burn bags Archives - The Automatic Earth

🚨Germans are thunderously applauding Weidel, who promises that under the AfD, Ukraine will never join the EU or NATO, and will also stop receiving German money and weapons.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
"We need diplomacy between West and East. Therefore, if the Alternative for Germany… pic.twitter.com/wMGN9WDvJr
— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) July 20, 2026

They each deserve presidential medals of freedom for standing up and speaking out so honestly to protect our freedoms. @POTUS @realDonaldTrump @SusieWiles https://t.co/vs9V8Bi0oo
— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) July 20, 2026

This is one of the greatest moments in history.
Hillary gets totally destroyed by Trump. pic.twitter.com/H6jWEUwj5e
— 🦊The SLY Silver Fox 2.0🦊 (@FreedomHasWon) July 20, 2026

“Air war alone cannot dislodge a large military/regime, hence the dilemma of restraint vs. quagmire and new forever war…”

• Trump: Iran Will Pay ‘Many Times Over’ For US Troop Deaths (ZH)

After at least three more American troops were reported killed in Iranian attacks on Jordan and Iraq, President Trump has newly warned Monday that “Every time Iran kills an American soldier they will pay for that killing many times over!” The Commander-in-Chief says further he’s given “directives” on a presumably impending US military response to Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, as well as his generals. Trump had on Saturday said the deaths of service members in Jordan are “a very sad thing.” He stated: “We hate to see it happen.” In follow-up he described that the retaliation on Iran would be in ‘honor’ of these fallen ‘patriots’.

Greek Tankers Hit, Also as Iran Targets Bahrain
Iran’s IRGC continues to insist that it along is in control of the Strait of Hormuz, as it continues firing on foreign vessels seeking to traverse the Strait of Hormuz outside of Iran’s ‘approved’ zone and protocol. According to some of the latest developments on this front, via regional media: One of two Greek-owned tankers hit by projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz has been abandoned by its crew after fire was reported on the vessel. The crew was rescued by a tugboat after abandoning the Maltese-flagged Kavomaleas owned by Greece’s Dynacom Tankers.
Earlier, UKMTO reported fire onboard the tanker north of Kuzmar, Oman. It had been stranded in the Arabian Gulf after spending months offshore of Saudi Arabia. It appeared to exit the Strait of Hormuz on July 2 although its AIS tracking was turned off. Various locations across Iran meanwhile continued to get pummeled by US aerial attacks. Iran in turn has been heavily targeting Bahrain on Monday. “The US launched an aerial attack on one of the areas in Shiraz, it resulted in no casualties, and the situation is under control,” IRIB reports. Currently, FM Araghchi is said to be en route to Pakistan, as mediators scramble to contain the war.
Air war alone cannot dislodge a large military/regime, hence the dilemma of restraint vs. quagmire and new forever war…

I'm confused.

The USA has the most powerful military on Earth. We've bombed the HELL out of Iran for 4 months. Trump says their Air Force, Navy, and nearly all of their missile capabilities are destroyed.

…so how is Iran still capable of hitting US bases right now???
— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) July 18, 2026

Bahrain statement: “Bahrain’s Civil Aviation Affairs said Monday that an Iranian drone attack targeted civilian air navigation systems used to manage the country’s Flight Information Region as military escalation continues to rage on between Iran and the US.” Latest from CENTCOM: The US military says it has disabled one ship and redirected seven in its continuing blockade of Iranian ports. “As of July 20, the US military has redirected 7 commercial vessels and disabled 1 to prevent the ships from leaving or entering Iranian ports,” CENTCOM wrote on X.

Trump confronting Mamdani.

• Border Czar Warns New York City That ‘ICE Surge’ Is Coming (Hyde)

Federal Border Czar Tom Homan has announced that an unprecedented surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents is coming to New York City in response to the city’s sanctuary policies. Homan told Fox News on Sunday, “It’s coming,” citing the Trump administration’s refusal to be hampered by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s vow to champion the city’s sanctuary status and to continue resisting federal immigration enforcement. Homan refused to discuss specifics as to where and when enforcement actions would occur so as to avoid tipping off the various leftist groups who have organized to oppose ICE actions.

🚨 JUST IN: Tom Homan announces ICE STORMING into New York at any moment — but he's refusing to go public with details to keep leftist terrorist from organizing mass riots, protests and attacks on agents

Q: You threatened to surge ICE agents into New York. When can we expect to… pic.twitter.com/uicrDjeW1h
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 19, 2026

Homan told Fox News that “there needs to be a surge” and added, “But I am not going to show our hand because there are… well-funded groups who will try to impede, interfere. We’re not going to give them any upside on this.” The border czar’s comments followed statements Mamdani made during a New York Times interview on Saturday, in which the mayor expressed “pride” regarding the city’s refusal to cooperate with immigration enforcement and vowed to protect immigrant communities.
Mamdani told the Times, “What we are unwilling to do is to participate in civil immigration enforcement with a federal government that has said openly it wants to deport a vast majority of people for crimes that we will never even know.” According to Fox News, Homan fired back at Mamdani’s statement, saying that the mayor can have his stance but he will not prevent ICE from doing its job, noting, “That’s called the rule of law. If he doesn’t like it, call your members of Congress, tell them to change the law.”
The federal surge is also tied to New York state budget legislation signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul that strictly curbs local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration officials and bans ICE agents from wearing masks during community operations. Homan has also argued that blocking ICE access to municipal jails removes operational efficiencies, forcing federal teams out onto the streets to conduct widespread community arrests. The border czar said that President Trump’s campaign promises to address border security and to impose mass deportations are a large reason why he is the president today.

“The International Criminal Court (ICC) previously issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu amid the Gaza conflict.”

• Trump Insists Netanyahu Will Not Face Arrest In The US (Ben Whedon)

President Donald Trump on Monday strongly asserted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not face arrest while in the United States as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani reportedly weighs options to bring him into custody. The International Criminal Court (ICC) previously issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu amid the Gaza conflict. The U.S. is not party to the Rome statute and is under no obligation to arrest Netanyahu. However, Mamdani has mulled doing so amid the Iran war.

“Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “He is fighting against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which recently killed 52,000 innocent protestors, and has spent the last 47 years killing American Soldiers, and others,” he added. “The only ones that should be arrested are the people that led Iran into this unprecedented SPIRAL OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION, something that should have been dealt with years ago, by previous Presidents!”
Mamdani’s authority and ability to arrest Netanyahu without the consent of Washington, D.C., is dubious at best.

“President Trump has been clear: As China becomes a rising threat, America cannot single-handedly carry the burden of Europe’s defense.”

• The 2026 NATO Summit Confirmed A New Transatlantic Bargain (Ruel Domi)

For three decades after the end of the Cold War, the transatlantic relationship rested on an implicit bargain: America guaranteed European security while the EU and its satellites concentrated on economic and political integration and drastically expanded their generous welfare states. The latest NATO summit in Ankara demonstrated that this bargain is falling apart. A new one is emerging, one in which Europe is expected to assume far greater responsibility for its own defense while the United States increasingly shifts its strategic focus toward containing China in the Indo-Pacific. Europe appears reluctant to accept it, but eventually, it will need to get used to it. NATO’s latest summit demonstrated such a need.

Firstly, the new bargain rests upon the fundamental assumption that Europe cannot continue to outsource its security indefinitely. During his first campaign for president, stretching for the entirety of his first term, President Trump demanded that America’s allies on the other side of the Atlantic spend more on their defense.
Up until that point, NATO’s 2006 defense minister agreement established a 2% of GDP requirement for all members to spend on defense. And despite that agreement, only Poland and the United States had achieved that goal, leaving behind powerful and wealthy European states such as Germany, France, and even the United Kingdom (at the time, an EU member). Such a discrepancy suggests deep-rooted and structural unfairness, as wealthier and more influential countries must be willing to spend more on defense, which hasn’t happened until this summit.
While the American left idolized European welfare states and the robust social safety nets that came with them, it was clear that those welfare states would have been impossible to finance without the American taxpayer bankrolling European defense. Needless to say, when America needed Europe the most, in the aftermath of Operation Epic Fury, European allies repeatedly refused to join the United States in military activity designed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz from the Iranian blockade—which, ironically enough, would benefit Europe more than it would America—due to Europe importing much of its oil and natural gas through the Strait of Hormuz. When a conflict began with Iran, Europe once again proved reluctant to shoulder a larger share of the burden.
Donald Trump understood that this posture is unsustainable, which is why he asked Europeans to raise their defense spending in his first term, while raising the requirement to a historic 5% of the GDP for all NATO members throughout this ongoing second term. The bargain is clear: Europe must not be allowed to outsource its defense spending to the United States, at least not without increasing defense spending and implementing serious changes to its economic, political, and social model.
The current American administration correctly understands that a weak Europe is a threat to the future of the transatlantic alliance and to the alliance’s security in the face of looming threats from Russia, China, and growing competition from the Global South.
Secondly, as outlined in the 33-page national security strategy of the United States published in early December, the U.S. is diverting its attention away from continental Europe to the Indo-Pacific. There, Chinese control of the South China Sea and a looming invasion of Taiwan are seen not just as geopolitical inconveniences but as real and existential security threats to the United States and its strategic interests in the region.
For that reason alone, Europe must spend more on its defense to deter potential Russian aggression, while the United States deals with China. The notion that the United States should be left dealing with the Sino-Russian axis alone, while the EU goes down the drain of unfettered leftism, at the expense of its civilization and the NATO alliance at large, represents an absurd and unsustainable model of alliance maintenance—and, I should add, grave political malpractice.
If the United States were to continue on the liberal path of relationship building with Europe, it would have to concede the chips race to China, as a successful Chinese invasion of Taiwan would give the CCP control of over 80% of the world’s semiconductors, leading to almost complete Chinese control of global supply chains and a consequent economic disaster for America and Europe alike.
It is clear that the liberal bargain of the US-EU relationship needs to be replaced by a pragmatically realist approach that preserves the alliance while deterring foreign adversaries. The latest NATO summit did exactly that.

“As mayor, he promised to end homelessness in Greater Manchester by 2020. He didn’t. But he sure spent a lot of money on it.”

• Come Meet Britain’s Next Worst Prime Minister Ever (Stephen Green)

Following King Charles III’s formal request to form a new government on Monday, new U.K. Labour Leader Andy Burnham takes Keir Starmer’s place as Britain’s next worst prime minister ever. “I now pass the baton to Andy Burnham, I wish him every success. He has my full support,” Starmer said to anyone still listening. It won’t be easy topping — bottoming? — Starmer’s record of increasing Islamification, two-tier justice, and economic decline, but I have faith in Burnham’s ability to do so. At the very least, there’s certainly no doubting his willingness to try.

It seems like just last month [It was just last month, Steve —Editor] I wrote that “The U.K.’s most destructively feckless prime minister (since the last one)” would soon be history, but that Burnham “could prove Britain’s final undoing.” I hate to be so pessimistic when it’s only Monday, but take a look at this guy. Burnham hasn’t worked in the private sector in 30 years — as a writer, yuck! — serving in Parliament for two decades, both in and out of power. He held positions we don’t even have here, like Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Shadow Secretary of State for Health, and Undersecretary for Taxing of Things We Haven’t Yet Taxed.
Then he served as Mayor of Greater Manchester (2017-2026), until returning to Parliament earlier this year following a by-election (kind of like a special election year), seemingly for the sole purpose of taking a run at Starmer. Mission: Accomplished. As of this writing, Burnham is busy sacking various members of Starmer’s cabinet, including Rachel Reeves as Chancellor, Steve Reed as Housing Secretary, Lord Hermer as Attorney General, Peter Kyle as Business Secretary, and the execrable David Lammy from his dual roles as Justice Secretary and Deputy PM.
But as one commenter on X warned: “Many people are loving all Burnham’s sackings because of what they think about the politicians he’s getting rid of. But don’t cheer too enthusiastically because it’s not at all clear that the new appointees will be any better.” The situation remains fluid, as they say, but Burnham has yet to name any replacements to serve in his cabinet. The name to keep an eye on — as I warned you last month — is the woman often called “the brains” behind Burnham’s time as mayor, the Liberian-born daughter of lefty radicals: Miatta Fahnbulleh.
CutMyTaxUK reported last year that Fahnbulleh “was born in Liberia as part of a prominent leftist revolutionary family, has served as a junior energy & housing minister in the Starmer government before resigning to support Burnham.” Previously, as the “former head of the far-left New Economics Foundation,” she proved “adept at churning out socialist policy proposals.” Or as CMT-UK put it, “Keir Starmer has appointed a Housing Minister who hates private housing.” And guess what? Before even naming Fahnbulleh as Permanent Undersecretary for Ending Private Property, Politics UK reported that Burnham is considering introducing rent controls as part of his cost of living announcement on Tuesday. “We are looking at measures that could make a difference this year,” Burnham said.
Tell me if this next item rings any bells, particularly for readers in California. “We ran a [homelessness] scheme every night. 600 beds,” Burnham said Monday. “But we were the only place doing it. It taught me the only way is to do this together.” As mayor, he promised to end homelessness in Greater Manchester by 2020. He didn’t. But he sure spent a lot of money on it. Now he’s taking his program nationwide, presumably. What Britain needs is a national election that might correct Labour’s lopsided majority in Parliament despite the party’s massive unpopularity. What they’ll get is the country’s next worst prime minister. Until the next one, I’m afraid.

He’s just the next one.

• The Unelected Monarch Creates the Unelected U.K Prime Minister (CTH)

There is absolutely nothing democratic within the political schemes of the communists, leftists and Nazis’. Just as Ukraine is led by an unelected authoritarian under the guise of the ‘new democratic norms’; just as Kamala Harris was installed as a presidential nominee under those same anti-democracy norms; so too is U.K Prime Minister Andy Burnham now installed without any election by the British citizens. nThe unelected monarch, King Charles, appoints the unelected Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, and the first pledge of the unelected leader is a promise to make life better for the people who are denied a voice in his agenda.

THE BACKGROUND – Former communist Prime Minister Kier Starmer was facing a massive amount of opposition, his policies and party platform had collapsed, and the people of Britain were revolting against him. Starmer’s Labour party lost more than 1,400 seats in the country’s local elections, and the non-communist, nationalistic Reform Party was winning. Something urgent was needed. Polls showed communist Mayor Andy Burnham was popular as his mask still had still not fully dropped, and the illegal immigrants on the streets of Manchester were only raping a few girls each month which was still easy to hide.
However, the problem was that Burnham could not replace Starmer unless he was a Member of Parliament (MP). With urgent payments for future indulgencies quickly afforded, the communist MP for Makerfield, a district within Greater Manchester, resigned from his job so that communist Andy Burnham could run for his MP position. A few days later, exactly at the moment communist Burnham was being sworn in to the MP job, communist Starmer announced his exit. The plan had worked seamlessly.
The Communist Labour Party of the U.K then coalesced quickly to replace Starmer with Burnham, and today Communist King Charles appointed Communist Andy Burnham to lead the country. No election needed; i.e. ‘The New Democratic Norm’ again fulfilled. Great Britain’s Bernie Sanders is now in charge of things. …”I have just come from Buckingham Palace where I have accepted his Majesty the King’s invitation to form a government”…

“These bags were supposed to be at a different level, by different people, incinerated…but it never happened. Maybe we got lucky.”

• About Those Burn Bags President Trump Mentioned in His Address (O’Brien)

In addition to its general corruptibility, one thing you can be sure of when it comes to the federal government is that it’s probably not a good idea to trust federal employees to conceal your misdeeds. In the bureaucracy, “good enough” is the standard for quality work And so, when President Donald Trump delivered his address to the nation on July 16, he brought attention to something we should know much more about but don’t yet: the discovery of “burn bags,” which Trump said contained sensitive documents from the Obama administration.

Trump said, “Recently, we found significant numbers of burn bags… and this is a group of bags that were used to destroy information given by President Barack Hussein Obama to be burned….These bags were supposed to be at a different level, by different people, incinerated…but it never happened. Maybe we got lucky.” As the term implies, burn bags contain material that is slated for destruction, sending all of the former administration’s secrets into that big shredder in the sky. But someone “dropped the bag,” and more than a few of them were left to be discovered by the second Trump administration in the FBI building.

The burn bags were supposed to be destroyed.

Trump wasn’t supposed to win. pic.twitter.com/oSXrsusePJ
— Jason D. Meister 🇺🇸 (@jason_meister) July 19, 2026

Now that Trump is sitting on a political treasure trove of data and information that can be used to expose the left, expect a distraction or two. Whenever the left panics, you start to see ginned-up controversies over allegations of Trump “stealing our democracy,” “climate change,” “Christian nationalism,” or all of the above. Given the seriousness of the potential contents of those burn bags, it wouldn’t surprise me if the left goes even harder with its lies and wrap-up smears to try to take Trump out using the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.
As a result of the Trump administration’s discovery of those burn bags, the president ordered the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the CIA to review the documents, analyze them, and see if any laws were broken. That analysis will focus on the handling of the sensitive information and the chain of custody of the documents themselves, and the contents of the documents that were never destroyed. It must be noted that simply finding some old burn bags doesn’t mean something improper was done. The federal government uses burn bags as a matter of course to destroy sensitive materials that will no longer be kept on file.
The president believes that the bags of documents could unearth critical information that has been concealed from the public eye. He bases this viewpoint on his past experience with both the Obama and Biden administrations and their pattern of not preserving, or not providing access to, certain important intelligence information. In other words, Trump knows what he doesn’t know, and he wants answers. Could those bags contain more proof of the deep state covering up election schemes? Do any contain information that implicates specific members of the Obama or Biden administrations? If Trump knows, he’s not naming names or providing details just yet.
Trump’s mention of those burn bags was in the context of his larger address on election integrity failures and questionable activities on the part of Democrat administrations, their political operatives, and others. As leftists circle the wagons to protect their favorite former Democrat presidents and their people, leftist central messaging is already testing the following key messages:
• “Alleging foreign interference in an election is not proof (evidence) that a foreign government successfully controlled the outcome.” This is like saying, “Sure he had a gun and shot at ya, but he missed ya, so he didn’t do anything wrong.”
• “Criminal charges require more than political accusations.” Of course, this is true, but where do criminal charges themselves come from? They come from accusations that can be supported by evidence.
• “Even if you find some incriminating information in those burn bags, you’re going to need to prove that the person implicated knowingly violated federal law.” Depending on the situation, that would be a matter for the courts to decide, but this key message gets at understanding and intent, which in a PR sense can be a straw man. For example, it doesn’t matter whether you intended to kill someone with your car; if you ran over them, intentionally or not, you likely broke a law or two. In other words, “I did not know there was a law against this” is no excuse.
• “The discovery of documents alone would not establish a criminal conspiracy.” Another straw man. No one is saying “discovery of documents” is all you need. If the documents contain words and sentences that do establish a criminal conspiracy, someone’s goose may be cooked.
• “As for China, investigators must have direct evidence of coordination, communication, or actions that link actual people to the effort to tamper with an election.” Once again, this is just a description of the legal and justice process. All of this is true, but stating it does not get anyone off the hook.
Back in 2020 and 2021, when Trump sought to use the court system to contest the manner in which the 2020 election was conducted, he literally had no time left in his term to go the legal route as president. By the time the courts would consider some of his claims, he was essentially an outsider without access to much of the information that he now has. After election day in 2020, Trump was shut out of the system long enough to ensure that he would live the rest of his life in political exile after one term in office. But in 2024, Trump shocked the world and won. His administration now has access to what it needs to better determine what happened in 2020, to address it, and, hopefully, to tap the justice system to ensure such corruption never happens again.

“California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) last week also declared that “nostalgia is not working” and, while refusing to embrace socialism, added that “capitalism as we know it doesn’t work.”

• Democrats Dismiss Our Constitutional Traditions as ‘Nostalgia’ (Turley)

It appears that the Madisonian democracy has joined shackets and combat boots as embarrassingly outdated for many on the left. In calling for radical changes to our constitutional system, leading Democrats are now calling the lingering loyalty to our traditions as mere “nostalgia.” To be nostalgic in today’s parlance is to be a dupe of the oligarchs and an enemy to reform. “Nostalgia” has become the new coded term for reactionaries among Democratic figures, who are trying to convince Americans to accept radical changes to our republic after 250 years.

Kamala Harris recently insisted that opposition to ideas like packing the Supreme Court is mere “nostalgia” for a system that is no longer working. “I would caution us against talking about rebuilding with any sense of nostalgia about how things work, because even before, they weren’t working so well for a lot of folks,” she said. That “nostalgia,” according to Harris, is preventing us from doing things like packing the Supreme Court with an instant liberal majority. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) last week also declared that “nostalgia is not working” and, while refusing to embrace socialism, added that “capitalism as we know it doesn’t work.”
Morris Katz, a political strategist for Zohran Mamdani, spoke to CNN’s Dana Bash about looking beyond the label of democratic socialism and instead simply to accept that “our government does not work.” They are joining socialists who have long promised revolutionary changes without “introspection, nostalgia or regret.” It is an all-too-familiar pitch. Sixty years ago, a call to break free of “old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits” revolutionized a nation. That call was heard in a Chinese paper that would help lay the foundation for Mao Zedong’s bloody Cultural Revolution. Marxists had long rejected calls to preserve institutions and citizens’ rights as “nostalgia” and “sentimentality,” standing in the way of needed progress.
For the Democratic Socialist of America organization, nostalgia stands in the way of getting rid of the Senate, presidency, and the Supreme Court to fundamentally change the republic. The effort is to condition Americans to adopt radical changes to our core institutions that professors and pundits say will guarantee Democrats never lose power again. That is not an easy task for a people who have benefited from the oldest and most prosperous democracy for 250 years. They have to be very angry or very afraid to take such a radical course.
The Soviets understood that about the U.S. After Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB agent working in the media, defected in 1970, he revealed the four stages by which the Soviets hoped to bring about revolutionary change in the U.S. It began with undermining our institutions and values, with the help of journalists and academics. With establishment figures lining up behind radical changes, including packing the Supreme Court, the public is hearing a constant drumbeat of how our system is broken. Even Democratic judges are joining the chorus. Indeed, some appear to be auditioning for the slots promised by Democratic leaders to take over the court with a reliable liberal majority.
This week, the Hawaii Supreme Court issued an unhinged diatribe against the U.S. Supreme Court that abandoned any semblance of judicial restraint or decorum. It declared the majority as effectively racists, saying that “The Roberts Court sees only white.” It portrayed the court as a rogue institution that “overrides what Congress passed. It overrides what the people chose. All to serve its own ends.” It is an opinion that would make an MS NOW host blush. But it follows a pattern on the left to get people to turn against our institutions and even against the Constitution itself.
Others are telling the public that they are being repressed by the Constitution, which must be scrapped. In a New York Times op-ed — “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed” — law professors Ryan Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.” In yet another New York Times editorial, Jennifer Szalai denounced “Constitution worship” and claimed that “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us. A growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.”
Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky insists that it is time to trash the Constitution in favor of “radical changes.” These voices are seeking to remove all of the moderating elements of our system —the safety features that have produced the world’s most successful and stable republic. They are the very constitutional elements protecting us from the tyranny of the majority, protecting us from ourselves.
Without those protections, we will unleash the self-destructive forces that have been tearing apart other democratic systems since Athens. It is our constitution that spared us from that fate. As James Madison observed, “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.” Of course, history has shown that such radical proposals ultimately produce not democracy, but what the Framers called mobocracy. If we let that happen, many Americans will indeed look back at the last 250 years with a tragic sense of nostalgia.

“The left’s goal is always to break human reason. . . .” —Elizabeth Nickson

• War, Over There, Over Here (James Howard Kunstler)

You ask: Why did Achilles drag Hector around the city of Troy three times? Answer: He was just that pissed.

So it goes with President DJ Trump and the intransigent jihadi maniacs running Iran down a rat hole. Mr. T is just that pissed, too. “War is Hell,” the savvy Union general WT Sherman observed after he torched Atlanta, setting a precedent for moral clarity in the service of tactical fortitude. And thus, a century-and-a-half later, this is Iran’s hard time. Iran can make it stop at any time by. . . stopping. But the catch is, they really have to stop it, no more head fakes, ruses, jukes, dodges, and ploys. Just stop it.
Don’t doubt that they will have to stop it. We are going to make them stop. In the meantime, there is plenty else to concern those of us who care about our country, and Western Civ more generally, on the home front. Here comes the Insane Clown Posse of the Democratic Socialists. Their platform: abolish the police; no more jail for criminals; open borders; amnesty for all border-jumpers; abolish the Senate; Abolish the electoral college (House of Representatives to elect the president); defund the War Department, voting rights for all non-citizens; “wealth” taxes; free housing, food, medical care for all; green new deal laws; free Palestine (which is more important than any place else on Earth)!
Oh, and they are quite out-front about merely using the Democratic Party as a means to acquire power. Yeah, you noticed that already? Nobody actually had to read the quiet part out-loud. (Well, it wasn’t all that quiet.) Question is: how is all this going to work in practice (or in the praxis, as the Gramscian Marxists like to say — because it sounds like some occult power), as they roll over every institution in the land.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are our own jihadistas. They aim to make their program work by jamming it down America’s throat, starting with the throats of the plain old Democratic Party, the party of FDR, JFK, and HRC, currently fronted by Hakeem Jeffries (the House) and Chuck Schumer (the soon-to-be-abolished Senate). These two appear to be totally buffaloed by the DSA’s Insane Clown Posse. It’s their own Frankenstein monster, stitched together in their laboratory from the tatters of the 20th century. And like in the original by Mary Shelley, this monster is fixing to abolish its maker. Hakeem and Chuck are just standing by like a couple of credulous clucks waiting to see how things develop as the calendar marches implacably toward the catastrophic midterm election.
Last week’s Maine Senate primary debate was instructive. A more pitiful conclave of political losers had not been observed on continental US soil since Millard Fillmore led the Know-Nothing party into oblivion in 1856. (And, of course, five years later the American Civil war ignited.) Remember the old maxim: “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.” Well, Gawd help us, then. See for yourself.

The fellow on the right pretending to be a woman is one Ashley Webb (formerly James Charles Webb) who cited “her” reasons for joining the race as: running for office before (unsuccessfully), being a songwriter, writing books, and being an “angry citizen” who would be an “angry senator.” Perfect! You might ask: why wasn’t Punch the Monkey onstage with the rest of this bunch?
Here is your very picture of Progressivism, the larval form of DSA — and, as you read this, there are Progressive larvae yet metamorphosing into full-blown DSAs all over these fifty states. Mamdani in New York. . . Brandon Johnson in Chicago. . . Katie Wilson in Seattle. . . Michelle Wu in Boston. . . Karen Bass in LA, etc. And here come DSAs Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander, taking House seats in New York and Melat Kiros out in Colorado (yes, the lady who likes to wipe her hands on the US flag) who are expected to join The Squad (AOC, Jayapal, Pressley, Tlaib) next January. Plus, over on the soon-to-be-abolished Senate side, one Dr. Abdul El-Sayad running in Michigan. They all promise to keep the punishment coming until American morale improves!

Looming over this Insane Clown Posse of — oh, let’s just say it — feckless communists, is the ancient visage of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg — the old war-horse’s long-cherished dreams finally coming true. Remember, in 1988 Bernie took his new wife on a honeymoon to the Soviet Union? Like. . . to witness how well that system was working. . . exactly three years before it collapsed. You can say the Democratic Socialists of America have got exactly the avatar they deserve.
The question is: will the DSA drag the Democratic Party into oblivion? Most assuredly they will. We are going to get election reform one way or another this year. There will be no more mail-in ballot harvesting or voting by non-citizens or vote tabulation machines. It might be that a substantial demographic in our country is insane, say, generously, maybe forty percent. But a firm majority of Americans are not insane and they are going to put a stop to this communist insurrection just as President DJ Trump — who is really pissed — will put end to the forty-seven-year Iranian jihad. What a week it has been!!! More thrills and chills ahead, you can be sure.

“In 2018, 90% of Democrats disapproved of him. In 2026, that number sits at 69%.”

• Here’s How the Democrats Are Blowing the Midterms (Margolis)

It can’t be said enough that history is on the Democrats’ side, but they seem determined to blow it. Precedent alone should hand Democrats a comfortable advantage this year. Only three midterms in nearly a century broke the pattern. In 2002, George W. Bush’s Republicans held their ground just over a year after the 9/11 attacks, when national security dominated everything else. In 1998, Bill Clinton’s Democrats benefited when Republicans overplayed their hand chasing impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In 1934, Franklin Roosevelt’s Democrats rode the enduring popularity of the New Deal through the depths of the Great Depression. Each exception had a distinct, extraordinary set of circumstances behind it.

On the surface, it looks like Democrats should be able to win easily. Aside from precedent, Donald Trump’s polling gives them even more room to work with. Yet recent surveys suggest Democrats are underperforming badly enough that the wave they were counting on might not materialize. That underperformance could cost them control of the House. If Republicans hold the House this November, the reasons will be obvious: a socialist insurgency reshaping the party from within, and a singular obsession with opposing Trump that has crowded out everything else voters actually care about. The evidence is already sitting in the polling.
On the generic congressional ballot, Republicans are either tied with Democrats or ahead by three to four points, nowhere near the margin Democrats need to flip the House. A recent Washington Post/Ipsos poll put Democrats up just 48% to 45% on that same generic ballot question. Asked which party they agree with more on the issues that matter to them, voters split 41% Republican to 40% Democrat. Asked which party they trust more to handle the economy, the gap widened: 39% for Republicans to 35% for Democrats.Analysts at The Wall Street Journal have said a Democratic edge of anything under four points on election night is good news for Republicans trying to hold the majority. Right now, Democrats aren’t clearing that bar.

Because of Redistricting, analysts estimate that Democrats need to win by 3 to 4 points to gain a majority in the House Per WSJ https://t.co/qtBq5JC9Q8 pic.twitter.com/r4RCp2pbEr
— OSZ (@OpenSourceZone) July 18, 2026

Here’s the part that should really worry them. Trump’s disapproval rating among Democrats is far lower than it was during his first term. In 2018, 90% of Democrats disapproved of him. In 2026, that number sits at 69%. Despite those low approval numbers, most surveys still don’t show Democrats building a clear advantage in the races that will actually decide who controls the House. Democrats have assumed that being anti-Trump is enough. But the fact is, they aren’t giving voters a reason to vote Democrat, and the party’s growing tolerance for socialism isn’t helping them. Socialism remains deeply unpopular with the broader electorate, and its visible presence inside the Democrat Party is giving persuadable voters a reason to back Republicans they might not have otherwise supported.
Every historical tailwind is blowing in Democrats’ direction this year, and still, Democrats may fail to capitalize on any of it. Make no mistake about it, if they blow this midterm, they won’t be able to blame the map, the money, or the message alone. They will have blown the most favorable set of conditions a minority party could ask for, and they will have done it to themselves.

He may well be right.

• Why Democrats Can’t Do Better Than Kamala Harris in 2028 (Daniel McCarthy)

There are only two lanes to the Democratic presidential nomination two years from now, and one of them is already blocked — by Kamala Harris. Get ready for the Kamala comeback, followed, in all likelihood, by a replay of her crushing defeat by the Republican nominee. Believe it or not, the ex-VP occupies what counts as the “center lane” within the party, and for most of the last three decades that’s the one that’s led to the nomination. Republicans used to be the party of orderly succession, even if the candidate whose turn had come looked like a certain loser: think Bob Dole in ’96.

But recently, it’s been Democrats who’ve tended to pick a party elder as their nominee: Al Gore, as a sitting VP, might not have been remarkable in 2000, but in ’04 it was John Kerry, in ’16 Hillary Clinton, and in 2020 Joe Biden — with only Barack Obama butting ahead of the line in 2008. Democrats like a known quantity, a reliable liberal who isn’t too overtly radical; the radicalism can wait until after Election Day.= So they’re leaning to running Harris again, even if donors aren’t happy about it: They blew nearly $2 billion on her campaign and aligned PACs in 2024, only for Harris to lose every battleground state to Trump.
It won’t be donors who decide the party’s 2028 nominee, though, and ordinary Democrats actually find Harris reassuring. She’s a familiar face, after all, commanding practically universal name recognition. Harris checks the identity-politics boxes that may be as important as winning to Democratic primary voters: Their ticket must have a woman, and it can’t be all white. And after being vetted as a VP and undergoing the trial-by-fire of the ’24 campaign, Harris isn’t likely to surprise voters with any extremist tattoos or sexual-assault allegations — things that can’t be taken for granted among Democrats nowadays.
Then there’s the revenge motive: What better way to repudiate the Trump era and reverse the ’24 humiliation than by making the woman he defeated president? Democratic primary voters are still smarting from Hillary Clinton’s drubbing in 2016: by 2028, the election of America’s first female president will have been postponed 12 long years, and feminists in the party aren’t willing to wait any longer. These are the reasons Harris tops almost all polls of 2028 Democratic hopefuls, with an 11.6-point lead in the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate as of mid-July.
“She comes in with 99 percent name ID and everyone else is going to have to raise money and buy it,” a former Harris aide tells New York’s David Freedlander. The donors might prefer just about anyone else, yet they’d have to pour an enormous amount of cash into another candidate just to make him or her recognizable. This has led one longtime Democratic strategist with donors’ ears to welcome the inevitable: “I hope she runs,” Alex Hoffman told New York, “Because then she will lose and we will never have to hear from her again. She will never win an election at a national scale. Never.” But if Harris is hopeless, why does she seem inevitable?
She has seniority no one else can match, but what about the other lane that leads to the nomination? That’s the left lane — the far left lane. The one Bernie Sanders occupied in 2020 and 2016, and that a candidate like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might fill in 2028. Young Dems keep moving leftward, with the Democratic Socialists of America making deeper inroads into the party. Harris is not nearly left-wing enough for them — but then, anyone who is would be upsetting to the old guard. It’s not that the old-timers aren’t also well to the left on economics, but they don’t want to be labeled “socialists”— while the insurgent left is proud of the brand. The party’s mainstream wants to have it both ways on the Israel-Palestine conflict — while the young left, increasingly, is explicit about its anti-Zionism.
There are still enough baby boomers and suburbanites in the Democratic Party to make the left lane an unlikely road to the nomination. For now. Harris can expect a challenge from the left, but the party is still probably one more presidential cycle away from nominating someone who openly represents where Democrats are headed. In fact, a Harris defeat in 2028 would be the perfect prelude to the socialist and anti-Zionist left’s takeover, discrediting the old guard for forfeiting the election to Donald Trump’s successor. Insider Democrats know Kamala Harris is a terrible candidate, but the party they built can’t tell her no — even if this is the last nomination they get to make before DSA takes over.

For now far left field, but despair works miracles.

• Don Lemon Wants the White House and Thinks MAGA Is the Nazi Party (Manney)

Don Lemon believes America may need him in the White House. Days after saying he might run for president in 2028, the independent “journalist” and podcaster offered a sample of his judgment. “MAGA is the closest thing to the modern version of the Nazi Party.” He softened the smear with “without the Holocaust and all that stuff.” Lemon then claimed MAGA supporters remain loyal because they want white supremacy and power. From the New York Post:

“Lemon – who also revealed he is considering a presidential run in the 2028 election, saying he’d be a “really good” commander-in-chief – argued MAGA supporters have stuck by the movement in an effort to promote white supremacy. “Most intelligent people or logical people, when they get new information and that information is negative or not factual, then they change their minds and go, ‘Oh, well I wish I’d known better, and now that I have this information, then I can readjust,’” Lemon said.
“No matter how many facts and how much information you give them about this presidency, about the policies, they don’t change their minds,” he continued. “Because they’re really not voting for the price of eggs – they’re voting for white supremacy, they’re voting for power, they’re voting to have a preeminent voice.” Speaking as one of the millions of Americans who voted for President Donald Trump, Lemon is a bloody fool! He doesn’t know us, speak for us, or understand why the country rejected the left’s lectures in 2024. The Nazi Party was a racist, antisemitic movement that destroyed German democracy, established a one-party dictatorship, and murdered six million Jews along with millions of other victims.

Lemon’s qualifications empty the comparison of its defining horror while preserving every ounce of the insult. MAGA is a broad American political coalition that won an election. Trump’s 2024 voters were more racially and ethnically diverse than in either of his previous campaigns. He received 48% of the Hispanic vote and 15% of the black vote. From Pew Research: Trump won with a voter coalition that was more racially and ethnically diverse than in 2020 or 2016, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of the 2024 electorate. Among Hispanic voters, Trump battled to near parity in 2024 (51% Harris, 48% Trump) after losing to Joe Biden 61%-36% in 2020. Trump won 15% of Black voters – up from 8% four years earlier.
Trump also did better among Asian voters. While a majority of Asian voters (57%) backed Harris, 40% supported Trump. This was a narrower margin than Biden’s in 2020 (70% to 30%). These shifts were largely the result of differences in which voters turned out in the 2020 and 2024 elections. As in the past, a relatively small share of voters switched which party’s candidate they supported. Lemon can dislike their choice, but branding those voters as supporters of white supremacy strips them of thought, motive, and agency. The insult grows more absurd beside Lemon’s presidential musings. He said people keep asking whether he’ll run and declared he could lead the country better than Trump.
A man seeking presidential stature should be able to describe his political opponents without reaching for Hitler. Lemon treats tens of millions of Americans as morally diseased, then wonders whether they might welcome him as their president. From the New York Post: “Lemon made the eyebrow-raising declaration on “Can’t Be Censored” podcast hosted by Karman Wong and Travis Dhanraj, insisting that everyone wants to know if he has White House aspirations. “Do you have political ambition? Is that true?” Dhanraj asked on Wednesday’s show. “No, but people keep asking me if I’m running for president,” Lemon answered. “And I don’t know. I might. I’m serious. I don’t know. I might, because people keep asking me to do it, or if I’m going to do it.”
Lemon, 60, argued that experience isn’t necessarily a requirement to be commander-in-chief, citing President Trump’s lack of a political background before his election win in 2016. I can already hear many of you who are saying we should ignore Lemon. Silence has its place, but repeated public smears gain power when decent people shrug and move on. Sharing his words exposes the contempt behind them. Lemon wants attention, influence, and perhaps political power. The public should know how he speaks about Americans who vote differently.

“Establishment Democrats are freaking out over the Democratic Socialists of America’s attempted hijacking of their party ..”

• “I’m Not Living In Communist America”: Bill Maher Blasts DSA Democrats (ZH)

“I’m not living in Communist America… I’ve read the quotes from the DSA platform, from their own mouths. Don’t tell me I’m not seeing what I am seeing,” Bill Maher told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl in an exclusive interview that aired on Sunday.

Bill Maher: “I’m not living in Communist America… I’ve read the quotes from the DSA platform, from their own mouths. Don’t tell me I’m not seeing what I am seeing.” pic.twitter.com/grWslcyxD9
— America (@america) July 19, 2026

Karl asked Maher, “Could you see yourself voting for JD Vance?” Maher responded: “Yes. If this is the Democratic side, yes.” Establishment Democrats are freaking out over the Democratic Socialists of America’s attempted hijacking of their party because this anti-American, far-left Marxist movement, with possible ties to foreign subversion, risks dooming the party in the midterms and beyond.
The problem for Democrats is that years of letting socialists and Marxists into their DEI kingdom have only now produced dire consequences. Status quo Democrats are watching their power evaporate as DSA candidates defeat mainstream Democrats in primaries across New York, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and other states.

That’s a lot of licenses.

• China’s Fake US Driver’s Licenses Tampered With the 2020 Election (O’Brien)

When President Donald Trump talked about some of the things China has done to literally steal our democracy by seeing to it that, in 2020, its Manchurian candidate was elected in the form of a semi-comatose Joe Biden, many of the things he mentioned had already been in the news, but they may not have been covered by the legacy media. Case in point: Trump mentioned in his July 16 address to the nation that China stole TikTok data to create fake U.S. driver’s licenses.

If you follow conservative media, you may have known this. If you get your news from the legacy media, you most likely didn’t know it, and if you heard it now, you won’t believe it. That’s the group Trump was targeting in his address. His national address strategy was to speak past the legacy media and to begin the process of planting the seeds of the truth in the minds of those who rely on the CNNs, ABCs, and NBCs of the world. Strategically, Trump is now trying to break through the information barrier that the legacy media and the left have created to keep the majority of Americans in the dark on what’s really happened to corrupt our elections.
A year ago, Brooke Singman published a lengthy piece on the Fox News website that detailed just how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) executed its TikTok data theft scheme. Her primary source for the story was the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). The Senate Judiciary Committee launched its own investigation into this after the FBI had announced its own investigation in July 2025. As Singman reported, the CCP allegedly worked to get “fake driver’s licenses to Chinese sympathizers in the U.S. who would cast a vote for candidate Biden.” It is not clear how successful the CCP was in getting its ballots for Biden to count.
In July 2025, a Grassley spokesperson told Fox News, “Chairman Grassley is in receipt of an FBI document (response) to a request he made based on legally protected whistleblower disclosures…. The document alleges serious national security concerns that need to be fully investigated by the FBI.” As stated in that document, the intent of the alleged scheme was for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to produce and export fraudulent U.S. driver’s licenses to Chinese sympathizers in the U.S., so as to create “tens of thousands of fraudulent mail-in votes for US Presidential candidate Joe Biden, in late August 2020.”
According to the document at the center of these investigations, by August 2020, “the Chinese government had produced a large amount of fraudulent United States driver’s licenses that were secretly exported to the United States,” Fox News reported. The fraudulent drivers licenses would allow tens of thousands of Chinese students and immigrants sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party to vote for US Presidential Candidate USPER Joe ((Biden)), despite not being eligible to vote in the United States… China had collected private US user data from millions of TikTok accounts, to include name, ID and address, which would allow the Chinese government to use real US persons’ information to create the fraudulent driver’s license, the document states.
Reporting on the investigation indicates that the fake IDs included true ID numbers and the true addresses of U.S. citizens, which made the fraud difficult to detect. “China planned to use the fraudulent driver’s licenses to account for tens of thousands of mail-in votes,” according to the document.] What’s not clear is how specifically the PRC accessed the TikTok data and got all the information it needed to create those fake driver’s licenses. TikTok, for example, does not require a physical address when users register for an account. Did the creators of the fake IDs use the physical addresses of those Chinese sympathizers? This is fuzzy.
FBI Director Kash Patel and Grassley had been working closely on this case prior to the president’s speech on July 16.In another uncanny development from around the same time, in July 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at the International Mail Facility (IMF) at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport announced that in the first half of that year, they had seized 1,513 shipments of fraudulent documents, which included 19,888 fake U.S. driver’s licenses. Most of those shipments originated in China and Hong Kong, as well as Great Britain and South Korea.
According to the CBP statement on the matter from 2020, “The driver’s licenses were for various people in different states with a vast majority destined for neighboring states. Most were for college-age students, and other licenses would share the same picture but have different biographical data. Another concern was the bar code attached to the Michigan licenses worked.” In typical fashion, the Democrats’ propaganda machine known as the Associated Press reported at the time, “There is no evidence to suggest they were linked to voter fraud.” Case closed, I guess.
Maybe leftist newswire Reuters had a different take: “Facebook posts shared thousands of times claim that 19,888 fake driver’s licenses were seized at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport after being ordered by people ‘all registered to vote, all Democrats.’ Suggesting that the licenses were part of a voter fraud conspiracy, this claim is partly false. While it is true that U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 19,888 counterfeit licenses at O’Hare in late July, they had no apparent connection to Democratic Party registration or the upcoming election.”

Will Jamie Dimon finance it?

• Can Elon Musk Really Put ONE MILLION Data Center Satellites in Orbit? (Green)

Now that you’ve read the headline, I’ll show you the numbers, and you’ll probably say, “OH NO WAY!” But indulge me, won’t you. Ars Technica’s senior space guy Eric Berger looked at how much it might cost SpaceX to fulfill Elon Musk’s stated goal of putting ONE MILLION DATA CENTER satellites into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for the company’s artificial intelligence division, xAI. I don’t want to bother you with all the background math — you can click the link for the full MEGO effect, should you desire — but you do need to see the final totals for putting all those birds in orbit:

ª Optimistic: $350 billion in launch costs; $1 million per satellite; all-in cost of $1.45 trillion • Neutral: $1.85 trillion in launch costs; $1.5 million per satellite; all-in cost of $3.45 trillion • Pessimistic: $7.7 trillion in launch costs; $2.0 million per satellite; all-in cost of $9.8 trillion
The median scenario is $3.45 trillion dollars, or roughly 70% of what the U.S. spent waging World War II. Honestly, I felt the need for a shot of tequila after going through those figures. “Daunting” doesn’t even begin to cover the expense and complexity of such lofty goals. “Unimaginable” perhaps comes closer. But things become less daunting and more imaginable when viewed from the proper perspective.

The question isn’t, “Can Elon Musk really put one million data center satellites in orbit?” The correct question is, “Can he put enough data center satellites in orbit at a low enough cost to generate positive cashflow?” It’s all about the money, honey — because once you’re making more than you spend, the sky’s the limit. Literally, in this case. And while one can say for sure whether Musk can make the economics work, this is an area where SpaceX enjoys hard-won expertise. You might have heard of a little space-based internet service provider called Starlink.

The first operational batch of 60 satellites went up in May 2019, and Starlink beta service went live near the end of 2020 with fewer than 1,000 in orbit. By the end of 2024, with around 6,400 satellites, Starlink turned cash flow positive. That was the key metric, not whether Starlink had achieved its longterm goal of having a constellation of 42,000 operational satellites. “The key takeaway I want everybody to walk away with is, if SpaceX was building the Starlink system to pay for a Mars colony, we’ve got evidence that the company will generate the type of free cash flows from the business that could pay for said endeavor,” Quilty Space president Chris Quilty said at the time.
Today the end goal has changed — the Moon and data centers, not Mars — but the means remain the same: using orbital operations-at-scale to turn a profit doing the previously impossible. It took roughly 6.5 years for SpaceX to launch the 10,000th Starlink bird, and for the division to start raking in serious profits. So I tend to think of roughly 10,000 satellites — an unimaginable number not that many years ago — as the number required for sustained operations at a return worthy of the effort.
And Another Thing: Naysayers were all doom-and-gloom that SpaceX lost money in 2025, entirely on data center buildouts. But now the company leases server space to companies like Google and Anthropic for about $2 billion a month. xAI isn’t quite cash flow positive, but it’s closing in. Assuming SpaceX makes Starship work, the launch economics improve considerably. If the company doesn’t make it work, the entire project falls apart.
Also, Starlink enjoys a built-in audience, as it were, of people in rural or underdeveloped areas who had no other means of getting affordable high-speed internet service. Plus previously unfulfilled demand from airlines, cruise ships, and the Department of Defense. There’s no similar built-in demand for orbital data, so it’s my assumption that xAI will have to compete with terrestrial data centers on price. If Musk can overcome the serious technical and financial challenges to achieve positive cash flow, then SpaceX can continue putting data center satellites into LEO until they’ve hit one million… or 100,000, or 10,000. Or whatever number the market will allow.

🚨🇺🇦Protests Against Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Regime Are Still Ongoing in Ukraine!

As Zelenskyy reshuffles ministers at will, Ukrainians – mostly women, as many men have been kidnappe – continue to protest.

EU is trying everything to hide this from the public. pic.twitter.com/1zwlllen6o
— Mario ZNA (@MarioBojic) July 20, 2026

https://twitter.com/Chicago1Ray/status/2079010414445130084?s=20

CATHIE WOOD SAID TESLA IS THE LARGEST AI PROJECT ON EARTH.

"WE BELIEVE THE ENTIRE ECOSYSTEM OF AUTONOMOUS TAXI NETWORKS WILL GENERATE $8–10 TRILLION IN REVENUE OVER THE NEXT 5–10 YEARS.

TO PUT THAT IN CONTEXT…

THE ENTIRE GLOBAL GDP TODAY IS ABOUT $113 TRILLION."

ELON MUSK… pic.twitter.com/K4zRXVCwIM
— Vivek Sen (@Vivek4real_) July 20, 2026

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

Debt Rattle August 7 2025

Aug 072025

August 7, 2025 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:17 am Finance Tagged with: Adam Schiff, burn bags, Ghislaine Maxwell, India, Putin, Russiagate, summit, Todd Blanche, Trump, Zelensky 36 Responses »

Theo van Doesburg Counter-Construction 1923

• Trump, Putin To Meet As Soon As Next Week In Potential Breakthrough (ZH)

• Trump Tells Team To Arrange Putin Meeting ‘Fast’ – CNN (RT)

• Marco Rubio Discusses Potential for Trump and Putin Meeting (CTH)

• Ghislaine Maxwell Reportedly Cleared Trump’s Name In DOJ Interview (HUSA)

• Zelensky Rejects Any Limited Ceasefire With Russia (RT)

• Zelensky Rating Slumps – Poll (RT)

• Ukraine ‘Doesn’t Belong Among Civilized Nations’ – Hungarian FM (RT)

• Zelensky and the EU Increasingly Desperate Over The Inevitable Outcome (SCF)

• Top Trump Officials Will Discuss Epstein Strategy (CNN)

• FBI Burn Bags Had More Than Russiagate Files In Them (Margolis)

• DNI Tulsi Gabbard Breaks Down Russiagate (CTH)

• Ex-CIA Officer: Russiagate Deep State Operatives Still Work At The Agency (MN)

• Trump Slaps India With Additional 25% In Tariffs Over Russian Energy Trade (ZH)

• Sen. Adam Schiff Under Criminal Investigation For Mortgage Fraud (ZH)

• The Lucky Continent? (Rabo)

Rubio

NOW – Marco Rubio says for the FIRST TIME, Russia’s peace demands are finally clear—now it’s time for “ULTIMATE CLOSER” President Trump to seal the deal.

Coming just hours after news broke that Trump may meet with Vladimir Putin as early as next week, Secretary of State Marco… pic.twitter.com/u1FBUbSjic

— Overton (@overton_news) August 6, 2025

https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1952839386032226316

https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1953210757220581495

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1953144644247699556
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1953126714621522032

coup

One of the greatest persuasion plays I have ever seen involved the 2020 coup perpetrators successfully branding the anti-coup protesters of Jan6th as the real insurrectionists.

That’s the remaining tentpole hoax. I’ll see what I can do. https://t.co/LwckkxG8ks

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) August 6, 2025

scott

Scott Adams: The smartest, most capable people are all on one side.

What is it about the Right that attracts the best and the brightest?

Victor Davis Hansen
Mike Benz
Joe Rogan
Theo Von
Elon Musk
All-In Pod
David Sacks
J.D. Vance
Peter Thiel
Megyn Kelly
Mollie Hemingway… pic.twitter.com/u5wv9bp6cG

— jay plemons (@jayplemons) August 5, 2025

He's not wrong…. pic.twitter.com/7uD6eoh5SH

— Donna Louise (@DonnaLouise1212) August 5, 2025

https://twitter.com/TheGabriel72/status/1953078954564436172

Taibbi

Steve Witkoff was at the Kremlin yesterday with somehing new to tell Putin (we don’t know what). Or there would not have been a meeting. Did Putin have a breakthrough idea? Hard to imagine. He for years now has had the No Nukes, No Nazis, No NATO standpoint, and that stands. Give up -new- territory? Once a piece of land has been declared part of Russia, you can’t just undeclare it. Besides, the people in the oblasts have voted to join Russia, and that is serious.

Russia didn’t want any of this when the SMO started in early 2022, Putin didn’t even want to discuss it for Crimea then. But things have changed. Russian(-speaking) people needed protection, and got it. Curious to see what the talks result in. That the US insists on bringing Zelensky along does not exactly help achieve peace. Same goes for the fully russophobe European NATO nations.

• Trump, Putin To Meet As Soon As Next Week In Potential Breakthrough (ZH)

It appears the Wednesday Witkoff-Putin meeting in Moscow has led to a breakthrough of sorts, coming right down to the wire of threatened fresh US anti-Russia sanctions set to be imposed Friday. Presidents Trump and Putin plan to meet in person as soon as next week, the NY Times is reporting. A meeting with Ukraine’s leader would then follow. “President Trump intends to meet in person with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as soon as next week, and he plans to follow up shortly afterward with a meeting between himself, Mr. Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the plan,” the breaking report says.

There’s as yet been no indicators from the Russian or Ukrainian sides of the plan, or even that Moscow is aware of an ‘agreement’ to proceed with a meeting. According to more details: Mr. Trump disclosed his plans in a call with European leaders on Wednesday, the people said. The meetings would include only those three men, and would not include any European counterparts. The European leaders, who have tried to play a coordinating role on meetings to end the violence between Russia and Ukraine while supporting their European neighbor, appeared to accept what Mr. Trump said, one of the people familiar with the call said.

Anti-Moscow critics have said that the Kremlin is just buying more time with Washington while its military operations in Ukraine proceed at full pace. Will a breakthrough actually come of this? Trump has said of a fresh call with European leaders that they agreed with him that “the war must end” – but that it must be “an honest end”. There must be something substantial cooking if both sides agree to a meeting, which would be the first such face-to-face interaction between Trump and Putin of the US president’s second term.

Russia has confirmed the plans now.

• Trump Tells Team To Arrange Putin Meeting ‘Fast’ – CNN (RT)

US President Donald Trump has told his team to “move fast” to arrange a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, CNN reported on Wednesday. Putin proposed a direct meeting with Trump during talks earlier in the day with US special envoy Steve Witkoff, the news outlet said, citing two anonymous sources in the White House. The US president’s aides reportedly began planning for a potential summit immediately. Though these types of high-level meetings typically require preparation time, “Trump was urging his team to move fast,” CNN wrote. No location has been confirmed, but discussions could begin as early as next week, the outlet added.

Earlier in the day, Trump praised the outcome of the Putin-Witkoff talks, saying there is “a very good prospect” for a meeting between the Russian president and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. “There is a good chance there could be a meeting very soon,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated on Wednesday that this could come in the form of a trilateral summit involving Trump, Putin, and Zelensky, provided peace talks on the Ukraine conflict go well. The New York Times also reported that the US president intends to meet soon with his Russian counterpart.

Trump unveiled the plan in a recent phone call with European leaders, in which he announced plans to hold a trilateral summit alongside Putin and Zelensky after a one-on-one with the Russian leader, the NYT wrote on Wednesday, citing anonymous sources. Moscow has not yet confirmed any plans for a meeting. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said time is needed to normalize US-Russia relations before a summit can occur. Relations between Washington and Moscow fell to an “unprecedented level” under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, leaving many points of contention, he told TASS on Wednesday.

“Rubio added “a lot has to happen before that can occur.”

• Marco Rubio Discusses Potential for Trump and Putin Meeting (CTH)

At the White House event with Apple CEO Tim Cook, President Trump said that “there’s a really good prospect that” there will be a meeting with Zelenskyy and Putin. But he disagreed with the suggestion it amounted to a “breakthrough.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio notes in the interview here, “an opportunity will present itself very soon for the president to meet both with Vladimir Putin and with President Zelenskyy at some point here, hopefully in the near future.” Rubio added “a lot has to happen before that can occur.”

Pardoning Ghislaine would unleash a lot of anger.

• Ghislaine Maxwell Reportedly Cleared Trump’s Name In DOJ Interview (HUSA)

Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell reportedly told the Justice Department in a recent interview that she never observed President Donald Trump doing anything around her that “caused concern.” Maxwell was recently interviewed by the DOJ about roughly 100 people who were associated with her and her accomplice, deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. “Maxwell said nothing during the interview that would be harmful to President Donald Trump,” ABC reported, citing anonymous sources. “There is also an audio recording of the interview, the sources said, but it’s not clear whether the administration plans to release the audio to accompany any public release of the transcript,” the outlet added. “The public release of the transcripts could come as soon as this week.”

Maxwell was moved from federal prison in Florida to a cushier, lower-security camp in Texas after her DOJ interview. Maxwell was previously housed in the “honor dorm” of a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida. “Maxwell’s cushy new digs in D South – the so-called ‘honor dorm’ – are reserved for 30 to 40 of the low-security Florida lockup’s best-behaved prisoners,” the Daily Mail reported in March 2024. She has an appeal pending before the Supreme Court, and rumors are swirling that President Donald Trump may pardon her in exchange for information about his political enemies. A potential pardon would give Maxwell every incentive to clear Trump’s name – which is what she did, according to a Wednesday report from ABC News.

“Moscow has also said a ceasefire could be possible if Ukraine halts troop movements, suspends mobilization, stops foreign arms shipments, and holds a presidential election.”

• Zelensky Rejects Any Limited Ceasefire With Russia (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has rejected any limited ceasefire with Russia, insisting that Kiev will only agree to a complete halt in hostilities. His statement came in the wake of reports from Bloomberg that Moscow planned to propose a pause in air operations. Moscow and Kiev have agreed to several partial ceasefires since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Both sides have also accused each other of violating the agreements. Following a US-mediated 30-day agreement to pause strikes on energy infrastructure earlier this year, Moscow reported that Kiev’s forces had violated the truce over 100 times. Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources, that the Kremlin is considering offering an “air truce” during the visit of US special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow this week.

The arrangement would reportedly involve halting missile and drone strikes but would not end ground operations. The proposal is expected to come amid US President Donald Trump’s threats to impose secondary tariffs on Russia and its trading partners unless a peace deal is reached soon. Moscow has not confirmed plans to propose any sort of limited truce. In a post on his Telegram channel, Zelensky wrote that Kiev supports only an “immediate, complete and unconditional ceasefire. ” We’ve already tried many different formats, he said, referring to proposals for “silence in the skies” and halts to energy sector attacks. He alleged that all such agreements were breached and urged further sanctions on Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow favors a peaceful resolution and a “long- term, lasting peace” rather than a temporary truce. He has stressed that any settlement must address the “realities on the ground” and the root causes of the conflict. Russia has repeatedly called on Ukraine to recognize the loss of five of its former regions that joined Russia in public referendums, withdraw its forces from those territories, commit to neutrality, and limit its military capabilities. Moscow has also said a ceasefire could be possible if Ukraine halts troop movements, suspends mobilization, stops foreign arms shipments, and holds a presidential election. Kiev has rejected the terms as unacceptable.

Still much higher than I would have guessed. Who’s doing the polling?

• Zelensky Rating Slumps – Poll (RT)

Public trust in Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has dropped by 7% in about a month, according to a nationwide poll released on Wednesday. The apparent slump in popularity came after his controversial botched crackdown on the country’s key anti-corruption agencies. The survey by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), conducted from July 23 to August 4, suggests that trust in Zelensky stands at 58%, down from 65% in June. The poll says 35% of Ukrainians now say they do not trust Zelensky – an increase from 30% in early June. The drop in support was especially steep among respondents under 30, where trust fell by 15% – from 74% at the start of summer to 59% by early August, according to the poll.

The KIIS partially attributed the decline to Zelensky’s attempt to strip the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) of independence, citing Russian influence. Critics of the move accused Zelensky of having authoritarian tendencies, sparking protests at home and discontent in the West, given that many supporters of Kiev have for years demanded that it intensify the fight against corruption. Following the backlash, Zelensky was forced to roll back the reforms. KIIS stressed that although the controversy undoubtedly damaged Zelensky’s image, other factors are at play.

Of those who distrust him, only 6% cited the controversy as the reason, compared to 21% who pointed to overall corruption and 20% who say Zelensky is an inefficient leader during a time of conflict. The KIIS poll was based on phone interviews with 1,022 respondents across Ukraine. Last month, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) stated that US and UK officials had secretly met with their key Ukrainian counterparts to discuss ousting Zelensky and replacing him with former military chief Valery Zaluzhny. According to the SVR, the recent NABU and SAPO controversy was in large part engineered by Zelensky’s own officials to provide justification for the Western partners to seek his removal.

“..Ukrainian draft officers were accused of beating to death a dual Ukrainian-Hungarian citizen.”

• Ukraine ‘Doesn’t Belong Among Civilized Nations’ – Hungarian FM (RT)

Ukraine can have no place in the EU and “doesn’t even belong among civilized nations,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said. His comments come after Ukrainian draft officers were accused of beating to death a dual Ukrainian-Hungarian citizen. Media reports emerged last month that 45-year-old Jozsef Sebestyen, who lived in Ukraine’s Zakarpatye Region – home to a large Hungarian minority – died as a result of injuries sustained when he was beaten with iron rods by recruitment officers. News of Sebestyen’s death sparked outrage in Hungary, where hundreds gathered outside the Ukrainian Embassy in Budapest to condemn the incident.

Budapest summoned Ukraine’s ambassador to issue a formal protest and called on Brussels to introduce sanctions against Ukrainian leaders responsible for Sebestyen’s death. Commenting during an episode of the Harcosok Oraja podcast which aired on Wednesday, Szijjarto said: “A country like that not only has no place in the EU – it doesn’t even belong among civilized nations.” Ukraine’s forced conscription, marked by beatings and even killings, is “state-institutionalized” and “state-executed,” Szijjarto claimed. He added that any civilized country would act immediately upon seeing footage of officers violently detaining people, and that those responsible would be swiftly arrested and jailed.

“So what happens in Ukraine instead? Everyone turns their heads, no one dares to talk about it,” the foreign minister concluded. The Ukrainian military has claimed that Sebestyen died of a medical condition and showed no signs of violence. Hungary, however, has requested that the EU impose sanctions on three Ukrainian officials involved in mobilization efforts. In addition to alleged human rights violations, Hungary has cited several reasons for its opposition to Ukraine’s bid for EU accession. Szijjarto has argued that Ukraine’s membership would weaken rather than strengthen the bloc, while Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban has repeatedly warned that it would bring war directly onto EU territory.

“The Western rhetoric of “defending Europe” is a smokescreen used to justify the militarization of the continent and the artificial prolongation of the conflict.”

• Zelensky and the EU Increasingly Desperate Over The Inevitable Outcome (SCF)

In yet another sign of Ukraine’s psychological collapse, President Vladimir Zelensky has once again openly advocated for the political destabilization of Russia. In recent speeches, Zelensky stated that only a regime change in Moscow could guarantee “security” for Europe and prevent future conflicts on the continent. In practice, this is a desperate attempt to keep the narrative of the “Russian threat” alive, even as it becomes increasingly clear that the West has lost control of its proxy war against Moscow. Zelensky proposes a two-step plan: deepen the seizure of Russian financial assets and intensify diplomatic and political efforts to bring down the current Russian government. His logic is simple—but completely flawed: according to him, even if the war in Ukraine ends, the “threat” will remain as long as Vladimir Putin is in power.

The proposal, however, ignores Russia’s internal political reality, where Putin enjoys broad popular and institutional support. In other words, what the West and Kiev are pursuing is a coup d’état disguised as a “democratic transition”. But any serious analyst knows that the political structure of the Russian Federation is solid and widely backed by its population. Putin’s recent re-election, with a strong majority and high voter turnout, confirms this. There is no internal base for an uprising against the Kremlin—nor is there any international legitimacy for such an operation. Moreover, Zelensky’s calls to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort border on institutionalized looting. It is a flagrant violation of international law and economic sovereignty.

Confiscating the assets of citizens and companies based solely on nationality, then redirecting those resources to the war industry, reveals the level of moral and legal degradation that now dominates Western politics. Even more concerning is the fact that European leaders, such as Kaja Kallas, have already openly advocated for the fragmentation of Russia—a dangerously revanchist discourse reminiscent of the Cold War, which undermines any possibility of multilateral dialogue. The idea of breaking up the Russian Federation into dozens or even hundreds of “microstates” reflects an imperialist fantasy rooted in the darkest moments of European colonialism—and echoes remnants of the Nazi-fascist ideology that presupposes the creation of ethno-states.

Nonetheless, the obsession with “containing” Russia ignores a fundamental fact: there is no concrete evidence that Moscow intends to invade other European countries. The special military operation in Ukraine did not stem from any expansionist ambition, but from the need to protect the Russian population in Donbass and to curb NATO’s encroachment on Russia’s borders. After years of Western provocation and the genocide of ethnic Russians in what was then eastern Ukraine, Moscow chose to act. The Western rhetoric of “defending Europe” is a smokescreen used to justify the militarization of the continent and the artificial prolongation of the conflict.

In reality, Europeans are already feeling the economic and social consequences of this suicidal policy: inflation, an energy crisis, the erosion of civil liberties, and growing public dissatisfaction—manifested most recently in electoral results favoring illiberal candidates and parties, which were shamefully censored by European governments. The most rational path for Europe would be to distance itself from Kiev’s pro-war madness and adopt a foreign policy based on stability, sovereignty, and mutual respect. Unfortunately, European leaders appear fully aligned with a Russophobic agenda—even if it means plunging the continent into yet another decade of chaos. Zelensky does not speak for himself; he is merely the loudest voice of a failed project that insists on attacking Russia while Ukraine itself collapses economically, militarily, and politically.

“Trump on Tuesday defended Blanche’s recent sit-down with Maxwell, arguing that Blanche wanted to ensure that people who “aren’t involved are not hurt” by something “very unfair.”

• Top Trump Officials Will Discuss Epstein Strategy (CNN)

Top Trump administration officials will gather at the vice president’s residence Wednesday evening as they continue to weigh whether to publish an audio recording and transcript of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s recent conversation with Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The administration’s handling of the Epstein case, as well as the need to craft a unified response, is expected to be a main focus of the dinner, three sources familiar with the meeting told CNN. The meeting will include White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Blanche. With the exception of Vance, the White House considers those officials the leaders of the administration’s ongoing strategy regarding the Epstein files, two of the sources said.

The meeting comes as Trump’s administration is considering releasing the contents of Blanche’s interview last month with Maxwell. Two officials told CNN that the materials could be made public as early as this week. There have also been internal discussions about Blanche holding a press conference or doing a high-profile interview, possibly with popular podcaster Joe Rogan, according to three people familiar with the discussions, though those conversations are preliminary. Rogan, who endorsed Trump on the eve of last fall’s election, has been highly critical of the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case and previously called their refusal release more information about Epstein a “line in the sand.” [..] Patel and Bondi have previously clashed over the administration’s Epstein strategy.

Meanwhile, CNN previously reported that the Justice Department has been digitizing, transcribing and redacting the interview materials as they weigh if and when to publicly release the information from the Maxwell interview. There is over 10 hours of audio, a senior Trump administration official said. Portions of the transcript that could reveal sensitive details like victim names would also have to be redacted, one of the officials said. One official told CNN that some of the conversation within the White House has focused on whether making the details from the interview public would bring the Epstein controversy back to the surface. Many officials close to Trump believe the story has largely died down. Trump on Tuesday defended Blanche’s recent sit-down with Maxwell, arguing that Blanche wanted to ensure that people who “aren’t involved are not hurt” by something “very unfair.”

On Wednesday morning, the family of Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre issued a statement asking why no survivors had been invited to the meeting at Vance’s home. They offered to attend in Giuffre’s stead, as she died by suicide earlier this year. “Missing from this group is, of course, any survivor of the vicious crimes of convicted perjurer and sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. Their voices must be heard, above all,” wrote Giuffre’s two brothers and sisters in law, Sky and Amanda Roberts and Danny and Lanette Wilson. Amid the clamor for more disclosures about the case, the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday issued nearly a dozen subpoenas to the Justice Department and high-profile Democratic and GOP figures for files and information related to Epstein — a significant show of defiance against Republican leaders.

Two of the administration officials said if they were to release the audio and transcript, it would likely be done sooner rather than later. One said the release could be several weeks from now, depending on what the most senior-level officials within the West Wing and Justice Department decide. It was not immediately clear whether the White House and DOJ were aligned on the issue. “This is nothing more than CNN trying desperately to create news out of old news. [Trump] already addressed this issue in an interview with Newsmax, a real news outlet that routinely gets better ratings than CNN,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told CNN, when asked about the possibility of releasing the transcript. Blanche interviewed Maxwell at the US attorney’s office in Tallahassee, Florida, last month over a period of two days. Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in federal prison for carrying out a yearslong scheme with Epstein to groom and sexually abuse underage girls. She has continued to appeal her conviction, including with the Supreme Court.

Last week, Maxwell was moved from a Florida federal prison to a lower-security federal prison camp in Texas, a relatively uncommon move as those convicted of sex offenses are almost always deemed too high of a risk to public safety. As Trump has faced mounting pressure from his base for transparency, the White House has repeatedly said the DOJ should release all “credible evidence” in the Epstein files. Asked about Blanche’s meeting with Maxwell last week, Trump again said he’d like to see everything in the files released. “We’d like to release everything, but we don’t want people to get hurt that shouldn’t be hurt, and I would assume that was why he was there,” Trump told Newsmax on Friday. The president said he hadn’t spoken to Blanche about his meetings with Maxwell and didn’t know when that information would be made public.

“I haven’t spoken about it, but he’s a very talented guy, Todd Blanche, and a very straight shooter, and I think he probably wanted to know, you know, just to get a feeling of it,” Trump said. CNN previously reported that a senior Trump administration official stated that the president is not currently considering clemency for Maxwell, though he has repeatedly left the door open on the matter in recent weeks, saying he’s “allowed to do it.”

The Russiagate Files contained Epstein files.

Why any evidence in the burn bags of anything was not…well, burned, no idea.

• FBI Burn Bags Had More Than Russiagate Files In Them (Margolis)

Last month we learned that FBI Director Kash Patel uncovered a hidden SCIF room at FBI headquarters — sealed off since the Comey era — stuffed with thousands of Trump-Russia documents and burn bags. Among the most damning finds? The classified annex to the Durham report. “Just think about this,” Patel said. “Me, as director of the FBI, the former ‘Russiagate guy,’ when I first got to the bureau, found a room Comey and others hid from the world in the Hoover Building — full of documents and computer hard drives no one had ever seen. They locked the door, hid access, and just said, ‘No one’s ever gonna find this place.’” But there was something else in those burn bags besides Russiagate documents. According to Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), materials tied to Epstein were among the contents found in the burn bags, and a formal investigation is now underway.

During an interview on “The Benny Johnson Show,” Rep. Luna dropped a bombshell: “I’m asking [the FBI] directly who authorized this information to be placed in burn bags and what information they have about the former deputy director of the FBI destroying evidence pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein, which we know right now the FBI is actively investigating.” She credited Johnson’s program with kickstarting the inquiry. “It was your show that kinda tipped me off to follow up with one of those whistleblowers, and now that’s a full-fledged investigation,” Luna said. Johnson sought clarification. “You’re confirming to us that the FBI has destroyed Epstein evidence?” he asked. “I’m confirming that there’s an open investigation, and that the leads on your show resulted in them finding burn bags pertaining to Russiagate and potentially Epstein, yes,” Luna replied.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1952745647821463844

The congresswoman tied the attempted destruction of Epstein-related material to a broader pattern of misconduct during the Bush-era DOJ and FBI. “The actual cover-up was in 2005, 2006, 2007 when Epstein was allowed to skate even though they had him dead to rights,” Johnson said, pointing to former FBI Director Robert Mueller and then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Luna didn’t dispute the timeline and said this was part of what she’s pushing to uncover. Beyond Epstein, Luna also alluded to the potential destruction of evidence tied to the FBI’s now-debunked Trump-Russia investigation. “Had Tulsi [Gabbard] not come forward with that information in regards to Russiagate… think about it: people using their positions of power to violate constitutional rights, civil liberties, go after people, spy. It can’t be tolerated in a free and fair society.”

Despite the disturbing implications, Luna expressed confidence that the current administration is making progress on accountability. “I’m just really happy to know that, under this administration, that people are being held accountable,” she said. She also noted arrests are being made behind the scenes. If proven true, the FBI’s attempted destruction of Epstein-related materials could mark a new chapter in the scandal — and raise even more questions about who’s protecting whom.

Long interview. Miranda Devine used to mostly write, but has now become a “face”.

• DNI Tulsi Gabbard Breaks Down Russiagate (CTH)

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appears for an extensive podcast interview with Miranda Devine. It may create ‘splodey heads in Washington DC, but DNI Gabbard is now positioned as the tip of the spear to penetrate the fraud, lies, schemes and manipulations of the Intelligence Branch of government. Tulsi Gabbard is the leading voice for honesty and sunlight against the entire DC apparatus that participated in the Russiagate construct.

Gabbard now understands how the DC silo system was weaponized during the manufacturing of information against a political candidate, Donald Trump. Gabbard is speaking truth toward a corrupt system, and she will be the target of all fury that’s dependent on the retention of the corruption. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sits down with Miranda Devine to discuss, in her own words, Obama’s Russiagate plot to sabotage Trump, Hillary Clinton’s vendetta against her, and the evidence that could topple Brennan, Clapper, and Comey.

It’ll take time to sweep all the agencies.

• Ex-CIA Officer: Russiagate Deep State Operatives Still Work At The Agency (MN)

A former CIA operations officer has warned that Deep State operatives who concocted the fake Russia collusion narrative against President Trump under then Director John Brennan are still active inside the agency. Bryan Dean Wright told the Daily Caller that “At least two still do work there. That doesn’t mean that all of the other people have left. Those are just the two that I’m aware of.” nWright claims that One of the operatives still has a “blue badge,” meaning they are a direct CIA employee, while another possesses a “green badge,” and carries out work as a contractor. The Daily Caller notes that Wright declared in a recent op-ed that Brennan should “rot in prison” for treasonous plotting to undermine the integrity of the Republic. “These men thought they knew what was best for America, and they didn’t give a damn what voters like you thought,” the former spook asserted.

Wright further suggested that because Brennan worked at the agency for so long, he likely continues to shape the culture at the CIA and has almost certainly cultivated generations of like minded employees. As we’ve highlighted, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has officially handed the Department of Justice a criminal referral relating to the “treasonous conspiracy” by Brennan, other Obama officials and the former President himself outlined in Declassified documents. Further documents released by Gabbard have revealed that not only did the CIA believe a Russian intelligence assessment that the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign planned to smear Trump by linking him to the Kremlin, but that the FBI helped the Clinton campaign orchestrate the Russia hoax to distract from its investigation into her emails.

The declassified documents also show that the Clinton Campaign plotted to use Crowdstrike to push the claim that Russian hackers leaked information from the Democratic National Convention (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). President Trump has admitted that he previously refrained from pursuing an indictment for Hillary Clinton, but believes now she should “pay a very big price.” A House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report declassified on July 23 has also shown that just five CIA analysts under Brennan wrote the 2017 intelligence assessment, which included the infamous fake Steele dossier, on which the Russia hoax was based.

The report notes that according to a CIA self-assessment declassified on July 2, the analysts were part of a “Fusion Cell” Brennan had put together months to explore Russian election interference. There are concerns that those agents remain embedded in the framework of the CIA. Current CIA Director John Ratcliffe proclaimed last week that Brennan, James Comey, Hillary and others face “serious legal consequences,” for their roles in the scandal, revealing that he has made additional referrals for criminal prosecution, building on those sent weeks earlier by Gabbard, including one about Barack Obama.

“We’re gonna continue to share the intelligence that would support the ability of our Department of Justice to… bring fair and just claims against those who have perpetrated this hoax and the American people and this stain on our country,” he said during a Fox News interview. On Sunday Ratcliffe described Hillary’s role in the Russia hoax and her efforts to frame Trump as the “greatest political scandal” in a lifetime. “There was Intelligence from foreign Intelligence services, that one U.S. presidential candidate was trying to frame another candidate for treason, claiming that he was an agent of a foreign power, an agent of Russia, and that Intelligence was never shared,” Ratcliffe urged.

While speaking to reporters outside the White House, Peter Navarro just made it a point to call out George & Alex Soros for their involvement in the Russiagate conspiracy.

“There isn’t a single person associated with the Russia hoax that’s been held accountable…

It goes… pic.twitter.com/J6OQeMYn1C

— TheStormHasArrived (@TheStormRedux) August 6, 2025

India gets blamed for Ukraine. Get serious. What do you say to that? Show it to me on a map?

• Trump Slaps India With Additional 25% In Tariffs Over Russian Energy Trade (ZH)

Just as he warned yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order imposing an additional 25% tariff on India over its purchase of Russian energy, the White House said Wednesday hours after talks between the US and Russia over the war in Ukraine failed to yield a breakthrough. The accelerated tariffs – which will stack on top of 25% country-specific tariffs set to be implemented overnight – will go into effect within 21 days, according to the executive order signed by Trump. “They’re fueling the war machine. And if they’re going to do that, then I’m not going to be happy,” Trump said Tuesday in an interview with CNBC. This rhetoric was escalated in the initial paragraphs of the Executive Order:

“Executive Order 14066 of March 8, 2022 (Prohibiting Certain Imports and New Investments With Respect to Continued Russian Federation Efforts To Undermine the Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity of Ukraine), expanded the scope of the national emergency declared in Executive Order 14024 of April 15, 2021 (Blocking Property With Respect To Specified Harmful Foreign Activities of the Government of the Russian Federation), to include the actions taken against Ukraine by the Government of the Russian Federation. To address that unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, Executive Order 14066 prohibited, among other things, the importation into the United States of certain products of Russian Federation origin, including crude oil; petroleum; and petroleum fuels, oils, and products of their distillation.
…
To deal with the national emergency described in Executive Order 14066, I determine that it is necessary and appropriate to impose an additional ad valorem duty on imports of articles of India, which is directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil. In my judgment, imposing tariffs, as described below, in addition to maintaining the other measures taken to address the national emergency described in Executive Order 14066, will more effectively deal with the national emergency described in Executive Order 14066.”
…
Accordingly, and as consistent with applicable law, articles of India imported into the customs territory of the United States shall be subject to an additional ad valorem rate of duty of 25 percent.” The reaction was immediate extended selling pressure in India ETF…

“Pulte indicated potential violations of federal laws, including wire, mail, and bank fraud.”

• Sen. Adam Schiff Under Criminal Investigation For Mortgage Fraud (ZH)

How does the old expression go? “When you point one finger at someone, three point back at you?” Sen. Adam Schiff – best known for dramatizing Trump’s Ukraine call during his first term, misidentifying evidence in texts, overstating “collusion” findings, and defending a FISA memo later found to contain false statements – is under criminal investigation for alleged mortgage fraud, according to a Trump administration source cited by Fox News. Laura Ingraham revealed the news on “The Ingraham Angle” last night, reporting that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland is conducting the probe. The investigation follows a criminal referral from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to the Department of Justice, according to Fox News.

FHFA Director William Pulte alleged that Schiff “has, in multiple instances, falsified bank documents and property records to acquire more favorable loan terms,” which he said could endanger the stability of the U.S. mortgage system. According to the FHFA, Schiff and his wife purchased a home in Potomac, Maryland, in 2003, financing it with a $610,000 Fannie Mae-backed loan by declaring it their primary residence. However, Schiff also claimed a condo in Burbank, California, as his primary residence, even receiving a $7,000 California homeowner’s tax exemption. Fox News writes that in a 2011 affidavit, Schiff certified the Maryland property as his primary residence. The FHFA notes that this designation was reaffirmed in multiple refinancing filings through 2013, despite Schiff serving in Congress representing California.

A 2023 spokesperson said, “Adam’s primary residence is Burbank, California, and will remain so when he wins the Senate seat.” Another comment to CNN explained that both the Maryland and California addresses were listed as primary residences “because they are both occupied throughout the year and to distinguish them from a vacation property.” FHFA investigators and Fannie Mae’s financial crimes unit concluded Schiff showed “a sustained pattern of possible occupancy misrepresentation” across five loans. Pulte indicated potential violations of federal laws, including wire, mail, and bank fraud.

https://twitter.com/ElectionWiz/status/1952876848079114744

“..on a per capita basis, Switzerland has already pledged a significant amount of investment into the US and Swiss multinational companies already have sizeable facilities in the country..”

• The Lucky Continent? (Rabo)

While European equity markets ended the day on a slight positive note, the US market could not hold its opening gains and the S&P500 ultimately ended down some 0.5%. The US treasury curve flattened, led by front-end increases in rates (2y +5bp), following the significant steepening last week. European yield moves stayed within a narrow +/- 2bp range. The US trade deficit shrunk further in June, to $60.2bn, the lowest deficit since September 2023. Unsurprisingly it was yet another significant decline in imports – as tariff-mitigating frontloading activities faded – that drove that decline in the deficit. A prime example, again, were Swiss goods shipments, which showed a (seasonally adjusted) drop in US imports to $6.7bn from 13.4bn in May. That brings the US trade balance deficit even below its pre-trade war level and this suggests that we could start to see a reversal of the front-loading trade over the next few months.

That also means that the backlash is yet to come for exporting countries. So, even though the US-EU trade deal was slightly more favorable than we had accounted for in our projections for the Eurozone, the economy could still slip into a recession. But that would more likely still be more a technical contract rather than a real recession. Economists may have gotten a bit more clarity on the tariffs in recent weeks, especially when it comes to several big economies such as Japan and the EU (although questions remain). But for some other countries, the prospects remain far less certain (if that word still has any meaning). Case in point is India, which is still asking itself how to respond to Trump’s recent tirade and his threat of a substantial increase in the current 25% tariff on Indian exports, because of its “high barriers to trade” and its purchases of Russian oil.

So far, Modi’s government has been intransigent, arguing India is being unreasonably targeted by the US. The country is looking for ways to limit the economic damage, but Bloomberg reports that officials will continue to seek back-channel talks to ease the tensions. It remains to be seen whether India is willing to risk a significant escalation – like China was. Switzerland is in a similar crisis-fighting mode. After the surprise announcement of a 39% tariff on Swiss exports last Thursday, the country’s leaders have been frantically discussing alternative proposals to bend this rate, which is more than double the tariff the EU agreed with the US. The tariff will go into effect tomorrow, so Swiss President Karin Seller-Sutter flew –unsolicited!– to Washington yesterday with a “more attractive offer” in her bag.

Business minister Parmelin commented on Swiss public radio that the government needed to “fully understand what happened” between Swiss and US trade negotiators. Not too long-ago, reports had suggested that Switzerland could be one of the first countries to announce a deal with the US, after the UK. There was even some optimism that the tariff could be a low as 10%. That said, there is a clear difference between the British and Swiss trade relationships with the US. The UK has a modest goods trade deficit with the US. Switzerland, by contrast, has a buoyant surplus. This stood in the region of CHF 38.5bn last year, with chemical and pharmaceutical products being a key part of that. This contributed to Trump’s initial threat of a 31% tariff for Switzerland. It is not clear why that rose to 39% on August 1, but reports do point to a difficult phone call between the Swiss president and Trump last week.

There is speculation that Switzerland’s new offer could follow the blueprints of the Japan and EU deals, which include pledges to buy more American LNG and to invest more in the US. That said, on a per capita basis, Switzerland has already pledged a significant amount of investment into the US and Swiss multinational companies already have sizeable facilities in the country. Perhaps as a last-ditch effort may we suggest the Swiss President emphasize to President Trump that the “Trump Victory Tourbillon comes equipped with a Swiss-made TX07 Tourbillon”, as the Trump watch website advertises?

Our FX strategist, Jane Foley, notes that Swiss economic data and inflation have been relatively weak lately. Assuming Swiss politicians can negotiate a trade deal with the US with a baseline tariff closer to 15% this week, the probability of another rate cut this year – following the June cut – will likely diminish. That may give the CHF some support, and on this outcome we see scope for EUR/CHF to return to 0.93 near-term. However, confirmation of higher tariffs would likely lead to further upward pressure on EUR/CHF. The June high in the 0.9430 area may offer some resistance.

Remarkably some European officials are now even using the troubles nations such as Switzerland and India are facing to give a positive spin on the EU’s recent trade agreement. They argue that the US-EU deal may be better than deals some others have gotten or may get. Both sides are in the final stages of drafting a joint statement on their trade deal, which would essentially be a nonbinding rundown of what both sides have agreed to, according to those officials. One EU official also said that negotiators hope to have more news soon on the list of goods that will be exempted from the 15% tariff.

However, if the EU pushes too far, it may draw the ire of the US president, who already remarked that he will impose a 35% tariff on EU goods if the EU does not make good on its promise to invest an additional $600bn over Trump’s term. And note that the EU’s ‘commitment’ on that front is hard to steer, given that most of those investments should be done by the private sector (and if this implies factories moving from Europe to the US that would obviously weigh on European growth potential further down the line).

Dr. Anthony Chaffee: "Goldman Sachs had a part of their meeting leaked, and they said: Is curing patients a sustainable business model?"

"And of course the answer was no because a patient cured is a customer lost."

"There's another leaked document from Goldman Sachs… They… pic.twitter.com/yLbud6C6Si

— Camus (@newstart_2024) August 6, 2025

See Total Video Proof That 5G / WIFI Kills Plants, Animals, And Humans

In this vital report, industry executives warn their own employees of the dangers of 5G, HHS Secretary RFK Jr. delivers the receipts and scientist prove that plants wither and die in the presence WIFI And 5G.… pic.twitter.com/cqNEr23cZ4

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) August 6, 2025

Piers Morgan, confidently parroting the usual narrative, gets a reality check from Jeffrey Sachs, dismantled point by point, exposed for knowing far less than he thinks.

Painful to watch, but well-deserved…. pic.twitter.com/vU35JyR5Ni

— Richard (@ricwe123) August 6, 2025

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY OF TEXAS WAS CREATED IN 1867 BY 150 COLORED MEN AND 20 WHITE MEN

Chaplain Rich Stoglin: “The civil rights movement were fighting the Democratic Party… This is not made up. This is history. That’s a fact.” pic.twitter.com/YD750iNbFN

— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) August 5, 2025

The greatest scam in history…

The creation of the Federal Reserve: pic.twitter.com/24PsEZb38C

— Opportunity Cost (@OppCostApp) August 5, 2025

Elon Musk tells Joe the exact moment he lost all respect for Barack Obama. pic.twitter.com/SjA43XdJHc

— Joe Rogan Podcast News (@joeroganhq) August 5, 2025

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Debt Rattle July 31 2025

Jul 312025

July 31, 2025 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:48 am Finance Tagged with: apology, Brazil, burn bags, Clapper, clueless, immunity, mathematically impossible, mobilization, saints, sanctions 50 Responses »

Peter Beard Francis Bacon on his Roof at 80 Narrow Street, London 1972

• Anti-Russia Sanctions Ultimatum Will Blow Up in US’ Face: Jeffrey Sachs (Sp.)

• Trump Envoy Says This Time Oil Sanctions On Russia Will ‘Bite’ (ZH)

• Kremlin Points To Russian ‘Immunity’ From Sanctions (RT)

• US Media Owes Putin Apology – Fox News Host Greg Gutfeld (RT)

• FBI Chief Finds ‘Burn Bags’ of Russiagate Evidence In Secret Room At FBI (RS)

• More Americans Watch RT Than CNN – James Clapper (RT)

• From Union to Eunuch: How Trump Fixed EU’s Spine Problem (Amar)

• Ukrainians Can Stay In US – Trump (RT)

• Ukraine’s Mobilization Has Become A War On Civilians (RT)

• Europe’s Pledge To Buy $750BN In US Energy Is Mathematically Impossible (ZH)

• Trump Punishes Brazil With Sweeping Tariffs, Sanctions (ZH)

• Stunning Stats From the Border Crisis (Catherine Salgado)

• Democrats Are so Clueless About Men That It’s Hilarious (Margolis)

• The Camp of the Saints (Paul Craig Roberts)

layoffs

Nothing to see here pic.twitter.com/mPtnsWOjvJ

— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) July 29, 2025

flynn
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1950226552911753518

deal
https://twitter.com/JesseBWatters/status/1950353902114652164

terms

President Trump just posted this on Truth Social, advocating for term limits of uniparty politicians who have been in office for over 30 years.

This further exposes the insanity of the radical left’s “No Kings” movement.

Congress is just hospice with better amenities. pic.twitter.com/xrN9z576p3

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) July 30, 2025

zaluzhny

Something is missing from his new photos…wait a minute…there! Fixed it!

Once a Banderist, always a Banderist. pic.twitter.com/4N2pKptnSl

— Scott Ritter (@RealScottRitter) July 30, 2025

mearsheimer

John Mearsheimer: What’s happening in Gaza is genocide. The United States should have nothing to do with it.

(0:00) An Update on the Ukraine/Russia War
(5:13) The West’s Ridiculous Russophobia
(15:47) Why Do We Still Have NATO?
(25:29) The Growing Threat of China and How the US… pic.twitter.com/kPkIBZWWUD

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) July 30, 2025

Bessent China
https://twitter.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1950580949722497253

Devine

Trump is digging a deep hole. Wonder why. Tulsi Gabbard points out quite clearly that Russiagate had/has two victims: Trump and Russia. He should apologize for what the US did, but instead insists on naming himself as the only victim.

• Anti-Russia Sanctions Ultimatum Will Blow Up in US’ Face: Jeffrey Sachs (Sp.)

Threats of new economic restrictions against Russia are not only “dangerous” and counterproductive, but a sign of the severe incoherence plaguing the Trump administration, the world-renowned US economist and political commentator says. “If the sanctions are actually applied, they are an escalation of the conflict, and therefore very dangerous. I do not believe that they will be effective. For example, I do not believe they will stop Russia from selling oil, gas, and other commodities to Asian markets. Yet, provocations and escalation often have unpredictable negative effects, and that could be true here as well,” Sachs told Sputnik. Undermining Washington’s strategic policy objectives, new restrictions “could expose” its “incompetence or accelerate the breakup” of US-led geopolitical and economic blocs, the Columbia University Center for Sustainable Development director believes.

“This is, in short, the wrong approach. We need diplomacy and negotiation to get to the root causes of the conflict, and solve them, not unworkable ultimatums based on the idea of an unconditional ceasefire,” Sachs said, highlighting Western powers’ refusal to discuss the “underlying reasons” for the Ukrainian crisis, from NATO’s eastward expansion and the US regime-change operation in Ukraine in 2014, to “the failure of the Western powers to honor the Minsk II agreement, among others.” “Instead, the Western powers now demand an unconditional ceasefire. Russia will not agree to this, nor will a new round of US sanctions compel Russia to agree to this,” Sachs stressed.

It’s only round 19 after all.

• Trump Envoy Says This Time Oil Sanctions On Russia Will ‘Bite’ (ZH)

Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Russia and Ukraine, has freshly warned in newly published comments that oil sanctions will have a serious and hard-hitting economic impact if properly enforced – though they haven’t been up till now, he suggested. His prediction comes after President Trump’s announcement early this week that he would shorten Russia’s deadline to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine down to ten days from the previous 50. “We haven’t really applied full pressure on the oil sector yet,” Kellogg said on The Record With Greta Van Susteren. “Russia’s a petrostate, exporting around 7 million barrels of oil daily, much of it through what’s called the ‘dark fleet,’” he continued.

Noting that India and China remain Russia’s two biggest oil customers, he described that the revenue from these exports helps finance the war in Ukraine and fund “huge bonuses” for soldiers being recruited as Russia expends manpower in a war of attrition. The proposed sanctions, including 100% tariff on countries purchasing Russian oil, will “start to bite”… “If that happens—and if Russian oligarchs start seeing the effects, especially with Russian sovereign assets largely held in Belgium—Putin will start feeling the pressure not just from within his military, but also from the oligarchs and internally,” Kellogg said. He gaged the current level of sanctions as moderate, rating them at about “six out of ten” while admitting that enforcement remains weak, which he put at a “three out of ten.”

Kellog called for strengthening enforcement if Washington hopes to make the sanctions more effective. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has shrugged off these new threats and Trump’s revised timeline, which is clearly aimed at drastically ratcheting the pressure on Moscow. “We’ve taken note of President Trump’s statement,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday. “The special military operation continues.” He added, “We remain committed to a peace process to resolve the conflict around Ukraine while safeguarding our national interests.”

As for what’s next after US new secondary sanctions are activated – probably little will change, at least initially. Russia has been able to weather the sanctions storm fairly well, while deepening its economic relations with major BRICS countries, and its ground advance in Ukraine east – and even into Sumy lately – has shown no signs of stopping. At home, store shelves are full, and average Russian citizens have been living their daily lives with little perceptible change in circumstances.

“The first wave of sanctions began after the start of the Ukraine crisis in 2014(!)..”

• Kremlin Points To Russian ‘Immunity’ From Sanctions (RT)

Russia has long been accustomed to Western pressure and sanctions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, after US President Donald Trump announced a shortened deadline for a ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict and threatened new sanctions if Moscow does not comply. On Monday, Trump said he is moving up the deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine from 50 to “about 10 or 12 days,” adding that “there’s no reason in waiting.” He warned that failure to comply would result in new “sanctions and maybe tariffs,” targeting nations that buy Russian oil. Commenting on Trump’s remarks on Wednesday, Peskov signaled that Russia is not worried about new sanctions. “We have been living under a huge number of sanctions for quite a long time,” he stated.

”Of course, a certain immunity has already developed with regard [to sanctions],” he said, adding that Moscow “continues to take note of statements coming from President Trump.” Earlier, Peskov stressed that while Russia is “committed to the peace process to resolve the conflict around Ukraine,” it wants to ensure that its interests are respected. Moscow has insisted that a settlement must include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and recognition of the new territorial reality on the ground. Russia remains the most sanctioned country in the world by far, with more than 10,000 imposed by Western countries. The first wave of sanctions began after the start of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, and the number rose sharply after the conflict escalated in 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow should not be intimidated by sanctions, otherwise it could “lose everything,” noting that they often boomerang against those who imposed them.

“People lost jobs, careers, friends. There need to be consequences.” They owe a lot of people an apology. Hell, they even include Putin.”

• US Media Owes Putin Apology – Fox News Host Greg Gutfeld (RT)

The US media needs to make “serious” amends to many people, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, for its role in spreading the Russiagate hoax, according to popular Fox News host Greg Gutfeld. The political commentator, comedian, and author was responding to recent revelations made by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who released a trove of documents she described as “overwhelming evidence” of a coordinated effort by senior Obama-era officials – allegedly led by Barack Obama himself – to politicize information dismissed by US intelligence agencies and falsely accuse Donald Trump of colluding with Russia to win the election.

“We cannot let this go. They need to make serious amends because we are still living with the aftermath,” Gutfeld said on his latest show, which aired last weekend. “People lost jobs, careers, friends. There need to be consequences.” They owe a lot of people an apology. Hell, they even include Putin. According to Gutfeld, major American news media outlets “played the starring role in amplifying the subversive plot against the president of the United States.” He dismissed recent claims by the media accusing the Trump administration of trying to “rewrite history,” calling them an “attempt to shift culpability away from themselves and hide the lie they perpetuated for almost a decade.”

Earlier this month, a similar assessment was made by former CIA Director John Ratcliffe. In an interview with the New York Post, he cited an internal review suggesting that American public opinion had been manipulated through repeated media leaks and anonymous sources quoted by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other major outlets.

Allegations of “Russian collusion” persisted in mainstream media coverage even after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found no evidence to support the claims. Moscow has repeatedly denied interfering in the US election. Gabbard described the Trump-Russia probe, widely referred to as Russiagate, as “a years-long coup” against Trump. The US president himself, who has consistently dismissed accusations of ties to Russia as fabricated, praised Gabbard for “exposing” the alleged plot and urged her to “keep it coming.”

Great story. What will he find?

• FBI Chief Finds ‘Burn Bags’ of Russiagate Evidence In Secret Room At FBI (RS)

It has taken nearly a decade, but we may be just beginning to find out the immense scope and breadth of what amounts to a years-long soft coup being carried out by members of the Obama administration and other “deep state” players against President Donald Trump throughout much of his first term in office. Democrats, the same people who accused Trump of colluding with Russia for literally years, are now saying, “Move on.” However, new information is emerging almost daily, and we may be gaining a much clearer picture of what transpired. In June, FBI Director Kash Patel appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and discussed a “secret room” that contained documents and computer hard drives, which he claimed “no one had ever seen or heard of.” This has been described as a concealed sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF).

The Deep State is where the boss of the FBI has to be Indiana Jones to find out what his department has been up to.

There are other rooms. pic.twitter.com/fCLgf5HW3k

— Margarita Simonyan (@M_Simonyan) July 30, 2025

On Wednesday, it was reported that in that room, Patel also found what were described as “burn bags” full of sensitive documents related to the Trump-Russia investigation. Burn bags are used to destroy documents that are designated as classified or higher. Sources claim the bags contained thousands of documents. One of the documents in question that was found is the classified annex to a final report from special counsel John Durham. Declassification of the annex is being done by a team of intelligence and law enforcement officials, including Patel, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and acting National Security Agency Director William Hartman. Once this team is finished, the document will be handed over to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who will then make it public.

Some of the information contained in the classified annex reportedly includes the fact that the U.S. intelligence community had what it called “credible foreign sources,” indicating that the FBI would become a key player in spreading the supposed Trump-Russia collusion story before the “Crossfire Hurricane” probe was ever launched. The annex foretold the FBI’s subsequent actions, “with alarming specificity.” Fox News Digital reports that sources with knowledge of the annex stated, “Ultimately, the release of the classified annex will lend more credibility to the assertion that there was a coordinated plan inside the U.S. government to help the Clinton campaign stir up controversy connecting Trump to Russia. Mere days after this intelligence was collected, the FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane. It’s really hard to see how Brennan, Clapper and Comey are going to be able to explain this away.”

It’s all going to come out.
Kash Patel on Joe Rogan telling about former FBI Director Comey’s secret room being uncovered.
Fox News reporting seized burn bags held key evidence. pic.twitter.com/9fGfC5As9S

— Big Fish (@BigFish3000) July 30, 2025

It is unknown what other information was found in the documents. Patel and his team are working through them and will turn over any pertinent documents to Grassley. During his appearance with Rogan, Patel summed up exactly what was going on at James Comey’s FBI, saying: “Just think about this. Me, as director of the FBI, the former ‘Russiagate guy,’ when I first got to the bureau, found a room that Comey and others hid from the world in the Hoover Building, full of documents and computer hard drives that no one had ever seen or heard of. Locked the key and hid access and just said, ‘No one’s ever gonna find this place.'”

The list of questions the secret stash room brings up is almost endless. Did Comey and others really think no one was ever going to find it, or was it sloppiness, arrogance, or a combination of both? Who designated the documents to be burned? Did John Brennan or James Clapper tell Comey to burn them, or did Comey take it on himself to designate the documents to be burned? Why were they designated to be burned — and then why weren’t they burned? Are they the only copies? Or are there other copies and/or digitized versions of them?

https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1950582350825300330

And perhaps the biggest question of all: Does this mean those who designated the documents for burning are “busted?” A recent RedState Guest Editorial shed some light on if or when some consequences might befall those involved. Could the same statute, 18 US Code, Chapter 115, at Section 2384, that was used for January 6 defendants, be used on anyone involved here? It is early in the investigation, a lot of work remains to be
But whatever happens, if all of this has been found by Kash Patel and his team, one wonders what else James Comey (and others) may have hidden.

RT is banned everywhere, so we have to doubt this. But if they did, they would be much better informed.

Can’t quite place it. Perhaps he said it at some point in the past?!

• More Americans Watch RT Than CNN – James Clapper (RT)

RT has a larger American audience than CNN, former US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has claimed. Clapper was a key figure behind the Russiagate conspiracy theory, which included claims that RT helped influence the election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Earlier this month, Clapper’s successor Tulsi Gabbard declassified a trove of Obama-era documents which reportedly detail efforts by the two-time US president and his senior officials to distort intelligence on unsubstantiated claims Moscow interfered in the 2016 US election. In an interview with CNN aired last week, Clapper doubled down on the conspiracy and accused Russia of unleashing “a very sophisticated, extensive and aggressive information operations campaign to influence public opinion” in the US.

”RT… has a bigger following in this country than this network [CNN] does” while accusing it of using what he described as “fake news implants,” he said. Clapper claimed that the alleged Russian campaign was aimed at “sow[ing] doubt, discord and distrust among the American public.” RT has faced increasing censorship and legal hurdles in the US since 2017, when the Department of Justice required RT America to register as a “foreign agent.” The RT America channel was then denied congressional press credentials before being forced to close down in 2022 following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict and the West’s decision to impose unprecedented sanctions on Russia.

RT content was later restricted and deleted from major digital platforms, including YouTube, where the network had ratcheted up some 5 billion views and several million subscribers, and Facebook. Last year, the US also indicted two Russians, identified as RT employees, with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), money laundering, and illegally funneling millions of dollars to US-based entities to covertly influence US audiences. Separately, the US sanctioned RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and other senior RT employees, over alleged efforts to influence the US election. Moscow has denounced the crackdown, calling it a testament to the degradation of US democracy and “its transformation into a totalitarian neoliberal dictatorship.”

Just saw this video of Obama's DNI James Clapper saying that "RT has a bigger following in the US than CNN does."

Not quite the compliment it used to be, but we'll take it. pic.twitter.com/8wh8SKrgOj

— Margarita Simonyan (@M_Simonyan) July 29, 2025

“The art of the kneel: How Trump’s ‘deal’ brought Brussels to heel..”

“Regal von der Leyen – with aristocratic nonchalance – besides, never cared to check if she even has a right or the practical means to promise away $1.35 trillion that, actually, only specific companies could make available. Hint: she does not..”

• From Union to Eunuch: How Trump Fixed EU’s Spine Problem (Amar)

[..] First, it has been inflicted not by an enemy, but by an “ally” and big-brother-in-“values”: This is the moment the NATO-EU underlings are falling over each other to keep paying for the US-instigated and failing proxy war in Ukraine while also building the equivalent of a dozen new Maginot Lines (this time including a “drone wall”) against the big, bad Russians. Yet it is Washington that has struck its eager-to-please sycophants in the back. The EU has also done its very worst to assist in its own trouncing. As Trump retainer Sebastian Gorka – himself, ironically, a European slavishly serving the US empire – has correctly put it, Europe has “bent the knee.”

And once it was all over, with the blood not yet dry on the floor, the EU picked itself up, dusted off its pantsuit and said thank you, in the best tradition of German chancellors who grin and scrape when American presidents tell them they will “put an end” to Germany’s vital infrastructure. We are talking, of course, about the so-called tariff and trade “deal” just concluded at the Scottish luxury golf resort of Turnberry, between the US, under self-declared “tariff man” and elected, if by very messy rules, President Donald Trump (also owner of that golf resort) and the EU represented – no one really knows on the basis of what mandate – by the pristinely unelected head of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. The same one who promised us a “geopolitical” Commission and EU. If this is your “geopolitics,” it’s suicidal.

It was a bloody affair, but we can’t even call it the “Battle of Turnberry” because there was no fight before the EU went down. The gist of what really was an economic massacre is simple. After months of negotiations, seven trips to Washington and over 100 hours of empty talk by its touchingly useless trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic alone, the EU has brought home not a bad deal but pure, total defeat, as if it had been busy distilling the very essence of being on the losing side at Cannae, Waterloo, and Stalingrad: While Trump could enumerate a substantial list of big, expensive concessions made by the Europeans, von der Leyen got nothing, strictly nothing. This is not a “deal” at all. It is unconditional surrender. Without a preceding war.

In essence, the US will now levy “baseline” tariffs of 15% on most of its massive imports from the EU, including on cars. But there are exceptions! Already punitive American tariffs of 50% on steel and aluminum will remain in place. In return, for the US, selling in the giant if decaying EU market will be, in essence, free, at an average tariff rate of zero or, at best, below 1%. And to show its appreciation of such a fine, evenhanded “deal,” the EU sweetened it by throwing in some extras as if there is no tomorrow. Like at one of those late-night TV direct sales shows. Only that the EU slogan is not “order immediately and…” but “ruin us right now and get an extra $1.35 trillion just to make us even poorer and you even richer!”

That $1.35 trillion consists of two promises of direct EU tributes (yes, that is the correct, real term) to Washington: an additional – as Trump stressed – $600 billion which EU companies, surely dizzy with gratitude, will invest in the US; and $750 billion of especially dirty and expensive American LNG (liquefied natural gas) which they will buy to feed into whatever will remain of European industry. Meanwhile, Trump is making concessions – again – to China. China, of course, being the sovereign country and economic powerhouse that did what the EU completely failed to do: fight back against the Washington bullies. And now imagine what the EU could have achieved if it had worked with China to check US aggression. Instead, the recent EU-China summit in Beijing has shown that the EU is still not ready to abandon its arrogant stance of hectoring and threatening China, in particular in a futile attempt to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow.

The other thing the summit has made clear is that China will not budge. And why would it? The absurdity of all of the above is staggeringly obvious, even if there already are quarrels about the details. Because between Team Trump and Team von der Leyen, two card-carrying egomaniacs and narcissists, there was of course no one to take care of those. Regal von der Leyen – with aristocratic nonchalance – besides, never cared to check if she even has a right or the practical means to promise away $1.35 trillion that, actually, only specific companies could make available. Hint: she does not.

But what does it all mean? Here are three take-away points: First, we must, for once, agree with American regime change and war addicts, such as Anne Applebaum and Tim Snyder: European appeasement is a real thing. But not of Russia, which has never been appeased but provoked, needlessly fought, and, mostly, systematically denied even a fair hearing. No, what the Europeans appease is, obviously, the US, their ruthless and utterly contemptuous hegemon and worst enemy, from letting America and its cut-outs blow up Nord Stream to the Turnberry Fiasco.

Does that include Zelensky?

• Ukrainians Can Stay In US – Trump (RT)

Ukrainian refugees will be allowed to remain in the US until the conflict between Moscow and Kiev ends, President Donald Trump has said, reversing concerns that his administration would revoke their protections. Roughly 240,000 Ukrainians have entered the US since the escalation of the conflict in 2022, many under the Uniting for Ukraine (U4U) parole program introduced by former President Joe Biden. After taking office in January, Trump instructed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to terminate all categorical parole programs, including U4U, raising concerns that protections for Ukrainians could be revoked as part of a broader crackdown on immigration. Fears intensified after a public spat between Trump and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky in the Oval Office in February.

In April, thousands of Ukrainians also received emails from the DHS stating they had to leave the US within seven days. The department later said the messages had been sent in error and did not reflect policy changes. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump was asked by a Deutsche Welle reporter whether Ukrainians would be allowed to stay in the US until the end of hostilities. “I think we will, yes, I will,” the president replied, noting that “we have a lot of people that came in from Ukraine, and we’re working with them.” Trump’s remarks come as he has issued a ten-day deadline for Moscow to agree to a peace deal with Kiev, threatening secondary sanctions if it does not. The Kremlin has said it remains open to talks but dismissed the ultimatum as unconstructive.

Several European countries have recently taken a harder line on Ukrainian refugees. In Germany, lawmakers have called for benefits for military-age men to be cut, while in Poland support for accepting Ukrainian refugees has dropped from 81% to 50% since 2023. The UK has begun rejecting asylum claims on the grounds that some regions of Ukraine are safe for return. The EU, meanwhile, is debating long-term plans for the more than 4.3 million Ukrainians who reside there amid rising social tensions and costs.

“Kiev isn’t ‘losing’ men. It’s sending them to die..”

• Ukraine’s Mobilization Has Become A War On Civilians (RT)

To Western commentators, even scenes of forced conscription and street violence are not seen as failures of the Ukrainian government – but as further justification to continue the fight against Russia. That changed on July 6, when a man was beaten to death by draft officers in Ukraine’s Zakarpatie Region. His name was Jozsef Sebestyen – an ethnic Hungarian and citizen of Hungary. This time, the silence was broken. Hungary’s Foreign Ministry filed a formal protest. The president sent condolences to the family. And Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called on the EU to condemn the brutality of Ukraine’s mobilization system. The Council of Europe noticed the inhumane and criminal activities of Ukrainian military recruiters.

Human Rights Commissioner Michael O’Flaherty published a report highlighting systemic violations of the rights of conscripts. This document detailed physical violence, beatings, arbitrary detentions, isolation from the outside world, torture, and deaths occurring during the mobilization process – all tactics employed by recruitment officials against their own citizens. While the death of Sebestyen drew rare international attention, for most Ukrainians, violence at the hands of draft officials is a daily threat. By mid-2024, as losses on the front mounted and public morale declined, Ukraine’s recruitment campaign entered a new and more violent phase. Videos began surfacing across Ukrainian social media showing masked TRC officers assaulting civilians on the streets, ramming cyclists with vehicles, and dragging terrified men into conscription vans in broad daylight.

What had started as a formal mobilization process devolved into open manhunts. Occasionally, these harrowing encounters have ended in death. On March 3, a 48-year-old man died at the Kremenchuk recruitment center. His death was officially attributed to heart failure. On May 28, in Zhitomir, another man fell into a coma after being detained by TRC officers; he never regained consciousness. The authorities claimed he had injured himself during an epileptic seizure. On June 19, yet another man reportedly suffered a fatal heart attack at a TRC in Strye, Lviv Region. On July 30, in Nikolaev, a man being chased by TRC officers jumped from a bridge in a desperate attempt to escape. According to Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation, he died instantly. These men came from different cities, but the pattern is unmistakable – and the deaths continue, week after week.

If they fail to do it, Trump has another stick in the carrot game.

• Europe’s Pledge To Buy $750BN In US Energy Is Mathematically Impossible (ZH)

As part of the U.S.-EU trade deal agreed over the weekend, the EU committed to purchasing a mindblowing $750 billion worth of US energy products over three years ($250 per year) including LNG, oil, and nuclear fuel (again this is very big picture: neither side has detailed what was included in the energy deal – or whether it covered items such as energy services or parts for power grids and plants). There is just one problem: this number is laughably unrealistic because it would require the redirection of most US energy exports towards Europe and the EU has little control over the energy its companies import. Indeed, as Rabobank explains, unless energy prices increase materially, that figure remains beyond realistic expectations.

The EU imported roughly €65 billion worth of energy products from the U.S. in 2024, including €20 billion (35 million tons) of U.S. LNG and €44 billion of oil and oil products. To reach the required $250 billion per year, the EU would need to import roughly 67% of its energy needs from the US, based on 2024 Eurostat data. Even if the EU were to purchase all of its LNG from the U.S., the total would rise to only €40–50 billion, based on 2024 prices. This would require countries like Russia, Algeria, Qatar, Nigeria, and even Norway to completely relinquish their market share in the EU, while the U.S. government would need to mandate its LNG exporters to prioritize Europe. The shift in flows for crude oil and refined products would be even more substantial, as the EU currently imports only around 17% of its needs from the U.S.

Existing suppliers in the Middle East and India are unlikely to surrender market share without significant economic incentives, while U.S. refining and export capacity is already stretched. Capacity, cost, and competition will continue to shape energy flows, regardless of political intent. Reuters adds that “there is strong competition for U.S. energy exports as other countries need the supplies – and have themselves pledged to buy more in trade deals. Japan agreed to a “major expansion of U.S. energy exports” in its U.S. trade deal last week, the White House said in a statement. South Korea has also indicated interest in investing and purchasing fuel from an Alaskan LNG project as it seeks a trade deal.”

The flipside is just as laughable: total U.S. energy exports to all buyers worldwide in 2024 amounted to $318 billion. Of that, the EU imported a combined $76 billion of U.S. petroleum, LNG and solid fuels such as coal in 2024, according to Reuters’ calculations based on Eurostat data. More than tripling those imports was unrealistic, analysts said. Arturo Regalado, senior LNG analyst at Kpler, said the scope of the energy trade envisioned in the deal “exceeds market realities.” “U.S. oil flows would need to fully redirect towards the EU to reach the target, or the value of LNG imports from the US would need to increase sixfold,” Regalado said. Competition for U.S. energy could drive up benchmark US oil and gas prices and encourage U.S. producers to favour exports over domestic supply. That could make fuel and power costs more expensive, which would be a political and economic headache for U.S. and EU leaders.

Meanwhile, the EU estimates its member countries’ plans to expand nuclear energy would require hundreds of billions of euros in investments by 2050. Its nuclear reactor-related imports, however, totalled just 53.3 billion euros in 2024, trade data shows. The energy pledge reflected the EU’s analysis of how much U.S. energy supply it could accommodate, a senior EU official told Reuters, but that would depend on investments in U.S. oil and LNG infrastructure, European import infrastructure, and shipping capacity. “These figures, again, are not taken out of thin air. So yes, they require investments,” said the senior official, who declined to be named. “Yes, it will vary according to the energy sources. But these are figures which are reachable.”

There was no public commitment to the delivery, the official added, because the EU would not buy the energy – its companies would. Private companies import most of Europe’s oil, while a mix of private and state-run companies import gas. The European Commission can aggregate demand for LNG to negotiate better terms, but cannot force companies to buy fuel. That is a commercial decision. “It’s just unrealistic,” ICIS analysts Andreas Schröder and Ajay Parmar said in written comments to Reuters. “Either Europe pays a super high non-market reflective price for U.S. LNG or it takes way too much LNG volumes, more than it can cope with.” The United States is already the EU’s top supplier of LNG and oil – thanks to the Biden-inspired war in Ukraine and the CIA blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia – shipping 44% of EU LNG needs and 15.4% of its oil in 2024, according to EU data.

Raising imports to the target would require a U.S. LNG expansion way beyond what is planned through 2030, said Jacob Mandel, research lead at Aurora Energy Research. “You can add on capacity,” Mandel said. “But if you’re talking about the scale that would be necessary to meet these targets, the $250 billion, then it’s not really feasible.” Europe could buy $50 billion more of U.S. LNG annually as supply increases, he said. Amusingly, higher EU fuel purchases would, however, run counter to forecasts for EU demand to decline as it shifts to clean energy, analysts said. “There is no major need for the EU to import more oil from the U.S., in fact, its oil demand peaked a number of years ago,” Schröder and Parmar said.

* * *
According to Rabobank, the most plausible outcome of the trade deal’s energy provisions is increased European participation in U.S. LNG projects (which would also have been achieved without the deal). Unlike crude and refined products, LNG offers scalable, long-term opportunities through joint investments in liquefaction capacity and infrastructure. European firms are likely to commit capital to U.S. terminals to secure future supply and diversify away from Russian gas. However, this will not materially alter market balances over the next five years and by then Trump will be long gone.

50%nis crippling.

• Trump Punishes Brazil With Sweeping Tariffs, Sanctions (ZH)

In a huge move which the Brazilian government has blasted as rank political interference in its internal affairs, the Trump administration on Wednesday pulled the trigger on previously threatened sweeping tariffs on Brazil, and in addition sanctioned the judge overseeing the trial of Jair Bolsonaro, who has been accused of plotting a coup – and remains currently on trial – after rejecting the election results which brought President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to power. “Today, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is sanctioning Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) justice Alexandre de Moraes (de Moraes), who has used his position to authorize arbitrary pre-trial detentions and suppress freedom of expression,” the US Treasury statement reads.

“Alexandre de Moraes has taken it upon himself to be judge and jury in an unlawful witch hunt against US and Brazilian citizens and companies,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. “De Moraes is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights, and politicized prosecutions—including against former President Jair Bolsonaro. Today’s action makes clear that Treasury will continue to hold accountable those who threaten U.S. interests and the freedoms of our citizens.” It is quite significant that the Treasury statement openly names Bolsonaro as essentially subject of a political witch hunt. Trump himself has previously emphasized these precise words in several statements.

The outspoken former president, who has long been dubbed by some regional media as ‘the Brazilian Donald Trump’ – has even lately been ordered by the court to wear an ankle monitor after declaring him a flight risk. Bolsonaro recently returned from what was essentially political exile in Florida, only to be detained and stand trial once to his home country. This action is very unique, given that compared to other tariffs recently introduced by Trump, these measures against Brazil are explicitly political, which puts the two countries’ long positive trade relations in jeopardy. But Moraes is now in the spotlight, and pressure could build for Lula to made a political sacrifice and simply dismiss and make this all go away, to preserve economic status quo with the United States.

The US has sought to present this as more than just political and in protection of Trump-ally Bolsonaro, however, as the Treasury also cited Brazil’s “unusual and extraordinary” actions as harmful to American businesses, free speech, and economic interests. Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the former president, has defended Trump’s actions, saying it’s not about revenge, but justice. But certainly revenge and punishment is seems a big motivating factor given the recent history involving MAGA and Moraes, and recent very public clashes… “The time has come for Congress to act. Broad, general, and unrestricted amnesty is urgently needed to restore peace, restore freedom to those persecuted, and show the world that Brazil still believes in democracy,” he said in reaction on X.

“By the time Fiscal Year 2024 ended, the immigration court backlog had an appalling and obviously unmanageable 4 million cases, which represented a number nine times greater than a decade before..”

• Stunning Stats From the Border Crisis (Catherine Salgado)

The massive immigration backlog is finally dropping like Democrats’ popularity, and apprehensions at the border have reached historic lows as the Trump administration keeps a tight hand on the erstwhile disastrous border crisis. With the immigration court backlog down by more than 300,000 and apprehension numbers for border officers plummeting, it is evident that the Joe Biden border crisis is rapidly becoming a matter of the past. Now we just have to make a dent in the tens of millions of illegal aliens who have been breaking the law for years to live in our country and take our money and jobs. Hopefully, Donald Trump will live up to his previous promises of mass deportations of all illegal aliens, a policy that at least 56% of Americans support.

Center for Immigration Studies’ Law and Policy Fellow Andrew R. Arthur emphasized the significance of how much the immigration backlog has gone down. The Biden administration let practically anyone who showed up at either the northern or southern borders in, giving them a meaningless court date for sometime in the future that everyone knew most of the migrants would not honor anyway, and which precluded judicial diligence. The backlog for immigration grew way out of proportion; then Donald Trump came back into office. Today, fewer than 450,000 cases [the 2015 number] in the immigration court backlog is an almost unthinkable dream. By FY 2020, the backlog had risen to 1.52 million pending cases – though even that figure has become a misty watercolor memory of the way the immigration courts were not so long ago.

By the time Fiscal Year 2024 ended, the immigration court backlog had an appalling and obviously unmanageable 4 million cases, which represented a number nine times greater than a decade before, Arthur wrote. The main driver was the millions of migrants Border Patrol agents and CBP officers encountered at the Southwest border under the last administration, who poured into the United States illegally as the then-president and his DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, ignored congress’s migrant-detention mandates. Though those aliens were released, most (a point I’ll get to) were placed into removal proceedings before increasingly overworked immigration judges. If amnesty is your goal (and it was the express goal of Biden’s fellow partisans), crushing the courts is the best way to get there.

Fortunately, we no longer have a president who is trying to ensure amnesty for as many people as possible. Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks touted other encouraging statistics at the start of this month. In June, there were 8,039 apprehensions altogether, versus last year, when the number hit 11,414 after only the first three days of June. June 28 also saw the lowest number for single-day apprehensions on record at 137, while authorities estimate that “gotaways,” or illegals who evaded Border Patrol, likely went down by as much as 90% compared to June 2024. The Biden administration was constantly engaging in catch-and-release; the Trump administration had zero releases. This is exactly what Americans voted for in 2024.

At the core: men don’t want men in girls’ dressing rooms.

• Democrats Are so Clueless About Men That It’s Hilarious (Margolis)

Democrats are still scratching their heads over why young men keep slipping through their fingers. After years of trading in empty promises and socialist fantasies, the Left was stunned in 2024 when young men broke ranks and cast their votes for Donald Trump. Satellites could probably pick up the wailing from Washington. Who could possibly be surprised that young men are turning away from a party that openly sneers at masculinity, constantly lectures about so-called “male privilege,” and blames every societal issue on “the patriarchy”? Instead, gaggles of overpaid consultants huddled in generic hotel conference rooms to solve the Gen Z male riddle as if it were a malfunctioning piece of software. Remember when Democrats launched a $20 million effort just to figure out how to talk to men?

Despite the hefty price tag, their messaging keeps missing the mark because it’s rooted in the same elite, progressive ideology that alienated working-class men in the first place. Instead of addressing real concerns like economic opportunity, national security, or cultural respect, Democrats are throwing money at consultants and focus groups while ignoring the actual values and frustrations of male voters. The more they spend trying to rebrand themselves, the more obvious it becomes that they don’t understand or even particularly like the men they claim to be trying to reach. And yet the left still doesn’t understand what’s happening. The Washington Post certainly doesn’t. After acknowledging that Republicans won young men in the last election and that young Latino and black men in particular swung hard toward Trump, the paper still struggled to grasp the why.

“What happened?” it asks. Young men in swing states say the Democratic Party abandoned them, leaving them feeling helpless in providing for their families as prices rose and jobs evaporated. They felt no sympathy from the left, who they say brushed away their legitimate economic woes by citing their male privilege. They acknowledge historical patriarchy but assert that doesn’t make them invincible in a job market where graduate unemployment is concentrated among men. Those are the latest findings in focus groups conducted by the centrist pro-Democratic group Third Way and HIT Strategies with men ages 18 to 29 from swing states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The men were lower-propensity voters — more likely to turn out in a presidential year than a midterm — and voted for Joe Biden in 2020 but switched to Trump last year.

And here’s the key part: Men feeling left behind elicits eye rolls in many corners of the Democratic Party. The gender pay gap persists, with women making 85 percent of what men earned in 2024, despite greater female participation in the workforce than in past decades. The numerous calls from party leaders to appeal to the “manosphere” and appear less “woke” also elicit concerns that that means throwing marginalized groups under the bus on issues like trans or women’s rights. Let’s drop the polite fiction: The Democratic Party doesn’t respect young men or take their concerns seriously. Men, Democrats say, have privilege. If you want to win back men, you don’t do it by rolling your eyes at the issues that concern them or by peddling the debunked gender-pay-gap narrative.

Here’s the cold, hard truth. You cannot run a political party as a cult for the fringe and expect the mainstream, especially young men who still believe in hard work and fundamental truth, to stomach your nonsense forever. When Democrats choose to cater to purple-haired activists with preferred pronouns, bureaucratic meddlers, and billionaire tech lords, they make it crystal clear who counts and who doesn’t.

“Thirteen years ago Anjem Chaudhry, a leader of Muslim immigrant-invaders in England, said that the British would be under Muslim rule and Shariah law by 2027.”

• The Camp of the Saints (Paul Craig Roberts)

England is rapidly disappearing as a white ethnic nation. Eighteen British cities, including London, Manchester, Sheffield, Brighton, Oxford, and Salisbury have Muslim immigrant-invader mayors. Twelve year old Courtney Wright was sent home from school in Warwickshire for wearing a Union Jack dress to school on Culture Celebration Day. She was supposed to be celebrating the cultures of immigrant-invaders, not English culture. For her offense, she was sent home. In Britain, Culture Celebration Day excludes British culture, a hateful racist thing. The disintegration of ethnic Britain is approaching light speed. Less than one week ago the British government posted a job opening for a Shariah Law Administrator.

Thirteen years ago Anjem Chaudhry, a leader of Muslim immigrant-invaders in England, said that the British would be under Muslim rule and Shariah law by 2027. With the largest cities governed by Muslim mayors and the British government’s job posting for a Shariah law administrator, Chaudhry’s prediction seems on the money. The current ethnic British protests against the overrunning of their country are being put down by the white British police. The situation is the same in the US, Scandinavia, and Western Europe.

The state of Maine has hired an immigrant-invader as a police officer with the authority to arrest American citizens. California police departments have been hiring illegals for more than a year. The US now has immigrant-invaders as judges, prosecutors, and university professors. As Chaudhry said, as Muslim power grows, we will replace Western law and social mores. This is what French novelist Jean Raspail predicted in 1973 and Enoch Powell predicted in 1968. The dumbshit Western intellectuals snickered and pointed their fingers. Having been failed by its intellectual class, which endorsed Sodom & Gomorrah and a Tower of Babel, Western civilization disintegrated. What is left of it?

The belief system has been destroyed. Law and media have been weaponized against white ethnics. Free speech has been suppressed. A merit-based society has been replaced by an institutionalized DEI society that discriminates against white ethnicities. Schools teach white kids that they are racists and must stand aside for people of color. Feminists have destroyed the white family, thus dispensing with the basis of white society. Readers can add to the disasters that we have allowed to be inflicted on us. With the wars that are being stirred up, it appears that white ethnicities are on the verge of being exterminated. Where is a leader when Western civilization needs one?

Perhaps social Darwinism is true after all. People without survival instincts do not survive.

floss

Dental Floss…It's The New Syringe. No Needle, No Warning & No Consent.

The Gov't Has Tested Vaccine Embedded Dental Floss On Mice.

Your Mouth Is The Fastest Delivery System Into Your Bloodstream & Now They Are Targeting It.

This Will Be A Violation Of Body Autonomy…… pic.twitter.com/1DjOyKpSgb

— Valerie Anne Smith (@ValerieAnne1970) July 30, 2025

gates

Bill Gates: "For every disease that we don't have vaccines, we will try mRNA".

"We just need to mess around. There's a lot of lipid nanoparticles, and some are very self assembling." pic.twitter.com/lQdOOxsb19

— illuminatibot (@iluminatibot) July 29, 2025

mommy
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1950284170514849864

co2
https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1950519250973499643

ozzy

The funeral procession of Ozzy Osbourne through his home town Birmingham, UK
pic.twitter.com/7MrdGT1FJE

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) July 30, 2025

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