that Iran is running out of time.
And I don’t know who will win this standoff, but Iran has less resources and less wherewithal to withstand this python-like squeezing of it than we do in inflicting it. We can do this forever. One final asterisk or footnote. Things have changed somewhat. Donald Trump and the Republicans don’t think the midterms are lost. If they thought the midterms were lost, then they would accelerate the bombing probably and say, “We have nothing left to lose. Let’s end the Iranian threat now.” But they don’t think it’s lost because of what?

“A president asked why the FBI wouldn’t publicly admit what it privately told him, that he wasn’t under investigation, and the bureau treated the question as evidence of a Kremlin conspiracy.”

• Declassified FBI Document Blows Up Everything About Russiagate (Margolis)

For years, Democrats and their media allies swore up and down that the FBI’s investigation of Donald Trump was a serious national security investigation, launched only because of grave concerns about Russian collusion. Newly declassified FBI records tell a different story. It turns out that the bureau formally opened its full counterintelligence investigation into Trump back in 2017, and used his firing of FBI Director James Comey as the justification.

The president exercised his constitutional authority to fire an FBI director, and the FBI responded by opening a counterintelligence investigation into him. The key document is a declassified FBI “Opening Electronic Communication,” dated May 16, 2017, exactly one week after Trump fired Comey on May 9. It authorized a full investigation into the sitting president of the United States under the codename “Oxferd Comma.” No, that’s not a typo. Don’t ask me why it’s spelled that way.

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: This morning, the White House Government Transparency Task Force released newly declassified documents exposing an FBI criminal investigation code-named Oxferd Comma. The documents can be downloaded here. https://t.co/8l9NWPnCx0
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) August 5, 2026

“The FBI is opening a full investigation based on an articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States,” the document reads.
The stated goal was to determine “if President Trump is or was directed by, controlled by, and/or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation in a manner constituting a threat to the national security of the United States and/or a violation of federal criminal statutes.” The same document reveals that investigators were also examining Trump for possible obstruction of justice.
So what was the “articulable factual basis” for treating a duly elected president as a suspected Russian asset? Trump’s conversations with Comey. The document claims Trump “sought Comey’s personal loyalty” and “asked Comey to publicize the fact that the President was not the subject of an FBI investigation.” It also states that Trump “asked Comey to do what he could to resolve the investigations.”
That’s it. That’s the smoking gun. A president asked why the FBI wouldn’t publicly admit what it privately told him, that he wasn’t under investigation, and the bureau treated the question as evidence of a Kremlin conspiracy.
The document also argues that Trump’s shifting explanations for firing Comey “can be reasonably read to imply that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was a factor in President Trump’s decision to terminate Comey.” In other words, the FBI took a routine personnel decision, one Trump had every legal right to make, and spun it into proof that he was doing the bidding of Moscow. The memos show that both Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were advised that the probe had been launched.
The FBI’s leadership was furious that Trump fired its director, so it retaliated by branding him a potential Russian agent. Naturally, Democrats ate all that up. The bureau didn’t open the probe because of collusion evidence. There wasn’t any. You know that. I know that. Even Democrats know it, but they pretend not to. Yet, we got years of breathless wall-to-wall coverage, endless Democrat fundraising emails, and a cloud over an entire presidency, all built on a document that cited a personnel decision as its foundation.
Russiagate hobbled Trump’s first term, poisoned public trust, and gave the left its favorite conspiracy theory. Now we have the receipts showing how it started, and it’s just as bogus as anyone could have expected. Every official who signed off on this disgrace owes the American people an explanation, and the country owes Trump something it will probably never get from the Democrat Party or the press: an apology.

It’s probably very politically incorrect to say that no US senator should be named Abdul.

• The Democrat Establishment Is Freaking Out Right Now (Matt Margolis)

NBC News projected early Wednesday that Abdul El-Sayed defeated Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) in the state’s Democrat senatorial primary. Our partner DDHQ has also just called the race. Establishment Democrats are freaking out right now.
Bernie Sanders’ organization Our Revolution also declared victory in the race. “Last night, Michigan delivered one of the clearest messages of this election cycle: people power can beat big money,” Joseph Geevarghese, Executive Director of Our Revolution, said in a statement. “Abdul El-Sayed was outspent by nearly ten to one, facing the largest single-race AIPAC investment in history and tens of millions of dollars from billionaire-backed super PACs determined to buy this election. But they couldn’t buy what mattered most: the trust of working people. Abdul refused corporate PAC money, built a grassroots movement that reached hundreds of thousands of voters, and won anyway.”

Money out of politics.
Money in your pocket.
Medicare for All.

Michigan…

We won. I am so proud to be your Democratic nominee for US Senate. Let's win in November. pic.twitter.com/RItVmqrzob
— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) August 5, 2026

El-Sayed’s victory gives the party’s socialist wing a real foothold in a Midwest battleground heading into the November 2026 midterms. Stevens should have won this race easily. She’s a four-term congresswoman who, by every measure, was the more electable option in November. That’s exactly why Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer jumped into the race on July 24 with a late endorsement of Stevens, an obvious last-ditch attempt to keep El-Sayed off the ballot. Outgoing Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who chose not to seek a third term, also endorsed Stevens before Tuesday’s vote. It failed to stop El-Sayed, and now the party is stuck with him.
This is a genuinely terrible outcome for Democrats. The problem is November, where polling suggests El-Sayed is going to have a much rougher time closing the deal. Don’t forget that Trump carried Michigan in 2016 and 2024, so we’re not talking about a deep blue state here. This is winnable territory for Republicans, and a seat Democrats can’t afford to lose. And El-Sayed is the candidate the GOP wanted to face in November.
Just last month, El-Sayed, who has ties to antisemitic influencer Hasan Piker, said Israel should not exist as a Jewish state. He can’t quietly walk that one back before the general election. It’s on the record, and Republicans will make sure every Michigan voter hears it. Watch what happened when Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer questioned Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) on El-Sayed’s rhetoric. Dingell botched the answer badly, managing only to confirm that as the Democrat nominee, she would support him anyway. Other Democrats will face that same question throughout the rest of the campaign.
As more radical candidates like El-Sayed become the face of the party, Democrats won’t be able to put any real distance between themselves and the socialist wing. They can’t dismiss it as some fluke confined to the bluest corners of the bluest cities. This will reflect on the party at large heading into the midterms, whether Democrat leaders want to admit it or not. Losing a winnable Senate seat in the Midwest because the base chose ideology over electability would be a self-inflicted wound Democrats can’t afford.

“Abdul doesn’t represent a vision for the future. He’s leading a movement grounded in ideological fanaticism,” Rogers said.”

• ‘Common Sense vs. Complete Insanity’ (Ben Whedon)

Former Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., on Wednesday presented the Michigan Senate race as a choice between level-headed governance and radicalism after progressive Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination. Rogers faced no opponent in the Republican primary and is set to face El-Sayed in November. The progressive defeated Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., in what many analysts saw as a battle between the Democratic Party establishment and its progressive base. But the contest was unexpectedly close and the Associated Press did not call the race for El-Sayed until Wednesday morning.

Rogers, for his part, went on the offensive shortly after El-Sayed’s win. “The choice this November is simple: common sense or complete insanity,” he said in a statement. “For more than 25 years, one party has controlled Michigan’s two Senate seats — and they’ve run our state into the ground. They’ve driven 200,000 manufacturing jobs out of Michigan. They’ve dropped our schools to 45th in the nation. They’ve saddled families with the highest utility rates in the Midwest. Working people are paying more, earning less, and getting left behind.”
“And now the same failed politicians are asking us to send Abdul El-Sayed to Washington. Abdul isn’t just another liberal. He’s an extremist,” he added. “Abdul doesn’t represent a vision for the future. He’s leading a movement grounded in ideological fanaticism. His agenda would make our communities less safe and our state less affordable,” Rogers went on. “This election isn’t just about choosing a Senator. It’s about deciding whether Michigan has a future built on common sense — or whether we hand the keys to the most fringe extremists in the nation.”
The characterization of the race is likely to be a common theme for Republicans campaigning this election cycle, as many increasingly find themselves pitted against insurgent progressives, many of whom ousted incumbent lawmakers. Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich., has found himself in a similar position after socialist William Lawrence managed to defeat former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink for the Democratic nod in the state’s 7th Congressional District. That district, which is centered on Lansing, is regarded as a toss-up and could prove pivotal to the battle for the House.

Earlier this week, Sundance wrote: “I give it four months, and it’s over..”

He’s quite likely right, but you are not supposed to know. You are supposed to think “we” are winning. That’s why we ban RT.

• Ukraine Shot Down Zero Missiles In Huge Russian Overnight Salvo (ZH)

According to a growing casualty count, a large barrage of ballistic missiles fired by Russia on Ukraine has killed at least 21 people and wounded dozens more. The overnight attack has raised the alarm for Ukraine’s Western backers, given it is being widely reported that among the over two dozen ballistic and anti-ship missiles fired, not a single one was intercepted by Ukraine.

The attacks come on the heels of a record month: July saw over 380 missiles of all types launched on Ukraine, with government authorities citing the highest civilian casualties since 2022, with at least 377 civilians killed, and another 2,129 wounded for the month of July.As Ukraine grapples with very low and limited missile interceptors, and amid reports that the Pentagon too is struggling to keep up supplies amid the Iran war, CNN also confirms that “as Russia fired more than two dozen ballistic and anti-ship missiles” and that “none” were intercepted by Ukrainian defenses.
President Zelensky again took to social media to urge partners to rapidly send more anti-air missiles: “It is crucial that our partners realize that delays in their delivery or a reluctance to provide anti-ballistic systems lead precisely to such horrific casualties and destruction,” he said. “Partners who are not ready to help more actively with the supply of interceptors right now can help by imposing new sanctions,” he added. Notably the Russian strikes have expanded to not just city infrastructure, energy cites, military bases, and ports – but now Russia appears to be going after prominent businesses.
This comes after Ukraine’s repeat attacks on Wildberries facilities, the Russian online retailer giant comparable to Amazon: The strikes also caused damage to prominent businesses in Ukraine, including the country’s largest e-commerce platform, Rozetka, and Epicentr, a retail chain comparable to IKEA. In a statement, Epicentr said Russia launched a ”devastating attack” on its manufacturing infrastructure, killing one of its male employees. In a matter of minutes, Russian missiles destroyed what the company had been building for decades, the statement said.
FOZZY group, which is one of Ukraine’s largest retailers that operates supermarket chains, said Russian shelling caused fires at two of its distribution centers. It said that six of its employees had been killed, while more have been injured.
https://twitter.com/AMK_Mapping_/status/2084827361103753594?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2084827361103753594%7Ctwgr%5Edd2eacefa4402eff7bfa44235249b6be873b8fe7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fukraine-shot-down-zero-missiles-huge-russian-overnight-salvo-killed-least-21
But on the flip side Ukraine has only expanded its own long-range drone attacks on Russian territory, including on the capital city. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has explained to TASS that “In recent months, the number of drones launched toward Moscow has increased significantly. And overall, of all the attacks carried out almost daily against Russian territory, two-thirds of the drones are heading toward Moscow.”
Last month Zelensky had announced a 40-day “operation of influence” – describing a multi-pronged campaign of long-range drone strikes intent on forcing Moscow to halt the war and get to the negotiating table on terms favorable to Ukraine. The Russian military has all the while also been upping its response.

“Let’s remember them in peace,” she added, “when there is peace.”

• How Zelensky’s 40-Day ‘Influence Operation’ Against Russia Fell Apart (RT)

In late June, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky announced a 40-day “operation of influence,” portraying it as a campaign of long-range drone strikes meant to force Russia to enter negotiations on Kiev’s terms.As of early August, the campaign in practice turned out to be what Moscow has described as “terrorist attacks” on Russian oil refineries, residential buildings, logistics hubs, and other critical infrastructure, resulting in the death of dozens of civilians.

Russia’s answer has been to pummel Ukraine’s defense industry – including facilities producing drones and missiles instrumental to Zelensky’s much-maligned campaign – while continuing to grind forward on the battlefield. As the 40-day deadline passed on Tuesday, there was no sign Russia had budged an inch.Here’s how Zelensky’s campaign collapsed far from its stated objectives. Zelensky approved the plan on June 25, describing it on social media as a combination of “long-range” and “medium-range sanctions” aimed at compelling Russia to end the hostilities.
Over the following weeks, Ukrainian strikes focused on three main target sets: Russian oil refineries, logistics warehouses belonging to retailer Wildberries (often described as “Russia’s Amazon”), and a wave of strikes that killed civilians far from any front line. Ukrainian officials have said that they seek to make the war psychologically “sweep over” large segments of Russian society. The Ukrainian leader has repeatedly insisted on freezing the conflict along the current front line before a final settlement can take place. Moscow, however, has objected to a ceasefire on the terms of Ukraine and its backers, arguing it would be used by Kiev to replenish its battered military and receive more Western-supplied weapons.
What impact have Ukraine’s strikes on oil infrastructure had?
Ukrainian drones have hit refineries across several Russian regions, including one major facility in Moscow, over the course of the campaign. The strikes did lead to temporary deficits, long lines at the pumps, caps on maximum fuel purchases for ordinary consumers, and logistics hurdles in several regions, particularly the Crimean Peninsula.
In late June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strikes were designed “to undermine our confidence in ourselves and our capabilities” and to “create conditions for launching negotiations on terms favorable to our adversary.” He stressed that Russia “will not give them [Ukraine] that opportunity,” adding that the attacks had “no impact whatsoever on the situation at the front.” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak said the government had banned gasoline and diesel exports while strengthening air defenses around refineries, ensuring that plants operate at maximum capacity, and sending additional fuel to the hardest-hit regions. By late July, Novak said the market was “gradually stabilizing” as several refineries resumed operations and purchase limits were lifted in a number of regions.
Has Ukraine targeted Russian civilians?
Since Zelensky’s announcement, there have barely been any days without Ukrainian strikes killing civilians. According to Rodion Miroshnik, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s mission tracking Ukraine’s alleged war crimes, in the week of July 20-26 alone 492 people were affected, including 57 killed, seven of them children. In the most recent weekly count, Miroshnik reported 49 people killed, including four children, as well as 342 wounded.
The campaign’s final days brought one of the deadliest strikes on civilians: On Monday, a Ukrainian drone came down on a beach near the resort city of Gelendzhik, southern Russia, killing at least eight civilians, including four children, with dozens of others injured. As part of the campaign, Ukrainian forces also started to attack Wildberries warehouses, hitting around a dozen facilities across Russia. At least eight people were killed and dozens more injured, with small sellers – mostly trading in clothes, toys, and other purely civilian-use items – suffering large and often irrevocable financial losses.
Zelensky has confirmed that the attacks were deliberate, claiming the warehouses stored dual-use components, including drone parts and navigation equipment – something any large-scale retailer in the world sells. Moscow has insisted the retailer does not supply the Russian military. Wildberries’ losses are difficult to estimate, but they reportedly exceed $1 billion. Following the strikes, the retailer will launch several warehouses in neighboring Kazakhstan.
How has Russia responded to Zelensky’s campaign?
Russia responded with long-range drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian defense-related facilities, with a focus on those producing UAVs that were ultimately being used in Zelensky’s campaign, along with attacks on cargo vessels it said were carrying military shipments in the Black Sea. Moscow maintains it does not target civilians.
On the ground, Russian forces continue to advance. According to TASS calculations, they liberated and took control of 32 settlements in July alone. The month’s biggest prize was Konstantinovka, a fortified stronghold in the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration that Russian troops fully secured in early July. Officials in Moscow estimated that Kiev lost around 13,500 troops while attempting to hold on to the settlement. Later in July, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov announced that Russian forces were on the verge of liberating Krasny Liman, another key Donbass stronghold.
Has Kiev commented on its 40-day failure?
Zelensky himself has so far kept silent on the self-imposed 40-day deadline, but the head of his office, Kirill Budanov, argued that the calendar was irrelevant. “Don’t get hung up on these numbers – 40, 50, 100, 15 days. What matters is the result,” he said. Budanov is the same Ukrainian official who on several occasions in 2022 and 2023 predicted that Ukraine would retake Crimea; Kiev’s attacks were ultimately bogged down in Russian defenses far from that objective. Zelensky himself recently admitted that Ukraine is unlikely to seize the peninsula, which overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in 2014 after a Western-backed coup in Kiev.
How has Zelensky’s 40-day campaign been assessed?
Ukrainian outlet Strana.ua noted there were no signs Moscow was shifting its position after 40 days, while describing Russia’s de-facto naval blockade of Ukrainian ports – imposed in response to Ukrainian strikes on Russian vessels in the Black and Azov seas – as one of the most serious problems the campaign created for Kiev. RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan wrote that the operation, “announced by Zelensky with such bravado 40 days ago,” had instead concluded with the liberation of Konstantinovka, the dismissal of half of Ukraine’s government, and Kiev appealing for an “air truce.” “Let’s remember them in peace,” she added, “when there is peace.”.

“Belgium relied entirely on imports of the fuel from Russia in July, according to Bloomberg..”

• EU Sets New Russian Gas Record Despite Ban Plans – Data (RT)

The EU has been importing record volumes of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) despite a push to fully stop imports from Russia, Bloomberg has reported. Plans exist to end long-term imports of Russian LNG from next year after the EU already banned purchases under new short-term contracts. Yet its latest watered-down sanctions package carved out exemptions for European companies to continue transporting Russian LNG to third-country markets after some member states balked at measures they said would damage their own economies.

Belgium relied entirely on Russian LNG imports in July as disruption in the Middle East curbed alternative supplies to Europe, according to Bloomberg calculations published on Monday. The country reportedly imported around 400,000 tons of Russian gas during the month, while total LNG purchases fell by more than 40% year-on-year. Moscow remained Europe’s second-largest LNG supplier after the US, the outlet wrote.
The EU has faced soaring energy costs after scaling back imports of Russian energy following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. Natural gas has been the commodity the bloc has struggled most to replace since imposing unprecedented restrictions on Russia in 2022. Before then, Russia supplied about 45% of the EU’s natural gas imports. The Financial Times reported last month, citing Kpler data, that the bloc imported a record 9.89 million tons of LNG from Russia’s Yamal project in the first half of 2026, up 18% from a year earlier. France was the largest importer, followed by Belgium and Spain.
The US war on Iran and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz – a vital route carrying around 20% of global oil and LNG trade – have further strained Europe’s already volatile energy markets this year. Major suppliers such as QatarEnergy declared force majeure on shipments, sending European buyers scrambling for increasingly competitive US and West African LNG. The resulting spike in prices, freight costs, and supply disruptions has fueled inflation across the bloc, with analysts warning of gas shortages this winter.
The EU’s 21st package of sanctions targeting Russia included exemptions after Greece successfully lobbied to preserve European companies’ role in transporting Russian LNG to third-country markets. Athens warned the restrictions would hurt its shipping sector while benefiting foreign competitors. Moscow has condemned EU sanctions, particularly those targeting energy, as illegal and self-defeating, arguing they have undermined the bloc’s competitiveness.

“Sure, that sounds representative and fair. Great stuff, Barry, Eric, and the NDRC. Enjoy your fancy party!”

• Obama’s Exclusive Fundraiser for the Democrats’ Redistricting War (Thorne)

All together now: It’s only bad when Republicans do it. In today’s episode, the “it” in question is redistricting, also known as gerrymandering, depending on who’s doing it. The subject has become heated in the past year because awful, evil Republicans successfully redistricted the state of Texas back in August 2025. The move is projected to net an additional five Republican seats in the U.S. House. A slew of majority-Republican states have followed, with Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama redrawing their districts. They are expected to gain an additional one, one, two, four, one, one, and one seat, respectively.

Altogether, the reconfigured red states could net Republicans as many as 16 seats in the 2026 midterms.So, you can see why Democrats are upset. But as usual, it’s not because Republicans invented some new way of cheating — it’s because Republicans started playing by Democrats’ rules. As a resident of the Northeastern United States, I can testify that we Republican voters — Conservatives and MAGAs — are pretty much completely disenfranchised by Democrat gerrymandering. New York and California and basically every Democrat-controlled state has long been unfairly apportioned to help them hold onto power.
Now do blue states. pic.twitter.com/AejjKkmHyt
— Dale (@D47340) May 1, 2026

This is a “both sides do it” issue, but until Trump re-took office and started nudging Texas to take action, Republicans exercised more restraint and fairness in the states they controlled. Now, they have finally decided to play by the new rules. Predictably, Democrats have started shrieking and fainting as though the GOP had just invented the practice. And their media wing helps push the narrative. But did you know that the very first fundraiser Barack Obama hosted after Trump kicked his pinko party to the curb in 2016 was for a Democrat redistricting PAC?
A PAC that he helped launch, along with his former AG and wingman, Eric Holder, his comrade from way back in their Columbia University Activist Proving Ground days? On its website, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) declares: Under Attorney General Holder’s leadership, the NDRC is the centralized hub to fight for fair maps. Since our founding, we have executed a comprehensive redistricting strategy that includes shifting the balance of power away from total Republican control of redistricting, raising awareness of redistricting, and empowering the public to get involved in the fight for fair maps.
Democrats lost substantial power on the local and state levels during the Obama years, so once the lads formed their PAC in 2016 and launched it in 2017, “we immediately began preparing for the 2020 Census and the 2021 redistricting cycle.” One can hardly blame the Republicans for fighting back against this Obama-level onslaught, almost 10 years on. And now, every August, the well-heeled swells on elite Martha’s Vineyard, one of the off-coastal enclaves in which the Obamas own a mansion, gather to raise millions in support of the NDRC. I must pause here to insert one of my all-time favorite memes, from ACT for America:

Ticket prices or admission tiers are never available for the NDRC’s ultra-exclusive big-money soirée, which is well into “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it” territory. The event generally raises between $1.5 and $2 million. Long-time supporter George Soros has personally contributed approximately $2.6 million to the NDRC over the years, and he is also linked to a 2025 $500,000 grant from Democracy PAC.[..]If you want a good laugh, visit the NDRC website to read tales of how the valiant organization fights “gerrymandering” (which is what Republicans do) with its noble efforts to “make our democracy truly representative and ensure that every voter has a fair shot at making their voice heard in the process” (which is what Democrats do).
On a separate page, you can read how the NDRC “Applauds Maryland General Assembly for Putting Redistricting on the Ballot.” Maryland Dems will attempt to amend their constitution this fall, enabling them to gerrymander the state from seven Democrat U.S. reps and one Republican rep to eight Democrats and zero Republicans. In a state where just over half the registered voters are Democrats (~51.5%), almost a quarter are Republicans (~23.5%), and a quarter (~25%) are unaffiliated or something else.
Sure, that sounds representative and fair. Great stuff, Barry, Eric, and the NDRC. Enjoy your fancy party!

“It’s an old song. It’s a sad song. But we’re gonna sing it anyway.”

• Actor Fired for Opposing Transgender Athletes in Women’s Sports (Turley)

Geno Segers was a widely acclaimed actor who starred in the Broadway production Hadestown. That came to an end this month when Segers expressed the view of the vast majority of Americans: women’s sports should be confined to biological women. He has now been fired, even after an attempt to apologize for expressing his own views on the subject. Other actors have expressed support for transgender players without any response other than praise in the latest example of the rising McCarthyism on the left.

This is only the latest termination over the political views of artists in New York. As the song states in Hadestown, “It’s an old song. It’s a sad song. But we’re gonna sing it anyway.” We have previously discussed how private companies can fire employees for public conduct or statements that bring controversy to their business or products. However, even though the First Amendment does not govern such controversies, there remains a free speech issue. Free speech goes beyond the confines of the First Amendment and private companies can engage in censorship that curtails this human right.
The question often comes down to consistency in companies enforcing content-based standards. I did not like some of the comments of Segers, but there is little question that equally strong comments against “cisgender” athletes or for transgender athletes would not result in such termination. Segers posted statements critical of transgender athletes playing in women’s sports as well as the posting of preferred pronouns. The comments were certainly mocking and insulting at points: “If you asked me what my preferred pronouns are and it’s not obvious to you that I’m a he/him, that I’m good with he/him — Surely you don’t need any help. I’m not wearing a dress.”
One can understand why transgender advocates would be upset with the content and tenor of these comments, including “I don’t see transgender people becoming oppressed or being oppressed … life is unfair.”However, Segers also wrote: “I’m not against anyone living out their lives the way they want, but I am against their rights superseding the rights of other people. That’s a little bit foul.” Segers attempted to apologize for his comments after the cancel campaign picked up steam:
I wish to extend my most sincere apologies to everyone impacted by my words. While I never intended to inflict harm, I recognize that the impact of my statements is what matters most. I am fully committed to listening, educating myself, and elevating my standards. I will work tirelessly to earn the opportunity to make things right.Actors, athletes, and academics routinely offer equally strident and insulting comments about the issue as well as radical comments on cisgender citizens and culture. Those comments generally do not trigger cancel campaigns.
In academia, the bias is obvious and open. As discussed this week, over 40 percent of academics say that they will vote against faculty candidates who voted for Trump regardless of the intellectual content of their scholarship. Even moderate conservatives are rare in teaching while higher education is heavily populated with the most extreme voices on the left.
An example is the recent book published by Pennsylvania Professor Beans Velocci claiming “sex isn’t real” and the gender “binary” is “incoherent.” The assistant professor in history and the sociology of science seemed to relish the anticipated controversy over his book, telling Duke University Press in an interview that “any right wing or TERF detractor who wants to s***-talk the book is going to have to say or write the phrase ‘Sex Isn’t Real’ in the process.” Velocci is no standout in higher education. Attacking “cisness” and conservatives is a clear winning strategy for faculty candidates. As with actors, the opposing views would be lethal to an applicant.
The same is true with athletes. The mob has now come for Sophie Cunningham as it did for authors such as J.K. Rowling. Cunningham stated her support for maintaining women’s sports for biological females, a position also declared yesterday by Aryna Sabalenka, the number-one-ranked female tennis player. Cunningham was not obnoxious or extreme in her comments. She simply stated her concern for girls in sports. Nevertheless, she has been viciously attacked (including by a team owner), as have girls who support her.
Athletes, including coaches, routinely make opposing statements with no cancel campaign, including a women’s basketball coach. Former U.S. Women’s National Team star Megan Rapinoe routinely made controversial statements in favor of transgender athletes without any repercussions. However, Cunningham is now the target for the mob. Guardian’s Howard Bryant wrote, “Sophie Cunningham is now … accepting the role as the right’s anti-Black, anti-transgender culture war ambassador.”
Whether it is actors, athletes, or academics, there is a demonstrably different level of tolerance for controversial views on gender. Take Segers’ statements, swap the nouns or pronouns, and ask yourself if there would have been a cancel campaign, let alone a termination. It is not the fact of the controversy but the lack of consistency that is so problematic in these areas. It is likely that Segers will now be effectively blacklisted in seeking new roles and productions. For him, the musical lyrics came true: “Hadestown, Hadestown, a place where you can die.”

Who organizes this? Why are we not told?

• Spanish Immigration Crisis Exposes Cracks in European Union (JTN)

The Spanish immigration crisis has exposed cracks in the European Union and an opportunity for right-wing leaders heading into elections next year in Spain, Italy and France. Last week, tens of thousands of migrants poured over the Spanish border at Ceuta, a North African exclave ruled by Spain since 1580. The small coastal city is situated on a narrow peninsula on the southern edge of the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco — the only place where a European border touches Africa.

Instead of fully backing Spain as they may have done in the past, more than 20 European leaders instead criticized the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez for passing policies that attract illegal immigrants. PBS reported that as many as 60,000 entered the nation illegally, and that at least 57 migrants died on the journey. Other leaders went further. The government of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni harshly criticized Sanchez’s leftist government and suspended Italy’s participation in the Schengen Area—the passport-free zone that is a pillar of the European Union.
Though at an emergency EU meeting on Tuesday, the various governments played down criticisms of Spain’s leaders and applauded its quick response to send the vast majority of those who crossed the border back to Morocco, the incident exposed cracks in the continental bloc. Specifically, the right-wing candidates with elections next year—in Spain, Italy and France—have used the incident as a way to bolster their own credentials ahead of the contests and seek to ride the wave of Europe’s move towards stricter immigration enforcement.
Earlier this year, while Europe was working on tightening border controls and rethinking its asylum policies, Spain was an outlier. Under Prime Minister Sanchez, Spain announced a reform that will grant up to half a million people legal status, amounting to around 1% of the population. The move sparked domestic backlash and elicited concerns from leaders around Europe. “Some say we’re going too far, that we’re going against the current,” Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez said at the time. “When did recognizing human rights become something radical?”
At the time, the tide had turned elsewhere in Europe. In France, Germany and Italy, leaders have been pushing for tighter immigration controls, stepping up border patrols, scaling back asylum rights and helping to fund initiatives to create incentives for would-be migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia to stay home, Just the News previously reported. Spain’s neighbors accused Sanchez’s legalization plan of creating “pull factors” for illegal immigration to Europe and endangering the continental efforts to curb “uncontrolled mass crossings” that have become the hallmark of migrant flows from Africa in recent years.
“Irregular and uncontrolled immigration poses a danger to national security:” Italy
The critics were led by the government of conservative Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has long campaigned on curbing illegal immigration to her country and to the European Union. Meloni’s Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani, placed the blame squarely on Spain’s amnesty policy, arguing that it undermines national security. “Irregular and uncontrolled immigration poses a danger to national security. The images coming from Ceuta show how the Madrid Government’s decision to grant Spanish, and therefore European, citizenship to over 500,000 irregular immigrants is profoundly wrong and encourages human trafficking,” he said.
Meloni’s government temporarily suspended open air and sea transport between Spain and Italy on Friday amid concerns that Spain was not doing enough to control the flow of illegal migrants. Under the Schengen Agreement, 29 participating European countries created a passport-free travel zone without internal border checks. France also mobilized police and military units to conduct checks on the Spanish border. Meloni also led a joint letter by 22 European leaders, criticizing Spain for its policies that they contend attract illegal immigrants, putting the entire European Union at risk.
regularization of a very large number of irregular migrants,” the nearly two dozen European leaders, led by Meloni and Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, wrote to the European Commission. “We cannot allow uncontrolled mass crossings, the instrumentalization of migration or other hybrid threats to create the perception that illegal entry into the European Union is possible. That a migrant’s illegal entry can turn into a legal stay,” the leaders added.
Conservative party leaders and candidates across Europe also see the Spanish border crisis as an opportunity, especially in Spain, Italy and France. Those three countries are set to have elections next year. In Spain, where the crisis took place, Sanchez’s Socialist Workers’ Party is facing a likely alliance of conservative and right-wing populist parties polling ahead of his left-wing bloc. The populist Vox party is gaining steam as the main opposition against Sanchez’s immigration agenda.
Vox’s leader, Santiago Abascal, traveled to Ceuta amid the crisis to present a sharp contrast with Sanchez’s leadership. There he called for the militarization of Spain’s borders and labeled the flood of migrants an “invasion.” Abascal also called for Sanchez to be jailed over his handling of the crisis. Vox and Spain’s largest conservative party, the People’s Party, are gearing up for a general election next year. Sanchez’s leftist party has clung to power since 2023 after receiving fewer votes than the People’s Party. However, Vox and the PP were unable to form a coalition to remove Sanchez from power because they fell just short of an outright majority. Both are looking for an opportunity to oust Sanchez next year.
Blaming socialism
“By regularizing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, the socialist prime minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, has opened the doors of Europe,” said Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s conservative National Rally party and member of the European Parliament. The party’s longtime presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, will run in the election to replace French President Emmanuel Macron next year. The first television debate will take place later this month. “In 2027, we will stop this madness by reserving Schengen free movement for EU nationals,” Le Pen said in a post to Facebook.
Meloni, who led the opposition to Spain’s immigration policies, will also have to answer to voters in an election next year. Italians will decide whether to reward the prime minister for her own efforts to crack down on illegal immigration to Italy, one of the core campaign promises that catapulted her party to the top of polls in Italy’s 2022 elections. Meloni has led a remarkably stable governing coalition of right-wing parties in Rome and is the country’s second-longest serving prime minister.

Jensen Huang publicly named who's winning the AI race. Not OpenAI. Not Anthropic. Not Google.

Elon Musk.

His reasoning wasn't personality. It was infrastructure math:

– Tesla's AI factory is stacked with NVIDIA hardware
– Tesla's road fleet is the largest world-data collection… pic.twitter.com/6D3h8OUSE3
— stark0xbt (@stark0xbt) August 3, 2026

https://twitter.com/realCarola2Hope/status/2084611544260702584?s=20

Bill O’Reilly just made one of the boldest predictions yet about Anthony Fauci: He’s going to be “in court for the next five years.”

O’Reilly says Fauci may have escaped federal prosecution with the pardon from Biden…but the real legal battle is only just beginning.

O’REILLY:… pic.twitter.com/pge6Y81fXM
— Overton (@overton_news) August 4, 2026

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