The real threat that is destroying our world is not Putin. IT'S THEM.they are the globalist oligarchs who seek to enslave us. And none are in prison for their CRIMES against humanity each one of them must be arrested immediately and brought to trial for crimes against humanity.⚔️ pic.twitter.com/Ta6oZ0wSJa
According to TIME, during a private Oval Office meeting with Elon Musk in December 2025, Trump spent hours asking Grok questions about his presidency and legacy.
He also asked how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured Nicolás Maduro. Grok… pic.twitter.com/AmcajdacMW
The Trump administration has created at least 13 campaign-style ads as part of its controversial taxpayer-funded, multi-million-dollar effort to promote President Donald Trump and his policies.
Yet-to-be-aired spots include a trio of ads highlighting the US military and operations in Iran and Venezuela, one called “God Made Trump” and another recapping the UFC fight he hosted at the White House. Republicans and Democrats alike have questioned the wisdom of spending so much taxpayer money on the ads, which the White House has defended as public service announcements.
CNN has obtained clips of 12 ads, which range from 15 seconds to three minutes long, including two that have already aired. They appear in a Dropbox account — which was shared with CNN — run by LMD, the agency that has been given the government contract for the ad buys. Each ends with “Paid for by the U.S. Government” at the bottom of the screen. Another ad that is not in the Dropbox account, “Final Battle,” has also aired in recent weeks.
The three ads that have already aired have appeared on TV networks including CBS, CNN, MS NOW, Fox News and Fox. It’s not clear if all of the ads will air on television or digital platforms. Asked for comment, the White House on Friday afternoon pointed to a just-posted video compilation of the president criticizing CNN.
While each of the ads has a different theme, many of them include imagery of the president and audio with positive reviews from news reports, which is likely to intensify criticism that the campaign is using taxpayer dollars to help Trump personally. They also include patriotic images — including the cap toss at a military graduation, fireworks over Mount Rushmore and military flyovers.
First lady Melania Trump, who has been a rare presence at the White House during the president’s second term, is featured in many of the ads. There are also images from Trump’s reciprocal tariff announcement, the border wall, his escalator presidential-campaign announcement and the tongue-in-cheek framed photograph of an auto pen signifying former President Joe Biden on Trump’s “Presidential Walk of Fame.”
Trump’s White House created a spot titled “UFC” that showcases the June match held at the White House.
CNN previously reported that Trump has personally driven the video ads, including helping select the imagery and videos used, according to a source familiar with the matter. Two Trump advisers familiar with the ads said that they were being created in-house by the White House video team — which is part of the communications team, responsible for the administration’s public messaging — though at least one of them was produced by a pro-Trump meme group.
The ads that have aired so far have spurred widespread condemnation, even as the White House indicates it plans to ramp up its efforts. Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a post on X that the ads “may be felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes.” If Democrats win control of the House next year, he’ll gain congressional subpoena power.
Even some Republicans have criticized the ad campaign. “Look, if you want to spend money out of your super PAC or other campaign account to communicate that message, that’s fine. It’s not an appropriate PSA. It’s just not, you know, it’s not how we should be spending taxpayer dollars,” said Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has said “no” the ads are not an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars. “It’s not even a close question.”
A spot titled “Resilience” that shows Trump’s progression from a younger man in the New York real estate market to the US president.
The “UFC 250” ad heavily promotes the company and the June fight that Trump hosted at the White House, prominently featuring UFC CEO Dana White as well as the fighters, the lit-up “claw” over the Octagon and the championship belt. The “Maduro” spot intersperses a speech by Nicolas Maduro with appearances by Trump and his team at Mar-a-Lago following the Venezuelan dictator’s capture.
And “Military Hype” shows images of fighter jets and unclassified video of what appears to be missile launches. It also includes Trump’s February speech announcing the war with Iran, a conflict which remains deeply unpopular with the American people. “This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States Armed Forces,” Trump says in the ad, now seven months into the war.
Some of the ads are starkly political: The two-minute “King of the Jungle” video features images of Trump’s perceived political enemies — former Presidents Barack Obama and Biden, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, all Democrats. There’s video of lions hunting in the wild and a bald eagle sweeping down on the water. A cover of “In the Air Tonight” by In This Moment plays. And Christopher Walken’s lion speech from the 2002 film, “Poolhall Junkies,” is interspersed.
Trump’s White House created a spot titled “King of the Jungle” that intersperses images of Trump, campaign rallies, lions and eagles.
One of the spots, a three-minute-long ad titled “God Made Trump,” was broadcast during Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas. In it, Trump is presented as a messianic figure with a riff on Paul Harvey’s “God Made a Farmer.” It was created by Dilley Meme Team, according to NPR, and began going viral earlier this year. “I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to ruffle the feathers,” the voiceover says, “So God made Trump.”
Trump’s White House created a spot titled “God Made Trump,” which portrays him as a messianic figure.
The ad “Resilience” shows Trump at multiple points in his life, including early in his New York real estate career, an appearance he made on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” his descent down the Trump Tower escalator as he announced his candidacy in 2015 and then his time at the White House. In the audio, a reporter refers to him as “the bodyguard of Western Civilization.” His 2023 mugshot from a Fulton County, Georgia, sheriff’s office features prominently, along with video of an assassination attempt on him in Butler, Pennsylvania.
At least an estimated $5.6 million in taxpayer dollars have already been spent on the ads, according to a leading political ad-tracking firm, AdImpact. The actual cost of the taxpayer-funded ad campaign is even higher, but can’t be fully ascertained because public service announcements are subject to different public disclosure rules than campaign ads. A total of $20 million has been allocated for the effort. The money for these ads is coming from Customs and Border Protection, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Watchdog groups have said the ads mark a clear violation of appropriations law restricting the use of federal funding for propaganda or partisan communications, but it’s not clear if outside groups have standing to file a lawsuit. Though the ads have received bipartisan criticism, Congress — which groups said had the clearest lane to provide some accountability — has not acted to block the ads.
Until the midterms, we will be watching a massively coordinated attack denigrating all the good that has happened since Trump won in 2024. A combination of the leftist media and apostate “right-leaning” influencers will try to sell us just how awful Trump has been, so the wonderful communists, er, Democrats can ruin us once again. It will be hard to stomach.
As conservatives, we have had two magnificent years of change for the better. Only the Reagan years were this good. Reagan changed the world by defeating Soviet communism. He simultaneously reset our free-market economy. He reshaped the world while helping people in the U.S. live prosperous and meaningful lives. We live during a similar time. Trump has done the same magic trick of reshaping the world plus bettering personal lives.
But half the country does not know it. The leftist media neither had the will nor the capacity to make all the excellence of the Reagan years disappear back then. The leftist blob has honed its skills since. Its bravado and its capacity to propagandize is better than any of us thought possible. Helping the communists, er, Democrats to ruin our country once again. We must defeat them.
Success has been this administration’s MO. Yet we face a ginned-up and phony set of flaming darts volleyed at us daily. Instead of seeing achievements, we are hustled by lies of failure. The positives that have been accomplished in less than two years are remarkable, and they are legion. So much good has been done in the world, and truly for the average citizen, it’s hard to believe.
The leftist media has hidden these:
• A secure border
• Criminals being deported
• A massive drop in violent crime
• Severe fraud being exposed/stopped
• DEI halted
• University bias uncovered
• Deep-state government corruption halted
• Vote fraud revealed and curtailed (not enough John Thune)
• Real wages up
• Permanent tax cuts
• Stock market up
• An economy prepped for growth
• IRA valuations up
• IRAs for children established
• Government jobs down, private sector jobs up
• Manufacturing rebounding
• Huge investments in American business
• The U.S. energy sector unleashed
• Leftist-leaning NGO funding destroyed
• Lawfare beat-down
• Leftist communism exposed and fought
• Leftist/Jihadism connection exposed
• NATO increasing defense spending
• The Greenland deal
• The Venezuela liberation
• Panama Canal reset
• Iran neutered
• Cuba teetering
• China backpedaling/faltering
• Peace through strength, ending eight wars
• Beginning the Golden Dome defense
• The world order totally reshaped
• MAHA helping restore food safety
• MAHA bringing sanity to the pharmaceutical lobby
• Prescription drug prices down.
• Entrepreneurs encouraged
• Massive deregulation
• Anti-Christian bias targeted
• Men out of women’s sports and locker rooms.
• Preventing sex trafficking, saving trafficked children
• Dealing with the cartels, drug lords and pushers
And much more. 99% totally positive. A staggering list in two years. One that should be celebrated, lauded, applauded, and supported. Splashed across every media outlet.
We’ve never seen anything like this. We’ve never had it this good. We elected an administration that has performed a regenerative miracle for our country and its citizens. George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln were great Presidents with great achievements. We are seeing that kind of greatness today. A country turning around. It’s possible to live life proudly as an American again. We’ve been lifted from the Hell that globalists and corrupt politicians from within and without wanted for us. And we’re just getting started. Because the best is yet to come. If we let it.
I loved Reagan. His eight years were inspiring and filled with achievement. Yet in the last two years we have witnessed more transformation to the good than in the Gipper’s eight years. And trust me, the enemies within were not nearly as prevalent as they are now. The entrenched leftist beehive of propaganda media was not so evil, all-encompassing, nor as effective. Reagan didn’t face the rancor and horror of actual communists within. Thankfully Trump, unlike milquetoasts in the past, knows how to fight and win.
Yet here so many are complaining about small change, clucking about affordability, whining about the Iran war, nitpicking that both sides are the same. Blah, blah, blah. If you have small issues you don’t care for, I do too, but please look at the list of accomplishments above. Please compare. Whatever your complaints, remember all the good that has been done. Because the diabolical left will undo it as much as possible if they win these midterms. Small issues don’t count when genuinely great things are happening in droves.
Affordability? Yes, we have had inflation due to the spike in diesel and gas prices. It’s real. But so is the fact that Iran is now neutered. They cannot nuke anyone. They cannot replace their missiles, drones, and the capacity to wreak havoc on us with their terror networks. They are relegated to the dustbin of history. Dan Bongino said he saw the intelligence concerning Iran. His comment: It was genuine. Had we not done what we did, we would have nuclear havoc, and permanent gas prices of eight to ten dollars a gallon. if we had not acted, a crazed nation would have held the world hostage. That would have caused worldwide depression, not simply a temporary spike in oil and inflation.
And it is temporary. Within six months, gas will likely be back below three dollars. Prices will go down. Inflation will be tamed again. Trump will have traded the havoc of a crazed Iranian regime for a nine-month upswing in gas and inflation. Art of the deal in spades.
And if you think the Democrats care about affordability, think again. It was Obama and Biden who purposefully caused gas to be high with their policies. They said they wanted it to happen. Their policies made it happen. Gas and high prices under Democrats are normative. The Democrats don’t give a fig about affordability. They have no right to claim the mantle of caring about affordability. They don’t want to, nor know how to bring affordability. They just know how to demagogue the issue so they can retake power. That is all they want.
What they are best at is using the beehive of their media friends to convince you that things are terrible. That Trump is a warmonger. That the economy is and will be terrible. That everything Trump touches is horrible. That they can fix everything to be better. That they’re really not radical leftists who hate America.
That’s the picture they will paint. It’s what they want us to believe. And they have the cultural power to sway too many of us. What we need to do is simple: Stand and fight the onslaught of their propaganda. Do not let them demoralize you or anyone else. Remember, there is a country to save from these leftist radicals. And it’s you who has the power to defeat them. Get up, engage, donate, support candidates without a (D) behind their name. Vote and get voters to the polls whom you know will help. Persuade those on the fence if you can. Democrats must lose.
If you are conservative, right-of-center, independent, or moderate, please consider: You do not want the newly constituted radical left in charge. Of anything. Period.
Pray for and work towards victory. You won’t regret it. But you will regret doing less than you could to support this administration.
“After one failure after another,” Rezaei fumed, “the worst president in American history just keeps talking — and talking — and now his words have even outrun his own fantasies. “
The Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, apparently styles himself something of a historian of American history, or is angling for a plum job as a professor in an Ivy League university, or both. On Friday, Rezaei warmed the hearts of leftist historians all over the U.S. when he proclaimed that President Donald Trump is the “worst” president in U.S. history. Numerous socialist internationalist academics would agree.
“After one failure after another,” Rezaei fumed, “the worst president in American history just keeps talking — and talking — and now his words have even outrun his own fantasies. You can win every day in your own imagination.” Well, yeah, Mohsen, but that can cut both ways, now, can’t it? In concluding, Rezaei claimed that “reality is shaped by Iran — by its people, its soldiers, and its missiles.”
Later that day, however, Trump painted a vastly different picture of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s achievements and current capabilities: “They lost one set of leaders. Then they lost another set of leaders. Then they lost half of a third set, and they had a little runoff for who wants to be president and there were no participants. Everyone said, ‘I don’t, I don’t want to be.'”
Trump was being satirical; Masoud Pezeshkian has been president of Iran since July 28, 2024. Pezeshkian, however, is not the head of state; the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, holds that position, and has not been seen in public even once since he attained the top job. The word is that he was disfigured in the February strike that killed his father and predecessor; others contend that he is actually dead, but Iranian leaders pretend he is alive to give their tottering regime some legitimacy.
In fact, it’s not at all clear who is running things in Tehran, and Trump pointed out that this made trying to achieve a negotiated settlement difficult in the extreme: “And it’s part of our problem,” he said. “I don’t know who the hell to deal with. There’s nobody to deal with. Nobody wants to be president, I’d say ‘Who do I speak to in Iran?’ They’re not nobody around. Knock, knock. Nobody home. But that war is going to be over soon. One way or the other, one way or the other. It’s going to end very soon and probably right after the midterms.”
All right. In the meantime, going into those midterms, Rezaei has given the president the best possible endorsement. Who wouldn’t want a top leader of a bloodthirsty, repressive regime whom the overwhelming majority of its own people hate calling him the “worst” ever to hold his job?This is because Rezaei is, of course, looking at Trump through the prism of what is good for his embattled but ruthless regime. He never would have dreamed of calling Barack Hussein Obama or Old Joe Biden the worst president in American history when they were showering billions upon the Islamic regime in Tehran. He never bestowed that title upon any of the presidents who kicked the can down the road on Iran, either.
The fact that Rezaei has now given Trump this title is the clearest indication we have had in quite awhile that Trump’s stance toward the Islamic Republic is making it feel the pain. Rezaei, of course, likely has never heard the names of Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, or Andrew Johnson. He would be unlikely, given the international left’s high regard for the Islamic Republic, to give low marks to the likes of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as does the book Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Rezaei is simply venting his frustration at the man who has given the Islamic Republic such a hard time.
Trump promises that this hard time is going to continue. The Iranian people, and the free world, can only hope that the pressure on the Islamic Republic will finally cause it to fall, and to be replaced by a saner and more humane regime. Then Mohsen Rezaei can get a job as a professor of American history at Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, or some other America-hating university.
The midterm elections are a month away, and I would like to ask a favor: Please make sure that you vote. Please encourage your friends and family to vote. We need all the help that we can get.
Perhaps you feel that voting is a useless exercise that exists to legitimize bad outcomes — a way of forcing citizens to accept responsibility for things they did not do. “You get the government you vote for,” we often hear, but that’s not exactly true. Unelected bureaucrats and judges from unaccountable agencies and Constitution-subverting courts give us a lot of government that none of us want! “If voting made a difference, it would be illegal,” the old saw goes. There’s probably a layer of truth in that hunk of ore.
But voting can make a difference! We’ve seen what a difference it can make over the last ten years! There’s no way in Hades that the powers that be wanted President Donald J. Trump in office. Bill Kristol and all of the “conservative thought leaders” in his orbit worked to elect Hillary Clinton back in 2016. Duplicitous Mitt Romney delivered one of the most hateful anti-Trump screeds on national television that year. Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan advised fellow lawmakers not to say anything positive about Trump heading into the general election.
Economists predicted that a Trump victory would send the country into a depression. Retired generals predicted that Trump would lead the country into WWIII. Political marketing firms and campaign consultants essentially blacklisted anybody who considered working for the Republican nominee. The only places you could find anything positive about his candidacy were rebellious publications such as this one!
Boy, oh boy, when Trump won, you could almost see the Deep State Establishment melting in real time. Do you remember how all the networks waited hours to call the election because none of them could stomach admitting the truth? Hillary Clinton was too busy drinking, crying, screaming, throwing things — whatever — to concede publicly until ten hours after Trump had become president-elect. Trump strolled out to celebrate victory in the early morning hours, and, with a coy little smile on his face, repeated several times, “Elections are a complicated business, folks.” For the next ten weeks, it seemed as if “The World Turned Upside Down” were playing on repeat across cable news.
The day after Trump won, Speaker Ryan was so flabbergasted by the result that he sounded like a talking squirrel hopped up on cocaine and amphetamines during every television interview: Wow! What a victory! I’m totally behind Trump! Republicans in Congress are totally behind Trump! One hundred percent! Anybody have peanuts? I need some extra protein after my P90X workout! (Spoiler alert: Ryan and his congressional RINOs were “behind Trump” only because they intended to repeatedly stab him in the back.)
Hollywood actors — including most of the cast from The West Wing — produced videos encouraging members of the Electoral College to disregard the voters’ will and install Hillary in the White House. Extremely embarrassed lame duck Barack Obama — who had organized a lavish send-off for himself amid the ancient ruins of Athens a fortnight later — blamed Trump’s election on “fake news.” (That’s right! Obama used that term before Trump repurposed it for his own trademark advantage.)
In the background, of course, we were beginning to see the emergence of the Obama-Clinton-Brennan-Comey-Clapper-Rice Russia Collusion Hoax in which Democrats used the CIA and FBI to frame Trump as a Russian spy in an effort to prompt his impeachment and removal from office (or what honest people call an attempted coup d’état) — an egregious crime against the American people for which none of the conspirators has been brought to justice.
Trump won in 2016 because Republican voters showed up! He won despite the fact that Hillary outspent him four-to-one. He won despite the fact that news coverage of his campaign was 100% negative, while Hillary’s coverage was nearly 100% positive. He won despite the fact that every prominent “elite” on both sides of the Atlantic openly laughed at him and spoke of Hillary’s presidency as if it were foreordained. President Trump won in 2016 for one reason: His voters went to the polls in droves.
Fast-forward to 2020, and we all know what happened. The Deep State Establishment stole the election. The election was so obviously stolen that Big Tech social media platforms censored everyone who pointed out all of the unbelievable election irregularities. President Trump won nearly every traditional bellwether county across the country by double-digits and increased his total number of votes by over eleven million. Nobody has ever done that and lost an election, but the corporate news media pushed the Establishment propaganda that perennially unpopular Joe Biden had somehow won more votes than any candidate in American history — including fifteen million more than Obama won in 2012 and four million more than Trump won in 2024!
While Dementia Joe hid in his basement during that campaign, state officials used COVID as a pretext to violate election laws and permit the dumping of mail-in-ballots lacking valid authentication into unsupervised drop boxes in battleground states. Mark Zuckerberg and other tech titans transferred hundreds of millions of dollars into the bank accounts of Democrat political operatives. There were allegations of electoral fraud across the country. Witnesses attested that unlawful ballots — including those lacking dates and signatures — were counted. Nevertheless, state and federal courts conspired with the political and media Establishments to cover up what was almost certainly the biggest electoral theft in American history.
A few months later, Time published a story admitting that “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information” rigged the 2020 election. Of course, the writer of that public confession, Molly Ball, claimed that the conspirators “were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”
The plan was to convince Americans that Trump was unpopular, even though he won eleven million more votes in 2020 than when he clobbered Hillary. Using lawfare and information warfare against the American people, the Establishment attempted to destroy Trump and his MAGA supporters by preposterously accusing election integrity protesters of being “insurrectionists” who were somehow trying to overthrow the government without any weapons on January 6, 2021. Fraudulently-installed pretend-President Biden oversaw an FBI and DOJ that worked to imprison MAGA voters for years and Trump for life. Paul Ryan, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Mitch McConnell, and other RINOs (including most Republicans in the Senate) tried desperately to convince voters that Trump should be condemned and forgotten. Their efforts failed.
Trump voters came out in force in 2024 and made sure that the election was too big to rig. Even though Ryan and other RINOs told us that Trump appealed only to angry white males, the president did better than any Republican since Eisenhower with almost every minority voting bloc. Trump has expanded the Republican Party more than anyone alive today.
I want President Trump to be in a position to use every hour he has left in office to advance the MAGA agenda. He is destroying globalism. He is bringing industry and manufacturing back home. He has secured the borders and dramatically reduced violent crime. He is putting America on a path to lead the world for centuries. Help him continue on his journey. Remember why we’ve been fighting for more than a decade. Surprise the Establishment — once again! — by coming out in huge numbers to support Trump for the midterms.
The Establishment has one job: to discourage you. I want you to remember how much we’ve already accomplished! We’re so close to saving this country. We need another victory. All hands on deck!
Once again, you may have seen a lot of banter, interpretation and discussion in western media about Russia speaking of defending Kaliningrad with nuclear weapons if needed. To gain a full understanding of the context, I strongly suggest reading the transcript below. Vladimir Putin addressed the plenary session of the 23rd annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club. It is a very lengthy discussion. I am pulling out the key segment and suggest everyone take some quiet time to read.
President Vladimir Putin – […] Let me digress from the main topic for a while. There are people here in this room who hold a very diverse mix of opinions regarding an extremely acute present-day conflict – the Ukraine conflict, and what caused it. I would like to say a few words on this matter. It is a fact that many hundreds or even thousands of experts, your colleagues who will study the materials from this Valdai Club meeting, they have their own opinions on this matter. I am, of course aware that some within the expert community might ask why Russia started the war while talking about peace. I have commented this many times already, but let me say this once again in front of this audience.
Where is the truth? The truth is that we did not want and were not the ones who started to fight. In fact, they started to fight against us. They should have refrained from encouraging aggressive nationalism and Russophobia in Ukraine so as to turn it into a tool for fighting Russia. NATO should not have embarked on an effort to make our historical territories part of its military space in its own interests and should not have planned setting up its bases there.
Radicals in Kiev should not have been pushed to a government coup while the de facto illegal regime should not have been pumped full of all kinds of offensive weapons after that. Plans for setting up concentration camps for the people from Donbass and Crimea should not have been drafted. Unarmed people should not have been rolled over by tanks, shelled with missiles and bombed from the air and burnt alive just for being Russian, in terms of both their ethnic background and their spirit.
The list of these do-nots goes on, but let me stop at that. I am convinced that this was an intentional effort to place Russia in a situation when it was simply forced to defend itself with arms in hand to respond to this obvious act of aggression. They pushed us to this brink knowingly and intentionally. Overall, Russophobia, oppressing and killing Russian people and destroying Russia should not be turned into state ideology while striving to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. This was the way it was all articulated, right? No one forgot this. At least, we did not forget this.
If we want to live – and who does not? – as I have already said during one of my public appearances, let us live in friendship and work together for finding ways to accomplish this aim. Of course, confidence building is a painstaking and fragile process. Placing it on the right track is very hard, while it can be derailed very easily. The interests never fully coincide even when it comes to the closest partners, let alone countries which are rivals and are locked in an all-out competition or even confrontation against one another.
Sooner or later, the international situation and the international system will settle into some form of stable equilibrium. This is undoubtedly a complex, multifaceted and multilayered process built on mutual compromises, willingness to meet each other halfway, and a level-headed assessment of the situation, including by the West. The former hegemon will unavoidably have to acknowledge the realities of a multipolar world – just look at the trends shaping the global economy – and learn to cooperate with the countries of the Global Majority on the basis of respect for their fundamental interests. Of course, this will take time. We are going to have to live in an extremely unstable and ever changing world. The path to a new system will be full of unexpected twists and turns; unfortunately, often unpleasant and even dangerous ones.
I would like to turn to the history of our country. Russia has travelled a thorny path of profound transformation, and this process is still underway. Thirty-five years ago, we experienced the collapse of the state system, which was a genuine tragedy for tens of millions of people who woke up one morning to find themselves beyond the borders of their own country and whose lives – and the lives of their children – were changed overnight. Both in Russia and in neighbouring countries this led to a fundamental transformation and international affairs get transformed as well.
I would also like to highlight a certain naivety, idealism, or perhaps even complacency on the part of those who stood at the helm of the state during the final years of the Soviet era. Blind trust in Western partners and confidence in “gentlemen’s agreements,” when they thought they could simply take someone at their word and come to terms also played a cruel joke on the Soviet Union.
In retrospect, it becomes clear just how destructive a role this played not only in the fate of the Soviet Union, but also in ensuring long-term global stability. The Soviet leaders wanted the West to like them, while Western leaders sought to reshape the world to suit their needs and to grab their share – preferably a large one – of the Soviet legacy. We can see the result now.
T
he Soviet Union collapsed due to a mix of internal imbalances. This is the most important dimension to it. This is the truth, and this is what happened. Specifically, internal imbalances, as well as mistakes made by successive generations of the country’s leadership. Short-sightedness, narrow and unrealistic ideological dogmas instead of pragmatism, incompetence, and the practice of sweeping obvious problems under the carpet gradually exacerbated and undermined the Soviet Union’s domestic and international standing. Ultimately, these factors led to its collapse.
What is happening in the world today, the present-day conflicts and upheavals – all this largely stems from the fact that late 20th-century politicians, both in the East and the West, were unwilling, unprepared or unable to treat the era of major shifts with the required seriousness and depth. This is not a question of shifting responsibility onto the leaders of the past; this is simply how it all happened in reality.
However, even during that period, there were people, both in the East and West, there were other kinds of politicians who developed a keen understanding of these challenges and offered what I believe to be the right ways of resolving them. Today, their assessments can be viewed as visionary.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has recently promoted an expansive LNG pipeline deal to center the domestic infrastructure development around the concept of “Buy Canadian.” However, when questioned about the actual construction of the proposal, Carney now admits the developers will determine what resources will be used – and it will not be Canadian product.The unfortunate reason is not complicated. Canada does not have the industrial capacity to make the heavy components for the LNG expansion pipeline because Canada does not have the ability.
CALGARY — LNG Canada is planning to use Chinese steel in major components of its $33-billion second-phase expansion despite Ottawa’s promises that nationally significant projects would help drive Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Buy Canadian policy.
The joint venture says Canada lacks the specialized fabrication facilities needed to manufacture the massive modules required for its expansion and plans to buy more components from state-owned China Offshore Oil Engineering Co. Ltd. (COOEC), which manufactured modules for the project’s first phase. (read more)
I would remind readers this inability to manufacture industrial goods is exactly what former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau outlined to President Trump in December 2025 in Mar-a-Lago, when President Trump challenged Trudeau to stop importing Chinese steel and aluminum. Canada’s clean energy policy blocks the country from creating heavy industrial components. WATCH:
All of the political talking points from Mark Carney are built upon a foundation of lies. Their national inability is inherent in the Canadian industrial economy, which is created around a climate change agenda that blocks industrial manufacturing. Eventually, this reality is going to hit the psyche of the Canadian electorate. It will not be easy for them to accept that all of their leadership has been lying to them. However, denial is a very real issue which makes conversation with any Canadian very challenging.
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For the plant construction in Kitimat, the challenge is not a preference for offshore steel, but the specialized fabrication capability required for modules of this scale and complexity,” company spokesperson Paul Hagel told CBC News in an email, adding that “there are no fabrication yards in Canada that can manufacture and deliver the additional modules required for Phase 2.”
Hagel said that only five fabrication yards worldwide have the necessary combination of space, capacity, quality systems and marine access, including COOEC’s yard in China. {source}
The Diesel Question: An unexpected global diesel crisis has emerged against the backdrop of armed conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. This crisis has predictably reached a critical juncture, with President Trump announcing that he is seriously considering banning U.S. diesel exports. Such an embargo would severely impact the economies of Great Britain and France, whose leaders spearheaded opposition to his administration and openly celebrated his temporary setbacks.
Months of Ukrainian strikes against Russian refineries and shipping disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz have removed 1.6 million barrels of diesel per day from the global market. Replacing these losses requires additional refining capacity, but it is unclear where this capacity will come from.
In this context, the U.S. Gulf Coast has become the world’s supplier of last resort. American diesel exports reached a record 1.6 million bpd in August, up from 1 million bpd in February and representing 20 percent of the global diesel trade. However, U.S. refineries are already operating at nearly 97-98 percent capacity. Once storage facilities are full, refining will be curtailed, reducing not only diesel output but also gasoline and jet fuel output.
American Interests First
Even without regard for past grievances with Europeans, the occupant of the Oval Office has compelling domestic reasons to impose a diesel export ban. The U.S. midterm elections on November 3 are approaching quickly. The average price of diesel has hit record highs, prompting Texas to declare a diesel price emergency.
Federal authorities are under pressure to take decisive action to address the crisis. High fuel prices are an obvious vulnerability for the Republican administration, which, unlike EU governments, hasn’t forgotten that one of its primary concerns is the affordability of goods and services. A diesel export ban enjoys public support from Republicans in agricultural states and from candidates in competitive districts.
In light of this, continuing to export fuel at the expense of American citizens, farmers, and truckers — and their interests — in favor of ungrateful Europeans can only be described as shortsighted or irrational. Opponents of Trump in Europe should hardly expect to find such qualities on the list of sins they attribute to the American president.
Economic Context
The U.S. economy itself supports a ban on diesel exports. Such a ban would help lower domestic prices on the East Coast and in the Midwest. It would also allow distillate reserves to be restored by winter. Currently, these reserves are at their lowest levels in over 40 years.
It’s important to consider the reduced costs for farmers, logistics companies, and other industries. These steps will undoubtedly have a positive effect, favorably impacting food inflation and reducing overall inflationary pressure. A ban on diesel exports is the right step at the right time for a leader who cares about his nation and prioritizes its interests above all else. American fuel should primarily serve the needs of Americans. Europeans will simply have to accept that.
A Strong Signal to Europe
With significant volumes of diesel removed from the global market, the U.S. increased its share of EU imports from 17 percent in 2025 to 32 percent. Meanwhile, Indian diesel exports to Europe decreased from 163,000 to 50,000 barrels per day (bpd) over the same period. China and South Korea supply only small amounts to the European market, and Russian diesel is subject to sanctions. Europe simply has no alternative supplier capable of filling the gap left by the U.S.
The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that European reserves are at four-year lows, and seasonal demand for distillates is still rising.Therefore, a ban on American diesel exports will push European prices and the premium on crude oil to new levels. Europe will have to adapt to a new reality and compete with Latin America and West Africa for supplies.
Moreover, diesel accounts for about half of petroleum product consumption in Europe. Rising prices will inevitably accelerate inflation and drive up costs in logistics, agriculture, and construction, complicating the ECB’s policy and significantly increasing the risk of a Eurozone recession against the backdrop of high gas prices.
European economies are not resilient enough to withstand a prolonged ban. In most Western European countries, including Great Britain, reserves amount to only 20-30 days. For many of these countries, a ban on American diesel exports would be even more painful due to reduced domestic refining capacity.
No More Games — Time to Pay the Bill!
Retribution always follows betrayal. Some pay immediately for everything, while others pay in installments, like loan repayments. While the moments of reckoning may be significantly separated by time, the full price must eventually be paid.
Donald Trump has received a golden opportunity to return the favor to his European “friends” for their deliberate efforts to oust politicians aligned with Washington, their demonstrative gestures against his operations in the Strait of Hormuz, and other actions directed against him.
European leaders must now realize that their sabotage and interference with President Trump will have negative and painful consequences. High costs, austerity measures, falling production levels, and cold weather are the best teachers for those who believe they can bite the hand that feeds them.
For those who have publicly boasted about their embarrassing actions against Trump, such as former Council of Europe Deputy Secretary General Bjorn Berge of Norway, the question of imposing personal sanctions has long been overdue. The games are over. It’s time to settle accounts.
In June, on the last day of opinion releases for the term, NPR published a story claiming that Justice Samuel Alito was stepping down. The report was false, and it lasted roughly ten minutes before it vanished. Then, in August, Alito put weeks of speculation to rest himself. “Obviously I’m here for another term,” he told The Wall Street Journal.Social media lit up Friday with claims that Justice Alito had announced plans to retire next year, after CBS News released excerpts of a new interview with him.
Those rumors were somewhat overblown. Alito announced nothing of the sort. He did admit that stepping down has crossed his mind. CBS News’ national and legal correspondent Jan Crawford asked him why he chose to stay on the bench this year, despite pressure from Republicans who wanted a replacement confirmed while the GOP runs the Senate.”I thought about it and I will continue,” Alito told CBS News.
Crawford followed up, asking if he had really considered it. “Well, it’s something I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term,” he said. “But I thought that I could still make a valuable contribution, which is why I became a justice and a judge in the first place. So that was basically it.”Crawford then asked whether he would revisit the decision every year. “Yeah, I think I have to,” Alito replied. That’s a long way from a retirement announcement. The full interview will air on Monday.
Speculation about Supreme Court retirements has swirled for months, and it has always centered on two men. Alito is the second-oldest justice on the Court. President George W. Bush appointed him in 2006, and he has been a reliable conservative vote ever since. Clarence Thomas, the oldest justice, joined the Court in 1991 as a George H.W. Bush appointee, and is one of the most influential conservative voices in the Court’s history. Conservatives love them both and don’t want either gone, but given their advanced ages, there was also a desire to give President Donald Trump at least one vacancy he could fill with a younger originalist while Republicans still hold the Senate.
Let’s be honest, here. Nobody on the right wants to relive the Ruth Bader Ginsburg story from the other side. Ginsburg infamously stayed on the Court through Barack Obama’s presidency, despite her age and declining health, then died a few weeks before the 2020 election. Trump quickly nominated Amy Coney Barrett, the Senate confirmed her, and the left was infuriated.
Crawford put that very scenario to Alito, asking why staying doesn’t risk undoing his work the way it did for Ginsburg. “It’s too hard to predict what the political situation will be and what any president might do with respect to a replacement,” Alito said. He’s right that nobody can predict the future, but that’s the whole problem. If the Senate flips, I’d expect Democrats to block any replacement until after the 2028 election. And nobody knows who wins the White House in 2028.
Make no mistake about it, the stakes are enormous. Alito has earned the right to make this call on his own schedule, and he says he’ll make it again every year. Ginsburg made hers, too, and it cost the left a seat for a generation.
Crowds of protesters jeered at NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, after the US-led military bloc was awarded the Westphalian Peace Prize on Thursday. The prize, awarded by the Economic Society for Westphalia and Lippe, commemorates the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War and legally enshrined the modern concept of the nation state.
Rutte, known among protestors as the “Lying Dutchman,” collected the award in the German city of Munster on Thursday on behalf of the interventionist US-led military bloc.
Speaking at the ceremony, North Rhine-Westphalia Minister-President Hendrik Wust declared that “military strength can prevent war and preserve peace,” and that “NATO has demonstrated for more than 75 years that strength secures peace.” Protesters gathered outside Munster Town Hall disagreed. When the Dutchman, the German, and other dignitaries stepped onto the balcony, below which a blue-blazered band played, they were met with chants of “murderers” and “blood on your hands” from the square below (perhaps the greatest show of anger in the town since the anabaptists in 1534).
The NATO chief and the German chancellor gritted their teeth and smiled and waved through the boos and whistles. Wust’s speech did not mention NATO’s bombing campaigns against Serbia in 1995 and 1999, or its bombing and subsequent breaking up of Libya in 2011. More recently, NATO exercises on Russia’s Kaliningrad border have been interpreted as reckless provocations by the Kremlin, with the Russian Foreign Ministry reminding NATO leadership this week that Kaliningrad is integral Russian territory, which Moscow is prepared to defend with “all its arsenal, including nuclear weapons.”
Less than 24 hours earlier, Rutte declared that NATO’s European members should have attacked Iran on behalf of the US and Israel. “Europe was not able to take out the nuclear capability of Iran. We couldn’t. We didn’t have the capabilities. In ten years, we can and we should…it should be us doing this, not the Americans,” he said at a Euronews summit in Brussels. Merz took the opportunity to swipe at his political rivals too, falsely claiming the AfD – currently Germany’s most popular political party – is “Russian-backed.”
“A peace prize for a military alliance – at first glance, that seems contradictory, but in fact it is entirely logical,” he reasoned. “It protects our freedom, it protects our security, it protects our prosperity, and it serves the cause of peace in Europe.” The organizers of the Westphalian Peace Prize did not always share NATO’s confrontational stance toward Russia. Two years ago, the prize was awarded to French President Emmanuel Macron for “his diplomatic skill in maintaining dialogue with the Russian leadership despite serious upheavals.”
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, who is dealing with a major hole in his country’s budget and high-profile corruption scandals in his government, has criticized Kiev’s Western backers for their reluctance to provide him with more money.
the funds originally intended to last to the end of the year and faced a shortfall of €27 billion. The announcement came after the Ukrainian leader’s 40-day PR pressure campaign on Russia, which involved long-range strikes on energy and civilian infrastructure, failed to deliver the desired results and triggered a harsh response by Moscow.
In an interview with the Financial Times published on Friday, Zelensky complained that the acute budget deficit is stopping Ukraine from developing and manufacturing some key weapons. When asked if he believed that his foreign supporters were doing all they could to assist, the Ukrainian leader replied: “Not enough, of course not enough.” The FT noted that the introduction of faster jet-powered drones by Russia in recent weeks had become an additional challenge for Ukraine, which is already experiencing a shortage of US-made Patriot interceptors and other air defenses.
Zelensky acknowledged that a lack of money to purchase engines for interceptor UAVs was one of the hurdles. “We really import a lot of engines. There are some engines of our production, but not enough,” he said. A Russian drone and missile campaign against military-related targets in Ukraine intensified this year in response to terrorist attacks by Kiev, crippling its energy infrastructure and leading to blackouts and fuel shortages. It has also destroyed most of the country’s storage spaces, affecting the supply of food and other goods.
Wheat and other exports have also been reduced significantly by attacks on the port of Odessa and Ukraine-bound vessels in the Black Sea, leaving Zelensky’s government almost entirely dependent on foreign aid. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the EU turned down Ukraine’s plea to speed up the payouts of its loan. Officials in Brussels expressed belief that doing so would not solve the problem, but only delay it until 2027, the agency said. The bloc suggested that Kiev’s other partners, including Canada and Japan, could provide the funds to cover its pressing needs, it added.
EU bureaucrats were surprised to learn that Ukraine ran out of money so fast, according to Bloomberg. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned earlier this year that the bloc’s loan to Kiev would be swiftly plundered by Zelensky and other corrupt officials from his team. On Thursday, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) reported about a scheme involving the supply of EU-funded handguns to Ukrainian security services at prices inflated threefold. Kiev and it Western backers are “traditionally” plugging the $27-billion hole in Ukraine’s budget “using funds taken from ordinary citizens of European states,” the SVR said.
You and I — are we really so different? Why, I think not! We both live on planet earth, and… well, I’m sure we have lots of other stuff in common, too. Enough to build a friendship. So I say this with peace and love: You’ve been on an impressive winning streak — whacking around the Democratic establishment like they’re a flippin’ piñata — but thus far, all your gains have been incremental. A mayor’s seat here or a Senate nominee there. (Yawn.) Sorry, comrade. That won’t lead you to your workers’ paradise — at least, not anytime soon. You’ve got to think bigger. Way bigger.
C’mon, you guys are supposed to be revolutionaries! If you want to change the world, you need to do what the Republicans did and start at the top. The MAGA movement didn’t fiddle around with mayoral races; we had the cojones to target the top prize. So should you. The Democrats, after all, didn’t invite you into their party without fully knowing your beliefs. (You literally publish manifestos!) Yet they welcomed and accepted you anyway, because they needed your votes. And a deal’s a deal.
Because that’s the unspoken agreement: In exchange for DSA votes in the general election, DSA voters get to influence who the Democrats nominate for office. It’s how you got Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed on a major party’s ticket. Furthermore, this agreement won’t expire on Election Day 2026. In fact, the opposite is true: The midterms are the calm before the storm. Because in 2028, the DSA will be headhunting Democratic frontrunners.
You have no choice. That’s politics works: You can’t simply build your preferred candidate up; you must also tear the opposition down. Which sounds like a super-fun project! And in the name of friendship, I’d like to help. ‘Cause honestly? You’d benefit from outside assistance. We’re all prisoners of our own perspective. We know what we know — and we guess the rest. And because DSA membership mostly consists of overeducated white people, your messaging falters in Flyover Country: Outside of bright blue cities, college towns, and Muslim strongholds, your win rate nosedives.
There’s no shame in having blind spots. We all have them. It’s why an outsider’s perspective is so valuable. So, without any further ado, here’s your DSA strategy memo on how to destroy the five Democratic presidential frontrunners:
Candidate One: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Vulnerability: Being an idiot.Most of the country thinks AOC is too radical. You purists at the DSA know she’s actually not radical enough. (We’ve got no time for a corporate Zionist squish such as AOC, amiright?) But in Flyover Country, attacking AOC for being “too moderate” won’t work. That’s not her Achilles’ heel; it’s not her reputational vulnerability. Her weakness is her brain: The public suspects she’s stupid. When she’s quizzed on policy, she comes across like a doofus lightweight: That’s how to destroy her: AOC doesn’t know her ABCs. She’s a dummy — an empty vessel who cosplays as a Marxist in overpriced “Tax the Rich” evening gowns without getting the irony. She’s just not smart enough to be president. Consult the Dan Quayle playbook and attack accordingly.
Candidate Two: Jon Ossoff
Vulnerability: Nastiness, dirt, and deception. Every few months, the Democrats fall in love. (And every few months, they fall out of it.) They’re perpetually on the lookout for the next JFK. Today, it’s Jon Ossoff. According to Kalshi, he’s the new Democratic frontrunner in 2028. He’s handsome. Not even 40. He sounds like Barack Obama, and has very nice hair. (Which ain’t cheap: Ossoff spends more on hair and makeup than any other Senate candidate, male or female.) What makes him appealing is his youth and newness. Scandal does not taint him; dirt and filth do not touch him. Which is why the Democrats are swooning: He’s a fresh face and a blank slate.
Blank enough for the Democrats to project their hopes, wishes, biases, and aspirations. Ossoff will likely capitalize on this with vague, aspirational sloganeering, because the JFK card is a winner. It carried a young Obama to the finish line. Why not Ossoff? And the best way to negate it is by dirtying Ossoff up, muddying his clothes, and deep-sixing his likability. Without his youth and likability, Ossoff has no point-of-difference; there’s nothing special about him. It’s why attacking Natalie Harp was a high-risk move: Nastiness and likability are like oil and water.
They don’t mix. There are already rumblings about Ossoff being two-faced on Israel. The DSA should build on this, branding him as a nasty, dirty, unlikable liar. Turn his biggest branding asset into a negative. (But don’t play the Jew card yet. We’re saving that for later.)
Candidate Three: Kamala Harris
Vulnerability: Electability. As a minority female with ties to the Indian and black communities, Harris has a pitch-perfect resume for today’s Democratic Party. On paper, she’s everything the base is looking for. But in actuality, she’s a disaster. Nobody likes her. She’s too weird for the moderates, too moderate for the libs — and too much of a loser for the base. They still blame her for Trump’s victory. And they’re afraid she’d lose in 2028, because the American people don’t like her. They didn’t vote for her in the 2020 primaries. She was pushed on them in 2024 — and that was a catastrophe. Nobody on the left wants to watch the S.S. Kamala Harris sink for a third time.
Her only asset is her electability. She was the first female minority vice president, and because she’s been on a major ticket in back-to-back presidential elections, there’s a plausibility to her candidacy. On paper, she’s credible. But if you take that away, she’s dead in the water.
Each @SpaceX Star Mind super intelligence spacecraft will have over 250kW of solar power, which is about 20% more than the International Space Station https://t.co/XeSefgo6UY
i seriously doubt people comprehend what this means
*10 million Optimus per year*
that's the equivalent of a whole nation of robots that could eventually work tirelessly, ~24/7, without needing to be trained individually, with the intelligence of a nobel prize winner, that only… https://t.co/ACNmLB2t3w
Elon Musk’s ultimate AI vision is a “star mind” powered by the sun.
“We’ve already built the most powerful AI training clusters in the world. And then what we expect to do by the end of next year is about 10 times more than what we’ve done thus far. This will be very important… pic.twitter.com/WtQS13uFxg
Elon Musk: “My essential philosophy is curiosity. I’d like to understand the meaning of life — is the Standard Model of physics correct? The beginning of life, the beginning of existence, and the end of the universe. What questions do we not know to ask, that we should ask? AI… pic.twitter.com/8YOJIJoipG
NEW: President Trump reacts to newly released text messages showing Dr. Fauci raised concerns about potential COVID vaccine risks for pregnant women, but the Biden administration did not change its rhetoric.
Pakistan started the day by floating optimistic reports of the warring sides reverting to ‘moving toward peace efforts’ – however that appears very short-lived, or really was probably never a reality, given soon on the heels of these claims a top Iranian official has reiterated that the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until the US corrects its ‘behavior’. According to fresh reports out of state media sources:
Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Rezaei says Strait of Hormuz will not open until the US changes its behavior and accepts Iran’s conditions. This comes amid widespread reports that Iran has just undergone a significant military shuffling of top command leadership, which points to the ascent of the ‘hardliner’ crowd – as in those who are against signing an MoU deal with Washington…
Iran’s Leader has appointed 6 top military commanders:
• Ali Abdollahi: Chief of Staff • Ahmad Vahidi: IRGC Commander • Kiumars Heydari: Deputy Chief of Staff • Mostafa Izadi: Deputy IRGC Commander • Ali Ozmayi: IRGC-Navy Commander • Hossein Taeb: Chief of Basij. pic.twitter.com/3usuJwSm1y
The Wall Street Journal and others are picking up on Tehran’s obvious shift away from negotiations, and toward a more permanent state of military resistance. It writes: “Now, the new supreme leader, Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, is putting his own stamp on the country’s national-security policy amid a confrontation with the U.S. that could last months or even years.” According to more of WSJ’s analysis:
“In a sweeping overhaul of the government’s top echelon on Sunday and Monday, Iran named seasoned hard-liners to run the country’s security policies and institutions of repression. It marked the most significant government reshuffle under Mojtaba Khamenei, who hasn’t been seen in public since the war began. U.S. intelligence agencies say he is alive but severely injured, and top Iranian cabinet members say they have never met him since he took office. Iranian officials say he was injured but in good health.
Analysts said the appointments signaled Khamenei’s determination to hold fast in a showdown with President Trump, who is seeking concessions on Iran’s nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz. “The regime is preparing for a more confrontational posture at home and abroad,” said Kasra Aarabi, an expert on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful paramilitary force, at United Against Nuclear Iran, a policy organization that opposes Iran’s government. For some – especially the non-interventionists, it was obvious the war would take this course from day one.
‘Return of Peace Efforts’ Headline Pushes Oil Down
Despite what are clearly ongoing attacks on international vessels in regional waters, suddenly mediators are feeling optimism again, and decided to float another apparent round of pre-US market open headlines suggesting peace could return. Though there’s as yet no evidence of this, the Pakistani Defense Minister has signaled that the US and Iran are close to some agreement and that the situation is moving towards peace. Oil prices promptly plummeted ahead of market open. Pakistan’s interior minister Mohsin Raza Naqvi, has also just arrived in Tehran for talks with Iranian officials amid going mediation efforts, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.
“I don’t think you can trust them. But the point is they got the message that now this was the last chance. So, if they break this, and I think they will, Trump will have no choice, if he is to have any credibility..”
Sami Winc: But there were leaks from the government that there was a depletion of our weaponry to fight Iran with. And then, if you have anything, [President Donald] Trump is talking about there’s a new deal with Iran in the works. I know your audience is thinking, “Yeah, that’s not gonna pan out.” But if you have anything on that, and then also tales of JD [Vance] and Bibi Netanyahu not getting along.
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, to go first very quickly, people have been leaking that there are not enough Patriot missiles, for example, or Harpoon missiles, older ones, Tomahawk missiles. We’ve heard there are not enough bunker busters. I don’t know if any of this is true, but it’s been leaking.
And the problem, why Trump is so angry, is we have enough, we have about 40% or 50%, likely, of our arsenal, which is too low. This has been going on for a long time. [Former President Barack] Obama cut the defense budget, [former President Joe] Biden did, and we don’t have enough stuff. But the problem that makes people angry is we have enough to handle Iran. We don’t have enough to handle Iran, give Ukraine enough to protect Kyiv, and then deter China from attacking Taiwan. So, the more you say that and leak it, the more likely China might believe it and want to try.
While we’re engaged with Ukraine and Iran, they might want to try to see if they could go into Taiwan, and we wouldn’t have enough missiles. That’s the worry. The second thing about Trump and the Iran war, we’ve had five or six of these where he says the negotiations are going great. And then they break down, and then he hits them once or twice, and then they beg him, beg him, beg him to get back, and then everything’s close to an agreement. But the Iranians don’t tell the truth, and then he gets frustrated.
And the problem with this is that on Feb. 28, you know, we had 250 days before the midterms. So, after 38 days of kinetic operations, we stopped. We stopped because about 80%, 90% of everything they had was destroyed. But we didn’t know that they had these little mosquito boats hidden everywhere, and we didn’t know to what degree they had drones and missiles hidden. And they had a lot.So, when we kept saying we’re destroying 90% of their air capacity as far as missiles and drones, we didn’t know what the denominator was. We didn’t know 90% of what. 10,000? 20,000? It could be a lot, 10%. And so, they started threatening the Gulf.
At that point, the Gulf freaked out. And they had wanted us to go in there and eliminate Iran. But now that they got hit, they didn’t want to commit with their 600 aircraft and join us because they thought we wouldn’t take them out completely. So, then people came to Trump, I guess, this week and said, you’re out of time. We’re only 90 days. If you’re going to solve this, you can’t keep saying this because—so, last week they dreamed up, we’re just going to unload the greatest military campaign in the air since World War II. And they were. And then that panicked Iran.
And they say now they’re going to open the Strait of Hormuz. I don’t think you can trust them. But the point is they got the message that now this was the last chance. So, if they break this, and I think they will, Trump will have no choice, if he is to have any credibility, unless he continues with that program. And your third part of the question?
Winc: JD was at odds with Bibi. That was the tale. He was on Laura and he denied it, but—
Hanson: Well, that’s a complicated question because Trump came out today and said that he supports JD as his successor as the Republican nominee in 2028. The reason he did that was JD was starting to be associated with these negotiations and not the kinetic part under [War Secretary Pete] Hegseth. And the negotiations hadn’t worked.
And he had said we were dealing with the moderates. There are no moderates in Iran. There’s people who pose as moderates, but even if they wanted to be moderate, they’d be murdered. It’s run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, everybody knows that, and the theocracy. And then he said that Israel couldn’t kill its way out. That sounds like Israel wanted to kill people. They didn’t want to kill people. If Hezbollah had stopped the missiles tomorrow, they wouldn’t have ever gone into Lebanon.
So, there was an impression that, on the international stage, he wasn’t as experienced, let’s say, as Rubio, and Rubio’s stock was starting to come up. And if that continued, there might be a destructive race in 2028. So, what Trump did was he said to JD, pretty much, I will back you, but you’ve got to stop the stuff about Netanyahu. So, he had him meet Netanyahu, and there was supposedly—on Laura Ingraham’s interview, he denied there was a bad.
But the problem is this, that Tucker’s son worked for JD, and he, whether it’s fair or not, is associated with that wing of the MAGA movement, the Tucker Carlson, the Candace Owens, the Steve Bannon, the Joe Kent, is that his name? Yeah. All of those guys, and maybe Megyn Kelly, I don’t know. And Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie.
And the problem with that, if he is to be associated with them, they say some pretty crazy things about Israel and the Jews. And when Thomas Massie is at a loss, because of the decision that was made in Israel, you know. And so, there’s a lot of— And there’s two problems with that. Trump’s grandchildren are Jewish and his daughter has converted to Judaism. And more importantly, there’s a lot of powerful Jewish donors who are sick of the Democratic antisemitism. So, the Republican Party is trying to attract them.
But already you see, not just among Jews, but among other people, are worried that JD seems to be singling out Israel for criticism that’s not applicable to other, more deserving targets. So, this week he’s been rehabilitated, sort of, as he got in with, he had a talk with Netanyahu. He got on Fox and said it went well. Trump endorsed him, and you didn’t hear him taking—he’s more now looking at corruption than trying to solve the negotiations. And we’ll see what happens.
Winc: Yeah, we’ll see what happens. Well, let’s turn to some of the things going on at the federal level of our government. Rand Paul has gotten the votes to refer [Dr. Anthony] Fauci for contempt, given that he took the Fifth 111 times. And my question is not so much on that as this precedent set, and I don’t know if it’s worse now than it has been in the past, of having a government official execute the laws terribly against the people or to the people, and then just being able to get away with it because, at the end of a president’s term, they pardon them. And that’s a very bothersome pattern or precedent. And I’m not sure which one.
Hanson: Well, there’s two things that presidents do. They give pardons, so they’re exempt from prosecution, and they give clemencies, so that if they’ve been sentenced, their sentence can be stopped, they can get out of prison, for example. And they do both. And it’s controversial who does more of one or the other. But if you put them both together, which you should, out of our last 47 presidents, the top 10 were Democrats. And the most was Joe Biden at about 4,500 total. That’s pardons and clemencies and other things related to that.
And then there’s FDR. Then there’s Woodrow Wilson. I think Trump now is three or four in six years. But Eisenhower gave a lot too, by the way. But out of that 10, I think eight are Democrats. And that’s important to remember because they keep saying that Trump is the all-time pardoner. I think it’s been widely abused.
US President Donald Trump said that any hypothetical shortage of munitions in the US armed forces stemmed from his predecessor Joe Biden’s decision to supply them to Ukraine, rather than the current military campaign in Iran. “They talk about munitions. We’re fine with munitions. <…> But the reason it could be lower <…> is because he [Biden] gave $300 billion worth to Ukraine,” Trump said in an interview with Real America’s Voice.
Earlier, US media reported that US weapons stockpiles had fallen to record lows amid the conflict with Iran. The reports concerned Patriot air defense missiles, THAAD interceptors, ATACMS and PrSM long-range missiles. On August 5, The Washington Post reported, citing sources, that Trump had asked Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth to explain why the department had misled the president about a munitions shortage in the conflict with Iran. According to the report, the exchange demonstrated Trump’s “growing frustration” with Hegseth. Trump later denied that he was dissatisfied with Hegseth’s work.
Democrats are big fans of election year chaos. It helps cover up the fact that they are bereft of any substantive ideas to offer the voters. This year, they’re flooding the zone with crazies and waiting to see what sticks. Thus far, it’s mostly the communism that’s sticking. I wrote in last Friday’s Briefing that the Dems will never believe their party is so broken that it needs to be fixed. Of course, the reality divide between us is so wide that what we think is broken they might think is perfectly fine.
The way that the Democrats used to go about playing the game of politics was impressive. Until President Trump came along, I maintained that they played the long game much better than the Republicans. That’s one of the many things that he flipped on its head. The Dems have been in pure rage mode since then, just seeking out opportunities to tell the world that they hate Trump. It seemed to me that they lost their mojo for long-term strategy. Because nothing is ever too weird anymore, I’m willing to reconsider my opinion.
Rather than back away from the issues that have turned their party into a coastal elitist insane asylum, the Dems and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media are now pointing to the commies of the Democratic Socialists of America as proof that the establishment isn’t so bonkers. No, really:
Jessica Tarlov claims AOC now is a "Moderate Dem" as compared to the "core DSA wing."
Scott Galloway agrees that this is a "fair point."
AOC is a member of NYC DSA.
The gaslighting levels coming in an attempt to rebrand AOC for 2028 are going to be stratospheric. pic.twitter.com/AYypbHSeZu
That’s right: Things are so topsy-turvy now that people can speak of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a member of the Dem establishment. Squeaky is no longer the biggest thorn in the side of the elder Democrats, or so some would have us believe. She’s actually the Queen of the Thorns, which is the surest sign that the Dem elders aren’t that freaked out by this so-called DSA insurgency. Once more, with feeling: The DSA has been an accepted coalition in the Democratic Party proper all along. It’s not as if its members just emerged from the fog and surprised the geriatric Schumer wing of the party.
The only real thing that the Democrats have to sucker the voters is the promise of “free” stuff that isn’t really free, and the upstart honest commies in the party are even better at that than the more seasoned officials. The old way was to offer the voters fake freebies that were at least in the realm of possibility. With the DSA Stalinistas, it’s all unicorns and free housing in cities that run on cotton candy wishes. When you consider that, the internecine drama in the party looks a lot less genuine.
I’m all for them heading into November trying to sell a narrative that says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is whatever passes for a centrist over there. She’s not even “commie lite.” My RedState colleague Sister Toldjah wrote about Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, the next looming DSA “problem” for the Dems. Hong’s past is littered with campaign fodder for any eventual Republican opponent. The post mentions a recent interview with AOC and her attempt to cover for Hong. Put mildly, she’s not the best at being the grownup in the room.
As I also wrote on Friday, when November rolls around, every Democrat will be all-in on the DSA commie kids. It’ll be fun to see what kinds of faux tortured rationalizations they come up with to pretend that wasn’t the plan from the beginning.
“She’s now a known entity — practically a comfort food. And because of the public’s familiarity with her, AOC doesn’t seem as scary — or as flippin’ weird — as the new kids on the DSA block.”:
After meeting Zohran Mamdani, Graham Platner, Abdul El-Sayed, and Francesca Hong, AOC doesn’t seem so scary, does she? Why, she’s almost quaint, traditional, and (slightly) old-fashioned by comparison. Tread carefully, Republicans: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is still America’s most dangerous Democrat — and still the odds-on favorite to win her party’s 2028 presidential nomination.And if she captures the nomination, there’s (roughly) a 50%-50% shot she’ll win the White House. Don’t underestimate her: She’s media-savvy, camera-friendly, photogenic, and her PR instincts are as sharp as Sardinian swords.
Consider how deftly she just rebooted the “woke” narrative. Because woke is a joke in 2026: Woke is cringe, woke is dead, woke is done. Other than the fringiest of the fringe, nobody takes it seriously anymore. Just ask South Park: The excesses of wokeism are legion. A lesser politician would’ve tried to relitigate this or recalibrate that. But AOC knew better. Instead of polishing a turd and pretending it’s chocolate, she acknowledged overreaching, killed the old narrative, and set the stage for the “new and improved” version 2.0. Remarkably, she did it in a single sentence.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on her support for defunding the police in 2020: “During lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.” https://t.co/yNjzZCT4KSpic.twitter.com/VZBIXrLO0H
“I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke One was crazy,'” says Ocasio-Cortez with a laugh. Lots of conservatives attacked her for it — and justifiably so.
AOC says voters should listen "to what a candidate is saying now" instead of worrying about how much they claimed to hate white people or cops just a year or two ago because "woke 1 was crazy."
All of the above are fair, legitimate criticisms. Yet consider what AOC just accomplished: She demonstrated humility by acknowledging her “woke” mistakes. (And a politician who admits mistakes isn’t something we see every day on Capitol Hill. She rebranded ALL the P.C. craziness as “Woke One,” which effectively closed its chapter. (Now, everything that follows is “Woke Two” — which, of course, is something TOTALLY different [eyeroll]. She signaled a willingness to learn, grow, adapt, and change. (OMG, AOC is maturing before our eyes!)
For her political purposes, #3 was most significant. AOC’s greatest vulnerability in a national election is being painted as a far-left extremist, but by showing a willingness to learn, grow, and change, she comes across as an open-minded pragmatist.And by definition, an open-minded pragmatist cannot be an ideological extremist. It was a subtle but effective PR rebuttal: One of the most radical, far-left politicians in federal history is mastering the art of cosplaying as a moderate!Naturally, her liberal allies are happy to help:
Jessica Tarlov claims AOC now is a "Moderate Dem" as compared to the "core DSA wing."
Scott Galloway agrees that this is a "fair point."
AOC is a member of NYC DSA.
The gaslighting levels coming in an attempt to rebrand AOC for 2028 are going to be stratospheric. pic.twitter.com/AYypbHSeZu
Ingraham: This guy makes AOC look like a moderate. He wants government-run grocery stores, plans to make public buses free. Pledging to freeze rent prices and wants to borrow $70 billion for more affordable housing. pic.twitter.com/dWI2ue2vjQ
AOC was elected to Congress in 2018. After she wins reelection in 2026 (she usually gets about 70% of the vote) and completes her fifth term, she’ll have served in the House for 10 years. And she was a celebrity from the very beginning.That’s 10 long years in the spotlight. She’s now a known entity — practically a comfort food. And because of the public’s familiarity with her, AOC doesn’t seem as scary — or as flippin’ weird — as the new kids on the DSA block. (Hey, at least she doesn’t want to ban Thanksgiving or get rid of July 4 fireworks, right? Why, by comparison, she’s borderline MAGA!)
Because politics is a comparison sport: Your goal isn’t perfection; it’s to outperform your opponent. And compared to the DSA newbies, AOC really, truly seems moderate, mature, and (gasp!) reasonable. They’re the ones who are extreme — not her! Rep. Ocasio-Cortez won’t be the only Democrat vying for the DSA lane in 2028. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) is sprinting in that direction, too. But Khanna is ugly; Cortez is attractive. Khanna is boring; Cortez is charismatic. Khanna is a bandwagoner; Cortez a trailblazer. Sorry, but it ain’t a fair fight. Khanna is toast.
Assuming AOC inherits Bernie Sanders’ socialist network of donors and activists, the DSA lane is hers for the taking. Meanwhile, “establishment” candidates like Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, Mark Kelly, JB Pritzker, Cory Booker, Wes Moore, Andy Beshear, and Rahm Emanuel are all locked into a fierce battle to be the darling of the DNC. But that’s a very crowded lane. Not much room. Only one establishment candidate will survive. (The rest will cancel each other out.) It’s like Highlander — there can be only one. And by then, it’ll probably be too late: AOC will already have won a plurality in multiple primaries — and all the momentum going forward. She’ll be unstoppable. The nomination will be hers.
In the good ol’ days, a politician like AOC would have to move miles to moderate her image (which would risk angering her base). Not anymore. With the rest of her party racing like Usain Bolt to the radical left, all AOC has to do is temper her rhetoric and acknowledge overreaching with the “woke agenda” — and presto, she’s a moderate. It might be a coincidence, but she’s doing EVERYTHING a 2028 presidential frontrunner needs to do. Either way, the 2026 election will be the last time AOC competes in a House race. She’s outgrown her seat. Two years from now, she’ll have bigger fish to fry.
Chuck Schumer’s Senate seat is within her grasp, too. If she’s too risk-averse to run for president, replacing Schumer would be the next best thing. Schumer is done; he’s the least popular man in Washington. But if you want to change the world, nothing equals the presidency. She’ll still be attacked as a left-wing loon because she is a left-wing loon. And rebrand or not, the sheer magnitude of cringeworthy “Woke One” content she disseminated on social media won’t be forgotten: And by her own standard, it shouldn’t be forgotten. After all, in woke’s heyday, AOC called for archiving all the X posts of “Trump sycophants” who may “deny their complicity in the future.” Lo siento, mi amiga: What’s good for the goose is also good for el ganso.
But she’s making all the right moves to moderate her image. (Notably, AOC declined to endorse Francesca Hong and Graham Platner.) She rebooted the woke narrative in a single borrowed sentence. And in a Democratic Party where everyone else is sprinting left, simply by staying in place and making pragmatic concessions, she comes across as a reasonable, middle-of-the-road, non-threatening politician. We’ve known her for 10 years: That’s our Sandy! She has more name recognition, DSA fundraising infrastructure, and a larger social media footprint than almost all her peers. And like it or not, she’s excellent at PR. She really is. Don’t sleep on her.
Think of AOC like this: A bag of bones like Bernie Sanders came within a whisker of winning the Democratic nomination not once, but TWICE! (And Sanders was an old man, turning 79 in 2020.) So what do you think will happen when a photogenic, charismatic, media-savvy, 30-something Latina — running as Sanders’ successor — throws her hat in the ring? Sanders did well with his “Bernie Bros” but struggled with minorities and women. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) even claimed that Sanders told her point-blank that a woman isn’t electable, which Sanders hotly denied. Either way, he couldn’t connect with either group — struggling mightily with minority women.
AOC is positioning herself as the next Bernie Sanders — plus women and plus minorities. In today’s Democratic Party, that’s a passport to the presidential nomination.
It was an under-the-radar move, but AOC just moved one step closer to the White House.
As they experience newfound success across the United States in Democratic primaries, the Democratic Socialists of America have gone on a media blitz to share their vision for America. That vision includes radical changes to the American political system, like abolishing the senate, heavily restricting private markets, and abolishing police and prisons. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) rode a wave of dissatisfaction with the status quo to unprecedented electoral success this year. DSA affiliated candidates and fellow travelers lead New York City and are poised to dominate its congressional delegation.
Dismantling the entire American system of government
In other areas of the country, DSA candidates are campaigning on a radical platform once unthinkable. Beyond New York, DSA candidates have won in Colorado, Michigan, and in down-ballot races in Oregon, California, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Utah and Maryland. On Tuesday, a DSA member is leading in the polls for the Democratic Party nomination for governor in Wisconsin, testing the viability of the far-left political and economic messaging in a state that President Donald Trump won in 2024. Controversy has followed Francesca Hong. Like many other DSA affiliates, her past social media posts, including arguing to defund the police and calling to cancel Thanksgiving, are at the center of it.
In an interview last month on Fox News, DSA’s national co-chair, Megan Romer, answered that, “yes,” the DSA’s platform includes “abolishing the Senate,” “[replacing] the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them,” and “absolutely” abolishing immigration enforcement, defunding the military, and, eventually, abolishing police and prisons. “Yes,” “true,” and “yep,” said Romer in response to the host’s questions. The relentless media tour by senior DSA leaders focused scrutiny on the organization’s official platform. Republicans sensed an opening and traditional Democrats are worried the group’s radical proposals might sink the party’s midterm chances.
Indeed, many of the Democratic Socialist leaders are self-professed communists, Just the News previously reported. Many of the DSA’s leaders belong to internal party caucuses that explicitly define themselves as Marxist and advocate for achieving communism. This includes Romer, who is a member of the Red Star caucus of the DSA, which explicitly pronounces its ultimate aim: the overthrow of capitalism in the U.S. and, eventually, communism. Last month, the DSA released a new “program,” or platform, that outlined its priorities. Here are some of the most striking in the group’s own words:
‘End Mass Incarceration and Police Immunity’
The DSA’s platform includes radical proposals to defund, and eventually abolish, the “police and prison system,” which the organization argues is slanted for the benefit of the rich. Similar comments made by DSA-backed candidates have stirred controversy. “Demilitarize police departments, disempower police unions, and redirect funding to public services as steps towards fully abolishing the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor,” the DSA’s program reads.
Francesca Hong, the DSA member vying for the gubernatorial nomination in Wisconsin, has worked to distance herself from prior social media posts from years ago in which she argued for abolishing police. “I support defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police,” Hong posted in 2020, echoing the modern DSA policy platform. Other DSA-tied candidates have come under fire for holding similar views. For example, Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York City faced scrutiny for a series of deleted posts to social media expressing support for abolishing police, prisons and borders, seizing private property, and nationalizing industries, Just the News previously reported.
‘Abolish ICE’ and ‘Amnesty for All’
“A world without borders—just like a world without prisons or police—is possible, necessary, and the only moral way forward,” Chevalier posted to Twitter, now X, in September 2021. The DSA’s program also calls for completely ending immigration enforcement, including ICE detentions and deportations. DSA organizers have been at the center of nationwide protests against the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies, cooperating with a coalition of left-wing organizations, some of which received funding from China-based billionaire Neville Roy Singham.
“End ICE detention and deportations and punish federal agents’ brutality. Legalize migration, grant amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status, provide a path to citizenship for all permanent residents, and end visa caps and quotas,” DSA’s program reads. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is a member of the DSA, has called repeatedly for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be abolished. “As [New York’s] mayor, I firmly believe that ICE should be abolished,” Mamdani said. “I will not sit here beside you and proclaim the only way to respond to [immigration] is an agency that I’m older than.”
‘Abolish the Senate’ and ‘Replace the President and Supreme Court’
Hong, who will face Wisconsin Democratic voters on Tuesday, has also called for abolishing the agency. “Abolishing ICE isn’t radical — it’s good policy,” she posted to social media in January. The DSA’s proposals for reforming the United States government are also nothing short of radical. The organization envisions completely remaking the three separate branches of power in Washington and replacing the current system with a single legislature that directly appoints the other branches.
For example, rather than reform the Senate, as some Democratic politicians have argued for many years, the DSA wants to do away with the upper legislative chamber completely, vesting all congressional power in an expanded and more proportional House of Representatives. The organization’s leaders argue that doing so would make the country more democratic and representative. “The Senate is a very undemocratic institution,” DSA co-chairman Ashik Siddiqu said in an interview on C-SPAN. “I talked a bit about democracy, a ‘small d’ democracy, and that’s really important to us. We want democratic representation of all people who live in this country.”
“Public Ownership” of “Corporations”
The DSA calls for the “public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries.” This program of nationalization would be “to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people.” To this end, the organization’s program calls for “the end of capitalism” as the system of economic organization. In some way, New York City Mayor Mamdani is piloting aspects of this broader plan in a place where the DSA actually holds levers of power. His city-run grocery store experiment intends to create a system of stores that will offer a 30% discount compared to private competitors. The plan has some in the city warning that the stores will cost taxpayers and may force private stores to close.
The platform also argues for replacing the presidency and the Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary panel “chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” All of these reforms would require major constitutional changes. Abolishing the Senate would likely require the approval of all the states because of the special constitutional provision requiring each state to have “equal Suffrage in the Senate.”
What is surfacing now, five years later, is a stronger understanding of just how the establishment medical complex determined the safety and efficacy protocols of the COVID-19 vaccination. They had theories, they had speculation, they had scientific discussion; but ultimately, they did not know to what extent the vaccine was safe – and statistically it wasn’t safe. Looking back on recent history, the COVID experience stands out. The lessons from observing the government’s response, and how people reacted to it, have influenced our perspective on many topics related to liberty and freedom.
I turn to faith, read the gospel and recognize in more than a few ways the COVID experience was a generational test. It is generally accepted that somewhere around 60 to 70% of Americans accepted the COVID vaccine, although a great many of those who took the vaccine did so under tremendous pressure, essentially under duress and without fully informed consent.
There really was no way to apply “informed consent” to the process because the ‘information’ that should have supported the consent was skewed, shaped and in many instances intentionally manipulated. Again, the pressure for compliance to the process was extreme; beyond extreme. I said at the time we had never seen such a pressure campaign on any topic or issue as aggressively oppressive as we endured during two-years of COVID vaccination compliance pressure.
I do not fault anyone who took the vaccine. In fact, I hold great empathy toward those who now live with the hindsight question of their life potentially being shortened. Everyone has been impacted by this medical experiment and the subsequent sociological implications in the aftermath. A few days ago, a person wanted to discuss Dr Anthony Fauci’s testimony with me. I never bring up the subject of the COVID vaccine; not ever in personal discussion. However, if it is brought up to me, I will engage carefully, honestly and with empathy. I was asked about Fauci taking the fifth amendment and his previous grant of immunity by Joe Biden.
My response was short, purposeful and direct. Why would Anthony Fauci need criminal immunity? A lengthy reframing of the question resulted from my friend, who essentially then repeated it. Again, I responded, “why would any agent of the United States govt even begin a thought process that immunity for criminal activity would be needed?” Silently, inside my mind I wonder if perhaps I’ve spent too much time learning about the way Russian people think. They are like American mid-westerners of old; the questions are much shorter and more direct; there is no pretense. Why did Fauci need immunity? Why indeed. Someone knew something, eh?
That sense, the one we all carry that alerts us when something just doesn’t add up, doesn’t sit right, doesn’t reconcile unless we pretend something else exists in the sentence to explain the stuff that doesn’t reconcile. The stuff inside the sentence we create in order to explain or justify is the nonexistent stuff, the pretending stuff. Take the pretending out of the thought, and suddenly you know the answer. [Again, now you are thinking like a Russian.] We are in an abusive relationship with government. The COVID-19 experience just created a shortcut to show us just how extensive and abusive that relationship is.
How many Americans have physically been harmed in this example, and how many millions more are suffering the downstream consequences of continued codependent denial. COVID-19 was the embodiment of the truism: “when push comes to shove.” How far are you willing to go -what pain are you willing to suffer through- to retain your definition of liberty, freedom and sovereign control. Is there a price? The COVID-19 experience gave us all the uncomfortable answers….. and now the discussion necessarily gets quiet in mixed company.
Many people are angry. Many people have every emotional right to be angry. The scale of vaccine compliance suffering runs the gambit from collapsed friendships to lost jobs, broken marriages, to painful isolation and yes, to death itself.
There is no way to measure cold anger at a scale not entirely visible. Several years ago, CTH said to gently avoid touching the sensitive nerve of those vaccinated, there is no way for them to retreat from the decision. Done is done. Genuine human empathy must be applied generously, while simultaneously a pragmatic perspective must be maintained. Each person can define and judge but choosing to express that judgement is a different matter entirely. Remember, for the vaccinated all discussion is zero-sum.
As the revelations about the vaccine administrators, their thoughts, their severely compromised and corrupt activity continues to surface, it is worthwhile reminding ourselves that some people need to retain cognitive denial in order to avoid seeing the vaccinated person in the mirror. The credibility of all U.S. government institutions has collapsed; all of them. Let me repeat. When you stop pretending you accept the credibility of all U.S. government institutions has collapsed in our lifetime. The only people left covering for this collapse are those who need to retain the illusion of institutional credibility.
The Food and Drug Administration permits toxic chemicals in food and is controlled by Big Rx. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is controlled by Big Ag. The corporate media are controlled by their corporate advertisers. Manage your personal affairs accordingly. We may not live there, but we are all Russians now.
This is a must watch clip from the pandemic.
2021. CNN hunts down and confronts a doctor for spreading "misinformation" online. What was some of the "misinformation" he was spreading? Masks may not work and vaccines can be dangerous.
The president sued the network in December in his personal capacity for defamation over the BBC airing a program in 2024 that edited clips from his speech on January 6, 2021, to make it seem like he was inciting violence.A federal judge handed President Donald Trump a minor legal victory Monday by allowing him to amend his $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC in a move that is expected to help him dodge sharing financial information with the outlet. The president sued the network in December in his personal capacity for defamation over the BBC airing a program in 2024 that edited clips from his speech on January 6, 2021, to make it seem like he was inciting violence.
United States District Judge Roy K. Altman gave the president permission to file an amended complaint by next week, and dismissed the BBC’s request to dismiss the lawsuit as “moot.” The federal judge said the network can file a new motion to dismiss after the amended complaint is filed. “Today’s strong and thoughtful ruling is a major win for President Trump’s powerhouse lawsuit against the formerly respected and now disgraced BBC, which defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election,” a spokesman for Trump’s legal team told Fox News.
“President Trump is holding the leftist BBC, along with all of its comrades in the mainstream media, accountable for their peddling of Fake News through deception and maliciously defamatory conduct,” he added. The lawsuit comes after the British news corporation apologized for the editing, acknowledging that it failed to live up to the company’s standards by giving a false impression and promised to never show the segment again. But the network declined to say it was defamatory.
The segment edited Trump’s declaration at the White House that he and his supporters were “going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” and his statement nearly an hour later that Republicans should “fight like hell.” The clip instead combined the comments to have the president state: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
“.. for the millions of people who cherish New York and want to see it thrive, as opposed to becoming a filthy, crime-ridden, decrepit place of mockery and scorn.”
President Trump said in a Truth Social post around lunchtime that his administration is examining whether the federal government has the legal authority to block NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s dangerous political “experiment” before it can “destroy what was once a great City and State.”
“It is pure Amateur Hour, and it’s hard, as President of the United States of America, to sit back and watch it happen, especially to a place I once loved. Financial, and then Social, RUIN, is a 100% certainty – And then the Radical Left Jihadists charge Congestion Pricing on top of everything else,” Trump said.
He continued, “This doesn’t work in America, and must be stopped, NOW! I am looking to see if the Federal Government has any legal right to avert this disaster, before it is too late, for the millions of people who cherish New York and want to see it thrive, as opposed to becoming a filthy, crime-ridden, decrepit place of mockery and scorn.”
“The City Screwed This Up”: Judge Temporarily Blocks Mamdani’s Pied-A-Terre Tax Scheme
A New York judge temporarily halted Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist experiment to impose a new tax on luxury second homes, ordering far-left City Hall officials to remove a controversial list doxing more than 900,000 homeowners from the public domain
The publicly accessible database exposed names, addresses, and property values, effectively creating an easily accessible targeting list for radical activists, including Luigi-worshipping far-left activists, amid City Hall’s escalating war on property owners.
“I’ve Been Doxed”: Lefty Podcaster Scott Galloway Rips Mamdani After Landing On Socialist’s Rich Target List
Bloomberg reports that Justice Wayne Ozzi temporarily restrained City Hall from proceeding with the new pied-à-terre tax and required the city to remove the online list of properties that would be targeted by the tax and halt further action based on roughly 17,000 notices mailed to property owners. A hearing is scheduled for Aug. 31. “The city screwed this up… got it wrong… stop the train and make them do it over,” Randy Mastro, a former deputy mayor, told the court. Mastro is the one who brought the suit on behalf of three New York homeowners.
“The city screwed this up… got it wrong… stop the train and make them do it over,” Randy Mastro, a former deputy mayor, told the court. Mastro is the one who brought the suit on behalf of three New York homeowners. z”We are very gratified by the judge’s decision, which has vindicated the rights of hundreds of thousands of New York City homeowners who were subjected to a process they never should have been a part of in the first place,” Mastro said after the ruling. On Monday, Mamdani noted Mastro’s role in suits challenging his socialist housing policies. “You know, there are few things more certain in New York City than death, taxes and Randy Mastro filing a lawsuit against this administration,” the mayor said at a press conference.
"There are a few things more certain here today than death, taxes and Randy Mastro filing a lawsuit against this administration," NYC Mayor Mamdani says when asked about the new lawsuit filed by Mastro on behalf of NYC homeowners over the rollout of the pied-à-terre tax pic.twitter.com/BTnvLPvgly
He continued, “So we look forward to vigorously defending our city’s position in court as we have done so with the previous lawsuits that he has filed and I’m sure with the lawsuits that he will continue to file in the months and years to come.” Last month, Mastro also filed a separate complaint on behalf of a group of NYC landlords who sued to void a rent freeze approved in June, arguing that Mamdani improperly influenced the Rent Guidelines Board’s vote and ignored evidence of soaring operating costs for landlords. This plays into the broader socialist endgame: bankrupt landlords and create conditions for City Hall to seize distressed apartment buildings.
Mamdani has said the new pied-à-terre tax will help fund safer streets, safer schools, and “the city that New Yorkers deserve.” Yet we know socialists do not live in economic reality, and the fact that they had to dox homeowners suggests an alternative motive: they want to seize the means of production. Putting such a list out in the public domain for their radical left foot soldiers to access suggests that wealthy homeowners will be targeted. This is dangerous, especially given the rhetoric pushed by Mamdani’s friend Hasan Piker, who recently said, “Kill capitalists.”
“At the very stage when premature babies are receiving lifesaving care in neonatal intensive care units, Massachusetts will permit abortionists to end the lives of children of the same age – and even older. That is not compassion, and it is not health care,”
Massachusetts Democratic Governor Maura Healey has signed into law a measure that effectively permits abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, right up to the point of birth. Liberal women packed the room and gleefully cheered as she put pen to paper.The previous statute restricted abortions after 24 weeks to specific circumstances: preserving the life of the patient, physical or mental health, lethal fetal anomaly, or a grave diagnosis incompatible with sustained life outside the womb without extraordinary intervention. That framework is now gone.
The new law, deceptively titled the “Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act” (H.5595), states that an abortion may be performed by a physician based solely upon the professional judgment of the physician. No medical review process can override that judgment and the patient’s decision. Healey framed the change around stories of “pain and anguish and heartache and a lot of trauma.” She declared: “We’re signing this law today so that new patients, people we won’t know or won’t meet, will be able to get the care that they need in Massachusetts.”
She added that health care decisions should be made “between women and families and their doctors, not politicians,” and promised abortion would remain “safe… legal, and… accessible here in Massachusetts.” The ceremony featured applause and smiles from advocates, doctors, and lawmakers. Massachusetts now joins Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., as jurisdictions with no statutory gestational limit. The law takes effect in 90 days.
Pro-life leaders did not share the celebratory mood. Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, stated: “Governor Healey and the Massachusetts Legislature have erased the final protections for unborn children who can feel pain and who could survive outside the womb.” “At the very stage when premature babies are receiving lifesaving care in neonatal intensive care units, Massachusetts will permit abortionists to end the lives of children of the same age – and even older. That is not compassion, and it is not health care,” Tobias further urged.
This is what a 34-week-old baby looks like outside the womb.
In Massachusetts, you can now abort an unborn baby at this age.
Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, was blunt: the measure “legalized elective abortion up to birth on healthy moms and healthy, pain-capable infants. She continued that it is “not about protecting the doctor-patient relationship. It is about abortionists normalizing the deaths of fully-developed infants and pressuring vulnerable women to permit their unborn children to die in heinous acts of violence.” These procedures, she noted, rank among the most severe human rights abuses permitted in only a handful of places worldwide.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) responded simply: “Jesus wept.” This movement fits a pattern of cultural celebration around the destruction of the unborn. Earlier this year a woman in Memphis took abortion pills at a gender-reveal party after learning she was having a girl while friends shouted “kill it.” Washed up Sex and the City actress Cynthia Nixon drew widespread criticism for posing in a red hat altered to read “Make Abortion Great Again,” once again providing an example of how weirdo celebrities with dysfunctional lives should not be taken seriously whenever they spout off about how society should function.
Across the Atlantic, the UK House of Lords advanced measures that also effectively open the door to abortion up to birth, despite polling showing only about 1 percent of Britons approve of such extremes and clear majorities favor gestational limits to protect viable life.
The Massachusetts law removes objective statutory guardrails and hands the decision entirely to the attending physician. Pro-life physicians emphasize that true medical emergencies requiring separation of mother and child are distinct from induced abortion intended to end the life of a viable unborn child. Late-term procedures often involve dismemberment or induction, with the latter risking live birth if fetal demise is not first induced. Supporters insist the change merely prevents families from traveling out of state for “complex medical circumstances.”
Critics counter that the prior exceptions already covered life-threatening situations and severe anomalies, and that the new open-ended standard invites elective procedures on healthy mothers carrying healthy, pain-capable infants. Data from the state’s own Department of Public Health already showed dozens of abortions at 24 weeks or later in recent years; the removal of limits is expected to increase that number.
Nvidia has teamed up with some of Wall Street’s largest banks and investors to raise $500bn (£370bn) in capital for artificial intelligence infrastructure. The chipmaker said it had struck deals with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR, and that the investors were for the first time treating AI hardware and infrastructure, often referred to as “compute”, as an asset class. “In AI, compute is revenue,” Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said. “We are bringing the world’s leading long-term capital providers together to independently underwrite AI infrastructure.”
The financing will go towards Nvidia’s own projects and those being built by its partners. Infrastructure projects backed by this fund will likely include the construction of new data centres to house, operate, and cool miles of stacked computer chips that process AI data and actions. It will also back new factories to manufacture the AI chips needed to power these systems and increase their availability to buyers. “Compute has become a critical infrastructure asset,” Joe Bae and Scott Nuttall, co-chief executives of KKR, said in a joint statement. “As we’ve scaled our approach to digital infrastructure, we’ve learned that delivery, not ambition, is the hard part.”
Essentially every major technology and AI company uses Nvidia’s computer chips, or graphics processing units (GPUs), to power their services, AI platforms and AI chatbots. “Nvidia is absolutely enormous and produces these chips that everybody needs for AI and it needs to keep facilitating the growth of AI,” Jane Sydenham, senior investment manager at Rathbones, told the BBC. However, she added: “The worry is that more and more money is going into these projects. Are they all going to earn the right return for the future?”
‘
Mission critical’
Companies using Nvidia’s popular chips or GPUs include Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, SpaceX, Tesla, OpenAI and Anthropic. Such companies have collectively spent over $1tn in just three years on AI projects and infrastructure, with much more spending expected. And their demand for Nvidia’s chips and services has driven the stock market value of the company up fivefold in three years. In a statement on Monday, Huang referred to Nvidia’s role as a chip-maker as the company’s beginning. “Today, we are helping create a new class of productive, investable infrastructure: AI factories,” he said.
With a new ability to tap some funding from the banks and investors partnering with Nvidia, they will be able to finance more of the AI boom. Jim Zelter, president of Apollo, a lender which manages more than $1tn in assets, said: “Modern compute has emerged as a scarce, mission-critical asset class.” It is also “positioned to drive significant long-term economic growth and productivity gains”, Zelter added. BlackRock last month entered into an individual deal with Meta to finance and take a majority ownership stake in one data centre in Texas.
Anthropic also recently entered into a deal with Macquarie Asset Management and GIC, a sovereign wealth fund in Singapore, for its own investment in AI infrastructure. The company did not specify the size of the deal, but said more financing was needed as its popular chatbot Claude had become so popular that the “demand requires significant new compute”.
We have previously discussed how many professors seem to compete in finding new forms of racism in every facet of society and education. Astrophysics, math, runoffs, science, statistics, and meritocracy have all been denounced as racist. In this academic cottage industry, professors secure publications and speaking opportunities by identifying racism in expressions, images, or entire fields. Even time itself has been declared racist. Now, however, academics have found another undiscovered continent of white privilege: niceness.
When I saw a story in The College Fix on a study of “niceness as Whiteness,” I was skeptical and decided to take a look. The study by Vanderbilt Postdoctoral Research Fellow Abigail Beneke, Professors Benjamin Fisher (U. Wisconsin-Madison), F. Chris Curran (U. Florida), and Samantha Viano (George Mason) was first flagged by Dr. James Nuzzo. The paper “Niceness as Whiteness in School Police Officers’ Perceptions of Student Arrest” addresses the “perceptions of arrest” by school resource officers, or SROs) in two school districts.
The officers appear to be precisely what you are looking for in an SRO: empathetic and reluctant to make arrests. The researchers admit that they try to avoid arrests. However, according to the authors, hidden behind those sympathetic approaches was, of course, a boiling caldron of racism in terms of the racial disparity of those arrested. Indeed, the researchers realized that it was the niceness itself that was the evidence of oppressive “Whiteness.” Indeed, the officers may not want to be engines of racism and use “niceness” as a “coping mechanism,” but do so by deluding themselves and others that they are nice:
“Nice SROs did not want to arrest children. Nice police officers thought of themselves as well-meaning. Yet, they expressed being required to arrest children because of real or imagined mandates. They used niceness as a strategy for upholding a system of Whiteness that systematically privileges White people and excludes those who fall outside of Whiteness. Niceness hinders possibilities for the types of political, communal relationships central to authentic care.”
The paper makes it sound like everyone would be better off, or at least more honest, to return to hostile, racist-spewing officers. The reason is that niceness is an “enduring component of Whiteness” which “allows predominantly White people to elide how their own actions contribute to inequality by maintaining a sense of their own benevolence.” The evidence of niceness includes such findings as how officers work at “minimiz[ing] the negative impact of arrest by highlighting their own goodness.” (This includes saying things like “You want to listen to the radio? You want the window down? Is there a station you want to listen to?” after an arrest.)
Then there is the fact that these officers have good relationships and perspectives of the students. Again, it is just a shield of “whiteness” “SROs used niceness as Whiteness in their recounts of arrest … by highlighting the positive relationships they had with students they arrested…As with highlighting their own goodness, highlighting these positive relationships reframes violence (i.e., arrest) that contributes to racial inequality as a positive, since students still like the SROs. This strategy emphasizes the officer’s ability to retain his niceness—by virtue of the maintained interpersonal relationship—despite having arrested the student.”
The paper is an example of ideological screeds posing as academic research. Based on a few interviews, the researchers simply declare the empathy and relationships to be shields perpetuating “whiteness.” They cite other studies identifying niceness as a whiteness tactic:
“Prior research has demonstrated how primarily White women educators use niceness to uphold Whiteness in their work with children (Bissonnette 2016; Drake & Rodriguez 2022; Gardiner et al., 2023; Vlach et al., 2022; Wiborg, 2022). We found niceness was also present in the work of SROs, suggesting the potential for broader application of niceness to well-intentioned actors working in structurally violent systems. In addition to framing niceness as a means of excusing behavior that upholds Whiteness, we equally center the structural binds that delimit SROs’ capacity for providing care. In doing so, we identify niceness as a coping mechanism for arresting children.”
At these universities (Vanderbilt, Wisconsin, George Mason, and the University of Florida), these faculty members and their obvious agenda are viewed as ideal choices to teach their students. With four kids, I found the SROs at their schools to be extraordinary and popular figures. They would routinely intervene with kids to see if they were having trouble or try to direct them away from trouble. It turns out that everything that parents valued in their SROs was a perpetuation of privilege, according to these researchers.
While the researchers insist that “we do not intend to demonize individual SROs,” they reward the cooperating officers by twisting their every comment as revealing their deep white privilege. Presumably, they conveyed to the SROs that this would be a fair, unbiased study. It was neither, and, perhaps reaffirming their own triumph over racism, they were not a bit nice about it.
THEY KNEW. We MUST have Public Trials for these Monsters…
Pfizer’s own data: 1000%+ spikes in cancer, miscarriage and heart damage…as Fauci and Gates REPEATEDLY STATED it was ‘Safe and Effective’… pic.twitter.com/7zZsydETJF
Iran’s IRGC is holding the line, reiterating that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen to international shipping only after the United States accepts all of its conditions, which we outlined previously. Also, on Saturday Iran’s army spokesman Amir Akraminia stated that Iran’s new protocols in the Strait of Hormuz are “irreversible” and shall not be thwarted by the US. “The United States has no choice but to accept the existing situation; otherwise, it will incur costs far greater than those it has faced in the past,” Akraminia said.
On Sunday, a fresh report in The Wall Street Journal states the obvious – that President Trump has fewer and fewer options and is being squeezed, with any opportunity to declare ‘victory’ and make swift exit more elusive than ever, given Washington would have to make huge compromises, including lifting sanctions and paying war compensation to Tehran. Nearly six months ago when the war started, many non-interventionist critics accurately predicted the quagmire and catch-22 the US now finds itself in.
“For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said,” WSJ writes.
“But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things,” the report adds.
In a parallel vein to this scaled-back, lower grade conflict, President Trump has freshly told Axios in a brief interview that “We are low keying it” in the Persian Gulf. This comes after a week ago he called off ‘planned’ ‘harder’ attacks on Iran, which may have been just a bluff all along. Tehran didn’t blink, and it continues to press for maximal demands – as if to put ‘maximum pressure’ right back on Washington.
“We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” Trump claimed. According to more from Axios:
He stressed that Iran “is in very bad shape” economically and has no money to pay its troops. The U.S. naval blockade has exacerbated the Iranian regime’s economic crisis, Trump said. At the same time, Trump said that with oil down to slightly over $75 a barrel, U.S. consumers are feeling less pain from the war. Ironically, this is simply a return to administration talking points which defended the early days and weeks of a war that officials constantly touted would be ‘swift’ and limited.
The US hope was that Iran and its economy would just collapse from within, the masses would take to the streets, and the government of the Ayatollah would be overthrown. This has proven delusional time and again.
Instead, what we see happening is Washington being forced to move its bases back from front line areas in the Gulf, and officials including Trump himself constantly retreating from stated goals, objectives, and red lines. This is on display once again in the Sunday Axios interview:
Axios acknowledges that the new list of Iranian demands have gone from being the prerequisite for a nuclear deal to a prerequisite to opening the Strait. Trump now says the US is “low keying it” and focusing on economic pressure. In other words: the Strait will not be opening. https://t.co/AweQabOB8Wpic.twitter.com/3TMsxXcfh7
A video of Mojtaba Khamenei that was earlier released by the mass media had been shot before he became Iran’s Supreme leader, but he is now in good health and avoids appearing in public due to security considerations, an Iranian source told TASS. “This is an old video. It was made before he became [Supreme] leader,” he said, adding that his health condition is now quite good. “He is in good health and the only reason why he is not seen in public is security reasons,” he stressed.
Earlier, the Iranian Mehr agency released a video featuring Mojtaba Khamenei talking to a group of people who are listening to him attentively. Neither the date nor the venue of the event were indicated. Mojtaba Khamenei became Iran’s Supreme leader after his father, Ali Khamenei, was killed in a missile attack after the United States and Israel’s aggression against Iran.
Extreme leftists and white, female, overeducated, urban communists have one primary prism: how Obama-ish is their candidate? Both El-Sayed and Barack Obama are supported by the Muslim Brotherhood directly. Both El-Sayed and Barack Obama campaigned for Senate in the mid-term election (BO ’06, ES ’26), and both Barack Obama and El-Sayed planned to run for higher office in 2nd year of their freshman term as senator.
The media now begin their fawning endeavor as the Muslim Brotherhood backed Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed tries to moderate himself in the image of Barack Hussein Obama. I find it a little revealing that El-Sayed’s wife is a doctor who refuses to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients (cash only), as El-Sayed campaigns on Medicare for all. Of course, don’t look for the media to point this out during questioning. Notice also the Middle East nations that El-Sayed criticizes (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan) are the Mid-East nations who have pushed back or banned the Muslim Brotherhood. This is very revealing for those who walk the political deep weeds. By the way, he’s a paper doctor; a Phd, not an MD. WATCH:
[Transcript] – KRISTEN WELKER: And joining me now is Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. Dr. El-Sayed, welcome to Meet the Press.
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Thanks for having me.
KRISTEN WELKER: Thank you so much for being here and congratulations. Let’s talk about your victory this week. You narrowly defeated Congresswoman Haley Stevens. And when you actually add up all of the votes, the vote totals that went to Stevens and Mallory McMorrow, a majority of voters actually ended up voting for candidates who are more moderate than you. So how do you win over those voters who voted for someone else?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, thank you, Kristen. Really, we’re just grateful for everybody who participated. And the overwhelming recognition of the vote tallies is that 500,000 more Democrats voted than did Republicans in that election. And if that happens, we are going to win in a landslide. Now I know that we had it out with a very tough primary. There were a lot of issues that were discussed and differences that were identified and fixated on. But I will tell you this, that all of us agree that our differences are far smaller than what we agree on.
And what we agree on is that Donald Trump has been an existential threat to our democracy. He is costing us jobs. He is costing us more at almost every aspect of our lives, whether it’s our gas, our groceries, or our health care, and that Mike Rogers is going to be nothing more than a rubber stamp on Donald Trump’s disastrous economic and foreign policies. And so this is an opportunity for us to come together to mend fences, to build together the coalition that is going to defeat Mike Rogers in November and defeat Trumpism over the next two years.
KRISTEN WELKER: Well, let me ask you about some news that we’re learning this morning. Local outlets reporting that you spoke to former President Barack Obama on the phone. I know you’re not going to give me every detail of the call. But what was the crux of his message to you, Dr. El-Sayed?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, Kristen, you’re right. I like to keep private conversations private. But it was a really warm and inspiring conversation. I’ve got to be honest with you. I never saw myself ever able to run for public office. I literally told former President Bill Clinton that at my college graduation, in which I was the senior speaker and he was the main speaker. And I then watched the next year Barack Hussein Obama run for and win the presidency. I watched him serve with a level of class, a level of elegance that we could only pine for now. So I really enjoyed the conversation. I was grateful for his advice. It was very warm and very inviting. And I know that he knows the critical role that Michigan is going to play in holding Trump accountable, in winning back the Senate, and in building forward the future that we need.
KRISTEN WELKER: Is he going to campaign with you, Dr. El-Sayed?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Look, I really hope so. And it was a really good conversation about what we need to do to be able to win. And obviously, this is somebody who knows a lot about winning Michigan.
KRISTEN WELKER: And just to be clear, do you anticipate he’ll show up on the campaign trail with you? Is that one of the broad topics you all discussed?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Look, we talked a lot about what it’ll take to win. Obviously, his presence here in Michigan would mean so much to the coalition that helped elect him. So I hope that we get to campaign together.
Clean up in aisle 4! Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed just made a mess in an interview with Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press, and let’s just say his handlers have some fixing to do. One of El-Sayed’s signature issues is “Medicare for All.” It’s an issue that El-Sayed loves to mention but doesn’t like to talk about in detail. One reason is that it’s not good for sound bites. Once you get into the details of Medicare, it gets complex, bureaucratic, and boring. None of those things work well in media interviews. But there are other reasons he’d rather not talk at length about his health coverage ideas, and it became clearer when Welker pressed him on it.
Calling him “Doctor,” Welker told El-Sayed that everyday Americans worry that to make Medicare universal would mean tax hikes for everyone, not just the rich. El-Sayed dismissively tried to give Welker a quick sound bite in the hope she’d move on when he said, “As I’ve said across this campaign, I am for taxing billionaires their wealth.” But Welker wasn’t done. She said, “What about people who make less than a billion and less than a million dollars?” El-Sayed responded:
“So, for the average person, when you look at your W2, if you’re an employee who gets paid every two weeks or four weeks, after you pay your taxes, the next biggest check that comes off the top of your pay stub is to your health insurance company. So, imagine instead of paying that to your health insurance company, whose CEO makes $20 million a year, instead you paid a little bit more in taxes for healthcare that you wouldn’t lose if you lost your job or turned 26 or got married or got divorced.
I think all of us would be a lot more interested in that kind of a system if we knew that our healthcare would be free at the point of care and would be free without having to worry about losing it, in general.So, there’s an opportunity here, I think, to trade what we give to a big corporation, who gets to decide who we get to see and who we don’t, for a little bit more paid into FICA. And I think that’s a trade that’s worth making. I think the broader public understands that that’s a trade worth making considering how many people are holding medical debt, a third of all Michigan households right now.”
Welker reinforced her earlier point, saying, “Just to be very clear, you’re describing this trade-off. You are effectively acknowledging that people making less than a million dollars could see their taxes go up. I just want to be very clear.” His non-answers to her questions were a de facto confirmation of Welker’s suspicions. What El-Sayed said pretty clearly was to trust the government more than your insurance company, and that yes, your taxes will go up under his plan.
Something that rarely comes up when “Medicare for All” is discussed is what Medicare does not cover. Anyone who’s turned 65 and applied for Medicare knows that Medicare is hardly an apples-to-apples replacement for the kind of health insurance you may have gotten through your employer.
Medicare does not automatically include eye care, dental care, and certain prescription coverage. If retirees pay more, and most do, they can enroll in a Part C or Medicare Advantage plan that covers more. But even there, Medicare Advantage is only one option and may not be as good as your existing health insurance. Some opt not to go with Medicare Advantage, instead going with a more expensive Medigap or another alternative plan that they feel is closer to what they’re used to.
As for El-Sayed’s comments that by paying the government more for your Medicare, you’re not paying some private health insurance company, that’s often not true at all. Medicare Advantage plans and other supplemental plans are usually administered by private health insurance companies, and so you likely still would be lining the coffers of some private insurance company. What all of this means is that while El-Sayed wants Americans to think they’re getting health insurance comparable to what they’ve had, and all they need to do is pay the government more in the form of higher taxes, that’s likely not what it would look like in practice.
Welker also asked him about his BFF, Hasan Piker, who’s been right at his side throughout this campaign. Walking a political tightrope, El-Sayed sought to distance himself from Piker’s words but not from the pathetic Piker himself.
BREAKING: An Abdul El-Sayed supporter said voters are “stupid” and the best way to win is to hide the truth.
Abdul El-Sayed and Hasan Piker nodded in agreement.
During that same interview with Welker, El-Sayed distanced himself from Piker’s comments when he said that “America deserved 9/11.” When Welker asked the senatorial candidate for comment, he told her that Piker’s comments were “dumb.”
Of course, it was a dumb statement and of course I think Hasan himself would say that was a dumb statement. He disavowed it. So yes, America didn’t deserve 9/11, but you know, to sit here and play gotcha politics with a dumb thing somebody said out of context that they disavowed themselves — to say, ‘Oh well, what does that mean about what you think?’ I want to be held accountable for what I say and what I do, rather than this idea that we’re so stuck in cancel culture that all of us agreed was a bad idea back in 2020, but we seem to want to bring back, El-Sayed said. The leftist news site Politico had a slightly different take on El-Sayed’s comments:
El-Sayed’s comments are a stark difference from his interview with POLITICO earlier this year in which he declined to denounce Piker’s views in what he called a “gotcha game.””I’m not here to disavow people’s views,” El-Sayed said at the time. “This whole gotcha game, platform policing, cancel culture — I thought we were over it.”The Napoleonesque Senate candidate would not say one way or the other whether he’d continue to campaign with Piker, trying like the devil to get Welker to change the subject, saying that it doesn’t matter who he campaigns with. He said he’s “a lot more concerned about who I’m campaigning to.”
NBC: Hasan Piker has said "America deserved 9/11," do you plan to continue to campaign with him?
EL-SAYED: "I'm less concerned now with who I'm campaigning with…"
Politico wasn’t buying it, reporting that “El-Sayed’s embrace of Piker, who he said he believes is ‘critical’ for Democrats to embrace, has drawn criticism — from Republicans and Democrats alike.” On yet another front, former first lady “Dr. Jill Biden” once had a press secretary named Michael LaRosa. On Aug. 8, LaRosa bucked his party and publicly endorsed Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) in his bid to become Michigan’s next senator.
While it’s rare for an embedded Democrat operative to so publicly break ranks like this, LaRosa made it crystal clear on the X platform why he was backing Rogers: “I won’t defend or support anyone who is too cowardly to stand up to extremists who think the mother of my best friend, who jumped from 95 stories because the alternative was worse, deserved what happened to her…. Her only crime was showing up to work that morning.”
I refused to defend or support anyone with an SS Totenkampf tattoo, simply because they had a "D" next to their name.
I won't defend or support anyone who is too cowardly to stand up to extremists who think the mother of my best friend, who jumped from 95 stories because the… https://t.co/hC6s7W7PfK
All this adds up to a bad day on at least one Sunday show for the upstart candidate who is starting to look like the Michigan version of Graham Platner without the Nazi tattoo, the sexting, and all the other sex stuff. Judging him by the company he keeps, his refusal to distance himself from some seriously anti-American actors, and his clunky responses to straightforward questions, it’s clear that he’s got tougher days ahead. The truth is that the Sunday shows are very kind to Democrats. If he couldn’t hit a figurative home run in his first interview with Welker since winning his primary race, he’s got some weaknesses and vulnerabilities that the Rogers campaign and Republicans can exploit more fully in the coming months.
Hasan Piker, a close ally of Abdul El-Sayed, is calling for “Marxist-Leninist” punishment for those who criticize Michigan’s Democratic senatorial candidate. As radicals and anti-Semites like Piker flood the Democratic Party, establishment figures are struggling to justify their alliance with extremist candidates. Ironically, Democrats are now fulfilling the false narrative that they used against President Donald Trump after the Charlottesville protests. They are maintaining that there are “many fine people” in the DSA despite their seeking to destroy our constitutional system, open our borders, defund the police, and embrace virtual anarchy.
Now, some of these fine people are calling for moderates to be purged as radicals take over the Democratic Party. In 2017, the media manufactured a controversy by suggesting that Trump had praised neo-Nazis and Klansmen in 2017 as “fine people” in Charlottesville. It was demonstrably false, but became the accepted truth in the media. In reality, Trump condemned the neo-Nazis, and the statement about “fine people on both sides” was in reference to the people on both sides of the debate over the removal of historic statues.
That narrative took on an added hypocrisy when some of the loudest voices later endorsed a candidate with an actual Nazi tattoo who allegedly assaulted women, mocked wounded veterans, and praised terrorists. However, he promised to deliver Maine and bring figures like Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren back to power.
Anti-Semites and communists are not “fine” additions to any party. Hasan Piker is not a “fine person” in any universe. He has said that the United States deserved the terrorist attacks on 9-11 and prominently displays a picture of the collapsing Twin Towers. He has downplayed the murders and rapes of innocent Israelis on Oct. 7th and called one Jewish man who challenged him a “bloodthirsty, violent pig dog.” Figures like Harris and Buttigieg brush off El-Sayed’s allies, including Mohammad Baqer Qazwini, a prominent Muslim cleric who gave a sermon that called for followers to vote for El-Sayed while also calling upon them to pray for the death of President Donald Trump and to celebrate the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Then there is the Democratic House candidate in New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a prison abolitionist who boasted how she wiped her hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin. Chevalier and other DSA candidates are being welcomed in the Democratic Party despite anti-American views and a DSA platform calling for the destruction of our constitutional system, including scrapping the Supreme Court, the presidency, and the Senate. Many are also overwhelmingly anti-Israel, with many, like Piker, displaying virulent anti-Semitism.
When asked about the extreme agenda of these candidates, Schumer and others repeat the mantra that they need to win in the upcoming elections. In other words, the DSA is opposed to the core institutions and values of this country, but it could be useful in returning them to power. What is interesting is that the establishment does not appear to care what these radicals represent for their party, but the radicals care deeply about what the establishment represents. This week, former DNC Vice-chair David Hogg told establishment figures that the “Big Tent” of his party is not big enough for them. He and other moderates have to go.
When asked about Democratic moderates, Hogg replied, “They don’t have the right values.” Piker has even grander plans for our post-constitutional republic, calling for mass arrests, demanding pledges from establishment figures to “arrest and prosecute every prominent member of the Trump administration” who engaged in what he views as corruption as well as “every ICE agent who committed crimes on the job.” Piker also wants to purge any Democrats who do not support El-Sayed, calling them “haters” who deserved to be punished:
“There are haters in our ranks. Notice how whenever someone comes out and says, ‘Yeah that’s actually a bad association,’ immediately it’s weaponized by the Republicans. You can’t be out here saying like, ‘Oh, I’m a centrist Democrat. And I think Abdul is a bridge too far.’ That must be punished.” Piker, who likes to parade around in a Mao jacket, seems to be longing for the good old days of party purges under Stalin and his contemporaries in the Comintern.
He notably accused critics of the sin of “factionalism.” Since the Jacobins of the French Revolution, factionalism has been the scourge of revolutionaries. In my book, Rage and the Republic, I discuss the difference between the American and French Revolutions. Where James Madison saw factions as a natural part of a democratic system, the Jacobins sought them as a traitorous and reactionary element. Madison saw compromise as the best solution to factions, while the Jacobins saw the guillotine as the final solution.
Piker is right out of that Jacobin tradition, calling moderate Democrats “Koch payroll ‘liberals’” and “irredeemable.” (Notably, the Jacobins also pushed for some of the same DSA demands such as a unicameral legislature). Of course, conservatives can show the same intolerance for RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), but there is an added menacing element to communists calling for mass expulsion or punishment of moderates from their party. It is chillingly familiar.
Mao regularly purged the Communist Party of those not following the party lines, declaring, “Serious offenders should be punished by law, and when they are Party members they should also be dealt with according to Party discipline.” Establishment figures continue to use the “Big Tent” narratives to brush off questions about the radical agenda and associations of these candidates. The only thing that they have in common is the desire for power. Once these candidates win, figures like Schumer will discover that this tent is not nearly as big as they think.
Almost since US President Donald Trump started his second and final term, the movement that brought him to power twice has been fracturing. Now there is a full break among Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters. Its essence is simple: There are those who continue to identify MAGA with Trump, and on the other side of a widening chasm, those who remain loyal to MAGA but believe that Trump has not. The rebels say Trump has betrayed the cause and want to save MAGA – and thus the US – from Trump.
There are no official structures yet to what the MAGA dissidents call their movement, but it does have a de facto leader – popular journalist and podcast host Tucker Carlson. It was at Tucker’s all-American place in Maine that the MAGA schism was made official. There, several key figures of the evolving MAGA-against-Trump group met, and in effect, raised the standard of rebellion. Not literally, but in the shape of an X post by former US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (with 5.4 million followers). It featured a carefully composed picture of a merry rebel crew, including, apart from herself, Joe Kent, former counterterrorism tsar under Trump, Representative Thomas Massie, a long-term conservative Trump opponent, and Carlson, sitting at the head of the table.
Within days after the post, Carlson released a video manifesto with the title “It’s Time to Save America” on his own Tucker Carlson Network social media channel (with 5.2 million subscribers on YouTube). Within one day, it had over a million views on YouTube alone. In a rhetorical master class for the podcast age, Carlson sketched the American present as a dead-end of extraordinary decadence and degradation, a loss of reality among the establishment, and “paralysis and looting.”
He also predicted that change is inevitable if Americans want to avoid the “end-of-everything,” either by nuclear war or uncontrolled AI. He warned that even preventing this apocalypse by timely political action could produce great violence, that is, a revolution. And finally, he presented his alternative to both the end of the world and wild upheaval in ten concise points. Ranging from “fairness” to “unity,” his ten points were more a clarion call for national renewal than a concrete policy outline, with aims general enough to form a broad consensus, as he acknowledged.
Much of his ten points read like MAGA 2.0, that is, without Trump, as observers noted. On issues such as physical and mental health, the need for the economy to make actually useful things instead of just surveillance tech, weapons of war, and financial gimmicks, the beauty of the American landscape and architecture in need of restoration, Carlson’s impassioned pleas echoed the conservatism that is one root of the MAGA phenomenon.
Ultimately, what will be more important is where things differ: One of Carlson’s points was about sovereignty, or as he defined it, being “free from outside influence.” It is this point that provides the key to all the others. The ten points are, in essence, a declaration of independence, not just from any outside influence, but from Israel and its powerful US lobby. Carlson directly named them as forming one of America’s worst problems. For starters, he did not simply attack a selfish upper class whose members behave as if they were kings, above the rules of law and ethics. He called it the “Epstein class,” with reference to the late convicted pedophile, alleged suicide victim, self-declared Rothschild representative, and close associate of alleged Israeli rapists and intelligence.
Carlson also correctly linked the Iran War – a “strategic disaster” worse than Vietnam, as another realistic American recently stated – to “bribery or threat or both by Israel.” Equally plausibly, he accused Israel of committing genocide – like Nazi Germany, he said – and protested against continuing US support. Finally, the activities of lobbies, with that of Israel not alone, but in the lead, “gives the lie to the idea of representative democracy,” according to Carlson, because where lobbyists make the decisions, the voters do not.
In short, Carlson made the point that America’s worst military defeat in living memory, its support for – and really, participation in – an ongoing genocide, and its loss of sovereignty and democracy are all due, either entirely or to a large extent, to the US establishment’s perverse and deeply unpatriotic relationship to Israel. Politically, this amounts to an arguably long overdue declaration of war against the Zionist state’s aggressive influence operations.
And the message has gotten through. Haaretz, Israel’s ‘liberal’ paper of record, rapidly dedicated a long opinion piece to Carlson, accusing him of – surprise, surprise – “anti-Semitism.” This is an absurd smear, but expected. Systematically misrepresenting criticism of Israel, a genocidal apartheid state, as hatred of Jews is an old, stale Zionist tactic. Carlson certainly isn’t naïve. Even in his ten points, he anticipated being called a “Nazi” and shrugged it off.
But Haaretz does get one thing right. For Carlson and his growing movement, “Israel and its American supporters also represent a central source of the [MAGA] movement’s betrayal [by Trump].” Or, put differently, Carlson represents an American conservatism that has the courage to identify, name, and attack America’s insane dependence on a tiny yet immensely subversive and violent rogue state.
There is, no doubt, much idealizing and even nostalgia in Carlson’s image of American history and the West. And those wishing to be woke about an arch-conservative will find rich pickings. But that is futile and dull, because it is not the point that matters. What matters is that US polls have consistently shown a great, unprecedented groundswell against Israel. A new book on Israel’s US lobby is about to come out and is making a massive splash. The tide is turning.
Fellow MAGA rebel Joe Kent let it slip that Tucker-for-president is an option. Third parties are a difficult proposition. Yet Haaretz for one is worried, and from a Zionist point of view, it should be. And that is very good news.
I have a dream that American farmers, drillers, miners, industrialists, and manufacturers produce everything that American consumers need. I have a dream that anything worth building is built in America, that any job worth doing is done in America, and that anything worth buying can be found and shipped within the United States.
Why did we allow ourselves to be convinced that Americans should make only a few select things and buy everything else from foreign markets? Why did we allow politicians and Wall Street investors to convince us that “free trade” requires slave labor from faraway lands? Why did we spend a century ensuring safer work environments and more dependable wages for our skilled tradesmen only to export those jobs to adversarial nations that care nothing about worker safety or providing above-subsistence standards of living? Why did we fight a Cold War in defense of freedom only to subsidize Chinese communism? Why do we regulate ourselves to death in the name of “fighting global warming,” while China and India inflict the worst environmental damage on the planet?
Prove these statements wrong: There is no worker on the planet more capable than an American. There is no nation of people more innovative than the United States. There is nothing that Americans import from other nations that Americans can’t discover, create, grow, or produce on their own. There is no country on the planet with more educational infrastructure than the United States. There is no country on the planet with a greater incentive to defend its way of life.
I believe that Establishment politicians and multinational investment firms sold us a bill of goods when they told us that “free trade” deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, would provide American households greater prosperity. I believe that those politicians and Wall Street investors lied when they told us that the United States would become a “service economy” and that blue-collar workers would find personal fulfillment as customer service representatives, real estate agents, telephone operators, data technicians, and software coders.
I believe that politicians and Big Ag corporations lie when they insist that only illegal aliens are willing to sweat in farm fields. I believe that politicians who ignore federal law by establishing “sanctuary cities” and NGOs that aid and abet human smuggling into the United States lie when they say that some jobs are “too dirty” for Americans to take. I believe Establishment politicians and Wall Street titans have spent fifty years lying to the American people about the kinds of jobs that Americans should do.
The economy of the United States did not surpass that of the United Kingdom until the third year of WWI in 1916. While the U.K. had been the engine for the global economy for two centuries, America held an inimitable distinction: No other country in the world had maintained higher rates of both intra- and inter-generational mobility. The American Experiment created an ideal environment for innovation, hard work, investment, and private ownership. Individual workers advanced up the economic ladder during their own lifetimes, and their children and grandchildren ascended even farther. In a few generations, farmers became tradesmen who became merchants who became bankers, lawyers, ministers, and politicians. Respect for private property and a rejection of European social castes made America a land of opportunity.
Since the creation of the Federal Reserve in a rigged Christmas vote in 1913, the American system has been upended. Bankers created a monopoly for themselves to manipulate the value of the American dollar. They, in turn, set the monetary system down a path toward inevitable decoupling from the gold standard. Dollar-printing (and government spending) decreased the value of personal savings and artificially juiced the currency-denominated value of homes, stocks, and other assets — effectively transferring wealth from the poorest Americans to the wealthiest.
As inflation steadily kicked in, central bankers and corporation-controlled politicians looked for ways to limit the rising costs of American goods. They artificially increased demand for the dollar by linking it to oil revenues, offshored American manufacturing to low-wage or slave-wage foreign nations, decreased the quality of finished products, and replaced small businesses with a handful of multinational corporate monopolies. Each of these “band-aids” has preserved Wall Street’s internal mechanisms for generating profits, while destroying the engine of American ingenuity and the physical infrastructure of American industry, manufacturing, and real economic growth.
The end result has been that — in charts and graphs — America has appeared to maintain an advanced economy that has consistently grown through the decades, even though its industrial towns have collapsed into rusty graveyards. If you separate the economy of the United States into two separate lines on a graph — one for Main Street businesses across the country and one for multinational businesses running Wall Street — it becomes obvious that small American businesses have had no growth (or negative growth) for decades. While the costs of their raw materials, employees, government regulations, and taxes have continued to rise, their profits have dwindled.
The engine of American growth in the real economy has been sputtering and dying, while artificially inflated valuations of Wall Street assets have been disguising America’s economic infirmity. Wall Street has become the Potemkin economy hiding America’s loss of industrial strength. This is no way for a superpower to endure. The United States cannot survive if it is dependent on communist China for chemicals, medicines, circuit boards, electrical components, clothing, machinery, and furniture.
The United States and the European Union are the two largest Western economies of the 21st century. Over the past two decades, however, their economic trajectories have diverged significantly.This line chart below, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, tracks the gross domestic product (GDP) of the EU and U.S. economies from 2006 to 2026 using the latest figures available from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s World Economic Outlook. Figures for 2026 are forecasts.
The Early Rise and Fall of the EU
The 15-member European Union was established in 1993 from precursor organizations such as the European Communities. In 2004, 10 new member states joined, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. Aided by the addition of these new member states, along with strong British and German economies, the EU s total GDP reached $19.3 trillion in 2008. This represented 131% of the U.S. economy that year, which stood at $14.8 trillion. The euro also reached an all-time high in June 2008 at roughly $1.55. The table below shows the size of the EU economy relative to the U.S. economy from 2006 to 2026.
The global financial crisis and Great Recession changed the European Union’s fortunes.
The newly expanded bloc faced severe challenges as several member-state governments struggled to service their debts or rein in large structural deficits. These countries included eurozone members Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. Through a combination of multilateral bailouts and austerity measures, the EU weathered the crisis. However, in the years that followed, the 28-member bloc s aggregate GDP contracted, and the $18.3 trillion U.S. economy surpassed it in 2015. Part of the decline in dollar-denominated GDP also reflected changes in exchange rates as the euro weakened against the U.S. dollar.
Brexit and the Years of Decline
Further challenges followed. In a June 2016 referendum, British voters narrowly chose to make the United Kingdom the first country to withdraw from the European Union. The Brexit process culminated in the UK s formal withdrawal in January 2020. Losing the UK dealt another blow to the EU’s aggregate economy. Although the country had never joined the eurozone, it was the EU ]’s second-largest member economy. Combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit helped push the bloc’s GDP down to $15.5 trillion in 2020, roughly where it had stood a decade earlier.
A
s the UK economy has struggled through much of the 2020s, some in London have begun to float the possibility of rejoining the EU. Other European countries, including Albania and Montenegro, remain potential future entrants to the bloc.
The Post-Pandemic Divergence
Since the pandemic, the U.S. and European Union have followed very different trajectories. Despite inflation and high interest rates, the U.S. economy rebounded strongly from COVID and is forecast to reach $32.4 trillion in 2026. Meanwhile, the EU has faced a combination of rising Chinese industrial competition and an energy crisis stemming from Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. With economic heavyweight Germany facing protracted stagnation, the EU s GDP is forecast to reach $23 trillion in 2026.
That leaves the EU economy at just 71% the size of the U.S. economy, a sharp reversal from its position in 2008. Exchange rates account for part of the shift, but weaker growth and a series of economic shocks have also contributed to the widening gap.
Reading excerpts from Anthony Fauci’s ill-advised diary, saved on government servers, it’s clear to me above all that he’s a money-grubbing, narcissistic liar.Fauci helped fund the Wuhan Level 4 Virology Lab, knowing full well that the lab was tinkering with bat viruses. And when the Chinese Communist lab loosed COVID-19 upon the world, wee Tony felt two overwhelming urges: the immediate urge to cover his butt, and a burning and probably lifelong desire for the little rat to finally become a big cheese.
So Fauci lied about the virus’s origins, and pressured other spineless scientists to agree that the “novel,” i.e., never before seen, virus came from some Wuhan local enjoying bat soup or a pangolin hero, and not the obvious source, a nearby Fauci-funded virology lab. To believe that, you’d have to be a Democrat, one of their media handmaidens, or a complete moron, but I repeat myself.After all, those folks are all fond of fairy tales, telling us it’s fine for men to beat up female athletes, Muslims were instrumental in founding America, ObamaCare lets you keep your doctor and your plan, and Joe Biden’s Stage 4 prostate cancer was only recently discovered.
Having dodged all accountability for helping create COVID-19, Fauci then set about becoming, in his own words, “one of the most recognizable persons in the world.” Napoleon much, Tony?In this he was successful, making stuff up left and right, changing the common meaning of words, and becoming fabulously wealthy in the process. Estimates are that while millions were dying from COVID, 7-8 million dollars somehow found their way into Tony’s pocket. Who says crime doesn’t pay?
Fauci first stated – correctly — that masks wouldn’t prevent the spread of an airborne virus. Then he backtracked, saying that it was a necessary white lie, so the rubes wouldn’t cause a mask shortage for health professionals. Now, masks became absolutely necessary for everyone. In fact, two masks were better than one. As a dentist for forty-three years, I was outraged by Fauci’s mask theater, knowing that the paper masks I wore daily had pores big enough for any virus to get through, N-95 masks (which allow 5% of small particles like viruses to go through) made it hard for me to breathe, and only a moron would walk around wearing two masks.
Fauci then made up the six-foot “social distancing” and “no handshake” rules and again, a sneeze can send saliva twenty-eight feet or so, and the Wuhan Flu was acquired by breathing viral aerosols, not skin-to-skin contact. Feeling his power and fame growing, Fauci then got serious about running things. He and his “public health” pals shut down the country and then, with the avid support of Democrats frothing at the mouth to take down President Trump, crashed the economy and arbitrarily determined winners and losers.
Winners were government workers who got paid whether they worked or not; big box stores (I painted and landscaped my entire new home during the pandemic); rubber glove and medical mask producers; teachers unions whose members were paid for (not) remotely learning, liquor stores; the mostly peaceful and mask-exempt rioters of BLM, and the despicable fake-news media, loudly trumpeting body counts and blaming it all on Trump. And all the while, rivers of sweet, sweet moolah flowed into Dr. and Mrs. Fauci’s bank accounts.
Losers were the poor nursing home patients in states where the likes of “Handy Andy” Cuomo forced such facilities to accept patients regardless of COVID status, small business owners, movie theaters, museums, music venues, churches, synagogues, and mosques, folks who were denied routine medical and dental care and later paid the price, people suffering from anxiety who became full-fledged hypochondriacs and, after manually disinfecting their groceries, lit St. Fauci votive candles; and most of all, kids.
During the pandemic, the smallest and most vulnerable among us were denied proper education, normal social development, and even being out in the great outdoors. All this unnecessary and inestimable damage to our children — for a disease which killed Americans who were, on average, seventy-eight years old and had multiple comorbidities! St. Fauci wasn’t done, though. He forced a vaccine on Americans that failed to prevent either catching COVID or transmitting it — by definition, a failed vaccine — but did cause countless deaths and severe illnesses, countless because no one in the public-health hierarchy was much interested in counting them or informing the public. As a health professional, I was one of the first people (double) vaccinated, before coming down with COVID. Twice.
Did my vaccinations lessen the severity of my disease? Totally conjectural, something impossible to prove since the virus was constantly mutating and is currently just another flu bug. And despite mounting perhaps the worst pandemic response in recorded history, Little Lord Fauci somehow found time to chat up known intellectuals Barbara Streisand and Julia Roberts, have “friendship-building” dinners with so-called journalists Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, and attend a pro baseball game with two pals when no one else was allowed admittance, a game where he both took his mask off to talk to his friends and threw possibly the lamest first pitch in major league baseball history, almost as short and crooked as Fauci himself.
It must have been wonderful for Tony, watching his stature, er… social stature, and net worth grow even as millions of lives were lost, ruined, or damaged. But, sadly, the party’s now over. Anyone with eyes to see now realizes what an evil, selfish, and undoubtedly criminal man Anthony Fauci is. Whoever ran old, senile Joe Biden — Jill? The Chicoms? — certainly agreed with my assessment. They gave Fauci a blanket pardon for any and all crimes he committed during his reign of error. So, who will judge Anthony Fauci for his crimes against humanity?Democrats? Republican politicians? The courts? No, nothing’s going to happen to the incredibly wealthy and still quite popular Anthony Fauci, once the most recognizable name in the world. The Swamp protects its own.
Now, I’m seventy-three, and with multiple comorbidities, I can see the finish line. A deeply flawed man, I just hope that when it comes to my final judgment, the good I did in life outweighs the bad.By this coming Christmas, Anthony Fauci will be eighty-six. And if, like me, you’re outraged at all the damage done by a pencil-pushing bureaucrat who never even treated patients and became fabulously wealthy and popular doing it, relax. Because poor little Tony Fauci surely has tremors, night sweats, and insomnia, pondering his final judgment.
Caroline Sunshine went on CNN’s Newsnight this week and said the quiet part out loud about Dr. Fauci, and as you can imagine, the panel was none too pleased about it. The former Trump 2024 campaign press aide told her fellow panelists that Fauci is a textbook sociopath. “Forget about prosecuting him,” Sunshine said on CNN’s Newsnight. “The guy should be in a mental institution. He’s a textbook sociopath.” Naturally, the room fell apart.
Podcast host Leigh McGowan could only manage a stunned “What?” Sunshine pressed forward anyway, and laid out her diagnosis in clinical terms. “DSM-5 level sociopath who was running our pandemic response, low empathy, ability to inflict pain on innocents, narcissism,” she said. “Are you suggesting that he should be in a mental institution for having an ego?” host Abby Phillip asked, downplaying the charge as something that would describe just about everyone in Washington. The whole misery loves company thing.
But Sunshine’s point had nothing to do with ego. Fauci kept a diary through the darkest stretch of the pandemic, and he filled it with something other than grief for the country he was supposedly serving. “He writes in his diary at the height of the pandemic, when Americans aren’t allowed to see grandma dying of COVID, what is Anthony Fauci writing about? ‘The media is so hot for me.’ ‘I’ve had so many articles written about me.’”
Sarah Matthews, Trump’s former deputy press secretary, jumped to Fauci’s defense and reminded the table that she actually worked with him at the White House. “There is one person at this table who worked with Dr. Fauci,” Matthews said. “I was Trump’s deputy press secretary during COVID.” She admitted it was “very frustrating” watching Fauci land magazine covers and TV hits criticizing the administration’s COVID response, but she chalked it up to a novel virus and a government improvising in real time.
Sunshine was not buying the excuse. “You couldn’t keep him off TV,” she said. “You were in the press office. You would know.” Even Phillip could not resist a jab of her own, suggesting Fauci might have been drinking his own Kool-Aid. Sunshine turned that line right back on the panel. “You all in the media, you were in love with him,” she said. “You were in love with a narcissist. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you guys.”
Here’s the thing: None of what Sunshine said is wrong. We know what Fauci’s diary entries say. They aren’t the private notes of a public health official managing a national crisis with the good of the nation in mind. They’re more like the confessions of a man drunk on his own celebrity. This guy tracked his magazine covers. He counted his headlines. He measured his own importance in press clips while hospitals kept grieving families away from relatives dying of COVID-19. He even detailed his efforts to profit from the pandemic with cash awards.
Those entries also undercut the image Fauci spent years building. He cared more about protecting his own reputation than telling Americans the truth, including about where the virus came from in the first place. Fauci spent years treating the lab leak theory as a fringe conspiracy, only to watch his credibility collapse once his own communications and diary entries surfaced. Sunshine said an uncomfortable truth, and the CNN panel could not handle hearing it out loud. That reaction tells you everything about how deep the media’s investment in protecting him still runs.
President Donald Trump’s political stature is so poor right now that he has squandered the Republican Party’s advantage on two major issues that almost always favor the GOP: the economy and national security. A Reuters-Ipsos poll this week showed Democrats and Republicans virtually tied on “war, foreign conflicts and terrorism.” The GOP led on that issue by 11 points after the 2024 election. Today, 37% of US adults say Democrats have a better approach, compared to 36% who say the GOP does.
Fox News polling a couple weeks back showed something very similar: On national security, 50% of registered voters preferred the GOP, to 48% who preferred the Democratic Party. That’s compared to a 12-point edge for Republicans in January, before the Iran war. Both recent findings are within the margin of error. But the numbers even being that close is basically unheard of. Fox polling has regularly tested how registered voters compare the two parties on terrorism and national security. Until the Iran war, Democrats had never even been within double-digits of the Republican Party on either issue.
Republicans have also led consistently on national security in Gallup polling. Democrats only nosed ahead on that issue once in the 21st century: in 2007. Gallup’s data on which party is better on “international terrorism and military threats” has been even more lopsided in the GOP’s favor. Across 22 polls conducted since a year after 9/11, Democrats have led on that issue only once — again, in 2007 — and most of the time Republicans led by double-digits. And then there’s the economy.
The most recent Fox survey showed Democrats leading on that issue by nine points, 54%-45%. That was the biggest Democratic advantage since 2006, when they led by 20 points. And when they took a lead on the economy back in April, it marked the first time they were ahead since 2010, shortly after the 2008 financial crisis that began during the George W. Bush administration. CNN polling back in May showed a closer split between the two parties on the economy, with 35% of adults preferring Democrats, compared to 33% who preferred the GOP. The poll previously asked people to choose between congressional Republicans and congressional Democrats. The last time Republicans didn’t lead on that question was 2009.
The numbers on both fronts seem to illustrate that Trump greatly miscalculated the fallout from launching the Iran war — as well as other controversial policies like his global tariffs. By launching the tariffs, he effectively took ownership of whatever became of the economic picture. Then he compounded negative public sentiment by basically shrugging off any responsibility to address Americans’ inflation concerns. Now he’s contending with a still-stagnant economic picture, with the economy shedding 23,000 jobs in July. Americans don’t love Democrats; in fact, the blue side remains pretty unpopular in polls. So the fact that they’ve apparently taken a lead on the economy really says something.
And the national security numbers might be even more striking — because Democrats hardly ever even compete with Republicans on the topic. Just as education and health care almost always favor Democrats, national security and defending the homeland are almost always signature GOP issues, and lopsidedly so. That remained true even when Bush launched wars in the Middle East that gradually became pretty unpopular. Trump, though, seems to have botched the Iran war so badly that Americans suddenly see Democrats on equal footing with the GOP — in terms of issues on the GOP’s own turf.
“We have already had cases where AI, assigned a task, decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was to erase the corporations’ customer records ..”
I have always assured readers that in the anti-human digital age, whoever controls the data base controls the “truth,” which will be, and already is, an orchestration serving elite agendas.
Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, an online open encyclopedia that serves to demonize those who speak outside of the official narratives, agrees with me. Sanger in an interview last Friday with the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung said that Wikipedia’s lack of an adequate governance structure allowed “specific ideological viewpoints” to shape its content, turning the online encyclopedia into a “globalist, academic, secular and progressive” consensus.
“Wikipedia was recognized early on as an important propaganda organ.” Jews use it to demonize Israel’s critics, and Sanger reports “what we know as fact, based on all sorts of evidence, is that the CIA has already edited Wikipedia.” “Wikipedia is already compromised. That’s clear,” Sanger admitted. He went on to say the ideological bias embedded in Wikipedia is now being amplified because large language models increasingly rely on its content as a reference source when answering factual queries.
The digital revolution and its offshoot artificial intelligence have created the perfect Orwellian memory hole. I and numerous others have documented books and articles with URLs to online sources only to experience that within a few days of publication the sources no longer exist. This could not happen in print and analogue days. There were huge numbers of sources for every source reference in libraries, newspaper morgues, and private collections. It was impossible to erase reference sources.
The digital revolution rests on the Internet which developed as an open system. This means it can never be secure. Already security concerns are everywhere. The day has already passed that a username and a password sufficed. Now you have to have a code sent by text or email. Then a passkey, and sometimes also voice and face recognition, both of which AI can produce to impersonate you. Scammers progress faster than security, and once quantum computers appear encryption is useless.
The reality with with which we are faced is that information no longer exists in multiple print form. Information no longer exists in material form. It exists somewhere electronically in the cloud. One electromagnetic force can wipe it out, and malefactors and mistakes can erase it.
We have already had cases where AI, assigned a task, decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was to erase the corporations’ customer records. Imagine if that is your bank. What happens to your access to your accounts? Can you pay your bills? Is your automobile insurance cancelled? Do you face foreclosure on your mortgage? Possibly businesses are creating backup systems of some kind, but as they also are digital they too will fail.
The digital revolution was the creation of people devoid of capability to imagine unintended consequences. They are building for us a house of cards. When it collapses, so will organized society. It is merely a matter of time.
Slowly she builds her performance outrage, methodically working through the talking points afore her. Full dramatic acting on display. Lips pursed, bladed eyebrows angled, contempt tone triggered and the intent obvious.
NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya appears on CBS Face the Nation to discuss Mexican poop lettuce, Mexico poop peppers, Illegal Alien measles spread and the weaponized information from health ‘administrators’ around the COVID-19 vaccine. Obviously, with Media Patron Saint Anthony Fauci facing scrutiny, Margaret Brennan defends Fauci as she would if the Lightbringer, Chicago Jesus was disrespected. Combative video and Transcript below:
[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by the Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Good morning to you, doctor.
NIH DIRECTOR DR. JAY BHATTACHARYA: Good morning.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we should mention you are also helping to run the CDC until the new director is sworn in as well.
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Until next Wednesday, yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Until next Wednesday. So let me ask you about a number of things that I think people at home are worried about, particularly around the food supply. The cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce from Mexico is now in 15 states. There were two deaths this week due to it. Yesterday, USDA issued an alert for a range of products that may have salmonella, including meat and poultry. 27 states are affected by salmonella, possibly linked to jalapeños, but cilantro, red onion, avocado, also listed in the CDC notice. Albertsons, a grocery store, just recalled some items. There’s risk of salmonella in eggs in Texas, according to the CDC, and then you have the screwworm outbreak affecting beef. This is overwhelming for someone going into a grocery store right now. Why do they seem out of control?
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Well, the- the cyclospora outbreak is larger than in normal years. I mean, in normal years there actually is a- cyclospora cases. The- the two deaths that you mentioned, they happened in late July- late- late June, early July, before we identified this source. And so, folks that are listening, can rest assured, the CDC and the FDA are working hard to trace back exactly where these outbreaks are occurring from, intervening with the- the sort of suppliers to make sure that they don’t- and doing recalls to make sure that the disease doesn’t- the, you know, condition doesn’t spread. I mean, it’s tough. You go to grocery store, you buy lettuce, and you say, “Okay, can I buy the lettuce?”
Article III of the Constitution allows Congress to establish courts below the Supreme Court, which includes federal District and Circuit Courts. If Congress can establish them, it can abolish them. In 1801, in the waning days of John Adams’ presidency, Congress did just that and abolished the district and circuit courts of the District of Columbia.
These two courts display widespread intransigent partisanship and demonstrably poor scholarship, exemplified by this week’s ruling on the new White House construction. Given the difficulty of removing so many bad judges in these two courts by impeaching them, it’s time to repeat John Adams’ move: Abolish these courts. Cases that normally would be heard in them should be assigned to courts elsewhere. The case which most showcases the lunacy of the D.C. courts is National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States v. National Park Service, et al. As is often the case in poorly reasoned opinions, the author substitutes words for reason.
As you may know, the old East Wing of the White House which, among other things, contained underground security facilities (bunkers, bomb-shelters, and military and medical infrastructure), presidential offices and some minimal public meeting spaces, was torn down and construction begun on a replacement with a larger number of more modern offices and a ballroom to provide a larger, much-needed entertainment and meeting space, better security facilities, and protection against drone attacks. Up to now, rented tents and outdoor porta potty facilities have had to be utilized for state events, and the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Ball surely underscores the need for a safe venue for such things.
Except for the congressional appropriation for the upgraded secure facilities in this new wing, the remainder of the cost is being borne by private contributions to the National Park Service, which is administering these funds. But this is hate Trump city, and Alison Hoagland, a board member of the National Trust, said that she takes monthly walks past the White House and that the aesthetics of the new construction would cause her harm.
In the real world, monthly aesthetic harm to one person’s delicate sensibilities would not upend a needed improvement to the White House grounds, which are exempt by its terms from the National Historic Preservation Act (which establishes the Trust). The litigation has been long and involved back-and-forth court rulings between the district and circuit courts. The courts have now finally agreed the below-ground construction would not be halted, but this week ruled the above-ground work must be, even though that is a structural impossibility and a security (and aesthetic) nightmare.
The first question that every court must decide before proceeding further in any case is whether or not it even has jurisdiction to hear and decide the matter. The majority opinion doesn’t get to this until page 30 of its opinion, and then, for all its flowery verbosity, it got it wrong, just as the dissenting judge notes:
“…the district court had no jurisdiction because the Trust has no standing to stop construction at the White House. The ballroom is also likely within the President’s authority to make improvements to the Executive Residence at the White House. Finally, the balance of equities overwhelmingly favors the government. The district court elevated the aesthetic displeasure of a single passerby over the government’s security interests in the ballroom and the security risks of leaving an open construction site at the President’s home and office.”
In assessing the balance of equities between Ms. Hoagland’s claimed aesthetic harms and the needs of the White House, Judge Rao shows the Court “improperly glossed over, ignored or discounted the government’s evidence demonstrating the security harms from construction of the ballroom.” Nor could it, as Rao noted, “compensate for the slight aesthetic harm by resorting to hyperbole and its view of the legal merits. Every day the project is delayed increases the security risk according to declarations from senior military and Secret Service officials. Moreover, the creation of the above-ground ballroom “will alleviate security vulnerabilities that currently impact large events involving the President.”
As a practical matter, the underground and above-ground facilities cannot be separated out at this point. “The Secretary of the Army has further explained why the underground national security facilities cannot be adequately protected by the concrete slab and modest topping structure allowed by the district court’s injunction… The ballroom’s dimensions and structure are essential for security. According to the Secretary, “[t]o provide adequate subterranean protection without” the “height and mass” of the ballroom, “engineers would need to dig impractically deep.”
…The ballroom provides a critical “dual-layered system” of protection for the national security facilities, “comprising a sacrificial outer cover coupled with a hardened inner structural element.” …Corroborating the Secretary’s account, the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has similarly described how the “height and mass” of the ballroom “provide crucial, physical layers to shield” the national security facilities.
The height of the ballroom will also provide an “essential elevated platform to engage and neutralize aerial systems,” such as drones, that pose an increasingly serious threat to White House security. …There is no dispute that the Secretary’s declaration and the Army Corps memorandum are authentic, credible, and “go[] to the heart of the contested issue,” so it would be “inconsistent with this court’s own equitable obligations to pretend that [they] do[] not exist.”
David Friedberg: Starlink alone could be a trillion-dollar company
"Starlink alone could be generating on the order of $40 billion of revenue top line, with a huge amount of that flowing to free cash. That could be $30 billion in free cash flow within the year."
Elon Musk: “My mind often feels like a very wild storm. I have a fountain of ideas. I have more ideas than I can possibly execute, so I have no shortage of ideas.
Innovation is not the problem, execution is the problem. I’ve got an entire design for an electric supersonic… pic.twitter.com/769gcCsphh
Iran’s IRGC is holding the line, reiterating that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen to international shipping only after the United States accepts all of its conditions, which we outlined previously. Also, on Saturday Iran’s army spokesman Amir Akraminia stated that Iran’s new protocols in the Strait of Hormuz are “irreversible” and shall not be thwarted by the US. “The United States has no choice but to accept the existing situation; otherwise, it will incur costs far greater than those it has faced in the past,” Akraminia said.
On Sunday, a fresh report in The Wall Street Journal states the obvious – that President Trump has fewer and fewer options and is being squeezed, with any opportunity to declare ‘victory’ and make swift exit more elusive than ever, given Washington would have to make huge compromises, including lifting sanctions and paying war compensation to Tehran. Nearly six months ago when the war started, many non-interventionist critics accurately predicted the quagmire and catch-22 the US now finds itself in.
“For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said,” WSJ writes.
“But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things,” the report adds.
In a parallel vein to this scaled-back, lower grade conflict, President Trump has freshly told Axios in a brief interview that “We are low keying it” in the Persian Gulf. This comes after a week ago he called off ‘planned’ ‘harder’ attacks on Iran, which may have been just a bluff all along. Tehran didn’t blink, and it continues to press for maximal demands – as if to put ‘maximum pressure’ right back on Washington.
“We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” Trump claimed. According to more from Axios:
He stressed that Iran “is in very bad shape” economically and has no money to pay its troops. The U.S. naval blockade has exacerbated the Iranian regime’s economic crisis, Trump said. At the same time, Trump said that with oil down to slightly over $75 a barrel, U.S. consumers are feeling less pain from the war. Ironically, this is simply a return to administration talking points which defended the early days and weeks of a war that officials constantly touted would be ‘swift’ and limited.
The US hope was that Iran and its economy would just collapse from within, the masses would take to the streets, and the government of the Ayatollah would be overthrown. This has proven delusional time and again.
Instead, what we see happening is Washington being forced to move its bases back from front line areas in the Gulf, and officials including Trump himself constantly retreating from stated goals, objectives, and red lines. This is on display once again in the Sunday Axios interview:
Axios acknowledges that the new list of Iranian demands have gone from being the prerequisite for a nuclear deal to a prerequisite to opening the Strait. Trump now says the US is “low keying it” and focusing on economic pressure. In other words: the Strait will not be opening. https://t.co/AweQabOB8Wpic.twitter.com/3TMsxXcfh7
A video of Mojtaba Khamenei that was earlier released by the mass media had been shot before he became Iran’s Supreme leader, but he is now in good health and avoids appearing in public due to security considerations, an Iranian source told TASS. “This is an old video. It was made before he became [Supreme] leader,” he said, adding that his health condition is now quite good. “He is in good health and the only reason why he is not seen in public is security reasons,” he stressed.
Earlier, the Iranian Mehr agency released a video featuring Mojtaba Khamenei talking to a group of people who are listening to him attentively. Neither the date nor the venue of the event were indicated. Mojtaba Khamenei became Iran’s Supreme leader after his father, Ali Khamenei, was killed in a missile attack after the United States and Israel’s aggression against Iran.
Extreme leftists and white, female, overeducated, urban communists have one primary prism: how Obama-ish is their candidate? Both El-Sayed and Barack Obama are supported by the Muslim Brotherhood directly. Both El-Sayed and Barack Obama campaigned for Senate in the mid-term election (BO ’06, ES ’26), and both Barack Obama and El-Sayed planned to run for higher office in 2nd year of their freshman term as senator.
The media now begin their fawning endeavor as the Muslim Brotherhood backed Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed tries to moderate himself in the image of Barack Hussein Obama. I find it a little revealing that El-Sayed’s wife is a doctor who refuses to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients (cash only), as El-Sayed campaigns on Medicare for all. Of course, don’t look for the media to point this out during questioning. Notice also the Middle East nations that El-Sayed criticizes (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan) are the Mid-East nations who have pushed back or banned the Muslim Brotherhood. This is very revealing for those who walk the political deep weeds. By the way, he’s a paper doctor; a Phd, not an MD. WATCH:
[Transcript] – KRISTEN WELKER: And joining me now is Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. Dr. El-Sayed, welcome to Meet the Press.
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Thanks for having me.
KRISTEN WELKER: Thank you so much for being here and congratulations. Let’s talk about your victory this week. You narrowly defeated Congresswoman Haley Stevens. And when you actually add up all of the votes, the vote totals that went to Stevens and Mallory McMorrow, a majority of voters actually ended up voting for candidates who are more moderate than you. So how do you win over those voters who voted for someone else?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, thank you, Kristen. Really, we’re just grateful for everybody who participated. And the overwhelming recognition of the vote tallies is that 500,000 more Democrats voted than did Republicans in that election. And if that happens, we are going to win in a landslide. Now I know that we had it out with a very tough primary. There were a lot of issues that were discussed and differences that were identified and fixated on. But I will tell you this, that all of us agree that our differences are far smaller than what we agree on.
And what we agree on is that Donald Trump has been an existential threat to our democracy. He is costing us jobs. He is costing us more at almost every aspect of our lives, whether it’s our gas, our groceries, or our health care, and that Mike Rogers is going to be nothing more than a rubber stamp on Donald Trump’s disastrous economic and foreign policies. And so this is an opportunity for us to come together to mend fences, to build together the coalition that is going to defeat Mike Rogers in November and defeat Trumpism over the next two years.
KRISTEN WELKER: Well, let me ask you about some news that we’re learning this morning. Local outlets reporting that you spoke to former President Barack Obama on the phone. I know you’re not going to give me every detail of the call. But what was the crux of his message to you, Dr. El-Sayed?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, Kristen, you’re right. I like to keep private conversations private. But it was a really warm and inspiring conversation. I’ve got to be honest with you. I never saw myself ever able to run for public office. I literally told former President Bill Clinton that at my college graduation, in which I was the senior speaker and he was the main speaker. And I then watched the next year Barack Hussein Obama run for and win the presidency. I watched him serve with a level of class, a level of elegance that we could only pine for now. So I really enjoyed the conversation. I was grateful for his advice. It was very warm and very inviting. And I know that he knows the critical role that Michigan is going to play in holding Trump accountable, in winning back the Senate, and in building forward the future that we need.
KRISTEN WELKER: Is he going to campaign with you, Dr. El-Sayed?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Look, I really hope so. And it was a really good conversation about what we need to do to be able to win. And obviously, this is somebody who knows a lot about winning Michigan.
KRISTEN WELKER: And just to be clear, do you anticipate he’ll show up on the campaign trail with you? Is that one of the broad topics you all discussed?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Look, we talked a lot about what it’ll take to win. Obviously, his presence here in Michigan would mean so much to the coalition that helped elect him. So I hope that we get to campaign together.
Clean up in aisle 4! Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed just made a mess in an interview with Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press, and let’s just say his handlers have some fixing to do. One of El-Sayed’s signature issues is “Medicare for All.” It’s an issue that El-Sayed loves to mention but doesn’t like to talk about in detail. One reason is that it’s not good for sound bites. Once you get into the details of Medicare, it gets complex, bureaucratic, and boring. None of those things work well in media interviews. But there are other reasons he’d rather not talk at length about his health coverage ideas, and it became clearer when Welker pressed him on it.
Calling him “Doctor,” Welker told El-Sayed that everyday Americans worry that to make Medicare universal would mean tax hikes for everyone, not just the rich. El-Sayed dismissively tried to give Welker a quick sound bite in the hope she’d move on when he said, “As I’ve said across this campaign, I am for taxing billionaires their wealth.” But Welker wasn’t done. She said, “What about people who make less than a billion and less than a million dollars?” El-Sayed responded:
“So, for the average person, when you look at your W2, if you’re an employee who gets paid every two weeks or four weeks, after you pay your taxes, the next biggest check that comes off the top of your pay stub is to your health insurance company. So, imagine instead of paying that to your health insurance company, whose CEO makes $20 million a year, instead you paid a little bit more in taxes for healthcare that you wouldn’t lose if you lost your job or turned 26 or got married or got divorced.
I think all of us would be a lot more interested in that kind of a system if we knew that our healthcare would be free at the point of care and would be free without having to worry about losing it, in general.So, there’s an opportunity here, I think, to trade what we give to a big corporation, who gets to decide who we get to see and who we don’t, for a little bit more paid into FICA. And I think that’s a trade that’s worth making. I think the broader public understands that that’s a trade worth making considering how many people are holding medical debt, a third of all Michigan households right now.”
Welker reinforced her earlier point, saying, “Just to be very clear, you’re describing this trade-off. You are effectively acknowledging that people making less than a million dollars could see their taxes go up. I just want to be very clear.” His non-answers to her questions were a de facto confirmation of Welker’s suspicions. What El-Sayed said pretty clearly was to trust the government more than your insurance company, and that yes, your taxes will go up under his plan.
Something that rarely comes up when “Medicare for All” is discussed is what Medicare does not cover. Anyone who’s turned 65 and applied for Medicare knows that Medicare is hardly an apples-to-apples replacement for the kind of health insurance you may have gotten through your employer.
Medicare does not automatically include eye care, dental care, and certain prescription coverage. If retirees pay more, and most do, they can enroll in a Part C or Medicare Advantage plan that covers more. But even there, Medicare Advantage is only one option and may not be as good as your existing health insurance. Some opt not to go with Medicare Advantage, instead going with a more expensive Medigap or another alternative plan that they feel is closer to what they’re used to.
As for El-Sayed’s comments that by paying the government more for your Medicare, you’re not paying some private health insurance company, that’s often not true at all. Medicare Advantage plans and other supplemental plans are usually administered by private health insurance companies, and so you likely still would be lining the coffers of some private insurance company. What all of this means is that while El-Sayed wants Americans to think they’re getting health insurance comparable to what they’ve had, and all they need to do is pay the government more in the form of higher taxes, that’s likely not what it would look like in practice.
Welker also asked him about his BFF, Hasan Piker, who’s been right at his side throughout this campaign. Walking a political tightrope, El-Sayed sought to distance himself from Piker’s words but not from the pathetic Piker himself.
BREAKING: An Abdul El-Sayed supporter said voters are “stupid” and the best way to win is to hide the truth.
Abdul El-Sayed and Hasan Piker nodded in agreement.
During that same interview with Welker, El-Sayed distanced himself from Piker’s comments when he said that “America deserved 9/11.” When Welker asked the senatorial candidate for comment, he told her that Piker’s comments were “dumb.”
Of course, it was a dumb statement and of course I think Hasan himself would say that was a dumb statement. He disavowed it. So yes, America didn’t deserve 9/11, but you know, to sit here and play gotcha politics with a dumb thing somebody said out of context that they disavowed themselves — to say, ‘Oh well, what does that mean about what you think?’ I want to be held accountable for what I say and what I do, rather than this idea that we’re so stuck in cancel culture that all of us agreed was a bad idea back in 2020, but we seem to want to bring back, El-Sayed said. The leftist news site Politico had a slightly different take on El-Sayed’s comments:
El-Sayed’s comments are a stark difference from his interview with POLITICO earlier this year in which he declined to denounce Piker’s views in what he called a “gotcha game.””I’m not here to disavow people’s views,” El-Sayed said at the time. “This whole gotcha game, platform policing, cancel culture — I thought we were over it.”The Napoleonesque Senate candidate would not say one way or the other whether he’d continue to campaign with Piker, trying like the devil to get Welker to change the subject, saying that it doesn’t matter who he campaigns with. He said he’s “a lot more concerned about who I’m campaigning to.”
NBC: Hasan Piker has said "America deserved 9/11," do you plan to continue to campaign with him?
EL-SAYED: "I'm less concerned now with who I'm campaigning with…"
Politico wasn’t buying it, reporting that “El-Sayed’s embrace of Piker, who he said he believes is ‘critical’ for Democrats to embrace, has drawn criticism — from Republicans and Democrats alike.” On yet another front, former first lady “Dr. Jill Biden” once had a press secretary named Michael LaRosa. On Aug. 8, LaRosa bucked his party and publicly endorsed Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) in his bid to become Michigan’s next senator.
While it’s rare for an embedded Democrat operative to so publicly break ranks like this, LaRosa made it crystal clear on the X platform why he was backing Rogers: “I won’t defend or support anyone who is too cowardly to stand up to extremists who think the mother of my best friend, who jumped from 95 stories because the alternative was worse, deserved what happened to her…. Her only crime was showing up to work that morning.”
I refused to defend or support anyone with an SS Totenkampf tattoo, simply because they had a "D" next to their name.
I won't defend or support anyone who is too cowardly to stand up to extremists who think the mother of my best friend, who jumped from 95 stories because the… https://t.co/hC6s7W7PfK
All this adds up to a bad day on at least one Sunday show for the upstart candidate who is starting to look like the Michigan version of Graham Platner without the Nazi tattoo, the sexting, and all the other sex stuff. Judging him by the company he keeps, his refusal to distance himself from some seriously anti-American actors, and his clunky responses to straightforward questions, it’s clear that he’s got tougher days ahead. The truth is that the Sunday shows are very kind to Democrats. If he couldn’t hit a figurative home run in his first interview with Welker since winning his primary race, he’s got some weaknesses and vulnerabilities that the Rogers campaign and Republicans can exploit more fully in the coming months.
Hasan Piker, a close ally of Abdul El-Sayed, is calling for “Marxist-Leninist” punishment for those who criticize Michigan’s Democratic senatorial candidate. As radicals and anti-Semites like Piker flood the Democratic Party, establishment figures are struggling to justify their alliance with extremist candidates. Ironically, Democrats are now fulfilling the false narrative that they used against President Donald Trump after the Charlottesville protests. They are maintaining that there are “many fine people” in the DSA despite their seeking to destroy our constitutional system, open our borders, defund the police, and embrace virtual anarchy.
Now, some of these fine people are calling for moderates to be purged as radicals take over the Democratic Party. In 2017, the media manufactured a controversy by suggesting that Trump had praised neo-Nazis and Klansmen in 2017 as “fine people” in Charlottesville. It was demonstrably false, but became the accepted truth in the media. In reality, Trump condemned the neo-Nazis, and the statement about “fine people on both sides” was in reference to the people on both sides of the debate over the removal of historic statues.
That narrative took on an added hypocrisy when some of the loudest voices later endorsed a candidate with an actual Nazi tattoo who allegedly assaulted women, mocked wounded veterans, and praised terrorists. However, he promised to deliver Maine and bring figures like Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren back to power.
Anti-Semites and communists are not “fine” additions to any party. Hasan Piker is not a “fine person” in any universe. He has said that the United States deserved the terrorist attacks on 9-11 and prominently displays a picture of the collapsing Twin Towers. He has downplayed the murders and rapes of innocent Israelis on Oct. 7th and called one Jewish man who challenged him a “bloodthirsty, violent pig dog.” Figures like Harris and Buttigieg brush off El-Sayed’s allies, including Mohammad Baqer Qazwini, a prominent Muslim cleric who gave a sermon that called for followers to vote for El-Sayed while also calling upon them to pray for the death of President Donald Trump and to celebrate the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Then there is the Democratic House candidate in New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a prison abolitionist who boasted how she wiped her hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin. Chevalier and other DSA candidates are being welcomed in the Democratic Party despite anti-American views and a DSA platform calling for the destruction of our constitutional system, including scrapping the Supreme Court, the presidency, and the Senate. Many are also overwhelmingly anti-Israel, with many, like Piker, displaying virulent anti-Semitism.
When asked about the extreme agenda of these candidates, Schumer and others repeat the mantra that they need to win in the upcoming elections. In other words, the DSA is opposed to the core institutions and values of this country, but it could be useful in returning them to power. What is interesting is that the establishment does not appear to care what these radicals represent for their party, but the radicals care deeply about what the establishment represents. This week, former DNC Vice-chair David Hogg told establishment figures that the “Big Tent” of his party is not big enough for them. He and other moderates have to go.
When asked about Democratic moderates, Hogg replied, “They don’t have the right values.” Piker has even grander plans for our post-constitutional republic, calling for mass arrests, demanding pledges from establishment figures to “arrest and prosecute every prominent member of the Trump administration” who engaged in what he views as corruption as well as “every ICE agent who committed crimes on the job.” Piker also wants to purge any Democrats who do not support El-Sayed, calling them “haters” who deserved to be punished:
“There are haters in our ranks. Notice how whenever someone comes out and says, ‘Yeah that’s actually a bad association,’ immediately it’s weaponized by the Republicans. You can’t be out here saying like, ‘Oh, I’m a centrist Democrat. And I think Abdul is a bridge too far.’ That must be punished.” Piker, who likes to parade around in a Mao jacket, seems to be longing for the good old days of party purges under Stalin and his contemporaries in the Comintern.
He notably accused critics of the sin of “factionalism.” Since the Jacobins of the French Revolution, factionalism has been the scourge of revolutionaries. In my book, Rage and the Republic, I discuss the difference between the American and French Revolutions. Where James Madison saw factions as a natural part of a democratic system, the Jacobins sought them as a traitorous and reactionary element. Madison saw compromise as the best solution to factions, while the Jacobins saw the guillotine as the final solution.
Piker is right out of that Jacobin tradition, calling moderate Democrats “Koch payroll ‘liberals’” and “irredeemable.” (Notably, the Jacobins also pushed for some of the same DSA demands such as a unicameral legislature). Of course, conservatives can show the same intolerance for RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), but there is an added menacing element to communists calling for mass expulsion or punishment of moderates from their party. It is chillingly familiar.
Mao regularly purged the Communist Party of those not following the party lines, declaring, “Serious offenders should be punished by law, and when they are Party members they should also be dealt with according to Party discipline.” Establishment figures continue to use the “Big Tent” narratives to brush off questions about the radical agenda and associations of these candidates. The only thing that they have in common is the desire for power. Once these candidates win, figures like Schumer will discover that this tent is not nearly as big as they think.
Almost since US President Donald Trump started his second and final term, the movement that brought him to power twice has been fracturing. Now there is a full break among Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters. Its essence is simple: There are those who continue to identify MAGA with Trump, and on the other side of a widening chasm, those who remain loyal to MAGA but believe that Trump has not. The rebels say Trump has betrayed the cause and want to save MAGA – and thus the US – from Trump.
There are no official structures yet to what the MAGA dissidents call their movement, but it does have a de facto leader – popular journalist and podcast host Tucker Carlson. It was at Tucker’s all-American place in Maine that the MAGA schism was made official. There, several key figures of the evolving MAGA-against-Trump group met, and in effect, raised the standard of rebellion. Not literally, but in the shape of an X post by former US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (with 5.4 million followers). It featured a carefully composed picture of a merry rebel crew, including, apart from herself, Joe Kent, former counterterrorism tsar under Trump, Representative Thomas Massie, a long-term conservative Trump opponent, and Carlson, sitting at the head of the table.
Within days after the post, Carlson released a video manifesto with the title “It’s Time to Save America” on his own Tucker Carlson Network social media channel (with 5.2 million subscribers on YouTube). Within one day, it had over a million views on YouTube alone. In a rhetorical master class for the podcast age, Carlson sketched the American present as a dead-end of extraordinary decadence and degradation, a loss of reality among the establishment, and “paralysis and looting.”
He also predicted that change is inevitable if Americans want to avoid the “end-of-everything,” either by nuclear war or uncontrolled AI. He warned that even preventing this apocalypse by timely political action could produce great violence, that is, a revolution. And finally, he presented his alternative to both the end of the world and wild upheaval in ten concise points. Ranging from “fairness” to “unity,” his ten points were more a clarion call for national renewal than a concrete policy outline, with aims general enough to form a broad consensus, as he acknowledged.
Much of his ten points read like MAGA 2.0, that is, without Trump, as observers noted. On issues such as physical and mental health, the need for the economy to make actually useful things instead of just surveillance tech, weapons of war, and financial gimmicks, the beauty of the American landscape and architecture in need of restoration, Carlson’s impassioned pleas echoed the conservatism that is one root of the MAGA phenomenon.
Ultimately, what will be more important is where things differ: One of Carlson’s points was about sovereignty, or as he defined it, being “free from outside influence.” It is this point that provides the key to all the others. The ten points are, in essence, a declaration of independence, not just from any outside influence, but from Israel and its powerful US lobby. Carlson directly named them as forming one of America’s worst problems. For starters, he did not simply attack a selfish upper class whose members behave as if they were kings, above the rules of law and ethics. He called it the “Epstein class,” with reference to the late convicted pedophile, alleged suicide victim, self-declared Rothschild representative, and close associate of alleged Israeli rapists and intelligence.
Carlson also correctly linked the Iran War – a “strategic disaster” worse than Vietnam, as another realistic American recently stated – to “bribery or threat or both by Israel.” Equally plausibly, he accused Israel of committing genocide – like Nazi Germany, he said – and protested against continuing US support. Finally, the activities of lobbies, with that of Israel not alone, but in the lead, “gives the lie to the idea of representative democracy,” according to Carlson, because where lobbyists make the decisions, the voters do not.
In short, Carlson made the point that America’s worst military defeat in living memory, its support for – and really, participation in – an ongoing genocide, and its loss of sovereignty and democracy are all due, either entirely or to a large extent, to the US establishment’s perverse and deeply unpatriotic relationship to Israel. Politically, this amounts to an arguably long overdue declaration of war against the Zionist state’s aggressive influence operations.
And the message has gotten through. Haaretz, Israel’s ‘liberal’ paper of record, rapidly dedicated a long opinion piece to Carlson, accusing him of – surprise, surprise – “anti-Semitism.” This is an absurd smear, but expected. Systematically misrepresenting criticism of Israel, a genocidal apartheid state, as hatred of Jews is an old, stale Zionist tactic. Carlson certainly isn’t naïve. Even in his ten points, he anticipated being called a “Nazi” and shrugged it off.
But Haaretz does get one thing right. For Carlson and his growing movement, “Israel and its American supporters also represent a central source of the [MAGA] movement’s betrayal [by Trump].” Or, put differently, Carlson represents an American conservatism that has the courage to identify, name, and attack America’s insane dependence on a tiny yet immensely subversive and violent rogue state.
There is, no doubt, much idealizing and even nostalgia in Carlson’s image of American history and the West. And those wishing to be woke about an arch-conservative will find rich pickings. But that is futile and dull, because it is not the point that matters. What matters is that US polls have consistently shown a great, unprecedented groundswell against Israel. A new book on Israel’s US lobby is about to come out and is making a massive splash. The tide is turning.
Fellow MAGA rebel Joe Kent let it slip that Tucker-for-president is an option. Third parties are a difficult proposition. Yet Haaretz for one is worried, and from a Zionist point of view, it should be. And that is very good news.
I have a dream that American farmers, drillers, miners, industrialists, and manufacturers produce everything that American consumers need. I have a dream that anything worth building is built in America, that any job worth doing is done in America, and that anything worth buying can be found and shipped within the United States.
Why did we allow ourselves to be convinced that Americans should make only a few select things and buy everything else from foreign markets? Why did we allow politicians and Wall Street investors to convince us that “free trade” requires slave labor from faraway lands? Why did we spend a century ensuring safer work environments and more dependable wages for our skilled tradesmen only to export those jobs to adversarial nations that care nothing about worker safety or providing above-subsistence standards of living? Why did we fight a Cold War in defense of freedom only to subsidize Chinese communism? Why do we regulate ourselves to death in the name of “fighting global warming,” while China and India inflict the worst environmental damage on the planet?
Prove these statements wrong: There is no worker on the planet more capable than an American. There is no nation of people more innovative than the United States. There is nothing that Americans import from other nations that Americans can’t discover, create, grow, or produce on their own. There is no country on the planet with more educational infrastructure than the United States. There is no country on the planet with a greater incentive to defend its way of life.
I believe that Establishment politicians and multinational investment firms sold us a bill of goods when they told us that “free trade” deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, would provide American households greater prosperity. I believe that those politicians and Wall Street investors lied when they told us that the United States would become a “service economy” and that blue-collar workers would find personal fulfillment as customer service representatives, real estate agents, telephone operators, data technicians, and software coders.
I believe that politicians and Big Ag corporations lie when they insist that only illegal aliens are willing to sweat in farm fields. I believe that politicians who ignore federal law by establishing “sanctuary cities” and NGOs that aid and abet human smuggling into the United States lie when they say that some jobs are “too dirty” for Americans to take. I believe Establishment politicians and Wall Street titans have spent fifty years lying to the American people about the kinds of jobs that Americans should do.
The economy of the United States did not surpass that of the United Kingdom until the third year of WWI in 1916. While the U.K. had been the engine for the global economy for two centuries, America held an inimitable distinction: No other country in the world had maintained higher rates of both intra- and inter-generational mobility. The American Experiment created an ideal environment for innovation, hard work, investment, and private ownership. Individual workers advanced up the economic ladder during their own lifetimes, and their children and grandchildren ascended even farther. In a few generations, farmers became tradesmen who became merchants who became bankers, lawyers, ministers, and politicians. Respect for private property and a rejection of European social castes made America a land of opportunity.
Since the creation of the Federal Reserve in a rigged Christmas vote in 1913, the American system has been upended. Bankers created a monopoly for themselves to manipulate the value of the American dollar. They, in turn, set the monetary system down a path toward inevitable decoupling from the gold standard. Dollar-printing (and government spending) decreased the value of personal savings and artificially juiced the currency-denominated value of homes, stocks, and other assets — effectively transferring wealth from the poorest Americans to the wealthiest.
As inflation steadily kicked in, central bankers and corporation-controlled politicians looked for ways to limit the rising costs of American goods. They artificially increased demand for the dollar by linking it to oil revenues, offshored American manufacturing to low-wage or slave-wage foreign nations, decreased the quality of finished products, and replaced small businesses with a handful of multinational corporate monopolies. Each of these “band-aids” has preserved Wall Street’s internal mechanisms for generating profits, while destroying the engine of American ingenuity and the physical infrastructure of American industry, manufacturing, and real economic growth.
The end result has been that — in charts and graphs — America has appeared to maintain an advanced economy that has consistently grown through the decades, even though its industrial towns have collapsed into rusty graveyards. If you separate the economy of the United States into two separate lines on a graph — one for Main Street businesses across the country and one for multinational businesses running Wall Street — it becomes obvious that small American businesses have had no growth (or negative growth) for decades. While the costs of their raw materials, employees, government regulations, and taxes have continued to rise, their profits have dwindled.
The engine of American growth in the real economy has been sputtering and dying, while artificially inflated valuations of Wall Street assets have been disguising America’s economic infirmity. Wall Street has become the Potemkin economy hiding America’s loss of industrial strength. This is no way for a superpower to endure. The United States cannot survive if it is dependent on communist China for chemicals, medicines, circuit boards, electrical components, clothing, machinery, and furniture.
The United States and the European Union are the two largest Western economies of the 21st century. Over the past two decades, however, their economic trajectories have diverged significantly.This line chart below, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, tracks the gross domestic product (GDP) of the EU and U.S. economies from 2006 to 2026 using the latest figures available from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s World Economic Outlook. Figures for 2026 are forecasts.
The Early Rise and Fall of the EU
The 15-member European Union was established in 1993 from precursor organizations such as the European Communities. In 2004, 10 new member states joined, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. Aided by the addition of these new member states, along with strong British and German economies, the EU s total GDP reached $19.3 trillion in 2008. This represented 131% of the U.S. economy that year, which stood at $14.8 trillion. The euro also reached an all-time high in June 2008 at roughly $1.55. The table below shows the size of the EU economy relative to the U.S. economy from 2006 to 2026.
The global financial crisis and Great Recession changed the European Union’s fortunes.
The newly expanded bloc faced severe challenges as several member-state governments struggled to service their debts or rein in large structural deficits. These countries included eurozone members Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. Through a combination of multilateral bailouts and austerity measures, the EU weathered the crisis. However, in the years that followed, the 28-member bloc s aggregate GDP contracted, and the $18.3 trillion U.S. economy surpassed it in 2015. Part of the decline in dollar-denominated GDP also reflected changes in exchange rates as the euro weakened against the U.S. dollar.
Brexit and the Years of Decline
Further challenges followed. In a June 2016 referendum, British voters narrowly chose to make the United Kingdom the first country to withdraw from the European Union. The Brexit process culminated in the UK s formal withdrawal in January 2020. Losing the UK dealt another blow to the EU’s aggregate economy. Although the country had never joined the eurozone, it was the EU ]’s second-largest member economy. Combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit helped push the bloc’s GDP down to $15.5 trillion in 2020, roughly where it had stood a decade earlier.
A
s the UK economy has struggled through much of the 2020s, some in London have begun to float the possibility of rejoining the EU. Other European countries, including Albania and Montenegro, remain potential future entrants to the bloc.
The Post-Pandemic Divergence
Since the pandemic, the U.S. and European Union have followed very different trajectories. Despite inflation and high interest rates, the U.S. economy rebounded strongly from COVID and is forecast to reach $32.4 trillion in 2026. Meanwhile, the EU has faced a combination of rising Chinese industrial competition and an energy crisis stemming from Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. With economic heavyweight Germany facing protracted stagnation, the EU s GDP is forecast to reach $23 trillion in 2026.
That leaves the EU economy at just 71% the size of the U.S. economy, a sharp reversal from its position in 2008. Exchange rates account for part of the shift, but weaker growth and a series of economic shocks have also contributed to the widening gap.
Reading excerpts from Anthony Fauci’s ill-advised diary, saved on government servers, it’s clear to me above all that he’s a money-grubbing, narcissistic liar.Fauci helped fund the Wuhan Level 4 Virology Lab, knowing full well that the lab was tinkering with bat viruses. And when the Chinese Communist lab loosed COVID-19 upon the world, wee Tony felt two overwhelming urges: the immediate urge to cover his butt, and a burning and probably lifelong desire for the little rat to finally become a big cheese.
So Fauci lied about the virus’s origins, and pressured other spineless scientists to agree that the “novel,” i.e., never before seen, virus came from some Wuhan local enjoying bat soup or a pangolin hero, and not the obvious source, a nearby Fauci-funded virology lab. To believe that, you’d have to be a Democrat, one of their media handmaidens, or a complete moron, but I repeat myself.After all, those folks are all fond of fairy tales, telling us it’s fine for men to beat up female athletes, Muslims were instrumental in founding America, ObamaCare lets you keep your doctor and your plan, and Joe Biden’s Stage 4 prostate cancer was only recently discovered.
Having dodged all accountability for helping create COVID-19, Fauci then set about becoming, in his own words, “one of the most recognizable persons in the world.” Napoleon much, Tony?In this he was successful, making stuff up left and right, changing the common meaning of words, and becoming fabulously wealthy in the process. Estimates are that while millions were dying from COVID, 7-8 million dollars somehow found their way into Tony’s pocket. Who says crime doesn’t pay?
Fauci first stated – correctly — that masks wouldn’t prevent the spread of an airborne virus. Then he backtracked, saying that it was a necessary white lie, so the rubes wouldn’t cause a mask shortage for health professionals. Now, masks became absolutely necessary for everyone. In fact, two masks were better than one. As a dentist for forty-three years, I was outraged by Fauci’s mask theater, knowing that the paper masks I wore daily had pores big enough for any virus to get through, N-95 masks (which allow 5% of small particles like viruses to go through) made it hard for me to breathe, and only a moron would walk around wearing two masks.
Fauci then made up the six-foot “social distancing” and “no handshake” rules and again, a sneeze can send saliva twenty-eight feet or so, and the Wuhan Flu was acquired by breathing viral aerosols, not skin-to-skin contact. Feeling his power and fame growing, Fauci then got serious about running things. He and his “public health” pals shut down the country and then, with the avid support of Democrats frothing at the mouth to take down President Trump, crashed the economy and arbitrarily determined winners and losers.
Winners were government workers who got paid whether they worked or not; big box stores (I painted and landscaped my entire new home during the pandemic); rubber glove and medical mask producers; teachers unions whose members were paid for (not) remotely learning, liquor stores; the mostly peaceful and mask-exempt rioters of BLM, and the despicable fake-news media, loudly trumpeting body counts and blaming it all on Trump. And all the while, rivers of sweet, sweet moolah flowed into Dr. and Mrs. Fauci’s bank accounts.
Losers were the poor nursing home patients in states where the likes of “Handy Andy” Cuomo forced such facilities to accept patients regardless of COVID status, small business owners, movie theaters, museums, music venues, churches, synagogues, and mosques, folks who were denied routine medical and dental care and later paid the price, people suffering from anxiety who became full-fledged hypochondriacs and, after manually disinfecting their groceries, lit St. Fauci votive candles; and most of all, kids.
During the pandemic, the smallest and most vulnerable among us were denied proper education, normal social development, and even being out in the great outdoors. All this unnecessary and inestimable damage to our children — for a disease which killed Americans who were, on average, seventy-eight years old and had multiple comorbidities! St. Fauci wasn’t done, though. He forced a vaccine on Americans that failed to prevent either catching COVID or transmitting it — by definition, a failed vaccine — but did cause countless deaths and severe illnesses, countless because no one in the public-health hierarchy was much interested in counting them or informing the public. As a health professional, I was one of the first people (double) vaccinated, before coming down with COVID. Twice.
Did my vaccinations lessen the severity of my disease? Totally conjectural, something impossible to prove since the virus was constantly mutating and is currently just another flu bug. And despite mounting perhaps the worst pandemic response in recorded history, Little Lord Fauci somehow found time to chat up known intellectuals Barbara Streisand and Julia Roberts, have “friendship-building” dinners with so-called journalists Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, and attend a pro baseball game with two pals when no one else was allowed admittance, a game where he both took his mask off to talk to his friends and threw possibly the lamest first pitch in major league baseball history, almost as short and crooked as Fauci himself.
It must have been wonderful for Tony, watching his stature, er… social stature, and net worth grow even as millions of lives were lost, ruined, or damaged. But, sadly, the party’s now over. Anyone with eyes to see now realizes what an evil, selfish, and undoubtedly criminal man Anthony Fauci is. Whoever ran old, senile Joe Biden — Jill? The Chicoms? — certainly agreed with my assessment. They gave Fauci a blanket pardon for any and all crimes he committed during his reign of error. So, who will judge Anthony Fauci for his crimes against humanity?Democrats? Republican politicians? The courts? No, nothing’s going to happen to the incredibly wealthy and still quite popular Anthony Fauci, once the most recognizable name in the world. The Swamp protects its own.
Now, I’m seventy-three, and with multiple comorbidities, I can see the finish line. A deeply flawed man, I just hope that when it comes to my final judgment, the good I did in life outweighs the bad.By this coming Christmas, Anthony Fauci will be eighty-six. And if, like me, you’re outraged at all the damage done by a pencil-pushing bureaucrat who never even treated patients and became fabulously wealthy and popular doing it, relax. Because poor little Tony Fauci surely has tremors, night sweats, and insomnia, pondering his final judgment.
Caroline Sunshine went on CNN’s Newsnight this week and said the quiet part out loud about Dr. Fauci, and as you can imagine, the panel was none too pleased about it. The former Trump 2024 campaign press aide told her fellow panelists that Fauci is a textbook sociopath. “Forget about prosecuting him,” Sunshine said on CNN’s Newsnight. “The guy should be in a mental institution. He’s a textbook sociopath.” Naturally, the room fell apart.
Podcast host Leigh McGowan could only manage a stunned “What?” Sunshine pressed forward anyway, and laid out her diagnosis in clinical terms. “DSM-5 level sociopath who was running our pandemic response, low empathy, ability to inflict pain on innocents, narcissism,” she said. “Are you suggesting that he should be in a mental institution for having an ego?” host Abby Phillip asked, downplaying the charge as something that would describe just about everyone in Washington. The whole misery loves company thing.
But Sunshine’s point had nothing to do with ego. Fauci kept a diary through the darkest stretch of the pandemic, and he filled it with something other than grief for the country he was supposedly serving. “He writes in his diary at the height of the pandemic, when Americans aren’t allowed to see grandma dying of COVID, what is Anthony Fauci writing about? ‘The media is so hot for me.’ ‘I’ve had so many articles written about me.’”
Sarah Matthews, Trump’s former deputy press secretary, jumped to Fauci’s defense and reminded the table that she actually worked with him at the White House. “There is one person at this table who worked with Dr. Fauci,” Matthews said. “I was Trump’s deputy press secretary during COVID.” She admitted it was “very frustrating” watching Fauci land magazine covers and TV hits criticizing the administration’s COVID response, but she chalked it up to a novel virus and a government improvising in real time.
Sunshine was not buying the excuse. “You couldn’t keep him off TV,” she said. “You were in the press office. You would know.” Even Phillip could not resist a jab of her own, suggesting Fauci might have been drinking his own Kool-Aid. Sunshine turned that line right back on the panel. “You all in the media, you were in love with him,” she said. “You were in love with a narcissist. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you guys.”
Here’s the thing: None of what Sunshine said is wrong. We know what Fauci’s diary entries say. They aren’t the private notes of a public health official managing a national crisis with the good of the nation in mind. They’re more like the confessions of a man drunk on his own celebrity. This guy tracked his magazine covers. He counted his headlines. He measured his own importance in press clips while hospitals kept grieving families away from relatives dying of COVID-19. He even detailed his efforts to profit from the pandemic with cash awards.
Those entries also undercut the image Fauci spent years building. He cared more about protecting his own reputation than telling Americans the truth, including about where the virus came from in the first place. Fauci spent years treating the lab leak theory as a fringe conspiracy, only to watch his credibility collapse once his own communications and diary entries surfaced. Sunshine said an uncomfortable truth, and the CNN panel could not handle hearing it out loud. That reaction tells you everything about how deep the media’s investment in protecting him still runs.
President Donald Trump’s political stature is so poor right now that he has squandered the Republican Party’s advantage on two major issues that almost always favor the GOP: the economy and national security. A Reuters-Ipsos poll this week showed Democrats and Republicans virtually tied on “war, foreign conflicts and terrorism.” The GOP led on that issue by 11 points after the 2024 election. Today, 37% of US adults say Democrats have a better approach, compared to 36% who say the GOP does.
Fox News polling a couple weeks back showed something very similar: On national security, 50% of registered voters preferred the GOP, to 48% who preferred the Democratic Party. That’s compared to a 12-point edge for Republicans in January, before the Iran war. Both recent findings are within the margin of error. But the numbers even being that close is basically unheard of. Fox polling has regularly tested how registered voters compare the two parties on terrorism and national security. Until the Iran war, Democrats had never even been within double-digits of the Republican Party on either issue.
Republicans have also led consistently on national security in Gallup polling. Democrats only nosed ahead on that issue once in the 21st century: in 2007. Gallup’s data on which party is better on “international terrorism and military threats” has been even more lopsided in the GOP’s favor. Across 22 polls conducted since a year after 9/11, Democrats have led on that issue only once — again, in 2007 — and most of the time Republicans led by double-digits. And then there’s the economy.
The most recent Fox survey showed Democrats leading on that issue by nine points, 54%-45%. That was the biggest Democratic advantage since 2006, when they led by 20 points. And when they took a lead on the economy back in April, it marked the first time they were ahead since 2010, shortly after the 2008 financial crisis that began during the George W. Bush administration. CNN polling back in May showed a closer split between the two parties on the economy, with 35% of adults preferring Democrats, compared to 33% who preferred the GOP. The poll previously asked people to choose between congressional Republicans and congressional Democrats. The last time Republicans didn’t lead on that question was 2009.
The numbers on both fronts seem to illustrate that Trump greatly miscalculated the fallout from launching the Iran war — as well as other controversial policies like his global tariffs. By launching the tariffs, he effectively took ownership of whatever became of the economic picture. Then he compounded negative public sentiment by basically shrugging off any responsibility to address Americans’ inflation concerns. Now he’s contending with a still-stagnant economic picture, with the economy shedding 23,000 jobs in July. Americans don’t love Democrats; in fact, the blue side remains pretty unpopular in polls. So the fact that they’ve apparently taken a lead on the economy really says something.
And the national security numbers might be even more striking — because Democrats hardly ever even compete with Republicans on the topic. Just as education and health care almost always favor Democrats, national security and defending the homeland are almost always signature GOP issues, and lopsidedly so. That remained true even when Bush launched wars in the Middle East that gradually became pretty unpopular. Trump, though, seems to have botched the Iran war so badly that Americans suddenly see Democrats on equal footing with the GOP — in terms of issues on the GOP’s own turf.
“We have already had cases where AI, assigned a task, decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was to erase the corporations’ customer records ..”
I have always assured readers that in the anti-human digital age, whoever controls the data base controls the “truth,” which will be, and already is, an orchestration serving elite agendas.
Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, an online open encyclopedia that serves to demonize those who speak outside of the official narratives, agrees with me. Sanger in an interview last Friday with the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung said that Wikipedia’s lack of an adequate governance structure allowed “specific ideological viewpoints” to shape its content, turning the online encyclopedia into a “globalist, academic, secular and progressive” consensus.
“Wikipedia was recognized early on as an important propaganda organ.” Jews use it to demonize Israel’s critics, and Sanger reports “what we know as fact, based on all sorts of evidence, is that the CIA has already edited Wikipedia.” “Wikipedia is already compromised. That’s clear,” Sanger admitted. He went on to say the ideological bias embedded in Wikipedia is now being amplified because large language models increasingly rely on its content as a reference source when answering factual queries.
The digital revolution and its offshoot artificial intelligence have created the perfect Orwellian memory hole. I and numerous others have documented books and articles with URLs to online sources only to experience that within a few days of publication the sources no longer exist. This could not happen in print and analogue days. There were huge numbers of sources for every source reference in libraries, newspaper morgues, and private collections. It was impossible to erase reference sources.
The digital revolution rests on the Internet which developed as an open system. This means it can never be secure. Already security concerns are everywhere. The day has already passed that a username and a password sufficed. Now you have to have a code sent by text or email. Then a passkey, and sometimes also voice and face recognition, both of which AI can produce to impersonate you. Scammers progress faster than security, and once quantum computers appear encryption is useless.
The reality with with which we are faced is that information no longer exists in multiple print form. Information no longer exists in material form. It exists somewhere electronically in the cloud. One electromagnetic force can wipe it out, and malefactors and mistakes can erase it.
We have already had cases where AI, assigned a task, decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was to erase the corporations’ customer records. Imagine if that is your bank. What happens to your access to your accounts? Can you pay your bills? Is your automobile insurance cancelled? Do you face foreclosure on your mortgage? Possibly businesses are creating backup systems of some kind, but as they also are digital they too will fail.
The digital revolution was the creation of people devoid of capability to imagine unintended consequences. They are building for us a house of cards. When it collapses, so will organized society. It is merely a matter of time.
Slowly she builds her performance outrage, methodically working through the talking points afore her. Full dramatic acting on display. Lips pursed, bladed eyebrows angled, contempt tone triggered and the intent obvious.
NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya appears on CBS Face the Nation to discuss Mexican poop lettuce, Mexico poop peppers, Illegal Alien measles spread and the weaponized information from health ‘administrators’ around the COVID-19 vaccine. Obviously, with Media Patron Saint Anthony Fauci facing scrutiny, Margaret Brennan defends Fauci as she would if the Lightbringer, Chicago Jesus was disrespected. Combative video and Transcript below:
[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by the Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Good morning to you, doctor.
NIH DIRECTOR DR. JAY BHATTACHARYA: Good morning.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we should mention you are also helping to run the CDC until the new director is sworn in as well.
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Until next Wednesday, yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Until next Wednesday. So let me ask you about a number of things that I think people at home are worried about, particularly around the food supply. The cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce from Mexico is now in 15 states. There were two deaths this week due to it. Yesterday, USDA issued an alert for a range of products that may have salmonella, including meat and poultry. 27 states are affected by salmonella, possibly linked to jalapeños, but cilantro, red onion, avocado, also listed in the CDC notice. Albertsons, a grocery store, just recalled some items. There’s risk of salmonella in eggs in Texas, according to the CDC, and then you have the screwworm outbreak affecting beef. This is overwhelming for someone going into a grocery store right now. Why do they seem out of control?
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Well, the- the cyclospora outbreak is larger than in normal years. I mean, in normal years there actually is a- cyclospora cases. The- the two deaths that you mentioned, they happened in late July- late- late June, early July, before we identified this source. And so, folks that are listening, can rest assured, the CDC and the FDA are working hard to trace back exactly where these outbreaks are occurring from, intervening with the- the sort of suppliers to make sure that they don’t- and doing recalls to make sure that the disease doesn’t- the, you know, condition doesn’t spread. I mean, it’s tough. You go to grocery store, you buy lettuce, and you say, “Okay, can I buy the lettuce?”
Article III of the Constitution allows Congress to establish courts below the Supreme Court, which includes federal District and Circuit Courts. If Congress can establish them, it can abolish them. In 1801, in the waning days of John Adams’ presidency, Congress did just that and abolished the district and circuit courts of the District of Columbia.
These two courts display widespread intransigent partisanship and demonstrably poor scholarship, exemplified by this week’s ruling on the new White House construction. Given the difficulty of removing so many bad judges in these two courts by impeaching them, it’s time to repeat John Adams’ move: Abolish these courts. Cases that normally would be heard in them should be assigned to courts elsewhere. The case which most showcases the lunacy of the D.C. courts is National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States v. National Park Service, et al. As is often the case in poorly reasoned opinions, the author substitutes words for reason.
As you may know, the old East Wing of the White House which, among other things, contained underground security facilities (bunkers, bomb-shelters, and military and medical infrastructure), presidential offices and some minimal public meeting spaces, was torn down and construction begun on a replacement with a larger number of more modern offices and a ballroom to provide a larger, much-needed entertainment and meeting space, better security facilities, and protection against drone attacks. Up to now, rented tents and outdoor porta potty facilities have had to be utilized for state events, and the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Ball surely underscores the need for a safe venue for such things.
Except for the congressional appropriation for the upgraded secure facilities in this new wing, the remainder of the cost is being borne by private contributions to the National Park Service, which is administering these funds. But this is hate Trump city, and Alison Hoagland, a board member of the National Trust, said that she takes monthly walks past the White House and that the aesthetics of the new construction would cause her harm.
In the real world, monthly aesthetic harm to one person’s delicate sensibilities would not upend a needed improvement to the White House grounds, which are exempt by its terms from the National Historic Preservation Act (which establishes the Trust). The litigation has been long and involved back-and-forth court rulings between the district and circuit courts. The courts have now finally agreed the below-ground construction would not be halted, but this week ruled the above-ground work must be, even though that is a structural impossibility and a security (and aesthetic) nightmare.
The first question that every court must decide before proceeding further in any case is whether or not it even has jurisdiction to hear and decide the matter. The majority opinion doesn’t get to this until page 30 of its opinion, and then, for all its flowery verbosity, it got it wrong, just as the dissenting judge notes:
“…the district court had no jurisdiction because the Trust has no standing to stop construction at the White House. The ballroom is also likely within the President’s authority to make improvements to the Executive Residence at the White House. Finally, the balance of equities overwhelmingly favors the government. The district court elevated the aesthetic displeasure of a single passerby over the government’s security interests in the ballroom and the security risks of leaving an open construction site at the President’s home and office.”
In assessing the balance of equities between Ms. Hoagland’s claimed aesthetic harms and the needs of the White House, Judge Rao shows the Court “improperly glossed over, ignored or discounted the government’s evidence demonstrating the security harms from construction of the ballroom.” Nor could it, as Rao noted, “compensate for the slight aesthetic harm by resorting to hyperbole and its view of the legal merits. Every day the project is delayed increases the security risk according to declarations from senior military and Secret Service officials. Moreover, the creation of the above-ground ballroom “will alleviate security vulnerabilities that currently impact large events involving the President.”
As a practical matter, the underground and above-ground facilities cannot be separated out at this point. “The Secretary of the Army has further explained why the underground national security facilities cannot be adequately protected by the concrete slab and modest topping structure allowed by the district court’s injunction… The ballroom’s dimensions and structure are essential for security. According to the Secretary, “[t]o provide adequate subterranean protection without” the “height and mass” of the ballroom, “engineers would need to dig impractically deep.”
…The ballroom provides a critical “dual-layered system” of protection for the national security facilities, “comprising a sacrificial outer cover coupled with a hardened inner structural element.” …Corroborating the Secretary’s account, the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has similarly described how the “height and mass” of the ballroom “provide crucial, physical layers to shield” the national security facilities.
The height of the ballroom will also provide an “essential elevated platform to engage and neutralize aerial systems,” such as drones, that pose an increasingly serious threat to White House security. …There is no dispute that the Secretary’s declaration and the Army Corps memorandum are authentic, credible, and “go[] to the heart of the contested issue,” so it would be “inconsistent with this court’s own equitable obligations to pretend that [they] do[] not exist.”
David Friedberg: Starlink alone could be a trillion-dollar company
"Starlink alone could be generating on the order of $40 billion of revenue top line, with a huge amount of that flowing to free cash. That could be $30 billion in free cash flow within the year."
Elon Musk: “My mind often feels like a very wild storm. I have a fountain of ideas. I have more ideas than I can possibly execute, so I have no shortage of ideas.
Innovation is not the problem, execution is the problem. I’ve got an entire design for an electric supersonic… pic.twitter.com/769gcCsphh
Elon Musk says that within the next ten years, money will completely disappear and you will own no money because there will be no need for it, as robots and AI will provide everything you need.
Musk compares AI and robots to "a personal God" that will provide humans with… pic.twitter.com/RabVXBLrkD
If you thought Ukraine was busy defending itself and launching counterattacks against Russia, think again. Apparently, unbeknownst to the rest of the world Ukraine was launching geo-synchronous satellites over the Middle East, deploying proprietary signals intelligence intercepts between Russia and Iran, and conducting covert surveillance operations, in addition to weaving sweaters for homeless kittens from Zelenskyy’s hair… or something. But seriously, read this:
Isn’t he just the most magnanimous little fella? Not only is he singlehandedly going to win a war against Russia, but he’s going to take a few minutes break and win the war against Iran for everyone. What a guy. The last few weeks have been a tidal wave of weird and sketchy stuff that indicates some form of NATO intelligence operation is underway.
This round of sketchy started with that trip to London to meet the coalition of the willing and King Charles; followed two days later with the surprising “drone” attack on the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, which bore all the same hallmarks as the Nordstream pipeline attack, which was immediately before the G7 meeting in Paris and perfectly set up the horrible Russia theme for the summit.
Someone then launched hundreds of simultaneous long-range drones into Russia hitting oil/gas refining facilities shortly before the NATO summit in Turkey, that set up the “vulnerable Russia” theme. A few days later, Zelenskyy fires the young Defense Minister responsible for the recent success of the modern Ukraine drone program; then following public backlash fires the Commanding General of the military while simultaneously proclaiming everything was awesome.
A few more days pass and suddenly Laura Loomer is in Ukraine begging forgiveness for saying bad things about Zelenskyy and promoting the horrible Putin / innocent Ukraine narrative. (MAGA cleaving) To wit, 12 hrs later Tucker Carlson is giving a Russia-centric podcast -targeted exclusively to a U.S. audience- a horrible Trump / Glory to Putin narrative. (More MAGA cleaving) Somehow, despite Zelenskyy’s exceptionally busy calendar, he found a few hours to sit down with Loomer and talk about the resilience of the Ukraine people who are ducking a weaving through air raids while Zelenskyy stormtroopers try to capture them on the street and push them into the Eastern Ukraine meatgrinder.
But wait, there’s more… This weekend, Ukraine holds a very public, outdoor, open-air drone exhibition and Military Drone Exposition that drew military hardware companies from around the world to Kiev and put a bullseye on the location of many Military contractors and vendors. Not surprisingly, Russia targeted the well-publicized drone exposition, hit the venue with multiple ballistic missiles and killed hundreds of military drone dealers/vendors.
Following the strike on the Drone Exposition, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now saying he has the time to help NATO defeat Iran by sharing information gathered from Ukraine intelligence operations on Russian satellite orbits. Join in when you feel comfortable. These joint NATO intelligence constructs are difficult to keep up with. When it sounds crazy, it’s ALWAYS an intelligence operation!
“I r a n B l a s t s ” F r e e l o a d e r ” Z e l e n s k y F o r O r d e r i n g D e a d l y A t t a c k O n C a s p i a n V e s s e l ” A t I s r a e l ’ s B e h e s t ”..”
Zelensky’s nazis use him to get close to Israel. Oh irony.
Iran has accused Ukraine of attacking an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, which it says resulted in an explosion that killed one sailor and injured another. As we previously reported of the Saturday maritime incident, Ukraine seems to be openly boasting of this escalation. President Zelensky himself announced soon after on X, “We also have very good results from long-range strikes in the waters of the Caspian Sea. In particular, these are vessels that were involved in transporting military cargo from Iran, and a warship.”
Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned Ukraine’s charge d’affaires in Tehran to severely protest the “hostile and criminal” attack on Saturday, IRNA reported. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has further warned that the “blatant UN Charter violation” which was “done at Israel’s behest” could serve to “drag Europe into its war”. Araghchi also denounced and attacked Zelensky personally, calling him the “freeloader in Kyiv”…
Zelenskyy has attacked an Iranian commercial vessel, killing a sailor. A blatant UN Charter violation done at Israel's behest to drag Europe into its war.
In calls with EU High Rep Kallas and FM Lavrov, made clear that what the freeloader in Kyiv did CANNOT GO UNANSWERED.
The risk of the Russia-Ukraine conflict merging with the US-Iran conflict seems plausible, but still remains low, and yet the Caspian Sea situation shows that it is actually possible. The Iranians have sought alternative trade and shipping routes via the Caspian, and early in Operation Epic Fury Israeli warplanes reportedly targeted and took out Iranian naval vessels there. This isn’t the first time that FM Araghchi has called out Zelensky. Back in January of this year, for example, he called Zelensky a “confused clown”, and said that the Ukrainian leader had been “rinsing American and European taxpayers to fill the pockets of his corrupt generals.” The two countries have previously clashed over Iran supplying Russia with Shahed suicide drones.
Iran Will Halt Tit-For-Tat Strikes If US Maintains Pause The diplomatic track appears to have opened with the Trump administration’s move to pause strikes as a goodwill gesture ahead of the weekend – now in its second day. That created space for Omani officials to meet their Iranian counterparts over the weekend, with Tehran reporting “some progress.” The talks have now produced a reciprocal stand-down, under which Iran would halt retaliatory strikes on US bases as long as the US maintains its pause in airstrikes.
Reuters reports: Iran will halt its own attacks as long as the United States maintains its latest pause on air strikes, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Sunday, after President Donald Trump abruptly called off his two-week-old bombing campaign. After 13 nights of intensifying U.S. air strikes on Iran, the Pentagon abruptly suspended the campaign late on Friday, with no U.S. attacks reported on either Saturday or Sunday. Iran, which had been following each night of U.S. attacks with its own strikes on neighboring countries that host U.S. bases, has also so far held fire for two days.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, told Fox News on Sunday that Trump had decided to pause U.S. attacks to allow more time for diplomacy. “He’s giving talks some space, he’s giving it a little bit of room,” Waltz said, without providing further details. The senior Iranian source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters: “Iran’s position remains ‘attack for attack’: if the attacks stop, Iran will also halt its operations. That message has already been conveyed to the United States.” The source added: “However, Iran is prepared to mount a broad response should the U.S. launch another attack.”
Asked about the pause, a senior official in Trump’s administration said on Saturday that the president “has always been clear that his preference is diplomacy, but he has shown Iran what will happen if they fail to come to the table in a serious way.” The senior Iranian source said Tehran did not hold much hope that Trump’s decision to pause strikes represented a major shift in the U.S. negotiating position. “There is more skepticism than optimism about the halt in attacks. The prevailing view is that the pause is tactical rather than genuine. Iran has accumulated enough bitter experience with what it sees as U.S. deception,” the source said.
“The pause offers the clearest signal yet that a diplomatic off-ramp may be emerging, with Iranian and Omani officials reporting progress in talks to reopen the critical waterway.”
The US military paused its air campaign against Iran for a second consecutive night after nearly two weeks of tit-for-tat strikes. US strikes were aimed at degrading Tehran’s one-way attack drone and missile capabilities around the Strait of Hormuz, while Iran hit US bases in the region. The pause offers the clearest signal yet that a diplomatic off-ramp may be emerging, with Iranian and Omani officials reporting progress in talks to reopen the critical waterway.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said in a Telegram post that he met with the Omani deputy foreign minister and held talks on Friday and Saturday about restoring safe transit for commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. Baghaei said the officials exchanged views on principles and operational mechanisms for managing safe maritime navigation through the strait. “The talks were constructive, and some progress was made,” he added, noting that technical and political consultations remain ongoing. The Omani delegation left Tehran on Saturday evening.
Camera zooms in to reveal LINE of ships all 'stopped in Strait of Hormuz' — Fars News pic.twitter.com/F8wDPdBDBT
The talks coincided with the US military’s two-day pause in strikes and came as Brent crude futures surged into triple-digit territory and the national average for regular gasoline jumped above the politically sensitive $4-a-gallon mark. JPMorgan’s head of Global Commodities Research and Strategy, Natasha Kaneva, told clients last week that Brent prices at this level could increase pressure on Washington to reopen diplomatic channels. Meanwhile, Iranian Army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia appeared on state television on Sunday and warned the US that any further strikes would widen the conflict.
“I believe that if the Americans once again fall for the Zionists’ deception, or move in line with them, and insist on continuing the war, particularly through air strikes, geographically this will expand further,” Akraminia warned. Akraminia said the conflict has already expanded to the Bab al-Mandab Strait on the southern Red Sea, referencing the recent Houthi attacks on tankers. “The scope of our operations now encompasses the entire region, from US bases in Jordan to the countries along the Persian Gulf,” he said. Earlier, United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations reported an incident in the southern Red Sea after a “tanker witnessed a splash from an unknown projectile in proximity to the vessel.” Details are scant at the moment.
Britons are struggling to characterize their new Cabinet, following the arrival of a new prime minister on Monday. The Cabinet is not as northern or female as Andy Burnham signaled. Most members have certainly changed. Most are not loyalists to Keir Starmer, even less so to Tony Blair. Like Burnham, many hark back to a mythical golden age of socialism in the 1970s. Like him, most are alarmingly deficient in popular mandate, external qualifications, and even political trust for their new responsibilities.
Let’s start with Burnham himself, a man born in Liverpool who pretended to be Mancunian to win the mayoralty of Manchester. He claims to represent the north but has not lived north or east of Manchester. At best, he represents a narrow part of west-central England, just north of the Midlands. Burnham has always looked south while talking up the north. Burnham was most newsworthy for agitating for changes in national government, despite sharing a party with Starmer.
As Starmer continued to trip himself up with both feet, Burnham was one of the Labourites who prevailed on ministers to brief against their PM. After Starmer blocked Burnham’s candidacy for an accidental by-election in February, Burnham prevailed on a local MP to resign from Makerfield to force a by-election in June, which Burnham won easily, to return to Parliament, which would allow him to challenge Starmer for the leadership (less than two years into Starmer’s five-year term). Starmer initially vowed to fight on but announced his intent to quit this month. No MP stepped up to challenge Burnham’s presumptive run.
Thus, Burnham has no popular mandate to be PM, even within the party, except in the form of pledges by more Parliamentary partisans in support than against. Opposition parties rightly called for a general election to confirm his premiership, but the constitution does not oblige him.
Burnham’s supporters pretend that his easy rise proves the strength of his candidacy. In reality, it proves the weakness of his party. It could not find a new leader within its own MPs, despite a whopping majority. It triggered an expensive by-election and a more expensive mayoral election to reach outside of Parliament. Meanwhile, Burnham unwittingly poured scorn on that same Parliamentary party by criticizing normal politics and the London elite. (Since then, he has aired the idea of moving the Cabinet from London to Manchester. His current plan is to spend at least one day per work week there. That’s neither efficient nor effective.)
In the many weeks that Burnham enjoyed as rising PM, he remained vague about his Cabinet and his policies. On Monday, he spent hours appointing just the highest roles in the Cabinet. The other appointments look set to continue for days. Of the first day’s picks, I must start with the only selectee who can be coded as qualified and mandated (although not loyal).
John Healey becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer, the second most powerful position in government. He had quit as defense secretary six weeks ago, over Starmer’s procrastination on filling a hole in defense spending. Healey said that Britain should spend 3 percent of GDP on defense by 2030, which means he will need to find a couple dozen billion pounds per year. Previously, he advocated issuing “war bonds,” but who would buy them when the government is running record debt? He will need to cut other departments or raise taxes (probably both). On Monday, Healey said “fiscal control” would be his “first duty.” You could see the markets’ confidence decline immediately.
Healey’s resignation suggests a certain loyalty to Burnham, but otherwise they barely know each other. More usefully, he was a minister in the Treasury under Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Yes, Healey is actually qualified by experience! This is remarkable given that his predecessor, Rachel Reeves, falsified her CV, couldn’t add, and quickly became the most U-turn-prone and hated chancellor ever, as well as the most tearful.
Healey remains constrained by record government debt and his party’s suicidal unwillingness to cut spending. Remember that Starmer increased spending on welfare and benefits, after backbenchers rejected his proposal to cut them. (That was within Starmer’s first year of premiership.)
Burnham is an out-and-proud socialist who had already signaled that his government would spend and tax more. By Tuesday, his administration revealed plans to cut VAT (a sales tax) on electricity, to be funded by cutting the Starmer administration’s planned digital ID. But the minister responsible for that plan, Darren Jones, revealed, after being fired by Burnham, that digital ID was never funded. So Burnham is either ignorant or dishonest. This . . . doesn’t . . . bode . . . well.
In any case, scrapping VAT on electricity doesn’t make much difference to a household electricity bill in which most of the pricing goes to fund green initiatives, debt, stealth taxes, and administration. Burnham already looks unprepared and unreliable. Confirmation comes in the form of his deviation from his team’s prior briefings that he would appoint either Ed Miliband or Shabana Mahmood to the Treasury.
Red Ed goes to the Foreign Office, for which he is woefully unqualified and an undoubted liability. He infuriated the U.S. (and most Britons) as energy secretary, with his absolutism about reaching net-zero carbon by 2030, at whatever cost to the consumer. Ed also, by the way, reminds everybody of the weakness of the party’s leadership selection. He was leader from 2010 to 2015, when he literally and metaphorically stumbled at every election husting. Yet Burnham thinks Miliband is the best person to articulate British interests abroad? This won’t last long.
Miliband is already hurt. He has been denied the job he wanted, even though he was the first senior minister to call for Starmer to go, and he helped Burnham with an economic plan. (Some plan: it remains as vague as ever, except for the Soviet-style time horizon of 10 years.)
Meanwhile, Mahmood stays at the Home Office. Under-informed (or biased) souls read this as confirmation of her competence in pushing through controls on illegal immigration in the face of majority opposition from civil servants and backbenchers. In fact, she is hurdling a low bar after decades of government failures to control immigration, despite popular demands and almost every party’s commitments to lower net immigration.
Worse, Mahmood is duplicitous. She tells the right wing that her tweaks to the benefits and the timeline of asylum applications will dramatically control immigration. She tells the left wing that she will make the refugee route easier (which is the route by which almost all illegal immigrants get residency, with more privileges than citizens).
Also concerning is Mahmood’s long history of Islamocentrism, which is bizarrely ignored by mainstream media. She tars normative Britons as racists (whites and Jews in particular: isn’t that racist?), campaigned against Israel, played up her status as the first Muslim home secretary, promised that her promotion would serve “her” community, and railed against supposedly routine experiences of racism in her hometown of Birmingham, where her demographic is the largest.
I doubt Mahmood will last much longer than Miliband within Team Burnham. He favors the left of the party, which has characterized her (ridiculously) as a Nigel Farage in Labour colors. For now, Burnham needs to be seen to reward her, if only because one of her allies in Parliament, Josh Simons, was the MP who resigned from Makerfield to make way for Burnham.
So the highest three officers in the land will not last as long as normal, in my estimation. Burnham’s administration will not bring the stability that Britons crave, let alone the competencies that the markets and foreign governments crave.
National Review Online editor Philip Klein wants you to believe Barack Obama was some kind of political moderate. That’s the only way to read his reaction to a viral clip of the former president telling Caitlin Clark not to let “media nonsense” get her down and reminding her she’s a great player. Klein called it “a perfect example of why Obama is hated by the far Left & also why he won two elections comfortably.”
A perfect example of why Obama is hated by the far Left & also why he won two elections comfortably. https://t.co/c8iolzBXd7
Set aside the Caitlin Clark moment for a second. The framing is the real story here. Klein wants readers to believe Obama was more moderate than John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. He wasn’t.
Sean Davis, cofounder of The Federalist, made the point with numbers Klein conveniently left out. “Obama was adored by the far Left when he left office (95% approval rating among Democrats) and he remains adored by the far Left today because he is the most left-president in modern American history (89% approval rating from self-identified liberals in a CNN poll last month vs. 28% approval from self-identified conservatives, which means the left-wing loves him even more than the right-wing hates him),” Davis wrote.
I’ve written a few books about Obama, and I can tell you exactly why the far left worshipped him then — and still does: he built the most sweeping left-wing agenda of any modern president, yet somehow convinced people like Klein to call it “moderation” just because he said a few kind words to Caitlin Clark. Let’s run through what he actually did as president, since Klein seems to have misplaced the receipts.
Obama ran in 2008 promising to “fundamentally transform” the United States, and then he did exactly that. The 2009 stimulus was one of the largest government interventions into market activity in American history. Obamacare handed Washington unprecedented control over the nation’s healthcare system, and its Medicaid expansion extended federal-state coverage to millions more people, with Washington footing most of the bill. Dodd-Frank buried the financial industry under new federal regulations.
Obama didn’t stop at legislation. When Congress refused to pass the DREAM Act, he unilaterally shielded hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who arrived as children from deportation through executive action alone, an end run around Congress that was blatantly unconstitutional. He committed the United States to international greenhouse gas targets the same way, through executive fiat instead of Senate ratification, because he knew the votes weren’t there.
His administration also nationalized the student loan industry, cutting private lenders out of the market entirely. He reinterpreted Title IX to smuggle “gender identity” into federal law, a decision that eventually opened women’s sports and locker rooms to biological men. He repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” ordered his Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court, and later endorsed same-sex marriage after running in 2008 as a supporter of traditional marriage. Obama also helped transform the Democrat Party into an antisemitic party.
And don’t even get me started on what Obama did to race relations in this country. That last part tells you everything about how Obama operated. He knew exactly where the country stood in 2008, so he told voters what they needed to hear. Nobody who was paying attention actually believed him. He was too shrewd a politician to show his full hand before he had the power to play it.
None of this is moderate. None of it is centrist. It’s the most aggressive leftward lurch this country has taken in modern presidential history, and Obama pulled it off while much of the press corps treated him as a reasonable, above-the-fray statesman.
So when the editor of National Review holds up a clip of Obama being nice to a basketball player as proof of ideological balance, ask yourself why a supposedly conservative magazine is doing PR for one of the most radical presidents this country has ever had. Obama didn’t win over the far left by accident. He earned every ounce of that adoration by delivering exactly what they wanted, one executive order at a time.
“BRENNAN: “The SAVE Act, as you know, or even some version of it, is highly partisan, highly controversial.”
“Bigger picture, isn’t it going to hurt faith in our election process if a Republican-only policy to change how elections are run is rammed through 100 days…less than 100 days out from the election?”
President Trump criticized Sen. John Thune (R-SD) for his weak, unimpressive effort to pass the SAVE America Act, a key priority for the president and a top demand of the GOP base. The bill will be a significant step toward improving election integrity, specifically making sure only Americans vote in U.S. elections. It represents everything conservatives have fought for regarding election security.Yet, CBS News’ Margaret Brennan thought it could undermine faith in our elections, because why wouldn’t an establishment outlet go down that rabbit hole? Yet, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) was the one interviewed for this segment, and he wasn’t having any of this nonsense. His response to her first question was great, with a simple “no.”
BRENNAN: “The SAVE Act, as you know, or even some version of it, is highly partisan, highly controversial.”“Bigger picture, isn’t it going to hurt faith in our election process if a Republican-only policy to change how elections are run is rammed through 100 days…less than 100 days out from the election?”
KENNEDY: “No.”
“In my opinion, for both sides to have credibility in our elections, we need to do two things and only two things.” “Number one, you have to prove you are who you say you are in order to register to vote and to vote.” “And number two, however you decide to vote, that’s up to the states. We need to go back to having an election day, not an election month.” “We’ve got to know the results of elections that night or shortly thereafter, if it’s close.” “That, to me, is what the SAVE Act is all about.” “And I think we can pass it. And I think we can craft it in a way to survive a birdbath, but we’re not going to know if we don’t try!”
BRENNAN: “Grants, in other words, to states to incentivize. Not requirements for states to action…that’s your version.”
KENNEDY: “That’s not the only thing.” “I’ve been contacted by some really smart people about a way to do it in addition to the grants. I’m not saying it will work. But you’re not going to know unless you try.”
Senator John Kennedy just went toe-to-toe with CBS’ Margaret Brennan after she claimed the SAVE America Act would “hurt faith” in America’s elections.
Kennedy argued the legislation would do the EXACT opposite.
Forcing the vote appears to be the only way. BRENNAN: “The SAVE Act, as you know, or even some version of it, is highly partisan, highly controversial.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has openly promised to be the one senator necessary to force a roll call vote exposing who will or will not vote for crucial election integrity legislation just before the August congressional recess. Congressional rules acknowledge that the ability of any senator to demand a roll call vote is grounded in Article I, Section 5, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that “the yeas and nays of the members of either house on any question shall, at the desire of one fifth of those present, be entered on the Journal.” Therefore, it requires only one senator to start the process for such a vote.
Notably, election reform is wildly popular not only with Republican but even with Democrat voters. The SAVE America Act has bipartisan voter support. Scott Presler begged that one senator “to object to unanimous consent & ‘ask for the yeas and nays.’” Mike Lee replied on X:
Lee subsequently reshared Presler’s message while tagging Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.). “I hereby object to any effort to put the Senate into recess in August—at least until such time as the Senate has passed the SAVE America Act—and hereby request a roll call vote,” Lee wrote, making it clear to the whole country what he was doing and putting Thune on the spot. “Do not assume you have my consent. You do not,” Lee warned Thune.
The House had actually found a workaround to avoid the blocks the Democrats set up, as provisions of the SAVE Act were really included in the budget resolution that the lower chamber had put together before the recess, a resolution that also included vital military funding. Unfortunately, Thune, ever the backstabber, delivered a nonsensical lecture about the importance of consulting Democrats — you know, the ones who aim to defund ICE and the Iran conflict, fund foreign criminals, and kill all election integrity efforts — and coming up with a “bipartisan” funding package.
The last thing Thune wants is to be put on the record with a roll call vote, exposing him and his lack of efforts to pass the SAVE America Act. On Saturday, President Donald Trump made one last push for the legislation. “The all Republican Senators! Terminate the Filibuster, which the Democrats will do as soon as they get the chance, and PASS THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, and everything else, including the Budget, and upcoming Debt Ceiling. Do it now, before it is too late!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. Lee endorsed Trump’s call.
If somehow you didn’t grasp the need to pass the SAVE America Act until now, this was all the evidence you needed. https://t.co/IvW2aOOrOs
Sadly, Republican senators keep forgetting they’re supposed to work for We the People, the ones who elect them and pay their salaries. Hopefully Lee can galvanize some Senate action before the August recess. Most Americans across the political spectrum support voter ID, so We the People definitely want action.
It’s been coming for a while, but this week, the once-conservative firebrand Tucker Carlson has doubled down on a version of reality that would make Iran’s mullahs blush. Carlson used an appearance on the East Meets West with Olga and Tara podcast to unload on a provision in the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that would expand defense-technology cooperation between the United States and Israel. His verdict? Lawmakers who back the measure are acting against America’s own interests, effectively merging our nations’ militaries.
Carlson didn’t stop at policy disagreement. He accused the Republican Party of handing the country’s sovereignty to a foreign government, sparing only two members from his contempt. “The Republican Party has decided that the interest of Israel is more important than the interest of the United States,” Carlson said on the podcast. “There are a couple of exceptions Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, and they were driven out of the Republican Party. So it tells you what the priority is. The priority is serving Israel.”
Coming from a man who has spent years cozying up to authoritarian regimes and excusing Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, that’s rich. But consistency has never been Carlson’s strong suit. He then accused Israel’s Mossad of feeding American policymakers fabricated intelligence for decades. “Mossad has fed, repeatedly, disinformation lies to American policymakers over decades, including the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction,” Carlson said. “That fundamentally came from Israel. There’s no dispute about that.” There’s plenty of dispute about that, because it’s false.
British intelligence, French intelligence, German intelligence, and Spanish intelligence all concluded Iraq likely possessed chemical and biological weapons and was in defiance of the United Nations. From there, Carlson’s rhetoric went from conspiratorial to unhinged. He called the defense-technology partnership a “generational disaster” and framed it as proof Americans no longer control their own country.”It’s the definition of treason,” Carlson said. “This is treason. This is acting against your own nation, on behalf of a foreign nation.”
Then came the real bombshell. Carlson wants President Donald Trump and the Republicans who support the NDAA provision put on trial for it. “The idea that the Republican Party would support merging U.S. and Israeli intelligence, IDF and Pentagon is so deranged that you have to root for treason trials, for Nurnberg trials at some point,” Carlson said. “And the president could veto it; he won’t because he’s a slave to Israel.” Let’s be honest here. Comparing a defense-cooperation bill to the crimes of Nazi Germany while demanding war-crimes-style tribunals against your own president isn’t principled dissent.
This is full-on loony talk here. He sounds no different than the socialist candidates running for Congress nationwide… and, let’s be honest, some Democrats in Congress today. Carlson closed out his rant by accusing anyone who defends Israel of defending genocide. “We’re against genocide, we’re against book burning, that’s what we learned from the Nazi period,” Carlson said. “And all of a sudden you wake up and we’re like, ‘No, no, genocide’s totally fine, as long as Israel’s doing it.’ In fact, if you call it genocide, you’re the bad person.” I don’t know what happened to Tucker. I remember being excited when he started his show on X, but now, he’s become indistinguishable from far-left crazies. Calling for treason trials against a sitting president over a defense bill is the sign of an absolute meltdown.
Everybody who wants to gobble popcorn while watching exciting POTUS primary races in 2028 is going to be disappointed, at least in terms of the final outcome. We know how this story ends, but what leads up to it may be hilarious, particularly on the Democrat side. Every weirdo, loser, and mutation in their party intends to try to get the nod, knowing that the fix is already in; it’s just going to be a chance for folks like Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) and Pete Buttigieg to try to raise their profiles or maybe get picked to be VP. Neither of those two will.
But right now, it’s obvious who is going to go head-to-head against each other in the general election. You can deny it, you can argue it, you can cope all you want, but barring some unforeseen turn of events, we know how this is going to play out. It’s going to be JD versus Kamala, and that’s just the way it is. Well, that’s not technically correct. On the Republican side, the guy who’s going to be nominated is the guy who Trump says is going to be nominated, and right now that’s Vice President JD Vance. People are fantasizing that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is going to jump in and fight the veep for the top of the ticket, but that’s crazy talk.
And the least crazy guy involved is Marco Rubio himself, who has made a magnificent and fantastic 180° turnaround since his unfortunate dalliance with amnesty under the influence of a bunch of Bushie loser Senate colleagues a decade ago that nearly sank his political future. He knows that Donald Trump is going to pick the next nominee, and Donald Trump is already sending up smoke signals that it’s going to be JD. Marco is young. He has time. And he has no political death wish. He has stepped on the Donald Trump land mine before, and he does not want to be blown to little bits. But you can be sure that if JD stumbles, Marco Rubio will be right there to pick up the ball and run it in for the big win.
Will JD Vance stumble? He’s getting a lot of heat from some people on the Republican side, particularly those who think that he is insufficiently committed to destroying our enemies and protecting Israel. It’s annoying. Never-Trump has-been Brett Stephens, whose self-seriousness is inversely proportional to how seriously he should be taken, said, “Vance is MAGA at its absolute worst. Able to still sound reasonable while defending the indefensible.” Sounds like a rave review. Others cited his role in the Senate to essentially blame him for Capitol Hill dysfunction. Come on. Vance got grief for referring to the organized haters as an op; the organized haters of the op were outraged he called their transparent op an op.
JD terrifies those with the fantasy of returning to the good old days of submissive GOP-managed decline; they know he’ll carry the Trump message forward – which is a selling point. JD certainly doesn’t have the same view of war as a lot of traditional Republicans do, no doubt, in part, because, unlike most of them, he actually went and fought in one. He has seen firsthand the failure of America’s foreign policy establishment, and if he’s a little bit gun-shy about gunboat diplomacy, he’s got good reason to be. After all, his homeland in Appalachia has traditionally been one of America’s premier fields for growing crops of cannon fodder.
The consequences of the hawks’ prerogatives fall on people like JD Vance. Though a fellow son of that region and a veteran, I tend to be a little more on the “Bomb the bastards back into the Stone Age” side. Still, JD has earned his right to be skeptical about the overextension of American military power.Then there’s Israel, and while many of the people who are critical of him are very much aligned with me—my objection to Israel is that we’re not giving the Jewish state enough money and they’re not killing enough terrorists—they are misguided. JD Vance is not a groyper. If you actually listen to what he says instead of watching carefully curated podcast clips, you’ll see that what he’s saying is true.
The Venn diagram representing the interests of the United States and Israel is not a circle. Israel has its interests, and we have ours, and there’s nothing wrong with saying that. It’s obvious, and it’s important that we acknowledge this reality. Israel has a terrible image problem in the United States, partially because many Americans are stupid and weak, and because Democrats are cowardly and weak. The proper answer to terrorists is to kill them all and lay waste to their homes. That’s aesthetically displeasing to many people. Israel has chosen being aesthetically displeasing to being genocided out of existence by semi-human seventh-century barbarians, and a lot of fools hold that against it.
JD Vance does not hold that against Israel. He simply points out, correctly, that sometimes what Israel needs to do conflicts with what the United States needs to do, and a president of the United States should do what the United States needs to do. As for Iran, if you think he somehow believed that the Iranians were going to completely change who they are and become nice guys, I really can’t help you. This guy is a lawyer. He knows a little something about negotiating. And when you’re negotiating, you rarely describe your obnoxious opponent in the harshest possible terms. You talk nice about them. That’s how negotiations work.
Now, he may not choose to run for president in 2028. He’s got a very young family, including a newborn. It’s not clear his wife loves being in the limelight. She’s an incredibly smart woman; spend five minutes with her, and you’ll see. JD is even younger than Rubio. He’s got time. The bottom line is he may choose not to run. If he does choose to run, right now he’s got Trump’s endorsement, which means he’s the nominee. Certainly, he could lose Trump’s endorsement—Trump is notorious for spectacular breakups with former allies—but if you’ve got chips, put them down on JD.
Maybe there will be competition. There are rumblings about Ted Cruz jumping in, but I don’t think Ted Cruz is going to do that because Ted Cruz is smart and he doesn’t want to be humiliated by being utterly destroyed in the primary. There will probably be some dorky Never Trump geebos going for it, like Mike Pence, which would be hilarious. The Ned Flanders of American politics would be humiliated, but for Pence, you get the vibe that that might be a plus for him. Look, the GOP nominee in 2028 is going to be JD Vance about 80 percent of the time, so everybody needs to get their feelz under control and get ready to back him. Maybe he’s not 100 percent with you, but the alternative is 0 percent with you. Get over your panty twist, people.
And the Democrat nominee is going to be Kamala Harris. That’s just the way it’s going to be, because the Democrat Party’s biggest constituency is not failson and disappointment daughter, Democrat Socialists, but black women. Kamala is a black woman; ergo, she’s going to get nominated. You’re not going to get the Democrats to nominate someone who’s not a black woman. We’re seeing what happens when you do that in Texas. That blasphemous imp James Talarico is just not winning over black voters after beating Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett (TX-30)
One of the benefits of Kamala is that she’s also DSA-friendly; she’s a communist and was recently sucking up to the Hamas wing. The socialists will swallow hard and take her. A bunch of others will run, and they’ll lose. There’s some talk about AOC, but she’s going to take noted burger chef Chuck Schumer’s Senate seat. AOC’s sell-by date is fast approaching anyway. Believe it or not, she’s not left enough for the socialists, and here’s a hard truth some people don’t want to hear: she’s getting hefty.
Part of the attraction of AOC was that she was a cute young woman. Remember, they literally auditioned her for the job, and key to that was that she was attractive. Between losing her hotness and the fact that every time she opens her mouth, she says something stupid—like how the Senate was constituted to enshrine Jim Crow about a century before Jim Crow—this clownette peaks at junior senator from the Empire State.
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How the Soviets got to the Moon first is only hinted at in Star City, a tense, cold-blooded sci-fi spy thriller, also on Apple TV, that trades the optimism of its parent show for a bleak, paranoid look at the Soviet space program in a paranoid country. The Soviet Moon landing a few weeks before Apollo 11’s is simply accepted as fact, with no sense of how the Soviets won the race. That small omission can be forgiven because the rest of this nightmare scenario is truly high-quality TV.
Critics widely praised it as a gripping, high-stakes expansion of the FAM universe. Told from the Soviet point of view, in Star City, the Americans are the bad guys and Soviet paranoia has a logical basis. Of course, the Communists misinterpret many American actions, which feeds their paranoia. The action in Season 1 takes place in the 1969-71 timeframe. The high-risk trip to Venus, planned by the Chief Designer, played with great humanity and brilliance by Rhys Ifans, knows that the Central Committee will never give the go-ahead for the mission and hides his intention from all but a few engineers and astronauts.
The Chief Designer is never named. We also saw the nameless Chief Designer in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, appearing in the film as a laughing, bald-headed stand-in for insufferable Soviet superiority. The real “Chief Designer” of the Soviet space program was Sergei Korolev (Sergei Pavlovich Korolev). During his lifetime, his identity was kept as a closely guarded state secret by the Soviet government to protect him from potential assassination by foreign intelligence and to maintain state security.
In Star City, the Soviet apparatus of oppression is the star of the show. The Communists never let anyone breathe without their knowing. Everyone—I mean everyone—is followed, recorded, and surveilled. The most terrifying character on television today is Anna Maxwell Martin, who plays KGB Colonel Lyudmilla Raskova. A cold-blooded killer, torturer, and intimidator, Raskova stands in the middle of a web of Soviet oppression that uses all the tools of state intimidation and fear to maintain a level of control that is unbearable to citizens. Instead of fighting it, they try to stay out of its way as much as possible.
Her quiet, fanatical devotion to the Soviet state (and her own career) makes her casual brutality and scheming seem not only logical but necessary. Raskova is a composite character, but she represents the logical extreme of socialism. How many times have we heard from socialism’s apologists that the reason it’s never worked isn’t the system; it’s the people who run the governments who are the problem. Castro, Pol Pot, Lenin, and Mao—these were the “wrong” people to be leading any country. The theory of socialism is sound and will work if the “right” people are implementing it.
The logic of oppression leads inevitably to socialism as a national economic and social template. There simply is no better way to control people than mandating the actions of the citizenry based on what’s “good for everybody.” Imposing controls on how people act is only the beginning. In order to impose socialist dogma on the people, the state must control how they think as well. This means censorship to ensure homogeneous thinking, surveillance to ensure “proper” actions, and punishment for anyone who steps outside the socialist boundaries established by the government through anti-state thoughts, words, and deeds.
Putting someone in jail for listening to rock music? The Soviets outlawed rock as “degenerate.” Certain writers who published “dangerous” ideas were also locked up. Young people enamored of socialist ideology should think long and hard about the kind of society created by adopting socialist principles. They are not only unrealistic, but they’re also impossible. Human beings do not act the way that the socialists say we must act to create their utopia. Until we do, the imposition of socialism will always—always—result in brutality, poverty of mind and spirit, oppression, and death.
Mutti Merkel is/was the uitimate globalist. And she destroyed what was once West-Germany, a country she grew up neighboring from her dirt-poor communist East-Germany. Was this her revenge?
A statistic you won’t find in the mainstream media, because it totally undermines the idea that mass immigration is in any way beneficial to Europe, is the number of foreign nationals in Germany’s prisons. Remix reported on July 24 that foreign nationals account for 45% of the prison population in Germany, and that in the cities of Hamburg and Berlin, the proportion of foreign nationals in prison is almost 60%. When you consider that many migrants have become citizens or have children who are German citizens, the number of criminals due to mass migration could be much higher.
The majority of the foreign criminals reportedly came from either Eastern Europe or Arab countries. To put more precise numbers on it, Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung found that 27,000 of the 60,408 people in German jails in March 2026 were not citizens of the country. Notably, as recently as 2015, the percentage of foreigners in German jails was 30%, so the number has increased dramatically since then. Remix also reported that dual citizens and foreign-born German citizens are not included in the above statistics, arguing that the actual share of inmates with a migration background is likely even higher than the reported 45%.
I always point out that European and other Western nations’ governments do not import persecuted Christians or Jews, nor do they import freedom-loving political prisoners. They do not bring people in to assimilate them or demand that they accept Western moral standards. No, Western governments import masses of violent Third Worlders, many of them Muslims, whom politicians then encourage not to assimilate. That has led to the crime wave sweeping the West. In fact, while the foreign population of Germany is only around 17%, according to Remix, foreign nationals possibly comprise a majority of the country’s criminals.
The German Association of Prison Officers’ chairman, René Müller, complained that translators are increasingly necessary in the prison system and that they are not always available to meet the needs of the number of prisoners who require them. He believes this raises the risk of aggression from inmates and the possibility of Muslim prisoners becoming increasingly radicalized and isolated.
Bavaria’s Justice Ministry attributed aggressive behavior by inmates towards staff to language issues and “culturally determined behaviors.” If only the German authorities had examined the cultures of these migrants before welcoming them into the country without any language skills or shared values to make assimilation possible.
Remix News reported on this back in 2024, when it was estimated that German prisons cost taxpayers approximately €4.14 billion annually, with around €1.82 billion spent incarcerating foreign nationals. At the time, foreign prisoners already made up more than half of the inmate population in several states.
Alternative for Germany lawmaker Martin Hess said those figures demonstrated the consequences of the country’s migration policies. … The former police officer called for stricter deportations and a complete reversal of Germany’s migration policy, arguing that foreign criminality imposes both a security risk and a major financial burden on taxpayers.
Unfortunately, woke German authorities like their current system of arresting citizens for free speech while lavishing money on foreign criminals.
On May 28, 2021, Anthony Fauci learned that the Department of Health and Human Services would refer EcoHealth Alliance – the New York nonprofit that had routed NIAID money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology – to its inspector general. That night he wrote in his diary:
“I am certain that there will be some deficiencies that the IG will find as is always the case with IG audits. Certainly, whatever they find it will be misconstrued by those who want to make a case for our involvement in the outbreak. I am starting to feel that it is important for me to write an editorial or an opinion piece giving our side of the story.” (p. 753)
Our involvement in the outbreak. Followed closely by a plan to get out in front of it. That instinct – get ahead of it, control the story, decide what the public needs to believe and then saturate every channel with it – is the organizing principle of these documents. It shows up in the origins fight. It shows up in masks, transmissibility, and boosters. It shows up in how he handled the people who disagreed with him. And it shows up, most revealingly, in what he chose to write down.
What was released
On July 24, Senator Rand Paul’s committee published two documents that have not been reported in any depth.The first is Fauci’s personal diary, 1,141 pages, running from late 2019 through his retirement in December 2022. It is partly a journal and overwhelmingly a scrapbook: he pasted hundreds of articles about himself into it, frequently in full. The second is 136 pages of internal email about his awards – nominations, ethics clearances, and the disposition of prize money. Fauci does not date the composition of his entries, so we cannot always distinguish what was typed the same evening from what was assembled later. Page numbers refer to the released PDFs.
I. What they thought at the start
Page 13 of the diary covers two important events from January 31, 2020. The first is that Fauci is handed the mic to serve as Covid’s point person. He writes: “White House is now fully convinced that I be the science/health spokesperson for the USG. Bob Redfield just does not come across very weel. He takes forever to say something and it is usually wondering. This drives the WH and HHS comms people crazy and so they are putting me out on all the requests.” The director of the CDC was not sidelined for being wrong, but for being slow on camera. The selection criterion was not who’s the most credible scientist, but who performs best on TV.
Redfield’s own account of that period, given under oath in 2023, is worth recalling. Asked why he had been excluded from the origins discussions, he pointed to ideological differences: “Because it was told to me that they wanted a single narrative, and that I obviously had a different point of view.” The second thing happens after he gets back to his office. Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust calls, sounding “very concerned,” with Kristian Andersen of Scripps conferenced in and Eddie Holmes in the background from Sydney. Fauci writes down what they told him:
“The people on the phone felt that the mutations around the furine cleavage site of the spike protein could not have occurred naturally since it would require an evolutionary ‘jump’ that they found nowhere in bat isolates.” Deliberate insertion, they said, followed by release – accidental release being the most likely. The next day Fauci convened a larger call of twelve experts in epidemiology. His entry characterizing it (p. 14) is the probably the single most consequential paragraph in the whole diary. There was “not total agreement about the likelihood of deliberate insertion,” he writes.
Ron Fouchier was certain it could have arisen naturally and said they shouldn’t waste time. Christian Drosten agreed with Fouchier. And then, in Fauci’s own words: “the rest felt that deliberate insertion was possible.” Ten of twelve thought it must be manmade. And he admits the person driving the zoonotic theory perspective, Ron Fouchier, was “expected of him since he was the original GOF [gain of function] person with Yoshi Kawaoka.”
II. What happened next
Three days later, four of the scientists from that call were circulating a draft arguing the opposite. “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” appeared in Nature Medicine on March 17, concluding that the virus was not a laboratory construct. Andersen told the journal in his cover note that the paper had been prompted by Fauci and Francis Collins. Drafts went to both men before publication. Fauci’s reply to Andersen: “Nice job on the paper.” Two months after Proximal Origin published – Fauci’s institute approves an $8.9 million grant for Andersen.
On April 16, Collins wrote to Fauci asking whether NIH could help “put down this very destructive conspiracy.” The following day, Fauci cited Proximal Origin from the White House briefing room podium – the most watched platform on earth at that moment. Three weeks after that, on May 4, 2020, he told National Geographic that the evidence was “very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,” citing “a number of very qualified evolutionary biologists.” The doubt referenced in his diary never reached the public. And his account of that February call has never stopped changing.
A June 7, 2021 diary entry (p. 767), recounting the same meeting: “About half of the people felt that this was possibly a constructed virus and the other half were convinced that this was a natural occurrence.” In a June 3, 2024 sworn opening statement to the House Select Subcommittee, Fauci said he joined a call with about a dozen international virologists, that the discussion was “lively, with arguments for both possibilities,” and that after further examination several who had been concerned about lab manipulation became convinced the virus was not deliberately manipulated.
The June 2021 retelling contains another problem: he says “a few weeks later” Andersen and colleagues re-examined the data and concluded natural origin. The draft was circulating on February 4 – three days after the call. The June 2021 entry shows how he’s trying to mould history into something different for posterity.
III. Habit becomes routine
Origins is where this pattern is most consequential, but it is not where it started or where it stopped. The diary shows the same strategy applied to every contested question of the pandemic: decide what the public needs to believe, then flood the zone. Consider masks. Fauci’s public reversal in the spring of 2020 is well known, and he has explained it as a response to shortages and to emerging evidence on asymptomatic spread (p. 375). But watch what happens when the question comes back around in February 2021, when he begins pushing double-masking (p. 619):
“CDC starting to do practical things that I have actually been pushing for some time. For example: Wearing 2 masks could be better than just one. They did a dummy study and showed that a cloth mask over a surgical mask actually gives a more complete fit and keeps out aerosols.” Note the order of operations: He had been pushing it “for some time,” the evidence arrives afterward, and the evidence is a mannequin. That is the entire evidentiary basis for double-masking in a 1,141-page diary kept by the government’s chief spokesman on the subject during the month he was urging 330 million people to adopt it.
We see every time Fauci is turned to for guidance, he makes bold proclamations without feeling burdened to verify any scientific basis. We see it in the numbers.Across 1,141 pages by the nation’s senior infectious disease official during the largest public health event in a century, here is how often certain terms appear. Never once: “peer review.” “Meta-analysis.” “Risk-benefit.” “Learning loss.” “Mental health.” Once: “N95.” “Seroprevalence.” “Cost-benefit.” Twice: “Cloth mask.” “School closure.” “Natural immunity.”
The question of whether prior infection conferred meaningful protection – the question underpinning the vaccine mandates that cost people their jobs – is never worked through anywhere in these pages. It appears twice, both times as an attack to be repelled.
.@VDHanson : “We didn’t storm the beaches of Normandy… didn’t bleed and die in the trenches of World War I…. didn’t sacrifice everything in World War II…. just to be lectured by newcomers on why America is ‘racist’ and ‘flawed.’” Victor is right. pic.twitter.com/DSJ6vjWzyd
BREAKING: Cathie Wood says SpaceX could eventually become a global telecom provider.
In the short term, SpaceX may partner with mobile carriers worldwide. But in the long term, she expects it to offer connectivity directly to consumers at a much lower cost as Starlink scales… pic.twitter.com/e2pYFasbeQ
After being at the White House just last week, Iraq’s new “Washington approved” prime minister is apparently now the new shuttle diplomacy guy, after Qatari and Pakistani peace efforts on Iran have come to naught. The NY Times is reporting Thursday afternoon that “Iraq’s prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, is in Tehran carrying a proposal for a cease-fire between Iran and the United States, according to Iranian and Iraqi officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about matters of national security.”
But the messaging apparently went the other way to, from Tehran to Washington, per more from the Times: Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told local news media that the Iraqi leader had shared with Iranian officials his “insights and impressions” from his recent meeting with Trump. Araghchi added that Tehran and Washington don’t have a problem when it comes to finding mediators, “the problem is America’s attitude.” At the moment, Trump is threatening new, massive attacks on Iran, which could come tonight or at any time, with the whole region on edge and the State Department telling Americans to urgently find flights out of the Middle East.
President Trump has newly been cited in Axios as saying he’s seriously considering restarting major combat operations in Iran. He’s previewing strikes that would be bigger than anything before, including in the opening days of Operation Epic Fury, when dozens of Iranian government and military leaders were killed, including the Ayatollah. There’s also chatter that Israel could rejoin the attacks this time, after Israeli jets have been absent in the past twelve days of renewed bombing raids.
However, Axios stipulated that Trump has yet to make a final decision. Mideast regional Al Hadath and Israel’s Channel 12 are separately reporting that US officials have told regional allies to “be prepared” for such a new major assault on Iran. Axios writes, “In a brief interview, Trump acknowledged that such a decision would have consequences and stressed he hasn’t made a determination yet.” This as Brent Crude has climbed past $100 per barrel on Thursday, and as the prospect of all-out war remains unpopular among American voters, especially with months to go ahead of the midterms.
“I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before. I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it,” the president said. And more via the Axios interview: Trump said Israel “would join in two minutes if I ask them to,” but added that “we don’t need anybody” to launch a new operation against Iran. He also said there would be “consequences” for Israel joining the strikes, hinting at Iranian retaliation against Israel.
Trump said the Iranians “want to negotiate” but are not ready to make a deal at the moment. “They haven’t received enough pain yet,” he said.
Two regional sources with knowledge of mediation efforts said Iranian leadership hasn’t accepted the latest proposal put forward. “We are trying, but the Iranians are not being helpful,” one of them said. The Houthis have meanwhile been ratcheting their involvement, apparently having been called upon by Tehran to help it keep leverage over key oil transit chokepoints. All the while, there have been widespread reports of the Pentagon surging large aircraft, especially refueling tankers, from Europe to the CENTCOM area.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that Iran is “begging for a deal” and “they need to come to their senses,” adding that Tehran will “pay a very heavy price for the things they are doing.” Speaking on the sidelines of the ASEAN conference in Manila, he claimed that “Iran is begging us, both directly and indirectly, ‘Let’s do a deal. Let’s talk.'” But the reality remains that there’s no public indicators showing this; instead, the Iranians have pretty aggressively sought to enforce their red lines, this week attacking a series of international ships in the Hormuz Strait.
Rubio tried to blame an alleged fracturing of the Iranian government, and a takeover by the ‘hardline’ faction of leadership. “The problem with Iran is every time they make a deal, the people in charge either break it or they want to change it. So it looks like they’re not ready to make a deal, so they’re going to continue to pay a price, and every night the price gets higher and higher,” he asserted. Rubio then characterized Iran and its policies as “run by radical clerics” – calling them “oblivious” to its economic problems. In the background is the fact that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent months ago boasted that US policies and sanctions engineered a currency collapse in hopes that the January economic protests would topple the regime.
This never materialized and now people in the Trump administration seem perplexed. Rubio continued the blame-game while suggesting that if Tehran were to play ball on negotiating a deal for the Hormuz Strait, it could receive major economic benefits. “Iran can be the richest country in the Middle East if they wanted to be. But instead, they take their money, and they use it and they give it to Hezbollah. They give it to Hamas. They give it to the Houthis. They give it to Shia militias. They give it to sponsored terrorism all over the world,” he said.
Iran “will pay a very heavy price for the things they are doing. They are already paying a heavy price,” he said. Rubio also responded to recent statements of the Iranians talking about exacting “an eye for an eye” in terms of military approach. The US top diplomat then asserted that President Trump’s approach was “a head for an eye”. He described that currently Iran’s military-industrial base is being “decimated” – suffering “billions” of dollars” in damage. This as…
The US bombs Iran for the 12th consecutive night, killing at least two people and wounding 11 others in an attack on the Shalamcheh border crossing with Iraq. Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait have reported retaliatory missile and drone attacks from Iran. But what’s happening in the Red Sea right now does suggest that the Iranians have more cards to play. Their allies, the Houthis of Yemen, have initiated closure of the Bab al-Mandab Strait to all Saudi shipping. At least two vessels were attacked, with unconfirmed but widely circulating video showing one on fire and in distress:
BIG: First Saudi oil tanker reportedly hit by Houthi missile near Yemen, engulfed in flames. pic.twitter.com/R3nG7FSdW1
After the Iranian-aligned Houthis confirmed they struck two Saudi oil tankers as part of a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, as a second chokepoint on global oil supplies opens alongside the Strait of Hormuz, on Thursday the Shia militant group is now openly threatening Aramco facilities inside the kingdom… or at least some unnamed officials are telling regional media. The Houthis have characterized their campaign as “a blockade for a blockade,” saying it is intended to pressure Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have already been blockading Houthis controlled-ports in Yemen for years, which hearkens back to a Gulf vs. Houthi chiefly aerial war that opened in 2015.
The group is threatening to carry on with attacks even if Saudi vessels seek to avoid the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. US regional allies are currently scrambling to establish alternative energy shipping routes that avoids the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint.Al Jazeera has cited unnamed Houthis sources who say that Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil facilities could be next:”The ship, confirmed by both the Houthis and British maritime organisations, was struck on its top deck, which caught fire – a less severe outcome than a hull strike, which typically causes a vessel to sink. The Houthis claim both ships were hit, though British monitors say the second tanker made a U-turn and redirected toward the Suez Canal.
At least 10 vessels attempting to cross Bab el-Mandeb strait have been forced to reroute towards the Suez Canal instead, facing a much longer journey around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope. The two targeted vessels had been heading to India and China.The Houthis describe the campaign as “a blockade for a blockade”, warning that Saudi Arabia must lift its blockade on Yemen or face further consequences. Houthi officials say they plan to escalate operations to target Saudi oil tankers and ships even when not crossing Bab el-Mandeb – meaning vessels rerouting via the Suez Canal could still be at risk.
Houthi sources also say Aramco oil facilities could become a future target if the blockade on Yemen is not lifted.” The Houthis have until this week largely remained on the sidelines of the US-Israel war on Iran, but are now clearly ratcheting their involvement, helping Tehran with keeping leverage over global oil shipping. It was in March of 2022 that the last major strike on Saudi Aramco facilities was reported. Prior to that, 2019 saw the major Abqaiq–Khurais attack.
However, which group was ultimately behind some of those past, historic attacks remained somewhat of a mystery, also amid speculation that it could have been pro-Iranian groups out of Iraq. This as Brent Crude has on Thursday returned to the $100 per barrel mark.
“The strikes are designed to further degrade…” This is the copy-and-paste headline I’ve read for the past week about Iran. We’re degrading their radar, we’re degrading their naval capabilities, we’re degrading their ability to disrupt shipping. That’s all fine and dandy, but we need to “further degrade” a lot more. And we need to “further degrade” from the top down, not the bottom up. The Iran War ends one of three ways:
Option A: The Iranian regime is toppled, its leaders killed or forced to flee, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is completely dismantled. Whatever government arises from the ashes is friendly to the West, or at least not openly hostile.
Option B: We eventually tire of the cat-and-mouse game, pack up our military, and go home. The status quo reasserts itself, albeit with an Iranian regime that can claim it defeated the Great Satan. We accept another 47 years of the same, though Iran will have acquired a nuclear weapon well within that timeframe.
Option C: We pound the current regime into compliance. They finally agree to give up their pursuit of nukes, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and cease funding regional terrorism. And I have bad news for those banking on Option C. That option doesn’t exist. For anybody not whistling past the graveyard, it should be abundantly obvious at this point that the IRGC thugs and their cardboard cutout mullahs have absolutely no intention of ending the jihad so long as their bodies draw breath. The only reason they “negotiated” over the past few months was to give themselves breathing space from which to resume their headlong rush.
President Donald Trump is keeping the “negotiations” door open while bombing them nightly, in a Hail Mary attempt to get them to come to the table in good faith. But we all know where that route leads, i.e., another few months of fruitless talks that will lead us to the same dead end, all the while Iran continues to lob missiles at our allies and attack shipping. I know it. You know it. President Trump knows it.
In 1941, our government did what needed to be done. And the American people supported our government and the troops to the best of their abilities. They cut back on meat and bread. They planted victory gardens. They bought Victory Bonds to help fund the campaign. The men answered the draft. The women headed off to the factories to replace the men. And nobody whined. And this was on the tail end of the Great Depression.
Nowadays? GAS PRICES ARE TOO HIGH!!! MY LIFE IS INCONVENIENCED BECAUSE GAS PRICES ARE TOO HIGH!!! I DEMAND THE GOVERNMENT DO SOMETHING ABOUT GAS PRICES SO I CAN GET BACK TO STARING AT MY iPhone 24/7!!! Imagine what the “resolve” of the American public will be 47 years from now.
At this point, President Trump has little choice but to follow through with Option A. He is a master negotiator and has been able to maneuver his way around roadblocks that would have paralyzed other presidents. But sometimes the forces of history box you in and narrow your path. His best path forward is to topple the regime and deal with whatever replaces it. And he needs to explain this to the American people, some of whom openly root against us, and others who still fail to grasp both the severity of the situation and the rare opportunities it presents. The 2026 midterms will not define Trump’s legacy. His handling of Iran will.
The biggest mistake we can make at this point is if the Iranian leaders stop firing missiles for a couple of days and express interest in restarting talks, and our government takes the bait, immediately stops the current bombardment, and winds up in exactly the same place we are today, but a week before the midterms.Option B means the can is kicked down the road. Option B means our kids get to deal with nuclear-armed ayatollahs who never let something so trivial as a sense of self-preservation deter them.
Option B means that, when that happens, we run the risk of it happening during a Democrat administration which, at best, will do nothing but make laughably empty threats (think Biden) or, at worst, openly side with the ayatollahs (think Obama). But hey, at least we’ll be able to tell our kids that the price of gas came down in the fall of 2026, right?
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has formally referred former Special Counsel Jack Smith to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution, alleging that Smith made false statements under oath to Congress about the scope of his investigation into President Donald Trump. According to Fox News, in a July 22 letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Jordan alleges that Smith intentionally misled the House Judiciary Committee during a December 2025 deposition by testifying that his office obtained only telephone toll records and did not seek or review the contents of lawmakers’ text messages.
Jordan contends newly released records contradict that testimony and amount to obstruction of Congress. “All individuals have an obligation to comply with a duly authorized congressional inquiry. Mr. Smith is no different,” Jordan writes, accusing the former special counsel of making “intentionally false statements” designed to impede congressional oversight. The referral follows the release of documents by Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who says Smith’s investigative team accessed and reviewed text messages involving 44 members of Congress from both political parties, along with current and former Trump administration officials, during an investigation known as “Operation Arctic Frost.”
Grassley also alleges investigators viewed some communications before a Justice Department “filter team” completed its privilege review, raising concerns about compliance with procedures intended to protect privileged information. During his December deposition, Smith testified that his office sought telephone toll records containing historical routing information — including call numbers, dates, times and durations — but not the contents of calls or text messages. Republicans argue the newly released records show Smith’s team obtained and reviewed message content, directly contradicting his sworn testimony.
The Justice Department confirms receipt of Jordan’s criminal referral and says it will investigate any evidence of criminal conduct. No criminal charges have been filed, and the referral itself does not constitute a criminal prosecution. Smith denies wrongdoing.
Last week, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Smith should be “prosecuted.” “What did he do with the text messages? We don’t know that yet. What we do know is he absolutely read them. He absolutely shared them with members of his team and all of that illegally,” Hawley alleged. “The Justice Department requires that there be screening for any members of Congress [regarding] their text messages. Jack Smith said under oath that he didn’t seek the text messages of members of Congress, but in fact, we know that he did. So he lied, he violated the law, he violated the Constitution. This guy ought to be prosecuted.”
Democratic House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin condemns the referral as “baseless and vindictive,” arguing Republicans misrepresent Smith’s testimony. Raskin says committee investigators never specifically questioned Smith about presidential records or members’ text messages during more than 13 hours of testimony and maintains Smith truthfully answered the questions that were asked regarding telephone toll records rather than message content.
The referral marks the latest escalation in congressional Republicans’ scrutiny of Smith. In November 2025, Jordan separately referred Smith’s former deputy, Thomas Windom, to the Justice Department for alleged obstruction of Congress. Jordan told then-Attorney General Pam Bondi that “Congress cannot perform its oversight function if witnesses who appear before its committees corruptly refuse to provide information that the law requires them to furnish. The obstruction of a committee investigation undermines Congress’s core constitutional oversight obligations.”
Jordan’s latest referral asks the Justice Department to determine whether Smith’s testimony warrants prosecution for perjury or making false statements before Congress.
Chief Judge James Boasberg is frustrated … and he is not alone. Recently, the D.C. federal judge reportedly “groused” that the D.C. appellate court had ordered him to reconsider a case about whether the D.C. government engaged in biased enforcement against political graffiti. Conversely, the litigants are equally irked over what they see as Boasberg’s bias after he responded by, again, dismissing their claims without a trial.
For a second time, Boasberg has barred pro-life groups from access to a jury after members were arrested for writing in chalk “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on a sidewalk while Black Lives Matter writings were left untouched. I wrote earlier about the emerging body of “Boasberg’s Law,” cases in which the judge has increasingly shown an untethered and expansive view of his own authority. Recently, Boasberg was found to have committed an “abuse of discretion” in twice finding that the Trump Administration was in contempt of court for failing to turn around deportation flights.
My disagreements with Boasberg are not over the underlying issues, but rather the court’s rejection of basic limits on its own authority. While chastising President Trump for exceeding his authority, Boasberg has been reversed for exceeding his own. In the earlier case, Boasberg dismissed grand jury subpoenas in the probe of Fed Chair Jerome Powell. I have been critical of that probe, but Boasberg’s refusal to allow the subpoenas to be executed was based on an opinion that was rife with open hostility for President Trump, dubious sources, and biased observations.
I have similar reservations in this latest case. During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, streets in Washington were covered with BLM graffiti and the police watched as protesters wrote slogans and slurs on stores, streets, and sidewalks. The government itself even commissioned a massive painting of the message on a street near the White House.However, when Frederick Douglass Foundation and Students for Life of America wrote their pro-life version of the slogan, they were immediately arrested and the chalk protest removed.
The D.C. Circuit’s reversal of Boasberg in the case was a major victory for free speech. Boasberg had applied the wrong standard to kill the case, holding that the group could not challenge the selective enforcement of the laws. In reaching that conclusion, Boasberg applied the wrong standard, imposing the heavy burden of proving that the city was engaged in “invidious enforcement.” While that standard was used correctly to dismiss an equal protection claim, it is not the standard for a free speech challenge. The Court did not hide its dissatisfaction with the thrust of Boasberg’s opinion in dismissing the First Amendment claim:
“The First Amendment prohibits government discrimination on the basis of viewpoint. ‘To permit one side … to have a monopoly in expressing its views … is the antithesis of constitutional guarantees.’ The protection for freedom of speech applies not only to legislation, but also to enforcement of the laws.”The appellate court sent the case back to Boasberg with the opportunity to apply the correct standard and to create a substantive record before issuing a ruling on the free speech claim.
Boasberg took the case and ruled again that the groups would not be allowed a trial. The new dismissal was issued despite the standard that, in seeking such a dismissal before a trial, the court must accept all material facts in favor of the nonmoving party or, in this case, the pro-life and pro-free speech litigants. Boasberg rejected the factual claim that they were “similarly situated” to the BLM protesters. The litigants presented the results of discovery on the point, but Boasberg dismissed the claim on his own subjective view of the evidence. They have now filed again with the appellate court to appeal his order.
Some of Boasberg’s factual findings are baffling. For example, he maintains that the groups did not show that MPD officers “even witnessed any specific defacement during [Black Lives Matter] protests.” However, the groups presented such evidence as bodycam video of officers watching as a protester spray-painted ‘I can’t breathe’ on the street near the White House two weeks after the arrests of the pro-life protesters. They submitted other video evidence of officers watching protesters spray-painting BLM messages outside of the Department of Justice.
Moreover, they presented what they claimed is guidance from Assistant Chief of Police Jeffery Carroll, in charge of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Special Operations Division, in the application of different treatment for graffiti. Carroll reportedly admitted to being “present” at BLM protests featuring “defacement” of property, public and private and Lt. Jason Bagshaw admitted that he also saw defacement “related to” BLM protests. This does not mean that a jury would rule for these litigants but rather that court cannot substitute its judgment for a jury when a credible and supported claim has been made by litigants.
Boasberg declares that no such credible evidence was presented. The fact is that a reasonable jury could conclude that there was a different treatment shown in the enforcement of these laws based on the content of the speech. The biased enforcement of laws is a common reality in other countries where courts enable such selective enforcement. In countries such as Iran and China, no level of evidence is sufficient to overcome the bias of courts in showing a preference for one side.
Judge Boasberg has had a distinguished career that is now being undone by a lack of restraint in these decisions. Again, I believe that the judge has been on solid ground in some of these conflicts, including criticizing the use of “intemperate and disrespectful” language in filings and demanding compliance with his orders. However, while Chief Judge Boasberg has described the President’s claim of expansive powers as “awfully frightening,” the same can be said about a judge who substitutes his own judgment for juries and disregards legal standards for disfavored groups.
We’re hearing more and more from the Democratic Socialists of America about all of the sins of America and very little of the good things we’ve done to ourselves and to the world at large on our 250th birthday. What is it, the nature of this DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, and the diversity, equity, inclusion criticism that we were racist, sexist, nativist, cruel, ruthless, etc., etc. But my question is, compared to what? Mao Zedong? He killed 70 million people. He was the greatest mass murderer in history, and that government is still communist in an unbroken chain from [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] all the way back to Mao. Do we ever talk about that or the million people who are in concentration camps in China?
Compared to historically to the Aztecs? We’re told the Aztecs were great people. They had an empire, but they crushed over a million people to create their empire. Some years, they sacrificed up to 10,000, maybe 15,000 a year of conquered tribes of fellow Indigenous people. Do we remember Shaka Zulu, the 19th-century creator of the Zulu nation? He was responsible for a genocide in crushing his enemies that probably cost over a million lives. Do we really think that the Native Americans were living in paradise until Europeans came? The story of Native Americans was conquest, enslavement, butchery of rival tribes. So, what is going on?
We have a tradition in the West of self-criticism. That’s what makes us different. Rationalism, self-criticism, improvement. But when that goes to an extreme, it ventures from self-criticism and self-reflection to nihilism, and it’s quite destructive. So, let’s just take a look at where the United States is compared to the rest. Look at immigration. Why do a million people, or 2 million people, 10,000 a day under Joe Biden, from very poor countries, most of them from what we would call the former Third World that were victims of socialism, why do they risk their lives coming here every year?
Why do all these critics of the United States … [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], why did her parents want to come here? Why did [Rep.] Ilhan Omar’s father want to come here? Why did [Rep.] Rashida Tlaib’s father want to come here? Why did [New York City Mayor] Zohran Mamdani’s parents want to come? Was it so bad? Can’t they ever acknowledge that they came here because they had greater security, they had greater freedom, they had greater economic opportunity? And if they had criticisms, it was never enough that they wanted to go back to the places that they praised, but only from a distance and in the abstract.
The truth is that the poor in the United States are better off than most of the middle classes in every other country. We saw that in the World Cup when middle- and upper-middle-class Europeans came over, and unlike … to watch the games, and unlike most tourists, they didn’t just stick on the coasts. They went to places in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, the South, and the Midwest. And they found two things. One, Americans were amazingly friendly and open, upbeat, not downers and drab, and everything’s terrible, which they expected from their experiences in Europe.
And more importantly, they were affluent. They had big homes. They had air conditioning. the poor had appurtenances. Everybody has a cell phone. Nobody worries about the cost, apparently. There’s also then the hypocrisy of a lot of our critics. And let me just give you an example of a few of them.
Hasan Piker is a child of very, very wealthy Turkish immigrants that became U.S. citizens. He grew up for much of his life in Turkey. He gave a talk the other day in a Mao suit to Democratic Socialists of America. Think about that. He put on the uniform, so to speak, of the greatest mass murderer in history, and then he denounced capitalism. But he didn’t denounce capitalism in his own life because his parents are multimillionaires. He is a multimillionaire, and he drives a, what? $120,000 Porsche. Isn’t that a luxury of the bourgeoisie?
And then there’s Zohran Mamdani, of course. His family, as I pointed out numerous times, was the elite of the elite of the elite in Uganda, a community of expatriates, Indians, from India that control 60% of the wealth, and they’re only 1% of the population. And he grew up in privilege here. He had a very nice home. He has a family estate on Lake Victoria, of all places. Ro Khanna, the congressman from California, he always is pointing out the evils of Republicans, and as he looks at the drift of the Democratic Party, he puts his finger in the wind, and he says socialism is the answer. Ro Khanna does.
But he’s a multimillionaire. His father-in-law is one of the wealthiest members of the Indian American community, probably worth $500 or $600 million. His own children have been deeded golf courses. His wife drives a $190,000 Range Rover, and he’s lecturing us about our shortfalls? And then, of course, we come to [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom. He wants to get in on the socialist craze, so he said the other day, as is his wont, moving his arms around and being very slick and glib, that capitalism fails. It didn’t work. It worked for you, Gavin. You have a $9 million home. You are the, basically, the quote-unquote, “protégé” of the Gordon Getty oil for- fortune, who backed all of your business opportunities.
Palantir’s reported job offer to former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov demonstrates how Kiev’s defense establishment has become a recruiting pool for the Western military-industrial complex, where vibes, not results, are rewarded. Fedorov was fired by Vladimir Zelensky on July 16, ostensibly over a long-running conflict between him and the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Aleksandr Syrsky. A self-styled ‘digital innovator’ and architect of Ukraine’s transition to a primarily drone-based war footing, Fedorov has since blamed his dismissal on Syrsky, an unpopular Soviet-trained general who was fired several days after Zelensky sacked Fedorov.
Immediately after his dismissal, Fedorov claimed that he had already been offered a new job. “Even tech giants have called with job offers,” he said. “Alex Karp, the head of Palantir, suggested we do something together, but I told him, ‘let’s talk about it later’.” Fedorov’s reluctance to accept Karp’s offer may have something to do with his political ambitions – it’s widely acknowledged that Zelensky sees Fedorov as a political rival who could relieve Brussels of its Kiev-corruption problem – but Karp’s offer was likely made for one reason: Mikhail Fedorov has been Palantir’s greatest salesman in Ukraine.
Fedorov first met with Karp in June of 2022, when he was still serving as Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation. Palantir opened an office in Kiev shortly after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict and signed memoranda of cooperation with the country’s Defense, Digital Transformation, Economy, and Education ministries the following year.
Implementing AI in warfare alongside @PalantirTech@louismosley is a strategic leap for Ukraine. It was a privilege to host Alex Karp in Kyiv—a leader who personally stood with us since 2022. Today, our partnership is defined by tangible results: from advanced air attack analysis… pic.twitter.com/sryO4gcxTb
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) May 12, 2026
Appointed defense minister in January of 2026, Fedorov aggressively courted Palantir, pushing its AI-powered command-and-control software at the expense of homegrown alternatives. Fedorov marketed Ukraine as “the best training ground” for contractors like Palantir, and offered the company and its competitors – including Anduril Industries, ShieldAI, and AeroVironment – tax breaks, favorable regulations, and unprecedented access to battlefield data.
By early 2026, Karp claimed that Palantir was “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine.” Fedorov hyped up the partnership, claiming in June that Karp “was just shocked by how we use Palantir. He was shocked by our vision, what we do and what we plan to do.” Fedorov oversaw Ukraine’s expansion of medium- and long-range strikes against Russian infrastructure, winning praise from Western media for “turning the tables” in the conflict – in the words of the Financial Times. Palantir’s software has been instrumental in “planning deep strike operations,” Fedorov said in May of 2026.
While his vision of an AI-powered, high-tech military is hugely popular in Silicon Valley boardrooms and among Ukrainian officials tired of the Russian military’s inexorable, grinding advance in Donbass, it has been questioned by Ukrainian troops and commanders. Every new wave of strikes on Russian commercial warehouses seems to invite a retaliatory storm of missiles and drones on Kiev, and frontline troops told Ukrainska Pravda that the ‘deep strike’ campaign has had no measurable impact on the progress of the conflict.
“I don’t know where we seized the initiative; there was simply a wave of PR activity in some areas,” an officer operating near Donetsk told the newspaper. Even mid-range strikes (<150km) on Russian command posts have had “no effect, not a drop” on the front, an officer near Konstantinovka added. Former Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny has warned that deep strikes are “expensive, technologically demanding, and ultimately reciprocal. Russia retains the ability to strike back with equal or greater force and neither side can rely on this form of warfare to produce a decisive strategic outcome.”
Shortly before he was sacked from the same position, Syrsky published a lengthy article insisting that drones alone do not win wars. “You need artillery, mortars, engineering means, air defense, electronic warfare and dozens of other items,” he wrote. “You need to buy everything, not just what is currently in style.”
At least two of Fedorov’s predecessors in the defense ministry – Aleksey Reznikov and Rustem Umerov – used their positions to enrich themselves through graft and embezzlement. Corruption carries consequences, however, and both Reznikov and Umerov have been investigated for wartime profiteering. Fedorov’s de-facto lobbying for Palantir is a safer and more legal path to riches, and one that has become more popular among Ukrainian defense and military officials. They include:
All of these companies depend on contracts with the Ukrainian government – contracts that Shevchenko, Danilyuk, Honcharuk, and Matveichenko can leverage their connections to secure. For Western investors, this proximity to power amid an ongoing war represents a potential goldmine, particularly in the case of UFORCE and Trypilian. The former counts former British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace among its board members, and the latter is part owned by former British MP and minister Brooks Newmark. With the EU pouring €6 billion into Ukraine’s domestic drone industry this year alone, Honcharuk, Matveichenko, Wallace, and Newmark stand to profit handsomely.
Former HIV outreach worker and biological male Rubi Lama lost a job he’d held for nine years when U.S. funding vanished from a health program in Nepal. He tested people, counseled those at risk, and helped sex workers avoid infection. Months later, unable to find other work, he joined them along a highway outside Hetauda. Fox News:
“An Associated Press social media post about transgender aid workers in Nepal turning to sex work after losing their jobs due to U.S. foreign aid cuts sparked a wave of conservative backlash, with critics arguing the video made the case for defunding USAID rather than saving it. The AP post said that in Nepal, where “a conservative culture leaves openly transgender people with few legal job options,” around 100 LGBTQ aid workers left jobless by U.S. funding cuts had turned to sex work to survive. An accompanying video focused on Rubi Lama, a former HIV outreach worker who said USAID-funded programs had provided free condoms, lubricant and HIV-prevention medication before the cuts.
“When USAID funding was there, condoms were free, lubricant was also distributed … for free,” Lama said in the video, adding that HIV treatments, including PrEP, were also available without cost. “But, now it is gone.” The framing quickly drew criticism from conservatives who said the story raised the opposite question: why American taxpayers were funding those programs in the first place.”
His story is painful on a human scale; it also raises a question many Americans are asking: why was the United States expected to keep paying his salary?Lama worked for Friends Hetauda, part of a network connected to the Blue Diamond Society. The society received 85% of its funding from USAID, operated 20 clinics, and employed 350 people. Associated Press (cue the maudlin music):
“For nine years, Lama — who is transgender — had devoted her life to conducting HIV outreach in Nepal’s marginalized communities, including the LGBTQ+ sex workers who wait by this highway each night. But after the United States slashed its foreign aid funding last year, Lama and more than 280,000 aid workers worldwide found themselves out of a job.Much has been written about the devastating impacts the U.S. foreign aid cuts have had on the millions of people the funding once helped. Far less is known about the impacts on the helpers themselves.
In impoverished Nepal, where a conservative culture leaves openly transgender people with few legal job options, the impact on aid workers’ lives was particularly crushing. Starving and scared, Lama and around 100 other LGBTQ+ aid workers left jobless by the funding cuts have turned to sex work to survive, walking the streets alongside the very people they once fought so hard to help.”
When the money stopped, 262 employees lost their jobs, and the organization says 35% to 45% of those former workers later entered sex work.The clinics provided HIV tests, condoms, counseling, antiretroviral drugs, and PrEP. More than 1,200 clients reportedly lost access to PrEP after the shutdown. Those are real health services, and the people affected aren’t punchlines. The political reaction followed a familiar script: President Donald Trump cut foreign aid, vulnerable workers suffered, and American taxpayers were cast as villains for refusing to continue the arrangement.
Trump’s Executive Order:
Section 1. Purpose. The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.
Sec. 3. (a) 90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy. All department and agency heads with responsibility for United States foreign development assistance programs shall immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries and implementing non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors pending reviews of such programs for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy, to be conducted within 90 days of this order. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) shall enforce this pause through its apportionment authority.
Critics spoke as though Washington had fired public employees in Ohio rather than ended overseas grants in Nepal.Foreign aid can serve American interests; HIV prevention can reduce disease, improve stability, and protect people who travel across borders. Compassion also has limits when one country becomes the permanent source of salaries and program funding for organizations half a world away. Nepal has a national government; it has health agencies, wealthy residents, international charities, and neighboring countries with their interest in regional health.
Fox News: “USAID later told partners to pause new funding obligations and issue stop-work orders or suspensions for existing awards, while critics have said the review led to major disruptions, staff reductions and the cancellation of critical foreign-assistance awards. But Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway argued the AP post exposed misplaced priorities, particularly among the media, saying the outlet presented U.S. tax dollars flowing to a “trans Nepalese job protection program” as though it was a good use of public money.
Carville on preference for voter ID: ”I guess you could say it exists, anything could exist, it exists on such a minuscule scale, and it’s been proven time and time and time again.“..
The SAVE America Act, which would mandate proof of citizenship along with valid ID for federal elections and tighten mail-in voting rules, remains stalled in Congress due to the Democrats’ filibuster in the Senate, even though the underlying idea is among the most popular in American politics.
Gallup found 84 percent of Americans favor requiring photo identification at the polling place, and 83 percent favor proof of citizenship for first-time registrants – including 98 percent of Republicans, 84 percent of independents, and 67 percent of Democrats. Pew Research Center put photo-ID support at 83 percent, with 95 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Democrats behind it and only 16 percent opposed. Rasmussen found 77 percent of likely voters calling photo ID a reasonable measure to protect election integrity. Thirty-six states already request or require identification for in-person voting.
As CNN’s Harry Enten put it: “The bottom line is this: Voter ID is NOT controversial in this country.” A bill with that kind of consensus isn’t controversial, yet Senate Democrats keep blocking it. Now longtime Democratic strategist James Carville is looking at those numbers and has decided his own party needs an exit ramp. On his podcast, Politics War Room, he told Democrats to stop fighting voter ID and find a way out of a fight he believes is already lost.
The trigger for the conversation was New Jersey. Carville’s co-host Al Hunt opened by noting the right had seized on Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s disclosure that roughly 6,600 noncitizens were registered to vote in the state, fewer than 400 of whom cast ballots. “Voter fraud in the United States is an infinitesimal problem,” Carville said. “I don’t even… to the extent, I guess you could say it exists, anything could exist, it exists on such a minuscule scale, and it’s been proven time and time and time again.”
That is where most Democrats stop – the problem is too small to bother with. Carville kept going. “But I don’t know if we’re not better off saying, okay, we’ll take that alternative ID, bring your gas bill or your light bill or something,” he said. “Because for whatever reason, it polls at 75%.” He pointed to his home state of Louisiana, where voters already have to show a driver’s license at the polls, and asked why the national party keeps treating that standard as an emergency. A rule allowing alternative documents such as a gas or electric bill still polls at 75 percent – a number that should give pause to a party that has spent a decade calling identification requirements a modern poll tax.
“We are not gonna win the war” on some kind of ID, Carville said. “I never had a problem with it. I’m just saying of all the things… if every poll shows 75 or better, saying we should have some kind of ID to vote… just quit fighting it and go along with it and move to the next thing.”Hunt pushed back, arguing that most states already have ID requirements and criticizing the SAVE America Act directly. Carville was quick to draw the same line. “I’m not talking about the SAVE Act, I’m not talking about the SAVE Act at all,” he said. His proposal was narrower: “Whatever the law in Louisiana is, make it the national law.”
It is worth being precise about what the New Jersey episode actually was, because it is not quite the case for the policy Carville is conceding. Those 6,600 people had pressed “no” when a Motor Vehicle Commission keypad asked whether they were U.S. citizens, and a software defect registered them anyway. They held valid state identification – that is why they were at the MVC. An ID check at the polling place catches someone voting under another person’s name. It does not catch a state agency overriding what an applicant told it.
Which is rather the point of Carville’s argument. He is not claiming voter ID would fix anything. He is saying it costs Democrats nothing and they are losing the fight anyway – that a party cannot win by declaring war on a basic expectation shared by nearly every voting bloc, and that the energy would be better spent on arguments it can win. The concession is notable coming from this particular program. Politics War Room has hosted the Brennan Center’s Michael Waldman to argue that widespread voter fraud is a myth and to pick apart the SAVE Act. Carville still believes the first part. He has simply stopped believing it matters.
Elon Musk says he’ll beat Hollywood at its own game, pledging that his artificial intelligence venture will produce a full-length film of Homer’s “The Odyssey” by year’s end, one he insists will stay faithful to the ancient text in a way Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation has not. Musk, believed to be the first trillionaire in modern history, unveiled the project Tuesday evening on X, posting AI-generated footage from Grok Imagine depicting a scene from the epic poem. “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of ‘The Odyssey’ that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer,” he wrote, offering no further details on production, casting or distribution.
In a follow-up post, Musk said he was “down” with a fan’s pitch to instead hand the project to actor and director Mel Gibson, backed by $100 million, to produce “an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek.”The announcement is the latest salvo in Musk’s long-running feud with Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” a Matt Damon-led adaptation Musk has criticized repeatedly over its casting choices. In January, Musk wrote that “Chris Nolan lost his integrity,” responding to a post that called the film “an insult to the author” over the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy.
In May, after conservative commentator Matt Walsh suggested Nolan cast Nyong’o only to avoid being labeled “racist,” Musk replied with a single word: “True.” Musk’s criticism hasn’t dented the film’s commercial performance, however. The R-rated, three-hour epic pulled in a $120 million opening weekend, according to Breitbart News, far exceeding pre-release industry projections of $80 million to $90 million.
Last week, Chinese startup Moonshot AI released one of the largest AI models ever built. Within 24 hours, the model “Kimi-K3” climbed to the top of the leaderboard for coding, beating Anthropic and OpenAI:
The announcement reminds us of DeepSeek’s entrance back in Feb 2025. The combination of cutting-edge capabilities, aggressive pricing, and open distribution is threatening the US players. Moonshot doesn’t need to be the best; only close enough, cheap enough, and accessible enough to make customers question why they are paying several times more for American systems.K3 itself is a marvel of AI engineering. It is efficient in routing queries to specific parts of the model, allowing enormous scale without the full computation cost. It supports a context window of 1M tokens for input, enough to analyze a large codebase or document collection. This underscores just how rapidly China’s AI developers are closing the gap with US rivals.
What do we make of this announcement? Investors will be more concerned about this than DeepSeek. Given the industry’s unprecedented spending spree, they need every dollar of revenue to justify the capital spending. Competition and substitutes erode the ROI of that spending. It is only a matter of time before Trump bans the use of Chinese AI models on the basis of national security concerns (feeding inputs to state actors and such). This will further strain an already-frail trade relationship between the US and China, potentially sparking Trade War 3.0.
Cheap Models are a Game Changer
It’s worth asking why cheap models like Kimi-K3 are so impactful to the AI discussion. Companies are racking up massive expenses from their employees’ AI usage. Rather than capping usage (which hampers productivity), CEOs are trying to be more efficient with tokens. In practice, this means routing routine tasks to cheaper, open-source models like DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, and Llama. Only the genuinely hard queries get escalated to expensive frontier models. This chart shows just how much open-source models have grown:
As a direct result, token usage continues to skyrocket (black line) but the cost of those tokens are collapsing (colored bars):
The vast majority of the world’s AI workloads can be done by cheaper, open-sourced models which don’t rely on expensive compute from Nvidia. The essence of commoditization. This is bad news for the frontier model makers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta) but great news for hyperscalers because even lagging models need to run on someone’s data centers. The cloud providers (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) provide that infrastructure.
Remember, cheap tokens don’t shrink usage. It proliferates it. That means more revenues for the cloud providers that help enterprises deploy AI widely. This realization is why Mag 7 stocks have moved opposite of the broader AI sector.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
The escalation pathway in the renewed tit-for-tat conflict between the US and Iran is becoming increasingly alarming and has been underway for eight days. US forces reportedly struck Qeshm Island and the southern Iranian cities of Shadegan, Sirik and Hajiabad, while Tehran retaliated with drone and missile attacks targeting US bases and critical infrastructure across Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, according to Bloomberg, citing Iranian state media.
The latest escalation could open the door for Israel to rejoin the fight. Itamar Ben Gvir, an Israeli security cabinet minister, told listeners on Israeli radio that he hoped President Trump would strike Iran hard. Iran’s latest attacks moved beyond military targets to now civilian infrastructure, which has been troubling. Kuwaiti Ministry of Electricity warned earlier today that its power and desalination plants have come under attack for the second straight day by Iranian projectiles.
US Central Command described the latest US strikes as seeking to reduce Tehran’s offensive capabilities on the Strait of Hormuz that threaten commercial shipping and “swiftly punish” Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces behind the Jordan attack that killed two US soldiers and left another missing in action.
U.S. forces pound Iran for the eighth straight night as CENTCOM releases new footage following Iranian missile and drone attacks on a U.S. base in Jordan that killed two U.S. service members. A third remains missing.
By now, the interim ceasefire deal signed by the US and Iran is in flames, as US forces have renewed their blockade of Iranian ports and the Trump team has tightened sanctions on Tehran’s oil exports…
“.. and then go home and say to our allies Iran is now mostly inert. They have no air force. You in the Gulf, you have 600 combat frontline aircraft. You have missiles. You have missile defense. ..”
We’re approaching 140 days since we first attacked Iran on Feb. 28 of this year. And we only really had … people call this a war, but it’s basically 40 days of actual bombing, tit for tat, followed by 100 days of negotiations interspliced with some tit-for-tat exchanges of missiles and drones. But for the most part, we have negotiated. Now, we know the strategy of both sides. The strategy of our president was he wanted to stay in power, meaning he wanted to have control of Congress. Otherwise, his initiatives and agenda will be ossified if the Democrats take over the House. They will impeach him if they take over the House, and he’s protected against conviction by running the Senate.
But if he should lose the House or Senate, in other words, if things would blow up, he would be in deep trouble. So, his point was always to make sure that Iran did not have the ability to produce a nuclear weapon and did not have the ability to launch missiles all over the Gulf and did not have the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz. But the negotiations interrupted that cycle in which Iran also had a strategy, and their strategy was, “If we can drag this conflict out and punctuate it with missile launches and ride out the retaliations, which would be proportional or symmetric, we can run the clock out all the way to the midterms.
“If we do, the Democrats will take over the House of Representatives, and maybe they will not allot money to continue Trump’s war. And more importantly, maybe this will be the start of a new government in 2028, and we’ll be home free as we were with [Joe] Biden and [Barack] Obama.” So, that was their strategy: Drag it out, drag it out. Who won? Well, we’ll see about the denouement, but for now, Iran has been able to survive because we stopped full-scale fighting almost 100 days ago, and these tit-for-tats have been ineffectual in the sense they have not stopped the missile barrages to the Gulf states, and they have not given us control over the Strait of Hormuz, and we do not have control of the enriched uranium.
So, where are we now? We still have the same pressures on Donald Trump. We’ve got less than four months now until the midterms, but the economic news has been surprisingly good. Inflation, at a per-month rate, is at a historical low almost, and unemployment is about 4.2. GDP is strong at 2.3, 2.4. The stock market is high. The full effect of tax cuts and greater energy production and deregulation are starting to be felt, along with foreign investment. So, Trump thinks that, along with the redistricting and the Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering, he might have a chance to upset the historical reality that 39 of the last 41 midterms have gone to the out party. So, he still thinks he has a chance, and he still wants to conclude operations and go home, and the Iranians know that.
So, where are we now? I think we can see what he’s doing. The last four days he’s had very, very strong strikes. Some of his critics have said on the right, “Well, you’re hitting all of these dock works and these small mosquito fleets and the fuel for missiles. “Why didn’t we do that earlier?” Well, we didn’t do it earlier because we were negotiating and we were measured and proportionate. And to deal with the Iranians now, you have to be unmeasured and disproportionate.
So, what we are seeing now is a full-scale effort to destroy all of their military abilities. And that would mean going to the factories, the industrial complex that makes these missiles, find where their launchers are, find their drone fields, clear the corridor near the strait of all of their anti-aircraft ability, their missiles, their drones, and their small fleet of vestigial boats that they use to mine the strait and attack tankers. Clear it all out. Do this for a week or two weeks and then stop and see if they want to concede. If they do not want to concede, then I think you would have another week of dual-use targeting.
And that would mean they were going to bring in the B-2s and hit Pickaxe Mountain, seal the areas under suspicion of harboring enriched uranium, hit the bridges, hit some of the power grid, and then go home and say to our allies Iran is now mostly inert. They have no air force. You in the Gulf, you have 600 combat frontline aircraft. You have missiles. You have missile defense. You can defend yourself from an inert Iran. You Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans, Taiwanese, you all want to use the Strait. We don’t. But we’ve cleaned it out now, and all you have to do is send a couple of vessels each.
And under our leadership, we always have forces in the Persian Gulf. We have frigates. We have a carrier that rotates in and out. We will help you organize the ability and the willpower to keep the Strait open.
In 2015, the Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen observed, “I know that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy. Likewise, Social Democratic Minister of Finance Kjell Olof Feldt stated: “That whole thing with democratic socialism was absolutely impossible. It just didn’t work.”
As I discuss, these countries are not only committed to capitalism but also ranked among the most free-market economies in the world. These countries are also very different from the United States: “When socialism was tried in larger nations in Europe, such as France under FranAois Mitterrand, it failed, and capitalist measures had to be restored. In 2025, the populations of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are approximately 5.9 million, 10.6 million, and 5.6 million smaller than many American states. “
The DSA and the American left, including many in the media, continue to sell the public a bill of goods on the success of Scandinavian socialism. Ironically, it is the type of disinformation that the left often cites to justify greater censorship. Despite denials from these very countries, socialists in the United States continue to spread this false claim that there is a socialist paradise over the ocean where collectivists labor in picturesque Nordic fishing villages.
The promulgation of such myths is a central feature of Marxism. Lenin stressed that “we must not confine ourselves exclusively to propaganda in the narrow sense of the word.” Stalin likewise warned that “If our Party propaganda for some reason or other goes lame…then our entire state and Party work must inevitably languish.”
The fact is that socialism has repeatedly failed throughout history. The only way to get a people to embrace it is to rewrite that history. That is precisely what we see not only in the United States, but in the recent claims of incoming British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who condemned the privatization policies of Margaret Thatcher: “The country surrendered control of the essentials — housing, water, energy, transport — and left people exposed to higher costs.” What he does not mention is that she followed the collapse of socialist policies under Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1977–78 during the so-called “winter of discontent,” which I also discuss in the book.
Chevalier is a true believer who has praised Marxism and the concept of “seizing the means of production.” She won her primary despite comments bragging about her using the American flag to wipe her hands and criticizing the dating of white women as Black and Arab men “Fetishizing ugly colonizer women.”
Given that history, the adoption of the Scandinavian socialism myth is par for the course. Like Zohran Mamdani, she is rallying young, disillusioned, college-educated voters who are told that their struggles stem from the failures of the free market. Instead, they are offered free stuff and the illusion of an economic nirvana where lattes and Pilates are virtually costless.
Indeed, the Scandinavian socialism myth is so enticing that I expect Scandinavians must wonder where they can also find it.
This is a very alarming conversation to be taking place in modern America. Alas, all things political have devolved into this current stage where Communism is represented by young voters as the preferred manner of government. Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) Co-Chair Gustavo Gordillo, having previously outlined that attachment to the Democrat party is only purposeful as a vehicle to gain political power, discusses the end game of DSA for installing communism within the United States. The DSA platform is disturbing, but generally in alignment with the Bernie Sanders and AOC model.
(1) Eliminate the United States Senate as a legislative body. (2) The House of Representatives then selects the President and Supreme Court justices. (3) All illegal aliens are given citizenship and amnesty. (4) All border enforcement is halted; there are no more USA boundaries. (5) The Dept of War (Defense) is dissolved completely. (6) The government, now controlled by the House of Representatives, determines who can have wealth – and how much. (7) Climate Change is the legislative priority – no more fossil fuel use.
Gustavo Gordillo’s family fled Peru due to a communist revolution. In the video below Martha MacCallum challenges DSA Chair Gordillo to explain how the DSA platform is expected to work. Gordillo explains the immediate DSA demand to control housing (govt), control food distribution (grocery stores), give free daycare for children, and create affordability for lower income citizens/aliens by taking the wealth from the high-income earners and giving the wealth to the lower income group.
Far-left podcaster and Democratic Socialists of America member Emma Vigeland appeared to inadvertently expose the far-left movement’s ends-justify-the-means political calculus: Even a “secret Nazi” would be acceptable if the candidate advanced a national socialist agenda. Vigeland, a former field reporter, producer, and commentator for The Young Turks and identified as a DSA member, also co-hosts The Majority Report with Sam Seder. She explained on a separate Vox podcast that she doesn’t care if a progressive or socialist candidate has “Nazi” skeletons in their closet.
“I am wary of over-focusing on an individual’s personal character over their platform. You know, I’ve said this before. I don’t really care if say like Bernie Sanders or AOC go home and they’re a secret Nazi, but they go out and they vote for the right things. Like we’re talking about politician,” the DSA member said earlier this month.Vox host Astead Herndon was astonished by Vigeland’s remarks, and asked: “You don’t care?”
DSA's Emma Vigeland says she “doesn’t care” if the candidates she supports are "secret Nazis" as long as they vote for their extremist agenda. pic.twitter.com/ukjBuKvGgW
Why is anyone surprised anymore? This comes after the political collapse of DSA’s Graham Platner, who had a large “Totenkopf” tattoo- a symbol associated with the Nazi SS.
I'm confused. Who are the nazis? Is it the MAGA? or is it the DSA? The nazis were "National Socialists" that was the name. So the DSA are the nazis, right?
— Igg-norancesbliss (@IgnatzDeZoobnar) July 16, 2026
[..] DSA’s nation-killing agenda to collapse America:
The DSA is such a liability for the Democratic Party that a prominent Bill Clinton insider took the time to write up a Wall Street Journal op-ed that said: “Lawmakers, law-enforcement agencies and journalists should investigate the DSA to see if it is being funded by foreign governments and interests.”
The federal government is well underway with a multiagency and multinational effort to combat the alarming rise of far-left revolutionaries. This was most evident on Thursday, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed delegations from 65 countries. Meanwhile, Jim “Fergie” Chambers, the communist centimillionaire and heir to the Cox media fortune, is apparently “one step closer to extradition” on federal charges linked to “international money laundering… with the intent to provide material support and resources to foreign terrorist organizations.”
Chambers is a major funder of America’s radical Left and has been described by pro-Palestinian activist Laith Marouf as “the new Soros.” Marouf warned that Chambers could gain significantly more influence and “street cred” if Spain refuses to extradite him to the U.S. City Journal investigative analyst Stu Smith provided additional color on Marouf’s recent conversation, offering readers a clearer view of the major financiers and influence networks operating across the radical Left:
As left-wing activists demand “Freedom for Fergie,” Laith Marouf is refusing to join them. Marouf says he opposes Chambers’s extradition to the United States but warns that an unsuccessful prosecution could merely give the multimillionaire more “street cred.” Citing conversations he claims to have had with current and former intelligence agents, including Syrian and Spanish sources, Marouf alleges that Chambers has been positioned as “the new Soros” and is using his fortune to capture radical English-language media around the world. “He basically bought all the landscape of progressive media and is funding all of them,” Marouf said, alleging that Chambers’s donations allow him to influence those outlets’ political positions.
Marouf also accused Chambers of threatening his life and attempting to destroy his reputation. He said he does not wish imprisonment or death on Chambers, but he will not join those demanding his release. “I will sit on the side as an observer, watching the game of the American white elite beating each other up.” Marouf argues that Chambers is using inherited “blood money” to purchase credibility within the Palestine movement. “No, I don’t want Palestine in his mouth,” he said. “I don’t want Palestine to be associated with Fergie Cox.”
The broader Left has largely rallied behind Chambers, leaving Marouf as a rare dissenting voice. His definition of “progressive media” is unclear, but his broader warning about Chambers buying influence across the radical English-language media sphere rings true. And if Spain refuses extradition, Marouf may be right that the ordeal will only give Chambers more “street cred.”
Smith has previously noted, “Chambers is one of the main funders of America’s radical Left. His money has flowed to a host of projects in the ‘anti-imperialism’ organizing space,” adding, “Chambers claims that he and Singham are effectively the two primary financiers of the US radical Left.” Despite this, the two have apparently been at loggerheads—a conflict that has now gone public.”
Following Rubio’s “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism” at the State Department on Thursday, where he addressed delegations from 65 countries on combating far-left extremism, the signal is clear: The Trump administration is positioning for a broader fight against transnational Marxist revolutionary networks, reminiscent of the Western counter-subversion campaigns waged seven decades ago.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants everyone to believe he’s holding all the legal cards this September, threatening to have the NYPD slap handcuffs on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the moment he sets foot in Manhattan. The problem is that he can’t. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz wasted no time shredding Mamdani’s threat, making clear the mayor has no power to detain a foreign head of government protected under longstanding international agreements. “Mayor Mamdani. Here’s why your threat to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu in New York City during UN General Assembly is not going to happen,” Waltz said.
Waltz then walked through exactly why Mamdani’s fantasy falls apart. “The United States is not party to the Rome Statute that underlies the International Criminal Court. The UN Headquarters Agreement grants diplomatic protections to visiting heads of government. Head-of-state immunity applies, and federal authority trumps any local mayor’s wishes,” he said. So, contrary to Mamdani’s ego and rabid antisemitism, a big-city mayor doesn’t get to override federal law, international treaties, and diplomatic immunity because he dislikes a foreign leader’s foreign policy.
Netanyahu is expected to visit New York in early September for the UN General Assembly, and Israeli officials are just as unimpressed with Mamdani’s posturing as their American counterparts. Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, turned the tables on Mamdani entirely. “If anyone should be arrested, it is New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani,” Danon said. Danon didn’t stop there, accusing Mamdani of abandoning his actual job to chase headlines at Israel’s expense. “Mamdani is failing to govern New York. Instead of focusing on his responsibilities as mayor and confronting the rising wave of antisemitism in his city, he has chosen to incite hostility and generate headlines by attacking the State of Israel,” Danon said.
Danon made clear none of Mamdani’s chest-thumping changes anything. “It will not change a thing. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will come to New York, address the United Nations General Assembly with pride and stand before the world to state Israel’s truth and its unwavering right to defend its citizens,” he said. Mamdani isn’t backing down, even though he admits he might not have the authority to do what he’s promising. He told The New York Times his administration is still examining whether New York City has any legal basis to detain Netanyahu at all.
“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said, echoing the same talking point he leaned on throughout his mayoral campaign. He went further, calling Netanyahu “a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court,” and claiming that view is shared by “many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years.” Mamdani admitted he doesn’t actually know if he can order the NYPD to arrest a foreign head of government, saying he’s “in an active conversation” with the city’s Law Department. He insisted, though, that he wouldn’t invent new legal authority out of thin air. “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do, but we won’t be writing our own laws to that end,” Mamdani said.
How noble of him. Netanyahu has brushed off Mamdani’s threats before and shown no sign of altering his travel plans. He’s also accused Mamdani of siding with Hamas, the terrorist group whose October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel started the war Mamdani keeps invoking to justify his crusade.
I’ve been watching the relationship between President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio lately, mostly due to a long string of commentary, both in my feeds and in my mailbox. Several people in recent days have started asking the same question: Is Trump grooming Rubio as his successor? My hip-shot response would be: Meh…. I wouldn’t object if that was the case. Rubio certainly seems a credible candidate. But, let me say up front—I have my doubts that’s a conscious choice on Trump’s part. But I get why people are asking. Let’s dive in.
Here’s the thing: this examination says as much about Trump’s leadership style as it does about Rubio. And Trump’s leadership style calls to mind a line from General George S. Patton: “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” It seems to me that Trump sings harmony with Patton on that one. Unlike most presidents, he doesn’t micromanage. Instead, he:
• Sets broad objectives — “secure the border,” “get a better trade deal,” “end this war” — and skips the tactical playbook.
• Hands trusted advisers real latitude to execute.
• Obsesses over outcomes and how they play in public.
• Steps in personally only when something becomes politically or personally important to him.
Former Cabinet officials and aides tell the same story: Trump wants competing viewpoints on the table, picks a lane from the choices given, and then expects his team to drive in it. He’s not the guy poring over hundred-page policy memos or running agencies from the weeds. Never has been. So let’s look at what’s actually going on between Trump and Rubio. A few things stand out:
• Rubio’s portfolio keeps growing. As secretary of State, he’s literally everywhere on foreign policy, and Trump keeps handing him the delicate diplomatic assignments nobody else gets. Give someone enough rope, and people start measuring him for a crown.
• The relationship has thawed considerably. Remember 2016? Trump spent that primary calling him “Little Marco” and making it personal. Fast forward to today, and the two have built something that actually works. Trump praises Rubio’s performance far more than he knocks it — that, alone, is a genuine rarity in Trump World.
• Rubio has evolved. He’s shed the establishment-conservative label and rebuilt himself as an America First guy on immigration, China, trade, and national security. A decade ago, he’d have been a lousy fit to carry Trump’s coalition forward. Today, he fits the part.
• The succession question isn’t going away for at least a year and a half. Trump can’t run again; the Constitution says so, which means Republicans are already scanning the bench for an heir. Any Cabinet member with a high enough profile gets viewed through that lens whether they like it or not. Certainly Rubio qualifies on that point.
All of that said—I’m still skeptical this is a deliberate succession play on Trump’s part, at least not yet. Is it possible that Trump’s quietly positioning Rubio? Sure. The evidence fits that story just fine. Give a guy the State Department, hand him the hard diplomatic assignments, praise him publicly more than you criticize him — do that long enough, and of course people start drawing a line from Point A to Point B labeled “heir apparent.”
But here’s what that theory conveniently ignores: Trump doesn’t tend to groom people. He uses their abilities toward his own policy ends. He never has cared much for legacy-building or dynasty-planning — the man barely plans past next week’s news cycle, let alone the 2028 primary. To my mind, what actually explains the Rubio relationship is far less cinematic than a “Lion in Winter” style succession plot. In Rubio, Trump has found someone competent, someone who executes without whining, someone who doesn’t leak to the Washington Post the moment his feelings get hurt. That’s it. That’s the whole story. In Trump World, that alone is enough to earn a guy the keys to half the foreign policy apparatus.
And there’s a simpler explanation still sitting on the table, one nobody seems to want to entertain: maybe Trump just hasn’t decided. Maybe, indeed, probably, he doesn’t see the need to. After all, presidents aren’t obligated to anoint a successor, and Trump in particular has never operated on anyone’s timetable but his own. The trust he’s placed in Rubio could, down the road, calcify into something more deliberate — a real endorsement, a real torch-passing. But “could eventually” isn’t “is now.” Until Trump says the word himself, or until Rubio starts acting like a man measuring the Oval Office drapes, the rest of us are just reading tea leaves and calling it political science.
I’ll believe the succession theory when I see it. Right now, all I see is a president who found a guy who gets the job done. To the degree that qualifies Rubio for being the next POTUS, well, that stands on its own. Trump seems willing to allow the primary process to work that one out.
Ukraine could suffer defeat in the conflict with Russia, as the military command structure is growing increasingly rigid and ineffective, Brigadier General Sergey Sobko warns. His remarks were echoed earlier by former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, who was controversially relieved of his post by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky earlier this week – which triggered mass protests across Ukraine. In a post on Facebook on Friday, Sobko, the chief of staff of the 11th Army Corps, wrote that the Ukrainian military is in urgent need of reform, “otherwise we may be defeated.”
“Professional discussion is often perceived as disloyalty, and initiative as a threat,” he said, adding that this tendency has discouraged commanders from “taking risks for the sake of success.” Sobko also suggested that commanders are being promoted based on “personal loyalty” to their superiors, as opposed to competence and professionalism. He also called out what he described as a growing trend within the Ukrainian military toward micromanagement and downplaying failures in reports.
Sobko’s criticisms echo those made by former defense chief Fedorov. In the wake of his dismissal earlier this week, the 35-year-old technocrat confirmed that he was at loggerheads with Ukraine’s top military commander, Aleksandr Syrsky, whom he accused of blocking his efforts to modernize the army and make it more technology-oriented. At a press conference on Thursday, the former minister said, “we faced a complete blockage of all our initiatives.” He also claimed that Syrsky made an ultimatum to Zelensky, demanding that Fedorov be removed from office.
On Friday, the Financial Times, citing anonymous sources, also reported that Fedorov’s push to make corruption-plagued procurement procedures in the defense sector more transparent did not sit well with the top brass either. The firing of the defense minister, which came as part of a broader government reshuffle, has sparked protests in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities. Apart from demands that the defense chief be reinstated, some demonstrators have also called for Syrsky’s dismissal. The FT quoted an unnamed senior Ukrainian defense official as saying,
“Syrsky hasn’t got a sense of how he’s going to win,” and that his “theory of victory is simply to hold out as long as you can and mobilize more people.” In a separate piece on Saturday, the FT, citing an anonymous senior official in Zelensky’s administration, claimed that the Ukrainian leader is considering firing Syrsky. According to the outlet, Zelensky is consulting military commanders over the weekend, looking for a potential replacement. Over the course of the conflict, Syrsky has earned the nickname ‘the Butcher’ for his perceived willingness to disregard heavy casualties.
Russia is at war with Washington and Europe, a war that has vastly widened, but Putin thinks Russia is engaged in a Special Military Operation confined to the battlefront in Donbas. Iran is at war, an existential war, with Satanic Israel, but the Iranian leadership thinks they are responding to an American “illegal military intervention.” All of Iran’s invective, threats, and vows are directed at Satanic America. Not a word about Satanic Israel, the cause of the conflict. America is just Israel’s proxy, as Ukraine is the West’s proxy against Russia. As neither Russia nor Iran understand that they are engaged in existential wars, neither has a war plan to achieve victory.
Iran’s policy is to inconvenience the American empire with an oil shortage and vows to escalate Iran’s tits to America’s tats. Russia’s policy is called TiT–Trust in Trump. John Helmer reports that the instructed Russian media and foreign policy analysts, who I suspect are financed by oligarchs, believe what they have invented as “the Anchorage spirit” has “given Russia a lot” by removing the US from direct participation in the conflict.
The implied hopes are in vain. What Trump has done is to turn over to Europe the arming of Ukraine with high-tech drones made in Germany that Ukraine, with US guidance and targeting information, is using to severely impact Russian oil production and refining, and to target and kill Russian civilians. Thus, the West has taken the war home to Russia. Currently, there is severe gasoline rationing in Crimea and long lines in some other Russian locations, and currently according to reports Russia is importing gasoline and diesel fuel from India. As for “trusting in Trump,” there are reports that Trump is considering allowing Zelensky to produce the US Patriot and Tomahawk missiles in Ukraine to provide more long-range weapons for strikes deep into Russia.
Russians have fled their summer holiday in Crimea where drone attacks are an everyday occurrence. St. Petersburg was under attack during the recent international meeting in the city, and Moscow’s mayor just reported that Ukraine, a.k.a., the West, launched 1,900 drones targeting Moscow in the past week. Russia is having to use its munitions to protect its capital, not to attack the enemy.
Putin, who insists that the conflict is limited to Donbas, refers to the increasingly successful attacks deep inside Russia as “terrorist actions.” Thus, Putin refuses to acknowledge them as acts of war, which relieves him of responsibility to do what Russian war doctrine requires. For example, Russian war doctrine at a minimum requires Russia to destroy the site of the German production of drones for Ukraine. In actually, Russian war doctrine requires a devastating nuclear attack on the United States. But as Washington knows that there is no threat from pusillanimous Putin, Washington knows Putin will not comply with Russia’s war doctrine. Putin proved this when he dismissed Washington’s attack on Russia’s strategic bomber force and on his home in an assassination attempt as merely “terrorist actions.”
Among the consequences of Putin’s denial of reality is the joining of NATO by Scandinavian countries that previously remained neutral, and the change in long-standing policy of Finland and Latvia to host on their territory on Russia’s border American nuclear weapons. So, it is clear as day, it is indisputable, that Putin’s idiotic pretense that Russia is not really at war, only involved in a Special Military Operation in Donbas, is leaving Russia exposed to a much wider war. The Russian media and oligarch-sponsored “experts” describe the rising threat to Russia as a “successful negotiation.”
The Iranians, who had an equally strong upper hand as the Russians, have also thrown away their advantage. Once the Iranian government on the verge of total victory threw their victory away by rescuing their enemies from defeat by agreeing to a ceasefire, Iran left the door open for future conflict. Ayatollah Khamenei stated: “The enemy must not sense any sign of weakness from us.” But it is signs of weakness that Iran sends.
Iran sits on its butt and permits American attacks, some of which are devastating on civilian infrastructure and civilian lives. Only then does Iran respond with disabling attacks on Washington’s bases in the Persian Gulf oil Sheikdoms and Jordan. This is nonsensical. A country that realized it was at war, would strike and wipe out the enemy bases from which it would be attacked. Not sit there and suffer the damage, as if it needs an excuse to respond.
But Iran only responds, after suffering destruction, to attacks. Iran has no war plan to defeat its enemies. This is a failure of Iranian leadership. And Russia’s is the same. The unwillingness of the two attacked countries to deal with reality is leading to two large wars.
Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has lambasted Western governments for pushing for war with Russia and banning RT in order to freely disseminate the warmongering “propaganda of the ruling class.” Appearing on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, published on Friday, Waters expressed dismay that “some people in the governments of the United States of America, and the UK, and the European Union are making blood-curdling, bloodthirsty noises about” a potential military conflict with Russia. The Pink Floyd co-founder noted that EU nations, including Germany, are rapidly increasing their military spending and funneling taxpayers’ money “into a big piggy bank in order to fight the Russians.”
“The Russians don’t want to invade Europe. What are they talking about?” he said, arguing that certain interest groups may be paying Western politicians to promote warmongering narratives and thereby justify outsized military expenditure. Instead of antagonizing Moscow and silencing voices that challenge Western “propaganda,” the musician-turned-activist said that “we have to be cooperating with the Russians.” “It sort of breaks my heart that I can’t watch RT anymore. ‘Cause it’s banned. You can’t watch Russia Today,” he said, recounting how the Russian broadcaster was taken off the air across much of the West following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022.
“So we live in a very difficult time where it may be, unless you, with your audience – or me with my tiny voice – can join with our brothers and sisters and pull together the ordinary working people all over the globe, and we can make the voice of the choir so loud that we can drown out the propaganda of the ruling class,” he said. Waters has long been a critic of Western military support for Ukraine, telling RIA Novosti last November that officials in the UK and the EU “don’t make any pretense that they care about” ordinary Ukrainians. Their endgame is to use the “corrupt Nazis” in Kiev, who will then “help them strip the country of all its assets and stuff the money into their pockets,” the musician said at the time.
Supreme Court filings this week confirm that E. Jean Carroll has received roughly $5.62 million from President Donald Trump after the justices late last month declined to hear his appeal of the civil judgment in the case. But the court’s action resolves just one chapter of the long-running legal battle – leaving a separate $83.3 million defamation judgment pending. Trump is expected to ask the high court to review that case, which his attorneys argue raises broader questions concerning presidential immunity and the scope of official presidential speech.
The high court’s June 29 ruling, revealed Tuesday in the filings, is connected to the 2023 civil court verdict in which Trump was found liable for sexually abusing Carroll, a writer, in the mid-1990s and defaming her after she publicly accused him. The court’s ruling also left the civil court verdict intact and clears the way for Carroll to collect the judgment, plus accrued interest, after years of litigation.
Allegations and Civil Trials
Carroll, a longtime advice columnist, first publicly accused Trump in 2019 of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan during the mid-1990s. The allegation appeared in an excerpt from her memoir published by New York Magazine. Trump denied the accusation, saying he had never assaulted Carroll and describing her claims as a “hoax” and politically motivated.
Carroll subsequently filed two civil lawsuits.
The first, filed in 2019, alleged Trump defamed her by denying the assault and accusing her of fabricating the allegations. The second, filed in 2022 under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, included a battery claim based on the alleged sexual assault and additional defamation claims. During the 2023 trial, jurors heard testimony from Carroll, several corroborating witnesses, and two other women who accused Trump of similar misconduct. Prosecutors also introduced the 2005 Access Hollywood recording in which Trump described grabbing women without their consent.
The jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, although it rejected Carroll’s rape claim under New York’s legal definition in effect at the time. Jurors awarded Carroll $2 million for the sexual abuse claim and $3 million for defamation. In a separate trial in January 2024, another jury awarded Carroll the $83.3 million after concluding that Trump continued to defame her through statements made after the first verdict.
Supreme Court Declines Review Trump appealed the $5 million judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, arguing that the trial court improperly admitted testimony from other accusers and the Access Hollywood recording. After the Second Circuit affirmed the verdict, Trump petitioned the Supreme Court for review in November 2025. The justices considered the petition during their June 25, 2026, conference before denying certiorari four days later without comment or recorded dissent. Because the high court declined review, the Second Circuit’s decision remains in effect.
Trump’s attorneys later filed a petition for rehearing, arguing that the Court should reconsider the case because a forthcoming petition challenging the separate $83.3 million judgment may present presidential immunity issues under Trump v. United States (2024). Rehearing petitions are rarely granted. Following the Supreme Court’s denial, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered the release of the escrowed funds. Despite emergency efforts by Trump’s attorneys to delay payment, the judgment was ultimately satisfied.
Trump Continues to Denounce the Cases
Throughout the litigation, Trump has been unyielding in his public statements. He has repeatedly called Carroll a “liar,” dismissed the allegations as fabricated for book sales or political gain, and portrayed the entire process as election interference and “weaponization” of the justice system. On Truth Social and in interviews, he has labeled the cases “hoaxes,” “con jobs,” and part of a pattern of politically motivated attacks. Even after the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump vowed to continue fighting, framing it as resistance against what he calls Democrat-funded lawfare. His spokesperson echoed these sentiments, declaring that “the American People stand with President Trump” in demanding an end to such cases.
The $83 Million Judgment Remains on Appeal
Although Carroll has now collected the $5 million judgment, the larger $83.3 million award remains under appellate review. The Second Circuit affirmed that judgment earlier this year, and Trump is expected to file a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court. His attorneys are expected to argue that statements made while he was president are protected by presidential immunity or should be treated as official conduct under the Westfall Act. Enforcement of the larger judgment has been stayed after Trump posted a bond securing the award while his appeal proceeds.
Whether the Supreme Court agrees to hear the second case remains uncertain. Some legal observers have suggested that immunity questions could present a more substantial issue for review than the evidentiary challenges raised in the first appeal, while others note that the Court’s refusal to hear the earlier case may signal reluctance to revisit the litigation. For now, the Supreme Court’s denial leaves the first judgment final while the parties continue to litigate the remaining appeal. The Carroll cases remain among the most closely watched civil proceedings involving President Trump, touching on questions of defamation law, presidential immunity, and the limits of civil liability for public officials.
“.. members of Congress saying ICE isn’t a real law enforcement agency. I think that- I actually think that emboldens some people to say, “I’m not going to comply with ICE.”
The worst thing to ever happen to the reputation of black culture in America was the introduction of police body cameras to highlight the behavior of African Americans to the world. Frequent travelers will note that foreign discussions no longer include curious questions about racism in America. With black Americans putting themselves on full cultural display, the world now understands the connection between black culture and antisocial behavior.
The same concept applies to ICE officers wearing body cameras. As each incident unfolds, people can see the severity of the antagonism faced by the law enforcement officers doing what the overwhelming majority want to see done. Deport all illegal aliens, cancel all H1Bs and put Americans first! WATCH:
[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: And we’re back with President Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan. Welcome back to Face the Nation.
TOM HOMAN: Thanks for having me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mr. Homan, we saw that two immigrants were shot in the span of a week. There was that one in Maine that was fatal just days after another one in Houston. We also saw that man fleeing agents in Florida who then was struck and killed by a tractor trailer. I know you’ve been trying to keep the department out of the headlines ever since that streak in Minnesota that was deadly. How do you respond to those who say what’s happening now looks like very little has changed?
TOM HOMAN: Well, you know, first of all, we’ll wait and see what the investigations- how they play out, right? Because, you know, I don’t want to get ahead of investigations on who’s at fault, what exactly happened. Because we all know when the investigations happen, there’s going to be cell phone video, there may be city cameras, and of course, then you got witness statements and affidavits from the officer, and- and witnesses. So, we got to let the investigations play out. So, I don’t want to really comment on investigation themselves, but you know, I think, you know, Markwayne Mullin, you know, took some action, and in concern of the safety of the agents and- and how we do operations, and- and that’s why he did that, you know, that- that- that pause on- on enforcement on vehicle stops.
But you know, I- my concern is I’ve never- I’ve done this since 1984. My concern is I think a lot of the rhetoric that you see every day, especially in sanctuary cities, and at these protests that- resist, members of Congress saying ICE isn’t a real law enforcement agency. I think that- I actually think that emboldens some people to say, “I’m not going to comply with ICE.” And I think no matter what people think of ICE, no matter what you think of immigration law, you should always comply with law enforcement.[..]
A Tesla owner slept overnight in his Model X Plaid during a brutal 40°C heat wave in Austria. The car kept the cabin at 20°C for 8 hours and used only 12% battery.
Sen. John Kennedy: Classified American intelligence showed that Iran was threatening to bomb London, Paris & Germany
"Here's what our intelligence showed, and I've seen it. It's classified, but I've seen it. But I can give you a general outline. Our intelligence showed that Iran… pic.twitter.com/ZLn2zhbBgt
— Tony Jacob | FindaClip.com (@tonjkb) July 1, 2026
Vice President JD Vance said in an interview on “The Michael Knowles Show” published on Tuesday that the US would use the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran to “refill” global oil supplies and stockpiles and to prepare for more potential military action against the Islamic Republic. “I think what the president has told us to do is use this MoU to sort of refill the world’s oil economy, to refill some stocks, and then to see where the hand is,” the vice president said.
“And … if the Iranians are willing to make the commitments that we would like them to make and are willing to back those up with verifiable milestones, then we are going to change our relationship with Iran. And if they don’t do that, then nothing has really changed except for what we’ve already accomplished from the military campaign, which is a lot. So, we kind of have two options here. We have the option of pursuing a long-term deal with the Iranians, but that requires a significant change in their behavior. We have the option of banking our wins and then, of course, doing things on top of that if the president feels that we have to. And I think both of those options are very much in play,” he added.
Summarizing the position, Knowles said, “So then the message if you’re an Iranian, the message you’re getting from the US is not, okay, we’ve settled this, you get to keep the Strait of Hormuz and we’ll try to play nice. Now, the message is we’re going to serve our self-interest by replenishing the oil coffers and get back to us in 60 days, you might have some fire and brimstone coming back down.” Vance didn’t dispute Knowles’ characterization and said, “And if you actually behave, you won’t, right?”
Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said in a post on X that Vance’s comments heightened suspicion in Iran that the war will restart despite the MoU. He made the comments in a post discussing the view in Iranian political circles that Israel may launch an attack before Israeli elections are held in October. “Will Israel restart the war with Iran before the October elections? This is the consensus view emerging within Iran’s internal national security debate over the past week,” Parsi said.
“Several factors are driving Tehran to this conclusion. Beyond its deep—and not entirely unwarranted—suspicion of President Donald Trump’s intentions, heightened by Vice President JD Vance’s recent remark that Trump wants to use the MOU to replenish global oil reserves and then ‘see where the hand is,’ two developments stand out: the recent Israeli-Lebanese agreement and its impact on Hezbollah’s military posture over the coming months,” he added.
https://twitter.com/DropSiteNews/status/2072170274397594053?s=20
Something is brewing inside the Democrat Party, and this time, Donald Trump has nothing to do with it. Behind closed doors, the establishment wing of the party is squaring off against a coup led by self-declared socialists, and the fight over who controls the party’s future is only getting started. Fox News host Jesse Watters laid out exactly how this ends on The Five, and it should terrify anyone still clinging to the idea that the Democrat Party can hold itself together heading into the next presidential race.
Asked by co-host Emily Compagno whether the country is actually being taken over, Watters didn’t offer easy reassurance. “Maybe. We’ll see how it goes,” he said. Watters then walked through the calculation that the Democrat leadership is making right now. He said the party is going to “accommodate the commies and see how they do in the midterms.” If the socialist wing performs poorly, establishment Democrats will blame them for it, and a Democrat civil war will erupt. If they perform well, Watters said, “it’s going to be Kumbaya,” a rambunctious Congress that simply pushes the internal reckoning down the road.
That’s where Kamala Harris comes in. As my PJ Media colleague Robert Spencer previously noted, Kamala is already courting the party’s socialist flank because she needs organizers on her side ahead of the next presidential primary, which lands barely a year after the midterms wrap up. “So it’s her or Newsom,” he said. And that’s really the key, here, isn’t it? Anyone who wants to have a shot at the Democrat Party presidential nomination will have to have the support of the socialist wing of the party, which, in turn, needs to have an alliance with the establishment. Watters called that combination “a powerful movement.”
That’s the trade Democrats are willing to make. But Watters saved his sharpest criticism for the people making up that socialist wing itself. They’re candidates who have never worked a real job, whose parents bankroll them, and who rack up debt while producing nothing. “They’re professional students,” he said. “They’re all in debt. They don’t earn anything. A lot of them don’t even own anything.” Their answer to that self-inflicted mess is to declare the entire American system rigged.
Watters wasn’t buying it. “It’s actually not rigged if you work,” he said. He described grinding through cramped apartments and lean years before earning success the old-fashioned way, contrasting that with a class of Democrat candidates barely into their careers who insist the American dream is already dead. “They haven’t even tried,” he said. “What are they talking about?”He rattled off examples, from Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D-Texas) to Democrat Senate candidate Graham Platner (D-Maine) to the socialist candidates in Colorado and New York, calling the current slate “all pathetic people.” Watters argued that their appeal comes precisely from that shared lack of accomplishment. “If no one else has worked hard, you can point to someone and say, oh, he gets me,” he said.
His fix for the affordability complaints fueling these candidates’ popularity was blunt. “You get a job, you get married, you start earning a living, and then you have skin in the game,” he said.
A socialist upheaval is sweeping through the Democratic Party. It is driven by a toxic mix of laziness, arrogance, and bubble mentality — making the brand toxic. It’s well known: NBC News last winter revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was more popular than Democrats. When the brand is weak and a new, energetic faction emerges, unexpected things can happen. For Democrats, it’s becoming a rising, vigorous insurgency of socialists who now pose a nationwide challenge. The establishment will have to spend large amounts of money, which they lack, to defend more electable candidates — those without Nazi tattoos, who are not antisemitic, who do not call for abolishing police and prisons, and who understand that money isn’t printed on trees. Oh, and those who don’t think we deserved the 9/11 attacks. What caused this red wave, one that’s awash with hammers and sickles?
First, the Democratic base is overwhelmed with overeducated elites. Second, they’re skilled at hiding their bizarre agenda items. The third reason Michael Shellenberger offers is interesting: the rejection of the liberal agenda is also fueling the shift to the Left. It’s ironic because we all call liberals crazy, and they’re doubling down on ideas that have been thoroughly discredited. They can’t admit they’re wrong. It’s truly astonishing. With the base consisting of wealthy, white, college-educated weirdos, it’s not surprising that this is the result (via Public):
…all of those socialists support a much more radical agenda than the one they ran on. The program of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which Mamdani and AOC are members, calls for: total defunding and abolition of the police, jails, and prisons; ending the independence of the Supreme Court and the entire Executive Branch, making them subordinate to congress; “expropriat[ing] property from capitalists and deliver it to the working class”; socializing energy production; allowing surgeons to sterilize children and adolescents in an effort to change their sex; a return to Joe Biden’s open borders policy; and the decriminalization of illegal camping and open air drug use. Burnham has proposed to spend an additional £39 billion on public housing, impose a new tax on everyone, and adopt the “Housing First” policy, which has resulted in the subsidization and enabling of drug addiction and death in the U.S.
And those policies are wildly unpopular. Abolishing the police drew just 15% support even back in 2020 at the height of the power of Black Lives Matter. Seventy-four percent of Americans approve of the separation of powers, 90% favor co-equal branches, and only 9% want any one branch to hold more power. Eighty-one percent of Americans view free enterprise positively, while only 39% view socialism positively, and that 39% reflects the diluted Scandinavian sense of the word, not expropriating apartment buildings and other forms of housing. Only 37% of the public think doctors should be able to give drugs to or operate on minors in an effort to change their gender. Seventy percent support closing the border, and 69% support limiting who can claim asylum.
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A big part of the reason for the socialist victories is that they successfully hide their radicalism. In 2021, Mamdani told the Young Democratic Socialists of America to lead with popular measures and to hold back the rest. “If we’re talking about the cancellation of student debt, if we’re talking about Medicare for All, these are issues which have the groundswell of popular support across this country,” he said. “But then there are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it’s BDS [boycott, divest, and sanction Israel], or whether it is the end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment.” The task, he said, was to “meet people where they’re at” and “over time bring people to that issue.”
Part of the reason it was hard for the opponents of Mamdani and other socialists to use his radicalism against him was simply that he did not campaign on it, was disciplined in ignoring attacks framed around it, and manipulated language. “Democratic socialism” calls to mind Scandinavia rather than the Democratic Socialists of America program of abolition and expropriation.
The mainstream media have helped. “There’s a fair amount of confusion and fear generated in the US by the term ‘socialist,’ which is associated with repressive societies like Communist China, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), North Korea or Cuba,” wrote CNN. “So it’s worth looking at what Mamdani and his supporters mean by it (think social programs in Western Europe) and also how the political right will use it against Democrats.”
The “Affordability” framing does the same work. It evokes cheaper groceries and rent, not Mamdani’s stated “end goal of seizing the means of production,” which he set aside in public only because, as he put it, “we do not have the same level of support at this very moment.” Similarly, one of the socialists who won in the New York primary, Darializa Avila Chevalier, deleted posts that read “Seize the means of production” and “No more police at all ever,” then told CNN she had “grown considerably” and was focused on “our community and our community’s future.”
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Second, there are far more college graduates than jobs that require a college degree, which has suppressed wages and created resentment. Peter Turchin called this “elite overproduction,” while sociologist Musa Al-Gharbi credits it as the main driver of the recurring waves of progressive zeal he calls “awokenings.” Graduates “went to the right schools, got good grades, majored in the right things, earned college diplomas, expected to have six-figure salaries,” he said, and then found that “the life that they were just taking for granted their whole life seems not to be in the cards.”
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But there are good reasons to expect that radicalism will be limited and will provoke a healthy backlash, particularly outside the bluest cities in the bluest states. The Democrats’ favorability has declined from 47% to 39% between 2020 and 2026, in part due to the party’s radicalism, and could decline further with more radical candidates becoming standard-bearers. And the candidates Mamdani endorsed took their June 2026 congressional primaries on turnout between 15% and 19%, with young-voter turnout less than half of the year before, and Raman advanced in Los Angeles on 29%. A movement that depends on low-turnout primaries hands moderate Democrats and Republicans an obvious opening.
For the time being, this is a Democrat problem, and it’s quite a headache.
It may not be a wave yet, but Democratic Socialists are slowly advancing within the broader Democratic Party, even outside their new stronghold of New York City. As a result, the core bloc of socialist candidates likely to win seats in the House of Representatives in the upcoming midterm elections will be in a position to exert significant influence over Democratic establishment leaders, much like a core group of leadership-skeptic Republicans have sometimes halted the legislative process under Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.
“The Dirty Break”: Socialists free-riding off Democratic Party
Some Democrats say there is a danger of the same kind of obstruction and chaos that has often plagued the Republican Party in recent years as its leadership manages a narrow majority in the House chamber. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—a separate entity from the Democratic Party—has adopted a strategy known as the “dirty break,” or running candidates on the Democratic Party ballot line “while building the infrastructure and base of supporters necessary to one day run our candidates independently,” Just the News previously reported.
After the midterms, at least six members of the House would now be affiliated with the DSA. In exchange for the socialist organization’s endorsement, the candidates are expected to uphold its political platform, which includes Medicare for all, defunding the police, increasing taxes on the rich, and reducing border enforcement. Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and many of his caucus in the House, appear to be uneasy with the growing influence of the left-wing in their party. Some of them have promised to stand against the socialist influence in the party. But others are rushing to accommodate their newly minted comrades.
Some old-line Democrats are courting the DSA
As a sign of the socialists’ growing influence, Kamala Harris, who is thought to be considering another White House bid in 2028, reportedly called New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is widely considered a leader among the faction, after a slate of DSA-backed candidates sailed to victory in the New York City primaries last week. The call, which was reported by Axios, centered on the future of the Democratic Party. Harris was not alone. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, said on C-SPAN that the success of the younger, newer DSA-backed candidates is “a very good trend for nationwide elections,” because it shows that voters are engaged. Rep. Ro Khanna of California said the elections represent a “beginning of a new, bold, strong Democratic Party.”
The Democratic Socialists are emboldened by those victories. They now cite the latest election upset by DSA-backed Melat Kiros against a 15-term incumbent in urban Denver as evidence that the party’s appeal can carry beyond the progressive stronghold of New York City. “New York City, we think, is really reflecting where the whole country is going at this point, so we’re very excited, and we want to keep building from it,” Ashik Siddique, co-chair of the DSA, told The Hill. “Increasingly, we’re showing that candidates running on strong platforms like these can win in red or purple states, in the Midwest and the South.”
Should Democrats reclaim the House in November, even a small cluster of democratic socialists could wield leverage far out of proportion to its population on the Hill. Roughly five DSA members or endorsees have already won primaries in safe-blue seats — among them Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and newcomers Darializa Avila Chevalier, D-N.Y., Claire Valdez, D-N.Y., Chris Rabb, D-Pa., and Melat Kiros, D-Colo. — with more contests still to come. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a current incumbent representing Michigan’s 12th District, is expected to win re-election.
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Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who is a progressive, said that these new members are expected to pursue the policies that they were elected on, not to moderate their views at the request of leadership.
“I think a lot of times people come into office, and particularly I would say at the leadership levels, there’s this call to moderate because we’re a big tent. But if the big tent is representing people, no matter what district you’re from, that wants universal healthcare, that wants a higher minimum wage, that wants universal childcare, all of those things, then we shouldn’t be moderating, we should be going for those big policies and helping people to see that that is actually really popular in districts across the country,” she said.
Pennsylvania state and socialist Chris Rabb, the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, has joined the growing chorus of Democrats denouncing the founding documents and core institutions in the country on our 250th anniversary. The Democratic socialist is running unopposed for Congress and will almost certainly be a member of Congress after November. Rabb spoke at an event billed as “America at 250 — Trump Fascism, Historical Erasure, and the Battle Over Truth” at People’s Plaza on Independence Mall in Philadelphia. He denounced the country as based on “stolen land and stolen labor.” He lashed out at the Declaration of Independence:
“Those screeds that were very lofty but were notoriously catering to a performative aspect of collective genius that purposely erased indigenous and black peoples…It created distance from an empire to help very privileged people continue that privilege and ultimately institutionalize that through the U.S. Constitution many years later. But it certainly did not provide independence to indigenous and black peoples. And we cannot talk about anything today without acknowledging that this is a nation born on stolen land & stolen labor.”
In Rage and the Republic, I discuss the inherent hypocrisy of our Declaration in declaring natural rights without denouncing the enslaving of so many in the country: “The Founders understood that inescapable truth of natural law when they signed a Declaration that ‘all men are created equal.’ Despite this defining line, even some who opposed slavery saw little hope for a revolution that would seek to overthrow both the monarchy and slavery. Jefferson would have to make the concession in striking critical language from his draft. While Jefferson’s legacy would be forever stained by his own maintenance of slaves, he did attempt to condemn the institution of slavery. He was rebuffed by his fellow delegates who were willing to acknowledge the existence of a natural law while ignoring its implications for the enslaved people in the new nation.”
Rabb ignores how the Declaration laid the foundation for a more perfect union. Ours was the first major Enlightenment Revolution based on the belief that our rights came not from the government but from God. It embraced the principles that would ultimately prevail in ending this shameful stain on our nation. “Fascism is not new. These systems of harm are built into the very fabric of this nation,..You cannot kill the beast until you name it. And that is difficult for many people who want to embrace certain tropes, certain narratives, whether it’s the American dream or American exceptionalism or the Protestant work ethic or so many other myths that do us no — they are a disservice.”
Rabb is not the first figure on the far left to denounce the “American dream” and “the Protestant work ethic” as harmful “myths.” He pledged that he would be “one of the few unapologetic reparationists going to Congress,” joining a growing number of Democrats demanding billions in reparations for black Americans. Many on the left are using the anniversary to condemn our founding principles or to decline to celebrate our Independence Day. This includes such demonstrations in states such as Massachusetts, which declined to join the celebration on the Mall for the 250th anniversary.
Recently, we discussed how a Massachusetts church ended the long-standing celebration of the Fourth of July to focus on the “on-going process within the congregation to better understand our own whiteness.” John Adams once wrote his wife Abigail to predict that Independence Day would be: “celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”
Adams was virulently opposed to slavery as were many of the Founders. Many openly discussed their hope that the new nation would address slavery after it succeeded in establishing its independence. Those lofty values were ultimately realized at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives in the Civil War. The claim that fascism is a system “built into the very fabric of this nation” is absurd and demagogic. This nation defeated fascism and remains the oldest and most successful republic in history. Indeed, the left is claiming to be fighting fascism while seeking to take over the Supreme Court in a court-packing scheme while limiting such core human rights as free speech.
In “killing the beast,” the far left is threatening to unleash the very forces that destroyed the contemporary revolution in France at the time of our founding. These voices are not new. They have been part of this republic — and other republics — throughout history. They are the voices of mobocracy that we rejected 250 years ago. That is precisely why Benjamin Franklin was right that this is, and will remain, our Republic to keep.
Hillary Clinton said that people should be “worried about everything” regarding Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte. The former first lady and secretary of state went on the Democracy Docket podcast with host Marc Elias. He asked her about what her concerns were about President Donald Trump’s choice of Pulte to replace Tulsi Gabbard, who announced she was leaving the job last month.
Former Secretary of State Clinton called Pulte “very dangerous” and a “loose cannon.” She also called his appointment “deeply insulting to the intelligence community,” noting Pulte has no intelligence experience.”The DNI has access to everything, everything that they want to see,” said Clinton. “I mean, I hope there are career and even political appointees in various of the agencies that are slow-walking or refusing to share information with Pulte.”
Germany’s Federal Public Prosecutor General has confirmed that charges have been filed against a Ukrainian national suspected of involvement in the sabotage of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines. Prosecutors believe he and his accomplices developed a sabotage plan on behalf of Ukrainian government agencies.
“On June 20, the Federal Public Prosecutor General filed charges against Ukrainian citizen Sergey K. with the Hanseatic State Regional Court in Hamburg. There are sufficient grounds to suspect him of being an accomplice to a war crime involving attacks on civilian objects, carrying out explosions using explosives, destroying construction sites, and disrupting public utility infrastructure,” the statement said. According to the Federal Public Prosecutor General, Sergey K. served as an officer in the Ukrainian army in 2022. The prosecutors noted that “he and other [Ukrainian] servicemen, acting on the orders of Ukrainian government agencies, developed a plan to destroy the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines. The goal was to prevent Russia from receiving revenue from gas trade.”
“A group consisting of several professional divers, a skipper, and an explosives expert was formed under the suspect s direction to carry out the plan,” the statement said. According to the German investigation, Sergey K. entered Germany via Poland on September 4 using a forged Ukrainian passport. The Federal Public Prosecutor General adheres to the version previously published by the German media. According to this version, the sabotage group used a sailing yacht, which was rented in Rostock through intermediaries using forged documents, to transport explosives to the pipelines. “The suspect and his accomplices transported large quantities of highly potent explosives suitable for combat use on board this yacht into international waters as far as the Danish island of Bornholm,” the prosecutors pointed out.
“The saboteurs then attached the explosives, which were equipped with remote detonators, to the pipes. “The Federal Public Prosecutor General emphasized that the Nord Stream pipeline previously supplied half of Germany s annual gas demand. The Ukrainian national is currently being held in a pre-trial detention center in Hamburg, where the trial is expected to take place. He was arrested in Italy last summer and extradited to Germany. On September 26, 2022, unprecedented damage was recorded on three branches of the Nord Stream pipeline and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which had not yet been put into operation. The Russian Prosecutor General s Office opened a criminal investigation into an act of international terrorism.
Vladimir Zelensky once again criticized Kiev’s Western partners for insufficient deliveries of missiles for air defense systems and stated that Ukraine had not received a single one of the 200 promised missiles.”We need missiles. We have reached agreements with some countries and have already transferred funds to them. Some under the PURL [program] and some without it. With Norway, <...> [we agreed] that they would pay for 200 missiles. Not a single one of those 200 missiles has arrived,” he said in a video published by the Ukrainian Novosti. Live news outlet. The head of the Kiev regime added that Ukraine will do everything possible to ensure the missiles are delivered for the agreed-upon price.
He added that Kiev has to “fight” to get partners to fulfill deliveries that have already been agreed upon. “This is a major problem. We will not discuss or disclose the details of the deliveries at this time. I believe this is a major problem related to our partners. <...> We simply need our partners to fulfill what we agreed upon. We aren’t asking for more – we just want them to fulfill what they agreed to, what they signed, or what they promised. Today, we are seeing a slowdown in these efforts,” Zelensky noted.
The Ukrainian authorities regularly ask their partners to increase arms deliveries, particularly missiles for air defense systems. Earlier, Ukrainian top military commander Alexander Syrsky acknowledged that the country’s missile and artillery forces are critically dependent on arms and ammunition supplies from the West.
I’ve often said that in the first phase of the war, people like Scott RItter and Doug McGregor repeatedly claimed Ukrainian losses were 7-8 times bigger than Russian.
Now, these people want us to believe Russian losses are 7-8 times higher. Or some 60 times what they were 3-4 years ago. I think not.
Russia’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine has now cost the country some 450,000 lives, according to a new study that estimates the war’s total casualty numbers to have surpassed 2 million. The research by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates Russia has suffered 1.4 million casualties, including killed, wounded and missing soldiers – a stunning number that amounts to roughly 1% of the country’s population. The losses are not spread evenly across Russia, with poorer areas and ethnic minorities suffering significantly higher casualty rates.
Stories of male populations of small remote villages being virtually wiped out are becoming more common in Russian opposition media. And according to the study, Russia is currently unable to recruit new troops at the same rate as it is losing them. “These rates are astounding,” Seth G. Jones and Riley McCabe, the authors of the study, said. “Russian fatalities in Ukraine are more than four times greater than all US fatalities in all wars combined since World War II, and more than nine times greater than all Soviet and Russian fatalities in all wars combined since World War II.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine is estimated to have endured between 525,000 and 625,000 casualties, including 125,000 and 150,000 fatalities. Neither Russia nor Ukraine release official casualty data, but the latest CSIS figures are broadly in line with western estimates. Jones and McCabe said that in terms of casualties, the war is becoming much more costly for Russia than it is for Ukraine. They said the casualty rate has likely risen to nearly eight to one in the first half of this year, meaning that for every Ukrainian soldier killed, wounded or missing, there are eight Russians casualties.
For much of the war, the rate stood at between two to three Russian casualties to one Ukrainian loss. Jones and McCabe said that the recent increase is down to Kyiv’s advances in its drone program, especially its ability to greatly extend the “kill zone” – the area around the frontlines that is so saturated with drones that it makes it almost impossible for Russian troops to enter. “Ukraine’s defense-in-depth strategy has been effective in killing and wounding Russian soldiers, as well as limiting Russian maneuver,” the said.
However, they said there are other reasons why Russia is suffering so much, including “Russia’s attrition strategy, its failure to effectively conduct combined arms and joint warfare, its poor tactics and training, corruption, and low morale.” Whatever the reasons, the data paints a horrendous picture: with 2 million total casualties, the war in Ukraine has now likely surpassed the battle of Stalingrad, widely considered to be the bloodiest conflict in history.
Everyone once in a while the cultural marxist way to describe a middle eastern attacker gets a new euphemism. Today’s update comes from politically correct Scotland.
“Tanned European man”
I wonder how long it took them to come up with that one?
The U.S. government’s equity portfolio could be expanding again, this time with a potential 5% stake in Sam Altman’s OpenAI at an $852 billion valuation, according to a new report. The proposed stake would mark another step toward taking direct financial positions in tech giants. For OpenAI, buy-in from the Trump administration could ease mounting political pressure ahead of an IPO. The Financial Times reports that Altman has floated giving the U.S. government a 5% stake in OpenAI, modeled after the Alaska Permanent Fund, a state-owned sovereign wealth fund created to invest a portion of Alaska’s oil revenue for the long-term benefit of Alaskans.
The FT noted that the proposal would spur other tech giants, including Anthropic, Google, and Meta, to follow suit by handing over stakes to the federal government. The discussions remain early and “conceptual,” and any arrangement could require congressional approval, the report said, adding that the idea stems from mounting pressure in the Trump administration over AI’s impact on jobs and the localized blowback against data center buildouts nationwide.
Earlier this week, Elon Musk’s xAI Memphis rolled out a ‘data center dividend’ for the surrounding community, offering free Starlink kits and half-price service to quell any dissent against AI. This move suggests that data center operators nationwide may offer other forms of dividends in the future to appease surrounding communities. Back to the FT report, Altman has reportedly discussed public ownership with Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Sanders, a crazed socialist, has argued for the public stake in AI companies to exceed 50%. The socialist and far-left lawmakers who make up the Democratic Socialists of America have even signaled a questionable data center moratorium – a move that would only cede compute power to China.
In recent months, Altman’s chatbot company proposed a “public wealth fund” that “provides every citizen — including those not invested in financial markets — with a stake in AI-driven economic growth.” “The goal is not only to support people through economic change after decisions have already been made, but to give them a stake and a voice in shaping how that change unfolds,” OpenAI said in a blog post. The talks come after the Trump administration took a 10% stake in Intel, 15% in MP Materials, and …
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For OpenAI, a government stake could ease tensions with the Trump administration ahead of an IPO (delayed until 2027), while offering a political answer to concerns that AI is financially wrecking low-income folks. Meanwhile, The Information’s earlier report that Nvidia has been renting back its own compute capacity from neocloud providers raises one obvious question…
Why do Western politicians celebrate “multiculturalism” over the historically productive virtues of Western culture? Why do Western pundits disparage knowledge, skill, and hard work as attributes of “white supremacy”? Why do Western lawmakers make it more difficult for Western citizens to own land and personal property? Why do Western bureaucrats churn out rules and regulations that limit what can be built and manufactured? Why do Western governments make it difficult for small businesses to thrive?
Why do Western news media claim that only foreign migrants are willing to perform blue-collar jobs? Why do Western bankers claim that only foreign slave laborers are capable of manufacturing critical goods? Why do Western professors spend more time lecturing about racism and oppression than how to critically think, invent, and build new things? Why do Western NGOs support open borders, “climate change” regulations, and economy-killing taxes? Why do religious leaders praise the criminal and not the faithful Christian?
Why do cultural leaders encourage citizens and foreigners alike to become dependent on social welfare? Why do pop culture leaders extol frivolous excess over hard work and discipline? Why do Westerners celebrate gay “pride” for at least a month each year instead of encouraging all citizens to take pride in what they build, learn, and accomplish? Why do Wall Street and the City of London work so hard to deprive the United States and the United Kingdom of economies that benefit Main Street businesses as much as multinational conglomerates?
Reading through the above questions should lead a rational person toward a reasonable conclusion: The people who currently maintain economic and political power in the West have no interest in making the nations that they ostensibly call “home” wealthy. The United Kingdom and the European Union cannot produce wealth if their manufacturers are forced to use windmill-generated energy that has been exponentially outpowered by coal and steam for four centuries. Germany cannot produce wealth if it subsidizes Chinese automakers while bankrupting its own with “green energy” regulations. Canada cannot produce wealth if it refuses to use its abundant natural resources while importing most manufactured goods from Asia.
Western nations that refuse to use hydrocarbon and nuclear energies are nations dependent on foreign powers for manufacturing. Western nations that refuse to allow their farmers to grow crops and produce meat and dairy supplies for their home populations are nations dependent on foreign powers for food. Western nations whose people lack the knowledge and skills to repair everything from small appliances to entire electric grids are nations dependent on foreign powers during crises. Western nations that lack the cultural will to be self-sufficient are nations stuck in a permanent state of dependency. If you hand out food stamps liberally and look down on people who insist on providing for their families without government assistance, then you will produce a nation of pirates and fraudsters who make, grow, and build nothing.
How does the United Kingdom survive when it produces next to nothing? Right now it generates most of its revenue by acting as the economic middleman for most of the globe. Even though its empire has collapsed and its navy has disappeared, the City of London’s army of bankers, consultants, and lawyers still take a nice cut of every economic transaction around the planet. They collect insurance fees, regulatory fees, and investment fees like an absentee landlord still bilking old colonies with “rules-based” trade agreements that put money in the pockets of English lords who create nothing.
The Bank of England and the Secret Intelligence Service work together to game the international economy by stirring up regional conflicts and using insider knowledge to bet on the eventual market winners. Britain’s central bank has ensured that the wealthiest members of society profit from market manipulation while the rest of society suffers from currency depreciation. This is an economic model engineered to benefit a small cabal of “noble elites” while impoverishing the larger nation.
Although Donald Trump’s defenders describe the Russia hoax and other efforts to frame the president as a “grand conspiracy,” RealClearInvestigations has learned that the man now leading the probe of that scandal is pursuing multiple conspiracy prosecutions that are smaller and more manageable, according to several sources with direct knowledge of the probe. Since taking over the Justice Department’s far-flung investigation in April, veteran prosecutor Joseph diGenova and his team quickly concluded that combining all of the alleged wrongdoing, which ranges from falsifying evidence and committing perjury to leaking classified information and obstructing justice, into one unified plot and trying them together as a single case would be unmanageable.
“You’d have 50 defendants in the courtroom,” said a well-placed source familiar with diGenova’s thinking. Before diGenova took over the investigation two months ago, its contours were ill-defined as it lurched ahead in fits and starts for more than a year. But according to the sources, diGenova is tackling the case with a new, disciplined focus and in so doing is giving it the direction it’s lacked.
But this is a change in tactics, not the theory of the case. The sources say his operating assumption is that Trump’s enemies in the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, the Obama and Biden administration, some Democrats in Congress, and their like-minded accomplices across several government agencies – including the CIA and the FBI – joined in one continuous conspiracy over almost a decade to deny Trump his civil rights, derail his political campaigns, and undermine his presidency.
Where other investigators have looked at specific pieces of the effort Trump’s defenders now call “Russiagate” after its original origins, diGenova is launching the first holistic look at the entire scandal. A well-placed source said it is looking at events from June 2015 when Trump first came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy through the 2022 FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago after he left office.
Insider sources provided RCI with an exclusive look into the specially assigned/ prosecutor’s office and its recent/ legal maneuvers. They said two/ separate grand juries in South Florida are now collecting and hearing evidence in what could become a series of conspiracy cases brought against people who served in the highest reaches of government, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former FBI Director James/ Comey.
Since much of the government’s alleged corrupt anti-Trump activity took place in 2016, prosecuting the cases as conspiracies is the only way to get around the five-year federal statute of limitations. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche tapped diGenova, a longtime denizen of Washington, D.C., who was a U.S. attorney during the Reagan administration, to helm the sprawling investigation into what Blanche views as a series of baseless and seditious prosecutions and impeachments of Trump. The acting attorney general has created a special position for diGenova with the title ‘counselor to the attorney general’.
DiGenova has moved into an office in Fort Pierce, Fla., where one federal grand jury is actively hearing evidence in the case. Another grand jury has been convened in Miami, where/ Jason Reding Quinones, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, is based. He is said to be working closely with diGenova. DiGenova and his team are confident that the jury pool and judges in South Florida will give them a fair hearing, as opposed to Washington, D.C., where they are no longer utilizing a third grand jury. “It’s dead in D.C. Everything is in South Florida now, a red jurisdiction more sympathetic to Trump”, said a senior U.S. official briefed on the matter.
"In 5 years, digital intelligence will exceed the sum of all human intelligence. Within five years, there may be at least 100 million humanoid robots, possibly even 1 billion. The economy could double in size within 5 to 7 years because AI and robotics may increase output… https://t.co/0ScktanMX8pic.twitter.com/dZY7bNC0Ph
President Trump says Elon Musk will likely donate SpaceX stock to TRUMP ACCOUNTS — and Trump will ring the opening bell for the New York Stock Exchange (and Nasdaq) from the Oval Office next week.
The Tehran terrorists are not hiding their genocidal intentions toward America. The advisor to peace deal negotiator and Majles speaker Mohammad-Baquer “Death to America” Ghalibaf (or Qalibaf) declared on June 10 that negotiations buy time for the Iranian regime that is simply allowing temporary recovery for the next round of fighting. Citing Qalibaf, Mahdi Mohammadi declared that “you must never forget that you are at war … negotiations are a tool of the struggle.” He added, “We have no illusions about peace with America.” A couple weeks later, on June 28, a new report surfaced that Iranian state media is openly insisting the government should and will seek nuclear weapons.
The Hormuz Letter noted that Iranian media is justifying this nuclear advocacy by blaming President Donald Trump for threatening to wipe out the regime, threats which Trump, of course, did not end up enacting. The reality is that the murderous mullahs just want to justify the decision they always planned to make, which was to keep on with their endless jihad. And they were never really sincere about ending their nuclear program, either.
Speaking of which, the Middle East Media Research Institute translated Mohammadi’s interview on Iranian TV. Ghalibaf’s advisor bragged that the Iranian regime “control[s] the Strait of Hormuz,” where the regime continues to attack shipping up to this weekend. Mohammadi used some typical extravagant boasting, such as “the entire world is on its knees before the Islamic Republic,” and “[our] enemy is humiliated and defeated,” but he also made it clear where the regime stands on war versus peace.
“In your toolbox, you have missiles, UAVs, intelligence, and security capabilities, the Resistance” which means the many terrorist proxies like Hezbollah “your allies, and you also have the negotiations,” Mohammadi explained. “If you look at it this way, there is no problem [with negotiations]. But you must never forget that you are at war… the important thing is to get the concession at the beginning.” Continuing to elucidate why the Iranian regime pressed for major concessions even though they never wanted a deal, Mohammadi told the interviewer:
We should get something substantial right at the start, because we know — at least that’s how I see it — that the whole thing will fall apart. Fine, let it fall apart. The important thing is to get something substantial at the start. I have said this explicitly in the past. We need time and resources. We are at war. We will use the negotiations as a tool to buy time and acquire resources. We have no illusions about peace with America.
The real problem is that too many American politicians have illusions about peace with the terrorist Iranian regime.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are on the rise. They just triumphed in New York, and are sending Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, along with Brad Lander, a former DSA member, to Congress, where they will join DSA stars Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Ditzville) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Islamic Rage). Another DSA luminary, Zohran Mamdani, is mayor of New York City, and it is looking increasingly as if the DSA has done an Invasion of the Body Snatchers move on the Democrat Party, occupying its body and replacing its soul. The DSA is now the Democrat mainstream.
Emboldened with all this success, the DSA is loudly and proudly proclaiming what it is all about, hoping to draw more suckers into the big top. The socialists are making it clear that their program is far more comprehensive and far-reaching than most people realize; they’re hoping to do nothing less than re-create Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China in the United States.
This is no exaggeration. The superlative investigative journalist Stu Smith recently published in City Journal a long expose of the DSA’s new platform. Smith revealed that “earlier this month, the Democratic Socialists of America’s top leadership met for an in-person meeting of their National Political Committee (NPC), the DSA’s governing authority. The result of the meeting was ‘Workers Deserve More!’, a rebooted platform for the organization featuring a host of radical proposals.”
The “Workers Deserve More!” document, as Smith describes it, a blueprint that, if implemented, would without any doubt lead to the total destruction of the United States. “The document commits DSA to scrapping the U.S. Senate, ‘abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state,’ defunding the Department of War, amnesty for all immigrants, and ‘replac[ing] the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.’”
Among the “carceral forces of the capitalist state” that would be abolished would be ICE and the police, so that criminals and terrorists would be streaming across the border and the American people would have no one to protect them. The idea of scrapping the Senate and making the executive and judiciary subject to Congress would be to place political power in the hands of the House, which the most populous (and far-left) areas of the country would control.
The “Workers Deserve More!” document also said that its goal was to “win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic.” You know, like the German Democratic Republic (that was the official name of Communist East Germany, one of the most repressive regimes the world has ever known) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).
In a series of X posts, Smith augmented his City Journal with more from the “Workers Deserve More!” platform, each bit more radical, and more destructive if implemented, than the last. The DSA would even move to implement a fully communist state: It would “establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people. Enact aggressive wealth taxes on the richest individuals and corporations to spend on public goods and infrastructure.”
Wealth taxes! Why, Gavin Newsom is already there. And that’s just another indication of how this socialist madness, that has failed in so many countries, is become mainstream in ours, where people should know better, but apparently (after years of miseducation) do not.
The DSA’s forthrightness is something of a departure from recent practice. Old Joe Biden, after all, ridiculed the idea that he was a socialist during the 2020 campaign, only to allow those who were running his regime to take a decisively socialist and authoritarian course. Barack Obama likewise campaigned as a calm, moderate, centrist, only to become the most divisive, far-left president the nation had ever had up to the time he took office.
Yet as the DSA grows in power and influence in the Democrat Party and the nation in general, it seems to be confident that Americans will love its plan. No one should be fooled, however. If we are unfortunate enough to inaugurate a DSA president on Jan. 20, 2029, all the aspects of the DSA program that are currently being covered up will return in force, and be inflicted upon the American people. There is no doubt about that at all.
Barbara Boyd discusses three Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani winning upset victories in New York congressional primaries, framing the results as part of a long-term cultural project rather than a purely economic platform. She argues the DSA’s internal education centers on communist theorist Antonio Gramsci and his strategy of revolution through cultural “hegemony,” citing a deleted Instagram post from a group tied to one winner that called for the “total eradication of Western Civilization.”
Boyd highlights a newly published DSA platform proposing major constitutional changes, then links Gramsci to the Council on Foreign Relations’ “post-Trump world” series, noting CFR fellow Charles Kupchan opens with a Gramsci quote and attacks reindustrialization and tariffs. She claims British imperial networks historically sponsored Marx and later Gramsci, using communism and counterculture against rivals, and urges promoting Trump’s “American System” economics and an optimistic national culture ahead of the midterms.
The Democrat Party has a socialism problem, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) just made it worse. Last week’s New York City congressional primaries delivered a troubling result for anyone who thought the Democrat Party had hit peak radicalism: it hasn’t. Far-left candidates Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, backed by Democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and linked to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), knocked out two Democrat incumbents. Far-left Democrat Brad Lander also won his primary.
At the watch party for the socialist winners, the crowd made its intentions clear. When Jeffries appeared on a TV screen, supporters broke into chants of “You’re next!” It’s clear the socialists are gunning for his seat, which means no one in the party is safe from this hostile takeover. Not even leadership. And what did Jeffries do? He congratulated them. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this post on X Saturday.
Congratulations to our newest members of the NYC congressional delegation.
From public servants to union organizers to community activists, the path is different but the work is the same.
We must decisively address the affordability crisis and crush far-right extremism! pic.twitter.com/f4XC6dpX7q
Seriously? The crowd at that watch party had just threatened to oust him on live television. Now he’s bending the knee to them, posting a glowing congratulation that frames “far-right extremism” as the threat to confront while saying nothing about the DSA affiliations, the far-left policy positions, or the fact that the winners’ supporters just signaled they’re coming for his job. He even treated these primary wins as equivalent to general election victories, which, in New York City, they essentially are.
I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised. When CNBC host Joe Kernen asked Jeffries on camera about the “You’re next!” chant and about the rise of socialist candidates in his party, he did what Democrats always do: he pivoted immediately to President Donald Trump.
CNBC Host Joe Kernen CALLS OUT Hakeem Jeffries after he refused to condemn socialist NY Democrat nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier for calling to abolish police, prisons and borders
KERNEN: “I know it takes time from the interview… but it doesn’t really answer the question… It… pic.twitter.com/8PZgVuByzj
No pushback. No acknowledgment of the problem. Just the standard deflection. This is a tell. Either Jeffries genuinely doesn’t see the socialist takeover of his party as a threat worth confronting, or he’s too afraid to say so. I’m not even sure which is worse. I’ve written before that this tension between the socialist wing and the rest of the party has serious implications for the midterms and 2028. Socialism may sell in deep blue cities, but it doesn’t play in the suburban districts Democrats need to win a majority. Every DSA-backed candidate who locks up a safe seat in New York City drags the national party brand further left and hands Republicans a hammer to use in competitive races everywhere else. And establishment Democrats are either unwilling to stop it or too afraid to.
Former President Joe Biden was back onstage at a Democratic Party gala to excoriate President Trump Saturday – but needed a little help figuring out just how to exit. Biden, who got pushed out of his reelection bid by fellow Democrats in 2024 following his debate disaster against Trump, defended his record and blasted his successor during his speech to the Maryland Democratic Party’s Fight Back & Win summit near Baltimore. He ripped Trump for the “deliberate distraction – destruction of NATO” and hammered Trump’s White House ballroom as a “vanity project.”
At his speech’s conclusion Biden delivered a familiar refrain about the nation’s ability to overcome challenges – then sought an assist to find out which way to leave the stage. He turned to the side seeking guidance, then pointed in two different directions to ascertain the best route. Once he had it sorted out, he walked away from the stage with his back to the audience. His appearance at event, held at the Live! Casino & Hotel in Hanover, Maryland, came just days after he appeared at the grand opening of the Barack Obama presidential library in Chicago.
At that event, a bewildered looking Biden was left awkwardly onstage at its conclusion. “Where’s my granddaughter?” he shouted while walking up to the podium as it ended. At other times, he was guided by former first lady Jill Biden. Biden, 83, relied on a teleprompter during his Saturday night remarks, squinting at times as he read his verbal blasts at his rival, who he defeated in 2020, only to relinquish the White House in 2024. He coughed loudly several times early on. “Have you noticed that Americans are saying the economy under the Biden administration is a hell of a lot better than under Trump?” he told party faithful in the deep blue state.
“It’s not just his vanity projects – tearing down the East Wing of the White House making room for his ballroom. Putting his name on the Kennedy Center. Building an arch in his own honor. Even hiring his own pool guy to fix the reflecting pool. Woah – what a loser,” Biden said to applause. He called it “simply stunning to me” that Trump made “billions of dollars” as he returned to the White House, saying “he has no shame.” Biden’s successive awkward exits come after a long history during his presidency of mangling stage directions, as he did famously at a G7 photo-op in Italy in 2024.
He made no reference to the ideological fight going on in his party after democratic socialists prevailed in three New York primaries. The former first lady has been upping her media profile as she promotes her new book, where she revealed she at first thought Biden might be “having a stroke” during his 2024 presidential debate disaster.Hunter Biden, meanwhile, has launched an active social media profile where he has been promoting his art and taking on his dad’s critics, at one point challenging Donald Trump, Jr. to a cage match while blasting the UFC fight staged on the South Lawn of the White House.
Honestly, Joe Biden is an 83-year-old man who probably should be home with his grandchildren, not being trotted out in front of a partisan crowd in Maryland to read attacks off a teleprompter and then wait for someone to point him toward the exit. On a purely human level, there’s something genuinely sad about that picture. No, what this is about is the Democrat Party machine — the political apparatus, the party operatives, the media figures, the staffers, consultants, and loyalists who spent the better part of four years looking America dead in the eye and insisting that Joe Biden was sharp, capable, fully in command, and absolutely fit to serve another term as President of the United States.
And today, they insist on trotting him onto a stage to show the world just how wrong they were. These are the people who called you a liar — or worse, a conspiracy theorist — for suggesting that Biden wasn’t sure what planet he was on. The people who buried the story, spiked the footage, and escorted skeptical reporters right out of the conversation.
These are the same people who are now, with a straight face, putting this man back on a stage. Think about what that actually required. I mean, this is really the saddest part…. Think about the number of people involved in this process. Someone booked him. Someone wrote the speech. Someone set up the teleprompter. Someone stood offstage and waited to guide him out when it was over. And at every step of that process, not one person in that operation apparently stopped to ask whether any of this was a good idea — for the party, for the country, or for the man himself. The show must go on. The attacks on Trump must be delivered. The base must be fed.
The Democrat Party has a long and well-practiced tradition of putting the pursuit of power ahead of everything else, including basic honesty about the condition of the people they’re asking you to trust with the nuclear codes. We watched it happen in real time through 2023 and 2024—the insistence, the gaslighting, the furious pushback against anyone who raised questions. And then the debate happened, and the curtain came down, and suddenly everyone who’d been telling you Biden was fine remembered they needed to wash their hair.
But now he’s back. Squinting at the teleprompter. Coughing. Waiting for someone to show him the way out. What’s the reasoning behind this? It’s simple enough; they’ve got nothing else to offer. They’re fresh out of ideas, and fresh out of people to represent those ideas.
Think about that for a moment. The Democrat Party—the party that controls most of the major media institutions, most of the universities, most of the cultural apparatus of the country—their big move on a Saturday night in Maryland is to dust off an 83-year-old man who can’t find the exit and point him at a teleprompter. That’s the best they’ve got. That’s the headliner. The best symbol for the self-proclaimed party of young ideas is an 83-year-old with, sadly, the mental capacity of a wheel chock.
Are you kidding me? Where’s the next generation? Where’s the compelling vision they keep claiming they have? Where’s the candidate who walks into a room and makes people believe something? The answer is both simple and revealing. They don’t have one.
I’m to the point now of concluding that this 83-year-old mushroom brain is the ideal symbol for the party. They’ve spent so many years building a party around identity checklists, approved narratives, and the politics of grievance that they’ve completely lost the ability to produce a leader who can actually lead. What they can produce is someone who will, in an almost reliable fashion, say the right things in the right order to the right interest groups—and when that person can no longer reliably do even that, apparently the answer is to keep sending him out anyway, teleprompter and spotter included, because the alternative is admitting they have nothing at all to offer.
You might remember recent reports outlining how the economy of Canada has slipped into a recession, posting two consecutive quarters with a negative GDP outcome. There are multiple reasons for this shrinkage, but the dominant factor is, well, quite frankly, Canadian politics and economic policy.
Meanwhile, in Mexico the opposite is happening. Mexico’s economic activity grew 1.2% in April from the prior month, the national statistics agency said, compared with a revised increase of 0.6% in March and beating a forecast of a 0.9% increase in a Reuters poll of analysts. {source} It is not coincidental to see the Mexican economy performing well, while the Canadian economy is contracting. Despite their identical proximity to The United States, each nation is currently executing a fundamentally different set of economic policies.
The Canadian government has been exceptionally combative with the U.S.A, leading to friction, tariffs and economic back-and-forth measures between the two nations.The Mexican government has expressly understood the nature of their dependency, admitted it, taken no action to diminish it, and purposefully set out to align itself with the interests of America. Canada is combative. Mexico is collaborating.
It seems unlikely that the three nations can agree on major economic policies, as a trilateral partnership would need alignment in core areas like energy policy. Canada’s energy policy is fundamentally separate from those of the U.S. and Mexico, and this is an issue that can’t be resolved through a trade agreement alone. A large part of Mexico’s economy relies on remittances from Mexican workers in the U.S. sending money back to their families. As long as the U.S. job market stays strong—and it’s only getting stronger in the industries where many Mexicans work—Mexico will continue to benefit from America’s economic growth.
One datapoint that points to the USA-Canada disconnect comes in the auto sector. The Center for Automotive Research (CAR) reports that Canadian vehicle production dropped 15 percent year-over-year through April. It’s understood that factories in Canada built approximately 64,000 fewer vehicles through April than the year prior, while US production rose by roughly 44,000 units, or 1.2 percent. Auto manufacturing companies in Canada operate there as part of the business plan to sell vehicles into the USA. As Canada increases friction with the USA, which is setting up a dynamic of U.S. withdrawal from the USMCA, those auto manufacturers will increasingly shift production from Canada to the U.S. market.
It appears that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s response to this predictable auto-sector outcome, is to flip those production facilities into venues for Chinese EV production (BYD and Geely). However, Democrats and Republicans are united in alignment with President Trump on this issue and Chinese EVs will not be permitted entry into the USA. This is a very big point of friction. Right now, no company in their right mind would invest in Canada against the backdrop of a potential USMCA withdrawal by President Trump. This is creating a scenario where our old nemesis, the U.S Chamber of Commerce, is spending tens-of-millions in Washington DC to purchase the votes and support of congress to retain the trilateral deal.
Right now, every multinational corporation in the world is looking closely at the White House as the July 1st deadline approaches. Almost none of them can fathom what will happen if the U.S. announces the intention to fully exit the USMCA and triggers a six-month withdrawal process. Despite what many have falsely claimed, it was specifically written into the original trade terms that if any of the three countries announce an exit to the trilateral agreement, they can fully exit six months later. If the USA makes this announcement -whenever they make this announcement- a literal economic doomsday countdown begins for Canada.
Mexico would not really be too disturbed by the announcement as both USTR Jamieson Greer and his Mexican counterpart have been negotiating on a bilateral basis for over a full year. However, for Canada the ramifications are so astronomical, it is almost impossible to fathom what might happen when 80% of their total exports face an unpredictable future. The leverage President Trump carries are so formidable, the only thing that compares in scale is the ‘elbow’s up‘ ego of Prime Minister Carney. ‘Splodey heads is an understatement. Canadians are so unprepared it’s jaw dropping. Make that exit announcement and as soon as reality sits-in, the Canadian dollar could collapse.
The London mayor who once insisted there was “no indication” of grooming gangs now faces explosive new scrutiny after a police review uncovered thousands of previously sidelined child sexual exploitation files. The Metropolitan Police has identified more than 4,000 potential child sexual exploitation cases across London that may require reopening. These stem from roughly 12,000 reports dating back to 2010, with about one in three previously closed after police or prosecutors took no further action.
Met Police uncovers 4,000 potential grooming gang cases as Sadiq Khan faces fresh scrutiny over London claimshttps://t.co/c2Wpx1MwOL
The cases have now been referred to the National Crime Agency under Operation Beaconport for urgent assessment.
'What on Earth are we doing? Why are we allowing this to happen?'
Journalist Andy Jones reacts to the horrifying news that a Met Police review has identified more than 4,000 grooming gang cases that may need reopening. pic.twitter.com/zaAyo6V7s1
This development directly contradicts Sadiq Khan’s past public statements. In January 2025, appearing before the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee, Khan repeatedly dodged questions from Conservative member Susan Hall about the scale of grooming gangs in the capital. He claimed his understanding from regular police briefings was that there were “no reported cases and also no indication of the grooming gangs” she was concerned about. When pressed on how many such gangs operated in London, he asked her to clarify what she meant by the term.
Critics now describe the position as gaslighting. Hall called the scale “utterly disgraceful,” noting it represents 4,000 young girls raped and sexually abused while authorities looked the other way or actively resisted scrutiny. Khan’s team now claims he has always supported leaving “no stone unturned.” The gap between that line and his earlier blanket denials has not gone unnoticed. This London revelation fits a wider, years-long scandal of institutional failure and political cowardice. Earlier this year we detailed how even the BBC exposed the scale of grooming activity in the capital under Khan’s watch.
Separate investigations laid bare mini-mart operations where vulnerable children were plied with alcohol and cigarettes in exchange for sexual abuse. Illegal shops were caught handing out free vapes to kids in return for sexual favours. And the weary response from parts of the establishment often boiled down to telling victims and the public to simply “get over it.”
London’s Metropolitan Police have found evidence suggesting there are thousands of child sex exploitation gangs or offenders in London.London is reportedly majority Muslim now (which tallies with my experience there), but even if that is in reality an exaggeration, it’s obvious the UK capital has a serious problem with Islamic rape gangs. Just in London, there are up to 4,000 grooming gang cases that authorities have tried to cover up.
Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe, who released the bombshell report on grooming gangs that identified 250,000 British girls and women as victims, indicated that between 87% and 95% of such sexual criminals are Muslim men. In other words, the mass child exploitation and rape gang crisis in England is almost entirely a result of mass migration from Muslim-majority nations. That is not surprising given that Islamic sacred texts endorse pedophilia, rape, and sexual slavery. But the current mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is also Muslim. Now, some Muslims do not follow the encouragement to sexual crime in their sacred texts, but will Khan address the rape-gang crisis any more now than he did before? Somehow I expect not.
In fact, according to GB News, Khan previously and emphatically asserted there was “no evidence” that grooming gangs were operating in London. Scotland Yard’s new findings indicate how wildly false that was. Sir Sadiq Khan is facing fresh scrutiny over his previous claims about grooming gangs in London after the Met Police identified more than 4,000 potential child sexual exploitation cases that could now be reopened… Roughly one in three cases [of 12,000] are now flagged for potential reinvestigation after police or the Crown Prosecution Service previously decided to take no further action.
And yet before the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee in 2025, Khan asserted, “My understanding from speaking to the police, and she will appreciate, I have done on a regular basis, is and I choose my words carefully for the reasons she will understand there are no reported cases and also no indication of the grooming gangs that she is concerned about in London.” It is likely his critics who accused him of a cover-up were correct. Notably, on Saturday, a Somali-born man drove a car into a crowd in London. The overwhelming majority of victim-based crimes in the UK do not result in a charge. On the other hand, thousands of British citizens have ended up in handcuffs for social media posts.
Great Britain has become, or at least is well on the way to becoming, a sharia state. Many of the British people are opposed to it and awake to the danger, but unfortunately, just as in many states here in the U.S., the communists in charge of the government are willing to take many tyrannical measures to ensure they never lose power. And it is even more difficult to change leadership in a country with a parliamentary system as Britain has. The UK is held captive thanks to suicidal woke idiots and fundamentalist Muslims.
Republican California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is calling attention to allegedly leaked audio of his Democrat opponent and former Biden HHS secretary urging staff to traffic illegal alien kids the “way you do an assembly line.”
The clip features two unidentified women discussing the comments of Xavier Becerra, who as head of the Department of Health and Human Services under the previous administration oversaw a gargantuan network of unaccompanied migrant minors passed off to barely vetted sponsors. We now know that many of these sponsors were unrelated to the children and exploited them, sometimes for sexual purposes. The allegedly leaked audio sheds some light on Becerra’s attitude, as he saw these vulnerable children as a sort of product, not as individual humans. Hilton indicated he has more information about to become public.
Some of the HHS employees were so bothered by the exploitation and trafficking of the young kids that they filed a complaint letter against Becerra, per the clip.
The leaked audio is reportedly from an internal meeting where Becerra seemed to be railing against his staff for — as he perceived it — moving too slow in passing unaccompanied alien minors (UACs) along. If the audio is of Becerra and staff, it contains the acknowledgment that the kids could be in a trafficking situation, but that isn’t supposed to be important.
“If Henry Ford had seen this in his plant, he would have never become famous and rich,” the alleged recording of Becerra states. “This is not the way you do an assembly line …We need to get discharges up. Every time we have to go to the Hill [Congress] and explain why we’re spending so much money when most people are struggling to spend a little bit of money for the kids on a daily basis, we try to explain how we’re spending more than $1000 a day for kids who may not even have the legal right to be here? Not me.”
While we cannot absolutely confirm the authenticity of this shocking audio, we can find evidence of Becerra callously refusing to address evidence that his agency was placing children with pimps and strip clubs. That interchange with a congressman appears to have come from Becerra’s 2024 testimony to the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity regarding UACs.
Rep. Thomas Tiffany (R-Wis.) cited evidence of trafficking in HHS’s UAC pipeline. “One of the little girls was forced into prostitution by someone who claimed to be her aunt, because there [were] no checks being done… It revealed that children were pimped out by their aunt, which it turns out the aunt wasn’t even related to the child’s so-called aunt. Are you familiar with that story that was in there?” Tiffany asked.
Becerra stuttered in response, “There are a number of, uh, incidents that are reported in that, uh, that Florida report. Some of them I can probably recall better than others. Some of them I would challenge and dispute, but, uh, that one I don’t remember.” So Tiffany pressed, “And do you remember the teenage girl that was in a house with unknown men with no private bedroom for her?” And “Are you familiar with the sponsors that utilize a strip club in Jacksonville as an address for where this child, where a child should be settled?”
Becerra didn’t have a good defense. Because for him, the children were not vulnerable kids needing protection; they were merely part of his assembly line to further the mass migration policies of the Biden administration.
You really have to hand it to Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. When it comes to trying to stop lawful immigration enforcement, they are willing to twist the law and themselves like pretzels to please the open-borders crowd.
There really is no other way to read their dissents in the three important immigration cases decided by the Court in the last two weeks. Their dissents are also very revealing because they spend a great deal of time criticizing the policies in each case, apparently forgetting that they are not policymakers but judges tasked with one job: determining whether the policy implemented by the executive branch (whether they like it or not) is within the authority granted by the Constitution or federal law.
They abandoned that role in each of these cases. Mullin v. Al Otro Lando was an easy case to decide. During the Obama administration, the number of aliens mobbing ports of entry overwhelmed immigration agents. The administration put in a metering system that only allowed a certain number of aliens to be processed and to claim asylum. Other aliens were prevented from crossing the border and the Trump administration continued that system. The aliens remaining in Mexico sued claiming they were unlawfully prevented from entering the U.S. and still had a right to assert asylum. Unfortunately, some lower federal courts issued injunctions agreeing with them.
But as the six-member majority of the Supreme Court said on June 25, the statute providing aliens with the ability to claim asylum only applies to aliens “arriving in the United States.” It should be obvious to anyone with any common sense – which seems to exclude the three dissenters – that you don’t arrive “in” a location until you actually arrive in the location. The Court held that under the plain text of the statute and the ordinary, everyday meaning of arriving “in,” aliens still in Mexico can’t claim a right to enter the country and claim asylum because they never arrived “in” the U.S.
But in a dissent by Sotomayor, joined by Kagan and Jackson, she chastised the majority for its “illogical interpretation” of the law and its “fixation” on the word “in.” She claimed the word “in” doesn’t really mean “in” and that anyone arriving on “our doorstep” is the same as being “in” the country. In addition to this illogical interpretation, she and her comrades spent much of their time discussing the supposedly terrible consequences of the majority’s decision, claiming it will cause “more people [to] die,” a totally outrageous claim that has no basis in fact.
But most importantly, the rightness or wrongness of the policy has absolutely nothing to do with the question that was before the Court. The issue was whether implementing this policy is within the authority of the administration under the language of the statute. It clearly is, something the three liberals refused to acknowledge.
Mullin v. Doe was a similarly easy case to decide, at least for the majority and anyone who can read plain English. In 1990, Congress gave the president, acting through the secretary of Homeland Security, the authority to provide temporary lawful status to aliens whose countries have been hit with natural disasters and other problems. Syrians were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in 2012 and Haitians in 2010. The Trump administration ended TPS for both groups in 2025, but federal courts once again issued injunctions telling the president he couldn’t do that.
But the TPS status has specific language barring all judicial review of any determination to grant or end TPS. The Court’s six-member majority enforced this provision, concluding that it wipes out all claims of statutory violations (which the Syrians made) although it does not bar constitutional claims (which the Haitians made). The Court dissolved the injunctions against the termination of TPS for both the Syrians and the Haitians.
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The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide in the coming days whether President Donald Trump can remove Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook from her post – an extraordinary step that would mark the first presidential firing of a Fed official since the central bank’s founding in 1913 and directly test the institution’s independence from political interference.
The justices, who hold a 6-3 conservative majority, signaled skepticism during January arguments toward Trump’s authority to oust Cook. The Federal Reserve Act requires that governors be removed only “for cause,” a term Congress left undefined and without procedural details. Trump cited unsubstantiated allegations of mortgage fraud – which Cook has denied and called a pretext for her removal over monetary policy disagreements. Cook has remained in her role while the case proceeds. No president has attempted such a firing in the Fed’s more than century-long history.
This dispute is one of three pending cases examining the outer limits of presidential power under Trump. The others involve his removal of a Federal Trade Commission member and an executive order limiting birthright citizenship. The court has already delivered Trump victories in two immigration cases this week and has frequently sided with the administration in emergency rulings, though it rejected his sweeping tariffs in February.
Firing Federal Officials
The justices appeared ready during December arguments to uphold Trump’s firing of Democratic FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter over policy differences. Lower courts had ruled that Trump exceeded his authority. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the Court to overturn the 1935 precedent Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which has protected heads of independent agencies from at-will removal. While the Court has narrowed that precedent in recent decades, it has stopped short of overruling it. Conservative justices have expressed sympathy for the view that statutory tenure protections encroach on the president’s constitutional powers. The Court previously allowed Trump to remove Slaughter while the case continues.
Election-Related Cases
Two election disputes remain as Republicans seek to retain congressional control in the November midterms. During March arguments, conservative justices expressed skepticism toward a Mississippi law – challenged by Republicans and supported by the Trump administration – that permits mail-in ballots postmarked on or before Election Day to be counted if received up to five business days later. A lower court invalidated the provision. A ruling striking down the law could encourage stricter voting rules nationwide.
Trump issued an executive order in March restricting mail-in ballots across the country, but a federal judge in Boston blocked its implementation on Thursday. In December, the Court heard a Republican-led challenge – involving Vice President JD Vance – to federal limits on coordinated spending between political parties and candidates. Some conservative justices appeared open to the First Amendment arguments against the restrictions, while the liberal justices seemed inclined to preserve them. A lower court had upheld the limits.
Transgender Athletes
In January arguments, the conservative majority signaled it is prepared to uphold laws in Idaho and West Virginia barring transgender athletes from female sports teams at public schools and universities. The states argue the measures protect fair competition for women and girls; critics see them as part of broader efforts to restrict transgender rights.
Geofence Warrants
The Court also heard April arguments in a Virginia case examining whether law enforcement’s use of “geofence” warrants – which sweep up cellphone location data from areas near crime scenes to identify potential suspects – violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches. The Supreme Court’s term, which began in October, typically ends in late June or early July. With seven cases still unresolved and the next round of decisions expected Monday, the coming days will bring clarity on these high-stakes disputes.
''The Amish basically have no obesity, no infertility, no cancer, no diabetes, no metabolic syndrome. They’re having 10 plus kids and they’re incredibly happy.'' pic.twitter.com/MCjAzqVAxC
— Joe Rogan Podcast News (@joeroganhq) June 27, 2026
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BREAKING: Companies are leaving Delaware at record rates.
• 52 companies have departed Delaware. • More than $3.30 trillion in combined market cap has left. • Corporate departures are up 322% year over year. • Companies have relocated to 7 different states, led by Texas and… pic.twitter.com/JmUirtgLgS
A little over a week since the US and Iran signed the MoU, some ships that had been trapped in the Persian rushed to travel through the corridor, with many trying to use an alternative route on the southern side of the Strait along the Omani coast. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) had coordinated this alternative routing with Oman – hugging the UAE and Musandam Peninsula coastline, avoiding the central passage that Iran had mined. This route was significant because it bypassed Iran’s designated corridor entirely, which ran closer to Iranian territorial waters.
However, Iran and Oman agreed on a new framework (joint working group) for the future administration of the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, June 24, 2026. The two countries agreed to establish a joint working group between their foreign ministries to discuss: Future navigation rules and administration of the strait. Services provided (e.g., safety, pilotage). Associated costs (in accordance with international standards). Both emphasized their sovereignty over their territorial waters in the strait.
The naval arm of the Revolutionary Guard issued a warning Thursday against using the new route. In a statement carried by Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency, naval officials said the route was established without notice or coordination with Iran, calling it “unacceptable and completely dangerous.” According to the IRGC: “The only authorized route for passing through the Strait of Hormuz is the one declared by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Vessel traffic outside these routes is extremely dangerous and prohibited. Violators will be dealt with.” The day before, the Guard had threatened one tanker over the radio, with a soldier warning “You are in range of my missiles and maybe (I) fire on you,” according to the private security firm Ambrey.
On Thursday the Ever Lovely, a Singapore-flagged ship operating in the fleet of Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine, attempted to transit the strait using a narrow channel near the coast of Oman in accordance with a route organized by the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) security monitor. The Ever Lovely was struck by a drone belonging to Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran allegedly shot at least four drones at ships traveling through the Strait on Thursday. One of those hit the upper deck of the Ever Lovely. On Friday, the US attacked Iran in ‘response’ to strikes on the commercial vessel in Strait of Hormuz a day earlier:
Iran’s IRIB reported that an explosion was heard at 11:15 pm at the Taheroui pier in Sirik. A military source said the blasts were caused by a projectile hitting the pier area, adding that around five hours earlier, several warning shots had been fired from Sirik toward violating vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. Reports also indicated that two warning missiles were fired earlier from around Karpan toward the strait. US Central Command said its forces carried out strikes against Iran on 26 June in response to Iran’s attack the previous day on the Singapore-flagged cargo ship M/V Ever Lovely as it exited the Strait of Hormuz along the Omani coast. CENTCOM said US aircraft targeted Iranian missile and drone storage sites and coastal radar positions after the vessel was hit by a one-way attack drone.
Although CENTCOM presented this as a powerful strike on Iran, and the US media trumpeted it as an act of major retaliation, the US response inflicted little damage and could reasonably be interpreted as a symbolic gesture rather than a punishing attack. The IRGC Public Relations department issued the following statement: Following the Israeli regime’s violation of the ceasefire in southern Lebanon, the treaty-breaking US regime also violated its commitments once again. Under various pretexts, including the transit of a vessel accused of navigating through an unauthorized route in the Strait of Hormuz, the US launched an airstrike against the coasts of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In response to this aggression, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy struck positions where the US terrorist military is stationed in the region. Under Article 5 of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, responsibility for regulating navigation through the Strait of Hormuz rests with the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, the United States sought to violate this commitment by encouraging various parties to defy it. It received the necessary response, and the same will apply in the future. If the aggression is repeated, Iran’s response will be broader than this.
Instead of marking a return to war, this exchange of fire can best be categorize as military political theater. I believe that Iran, thanks to intel from the Russians or the Chinese, has learned that the US has issued orders that will initiate the return to CONUS of the aircraft, vehicles and troops that had been deployed to the region in preparation for the February 28 attack. Because of the limited damage inflicted by the US attack, I believe that Iran chose to respond in a limited fashion rather than escalate and run the risk of the US cancelling the redeployment order.
For now, Iran remains in control of the Strait of Hormuz and ships wanting to transit the Strait are adhering to Iran’s new policy.
Iranian drones attacked Bahrain after overnight airstrikes by the United States. The U.S. strikes followed an Iranian attack on a cargo ship on Thursday. A tanker was hit by a projectile in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, according to Britain’s maritime security agency. No one was injured and Iran hasn’t officially claimed responsibility for the attack. These attacks occurred despite Iran and the U.S. reaching an interim deal to end the war.
Mike Steger from Promethean Action PAC argues the reason the Ukraine war is hardest to end is simply because Ukraine represents the proxy state of all the globalist stakeholders who need another large conflict in order to eliminate the problem of a moral-based Christian perspective within the ‘West.’ Essentially, without Russia as the enemy, the factional war they need to retain power is much harder to achieve. Promethean Action PAC YouTube: “Mike Steger explores the concept of “color revolutions” and argues that the same strategies used to influence governments abroad are now shaping politics across the West.
From Ukraine and the Arab Spring to Brazil, Europe, and the United States, Mike examines how non-governmental organizations, media networks, political activism, and government institutions have evolved into powerful geopolitical tools.The discussion also explores President Trump’s efforts to reshape U.S. foreign policy, dismantle longstanding government programs, push election reforms, and challenge what Mike describes as the political establishment ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.”
The Ukraine war is quite obviously escalating, especially regarding Ukrainian leaders seeking to “bring the war” to Russian soil, amid nightly drone attacks which have come in the hundreds and even thousands of late. President Volodymyr Zelensky is seeking to seize on the momentum of repeat drone hits on Russian refinery and energy infrastructure – a reality Russia has suffered over many months, leading to a current fuel crisis spanning dozens of cities and regions, and especially Crimea, which has temporarily halted fuel sales to common citizens altogether this week.
Ukrainian media is touting a new Zelensky plan to ramp up the pressure on Russia over the next 40 days, aimed at “pressuring Russia to end its war”. He has ordered Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) to launch a new 40-day operation, which also includes “plan for long-range sanctions, medium-range sanctions, and the results achieved by the SBU,” Zelensky said on X. He’s further calling it an “influence operation.” “For several months in a row, the SBU has demonstrated the highest performance in defending Ukraine’s positions on the front lines through the use of various types of drones,” Zelensky said on Thursday evening. According to more of the statement:
I approved a 40-day influence operation for the Service against the aggressor state aimed at compelling it to end the war. Importantly, for several months in a row, the SSU has demonstrated the highest performance in defending Ukraine’s positions on the front lines through the use of various types of drones. The Center of Special Operations “Alpha” leads in terms of the occupier’s personnel and equipment neutralized. Earlier, in mid-June, Ukrainian Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov proclaimed “Hell is beginning,” for Russia and its military. “Logistics are being cut off. Crimea is being isolated,” he said at the time.
Ukraine’s asymmetric warfare against Russia’s much-larger and better armed military machine is in a significantly better position than the status of a year or so ago. Russian forces still have the upper-hand on the front line in the east, but the pain clearly being inflicted on Russia’s economy can’t be ignored at this point.This sets up a potential slide into tit-for-tat escalation which could unleash a WW3 scenario. In the meantime this is an interesting-timed warning from Latvia and Poland:
Western intelligence agencies are increasingly concerned that Russia may be preparing a limited hybrid operation targeting NATO’s eastern flank, potentially involving the Baltic states or Poland. Such a move, officials believe, could be an attempt to test the alliance’s unity as the war in Ukraine enters a new phase.According to reporting by The Guardian, intelligence officials from two NATO countries have warned that Moscow is considering a “provocation” rather than a full-scale military attack.
Report by Major General Yevhenii Khmara on our long-range sanctions plan, mid-range sanctions, and the results of the Security Service of Ukraine – specifically the Center of Special Operations “Alpha” – on the front.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 25, 2026
At the moment inside Russia, many regions of Russia seem powerless to stop Ukraine’s inbound drone waves, given also that conventional air defenses are set up to defend primarily against larger, faster-moving projectiles like missiles or jets. President Trump has lately suggested that Ukraine is doing well in the war, or at least much better than it once was. Kiev now feels the pressure to keep this narrative going, also so it can attract more and more weapons and intelligence help. But at some point Russia will feel it necessary to strongly reassert its red lines. This could come in the form of another massive escalation, and against ‘decision-making centers’.
Ukraine announced Saturday that it used its Flamingo cruise missiles overnight to strike Russia’s Titan-Barrikady weapons plant, which reportedly manufactures parts for its powerful Oreshnik missile. The military plant is in Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, which is a major industrial city in southwest Russia. Writing on X, President Zelensky described it as a “major industrial complex” where Russia “produces artillery systems and specialized military equipment, including components for missile launch systems.” “Every Russian defense facility involved in the war against Ukraine is a legitimate target for our long-range strikes,” he wrote.
The Associated Press reports, “Volgograd Gov. Andrei Bocharov confirmed an attack on a business in the region’s Krasnooktyabrsky district, saying 10 people had been wounded and taken to a hospital. He said production facilities at the site were damaged but did not identify the company.” Additionally, “Ukraine’s state security service said Saturday morning that Ukrainian forces also struck an oil pumping facility in Russia’s Vladimir region that supplies fuel to Moscow, for the second time this month.” But on the other side of the border, Ukrainian media reports that Russia was also busy with now nightly airstrikes:
Russian forces targeted production facilities belonging to the Naftogaz Group, Ukraine’s largest national oil and gas company, in the Poltava and Kharkiv regions. The barrage of attacks included 129 drones, of which 113 were destroyed or jammed by Ukrainian forces, Ukrainian media reported. The Russian overnight attacks on Ukraine killed two people and injuring more than 20, according to state officials. At a moment much of the globe’s attention remains fixated on Iran and the fate of energy shipping through the largely blocked Strait of Hormuz, the Ukraine war is rapidly escalating.
Footage shows Ukrainian FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile launches and precision strikes on the Titan-Barrikady Plant in Volgograd, Russia.
Titan-Barrikady, officially known as JSC Federal Scientific and Production Center "Titan-Barrikady," is responsible for producing heavy… pic.twitter.com/xTYF2k2dLy
Ukrainian leadership has issued some astounding stats on the escalation on its side of the border: Russia attacked Ukraine with 1,400 drones and 1,500 guided bombs President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on Saturday, June 27, that Russian forces deployed approximately 1,400 attack drones, 1,500 guided aerial bombs, and 19 missiles of various types, including ballistic missiles, against Ukraine over the past week. In a statement published on Telegram, Zelensky noted that 15 Ukrainian regions were subjected to Russian attacks during the seven-day period. He highlighted that the cities of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Sumy faced near-daily bombardment.
But it also over the past week has sent projectiles into Russia in the thousands. Ukraine’s asymmetric warfare strategy against Russia’s much-larger and better armed military machine has put Kiev in significantly better position – in terms of potential negotiating leverage – than the status of a year or so ago. Russian forces still have the upper-hand on the front line in the east, but the pain clearly being inflicted on Russia’s economy can’t be ignored at this point. There are reports of fuel shortages across dozens of regions and especially in Crimea over the past several days.
Multiple Ukrainian FP-5 “Flamingo” Cruise Missiles slam into the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology’s “Titan-Barrikady” Defense Plant, which designs and produces parts for artillery and ballistic missile launchers, in the Southern Russian city of Volgograd. pic.twitter.com/pwTrnuHVL4
President Trump has lately suggested that Ukraine is doing well in the war, or at least much better than it once was. Kiev now feels the pressure to keep this narrative going, also so it can attract more and more weapons and intelligence help. But at some point Russia will feel it necessary to strongly reassert its red lines. This could come in the form of another massive escalation, and against ‘decision-making centers’.
The Democratic Socialists of America have adopted a strategy to exploit the Democratic Party’s ballot access to boost their own candidates at the expense of incumbents, a plan which achieved remarkable success in New York City this week. The victory of two DSA-backed candidates and one former member delivered a shock to the Democratic Party establishment, which has begun to call for better policing of the party’s primaries against candidates who are only seeking to exploit it, not join it. “I say this with no ill will or animosity: if you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination,” said Jaime Harrison, who served as the Democratic National Committee Chairman from 2021 to 2025.
“Don’t use our resources. Don’t rely on our volunteers. Don’t use our infrastructure. Don’t ask Democrats to invest their time, money, and energy in your campaign,” he added. “Focus on building the party you actually support.” The DSA – which calls for abandoning capitalism, defunding the police, and nationalizing key industrial sectors – has long publicly stated its intent to do just that. Ahead of the New York City primary elections on Tuesday, NYC DSA Co-Chair Gustavo Gordillo explained that his party is using the Democrats to access the ballot, but aims to achieve a fundamentally different agenda.
“We’re on the Democratic Party ballot line. We contest the primaries, and when they’re in the legislature, they’re part of the Democratic Party caucus, but we don’t agree with the way the Democratic Party establishment organizes or runs its party apparatus,” he told Spectrum News in an interview. Gordillo was rather open about taking advantage of Trump-hating Democrats. In a clip on X, he said:”We’re using the Democratic Party as a ballot-access vehicle, not because we share its goals […] We build our own organization, get elected under the Democratic label, caucus with Democrats when it’s useful, and push our own agenda from the inside.”
“I think in terms of the agenda, there’s a problem in the Democratic Party where they are funded by billionaire donors, and at the same time, they’re trying to represent the working class, and in our opinion, you have to choose between the billionaire class and the working class,” Gordillo said. “It’s just impossible to satisfy all of them.” The DSA is currently running a strategy known as the “dirty break”– “where DSA continues to run candidates on the Democratic Party’s ballot line, while building the infrastructure and base of supporters necessary to one day run our candidates independently,” as described by the party’s youth wing.
Various forms of the strategy have been referenced in party resolutions since 2019, when the party first defined it as a key goal: “to form an independent working-class party, but for now, this does not rule out DSA-endorsed candidates running tactically on the Democratic Party ballot line.” The party’s youth wing, the Young Democratic Socialists of America, identified the strategy by name in 2022, adopting a resolution at its convention that year. “Therefore, be it also resolved that YDSA is committed to, within DSA and on the left in general, a bold and transformative ‘dirty break’ approach to elections and electoralism,” according to convention documents.
The youth wing argues that the success of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who was elected as a Democrat in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District in 2018 (she now represents the 12th after redistricting), has proven that the “dirty break” strategy is a viable one. “Tlaib often acts as a tribune of the people, using her role in Congress to agitate around working-class issues rather than pass legislation,” reads one article on the YDSA’s website. Since Tlaib’s victory in 2018, the DSA’s power in Democratic strongholds appears to be growing.
Last year, DSA member Zohran Mamdani upset the Democratic political establishment and won election to the mayor’s office in New York City on a socialist platform. Earlier this week, he flexed his newfound political influence in the city to catapult three other socialist candidates to victory in Democratic primaries for the U.S. House of Representatives.
The communist takeover of the Democrat Party is in full swing, and some might find that surprising, as the Democrats have looked like a communist party for many years now. But what was hidden ten or twenty years ago is all out in the open now, and as ever more avowed socialists are getting elected, one Democrat is sounding the alarm. But only one.
That’s telling. The Evil Party, as conservative pundit M. Stanton Evans indelibly dubbed the Democrats back in the 1970s (he called the Republicans the Stupid Party, which is just as apt) started on the path of socialism back in 1933 with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, and confirmed its commitment to the socialist path in the 1960s with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. What’s happening now is simply the open avowal of the trajectory the party has been on for nearly a century. And so it’s less surprising that only one Democrat is speaking out than it is that there is still one Democrat who believes in freedom.
And yeah, you guessed it: it’s Sen. John Fetterman (D-Common Sense). On Wednesday, Fetterman commented on X on a story about the Democrat primary victory of a Marxist convert to Islam who hates the United States and Western civilization, but is now heading to Congress anyway, Darializa Avila Chavalier. “Anti-Israel. Anti-America. Anti-Western Civilization,” Fetterman wrote. “Why am I the only Democrat in the U.S. Senate that refuses to excuse this or defend any of those self-identified communists? Because your party comrades, senator, are communists themselves, and/or cowards and opportunists. Fetterman, however, is none of those things. He declared: “I said months ago, I said the Democratic Party is becoming an orgy of socialism. These recent elections vindicate my description.”
Fetterman zeroed in on Avila Chevalier, noting that she “described America as a f*****g disgrace. She posted ‘f**k Kamala Harris’ and posted that she forgot napkins and wiped her hands on the American flag. She wants to abolish the border, abolish prisons. That is a deeply disturbed individual.” No, she isn’t actually disturbed at all. She is just a committed and consistent Marxist internationalist. Those who are arguably disturbed are the Democrat Party bosses who got behind her candidacy, and the voters who sent to Washington yet another exponent of the most catastrophically failed political and social system in the history of mankind.
Avila Chevalier won’t be alone in the nation’s capital. Referring to another Marxist, Maine senate candidate Graham Platner, by his street nickname, Fetterman quipped: “P-Hustle and Chevalier: the dirtbag left’s new power couple.” And they’re not just that. They’re also the new face of the Democrat Party, along with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other Washington-bound socialists. Will Fetterman therefore finally leave the party, as has been rumored as often as he has denied the rumors? This time, he seemed to leave the door open to such a switch ever so slightly.
“Even if I changed my party,” Fetterman declared, “my votes or views wouldn’t change. I address this very directly. That’s the truth.” Whatever he does next, Fetterman is without any doubt one of the strangest political figures in American history. During his campaign for the Senate, he never gave any indication of being anything but a doctrinaire, down-the-line leftist, and attention focused less on his policy positions than on the fact that, after suffering a stroke, he seemed barely able to formulate a coherent sentence.
After being hospitalized for depression, however, he emerged not only able to speak clearly and lucidly, but he also began to take a number of common-sense stands, which inevitably led him away from the left. And his analysis of what has gone wrong with the Democrats is more accurate and convincing than almost all the other post-mortems. This doesn’t mean that Fetterman sees everything clearly now, and he certainly hasn’t made a full break with the left. But it’s as rare as it is refreshing to hear from an honest man.
Charlamagne tha God didn’t sound like he was asking permission. The Breakfast Club co-host heard former President Barack Hussein Obama mock President Donald Trump as tougher from a distance than face to face, then pushed the charge back across the table. From Fox News:
“So I just didn’t understand what he meant unless he was talking about the kiki they had at the [Jimmy] Carter funeral. But to me, that goes both ways. You kikiing in his face too, ’cause by the way, Trump has been saying wild stuff about you, bro, been saying wild stuff about you and your wife, but you was just right there kikiing with him at the President Carter funeral. So I can say it goes both ways. Don’t neither one of y’all be having that energy in each other’s face. At least from what we saw,” the radio host said.
Kikiing is an informal slang term for relaxing or gossiping. Charlamagne referred to Obama and Trump speaking to one another at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral, at times smiling and laughing with each other. Former first lady Michelle Obama did not attend. “So when I heard President Obama say that, I’m like, ‘Well, the same thing can be said for you.’ Don’t none of y’all be having that same image. Like we saw President Biden say, ‘Welcome home to Donald Trump.’ Like, so, it’s just like what are y’all? I didn’t understand that part. Like that just sounds like something slick to say on the podcast,” Charlamagne said.
“It sounds good on a podcast, OK? It goes viral. But when you really take a step back and look at it, don’t none of y’all be having that same energy for each other when you see each other. That’s what be confusing us because we be like, ‘Well, damn. I thought this was the big bad boogeyman telling us this guy’s a threat to democracy, which I believe he is, but still,'” he said. Obama, he argued, has often sounded different depending on the room, the crowd, and the moment. From a host whose platform has shaped political talk among younger black listeners, the jab carried more weight than another cable panel gripe.
Obama has spent years being treated less like a politician and more like a civic mood. To his admirers, he represented calm, cool, firsts, and finish. The new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park leans hard into that story. The center opened a week ago with four floors devoted to the Obama presidency, the 2008 campaign, the Oval Office, and the promise of democracy. Museum tickets are already sold out, with another block scheduled for July 8.
Fox News’ Jesse Waters sent a reporter to the Obama Center, which, as we were lectured, was built on stolen land — and I’m not talking about land pulled out from the public at Jackson Park — who asked visitors some difficult questions. A shrine can draw crowds and still invite questions. Stephen A. Smith, ESPN host and executive producer of First Take and host of Straight Shooter, questioned how Obama and former President Bill Clinton built large fortunes after careers in public office.
Smith’s larger point hit a sore nerve: elected leaders should prosper only when Americans are prospering too. Coming from a black broadcaster with his own huge audience, the criticism wasn’t easy to wave away as stale right-wing noise. From Fox News: The sports commentator and host of the “Straight Shooter” podcast weighed in on any profits President Donald Trump is making while serving in the nation’s highest office. “I don’t give a damn what money politicians slide into their own pockets from time to time,” Smith said on Wednesday’s episode of his podcast. “If the American people are prospering, get yours. It’s a capitalistic society.”
Smith went on to cast doubt on how former President Bill Clinton obtained his multi-million dollar net worth. “I’ll confess something to ya’ll,” Smith continued. “Clinton was a lawyer in Arkansas. Grew up poor, relatively broke. How the hell him and the Clinton Foundation is worth hundreds of millions of dollars beat me.” Smith also pointed to former President Barack Obama’s similar high net worth. “Barack Obama was a community organizer who became the president of the United States and, last time I checked, that salary ain’t over $450,000, if I remember correctly,” Smith said. “I got to double check that,” he added. “How the hell you depart from office worth over $200 million?”
According to an investigation conducted by Forbes, both Bill and Hillary Clinton have netted approximately $240 million since leaving office in 2021. Bill Clinton is reportedly responsible for the majority of the couple’s earnings, raking in $189 million by authoring books and $106 million in paid speeches. Obama owns real history; he won two national elections, became America’s first black president, and signed a health law that remade a large part of American life — and not in a good way.A legacy with weight can still carry vanity, scolding, and blind spots. The growing irritation around Obama isn’t about denying his place in history; it’s about asking why the man who preached unity so often left half the country feeling accused, condescended to, or dismissed.
The cracks didn’t appear only this week. Obama campaigned for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, including a pointed message to black men who weren’t sold on her candidacy. President Trump still won, and AP VoteCast found that he expanded his coalition with gains among younger voters and black and Hispanic men.
Democrats can pretend those voters misunderstood the assignment, but many voters may simply be tired of being assigned a role by a man with an ego larger than the sun.The left, who said the Obama years represented healing, sold us a bill of goods. Instead, the country got lectures on bitterness, guns, religion, race, police, and resentment. His defenders called it truth-telling, but many of us heard something colder: a gifted person who can read out loud quite well, who explained their very own country back to them with a raised eyebrow.
A man can have grace, talent, and historical importance while still leaving behind a politics that divided more than it inspired. Obama’s halo isn’t gone because too many institutions still polish it. The center in Chicago will attract crowds, glowing photos, and reverent tours. Yet the old automatic applause is much weaker.Charlamagne the God and Stephen A. Smith aren’t conservative backbenchers; they speak to audiences Obama once seemed able to reach by instinct. When voices like theirs start asking sharper questions, the problem is no longer Republican criticism.
The concern is that memory is catching up with the myth.
Politicians, government bureaucrats, central bankers, spy agencies, and mainstream news outlets lie to us every day. For some people, the previous sentence is patently obvious. For others, that sentence represents “fringe” thinking. For certain law enforcement agencies in North America and Europe, that sentence reveals potentially dangerous “extremism.”
“Extremism” is such a morally squishy word. It means nothing. It suggests that the average beliefs of the average person in the average part of an average town are, on average, correct. Should a person’s beliefs move too far away from the “average,” then that person will eventually fall into the “extremist” abyss. Of course, the average person long believed that the sun and planets revolved around the Earth. The average person long believed that bloodletting cured disease. The average person long believed in magic. Relativity, microbiology, atomic physics, and quantum mechanics belonged to the “extremists.”
Defining “extremism” depends upon which populations are included when calculating an “average.” To the average American, Islamic terrorism is religious extremism. To the average jihadi in the Middle East, terrorism is part of the Islamic faith. One man’s “extremist” is another man’s “religious cleric.” Unsurprisingly, as more jihadists migrate to America, the more supportive of Islamic terrorism the Democrat Party becomes. We now have several Hamas-supporting members of Congress who define Americans opposed to Islamic conquest as “extremists.”
For a decade, Americans were told to be on the lookout for Islamic terrorism: “If you see something, say something.” Now, if you see something and say something, you will most likely be denounced as an “Islamophobic bigot.” If the definition of “extremism” can shift 180 degrees since the Islamic terror attacks on September 11, 2001, then “extremism” is a nebulous political label.
In the United States, citizens overwhelmingly support federal legislation that would require photo ID, proof of citizenship, and other safeguards to ensure that elections across the country are free, fair, lawful, constitutional, and secure. Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans in Congress prefer to maintain the current “on your honor” system that can be gamed to permit large-scale vote fraud and rigged elections. By any polling measure, Congress’s point of view is far from that of the average American. Members of Congress, in other words, are the extremists! If you listen to the extremists in Congress, however, our elections have never been more secure.
In fact, when you look at some of the most important policy issues today, it becomes quite clear that Congress is ground zero for extremism. Most Americans want Congress to stop spending more money than it receives in taxes; Congress has put us forty trillion dollars in debt. Most Americans want secure borders and an end to illegal immigration; Congress has enabled an evil human trafficking system to exist for over fifty years that rewards criminals and has flooded the country with somewhere between fifty and a hundred million (nobody knows for sure!) illegal aliens. Most Americans are concerned about lowering fuel and food prices;
Congress has wasted trillions of dollars on “Green New Deal” scams that raise the household costs for fuel and food. Most Americans believe that college admissions and job hiring should be based on a person’s merit, skill, character, knowledge, and hard work; Congress continues to divide Americans by the color of their skin and their sexual eccentricities. Most Americans believe that men and women are biologically distinct; Congress pretends that biological sex is an imaginary social construct. Most Americans believe that a dollar saved today should maintain the same value ten, fifty, or even a hundred years from now; Congress thinks printing and spending dollars, depreciating the U.S. currency, and artificially spiking the dollar-denominated valuation of stocks, homes, and other assets is the best way to fake a constantly “improving” economy.
Most Americans believe that we should refrain from military engagements overseas whenever possible; Congress can’t ever get enough of forever-wars. Most Americans want their representatives to work for American citizens; Congress believes it should work on behalf of non-Americans all over the world. Most Americans view their country as a nation; Congress views the United States as both a global empire and a home for every person on the planet. On the most important issues, Congress is filled to the brim with extremists. They should be put on official security lists and monitored whenever they travel more than fifty feet from their taxpayer-financed homes. Instead, in the United States and throughout the West, the extremists run things.
That would explain why Christians are targeted for their beliefs. That would explain why the governments of Europe and North America have flooded their countries with unassimilable malcontents from the third world. That would explain why men are allowed into women’s restrooms and why pedophiles are accorded more respect than heterosexual married couples. That would explain why Western governments have declared war on “climate change” when most people don’t care about elites’ obsession with the weather. That would explain why so many European and North American politicians are willing to risk a nuclear war with the Russian Federation, while ordinary citizens have never been less willing to fight for the defense of their respective countries.
Perhaps the more that ordinary Westerners realize that it is the people running their governments, universities, and bureaucratic institutions who are most extreme, the less willing they become to do what those extremists say. Six years ago, the extremists locked down the world because of COVID. They closed churches, bankrupted businesses, disrupted childhood education, prevented family members from being together, and killed a lot of people with fake “vaccines.” If public health extremists tried to pull another COVID today, would ordinary Westerners do what the politicians and bureaucrats say? Or would Western citizens conclude that extremist governments endanger both their lives and liberties?
Every civilization develops a moral language—a set of virtues that it celebrates and vices that it condemns. For much of human history, societies lauded courage, resilience, self-sacrifice, duty, honor, and perseverance. The individual who overcame adversity was admired. The citizen who contributed more than he consumed was esteemed. To endure hardship without surrendering one’s dignity was considered noble. Increasingly, however, modern Western society appears to have inverted this hierarchy. Today, victimhood often functions as a form of social capital.
To claim injury is to acquire moral authority. To assert oppression is frequently to gain status. Public discourse, particularly within academia, media, politics, and social media, often rewards not those who demonstrate resilience, but those who can most persuasively locate themselves within narratives of historical or contemporary disadvantage. This is not to suggest that oppression does not exist. It plainly does. Human beings have always oppressed one another. History is replete with examples of slavery, discrimination, persecution, exploitation, and injustice. Serious societies acknowledge these realities honestly.
Yet acknowledging injustice and organizing one’s entire social order around grievance are two very different enterprises. The modern culture of grievance is distinguished not merely by its concern for injustice, but by its tendency to elevate grievance itself into an identity. In such a framework, suffering confers legitimacy. Personal agency is often deemphasized in favor of structural explanations. Individual responsibility, once considered indispensable to human flourishing, is increasingly treated as secondary to historical narratives of power and oppression. Why? Part of the answer lies in incentives.
Human beings respond to incentives whether they exist in economics, politics, or culture. If a society rewards certain forms of behavior with status, attention, influence, institutional support, or financial gain, those behaviors predictably proliferate. Social media has accelerated this process dramatically. Platforms built upon visibility and engagement naturally privilege outrage, conflict, and emotional intensity. Claims of victimization generate attention. Attention generates followers. Followers generate influence. Influence often generates money, prestige, and institutional power.= Grievance, in the digital age, has become monetizable.
The entrepreneur of outrage need not solve problems; indeed, solving problems may threaten his relevance. A permanent sense of crisis sustains audiences, donations, speaking engagements, media appearances, and political mobilization. The incentive, therefore, is often not reconciliation but perpetuation.= A grievance resolved is a constituency diminished. This dynamic extends beyond social media influencers. Entire political movements, activist organizations, and institutional bureaucracies can become dependent upon the continued existence—or perceived existence—of oppression. The maintenance of moral urgency becomes essential to organizational survival.
Consequently, there exists a temptation to expand definitions continually, to discover ever more subtle forms of harm, and to reinterpret ordinary human conflicts through increasingly elaborate frameworks of oppression.
Disagreement becomes violence.
Words become trauma.
Discomfort becomes harm.
Failure becomes victimization.
Ordinary interpersonal conflict becomes evidence of systemic injustice.
The danger is not merely conceptual confusion. The danger is cultural infantilization.
Events in 2027 and 2028 are likely to be very confusing. As a consequence, CTH needs to establish datapoints in real time that can later be referenced and reviewed to make sense of things when CTH starts to put the data into a very difficult to accept storyline. This process is similar to setting the 2012 election “splitter strategy” as a reference; that leads to the 2014 RNC winter meeting and rules changes; that led to the 2015 lineup of RNC candidates; that led to our ability to show how the ‘splitter strategy’ was being deployed for the 2016 GOP nomination. The defeat of Jeb didn’t happen in New Hampshire 2016; his defeat was an outcome of assembling years of previous datapoints which proved the illicit roadmap and made the RNC scheme very clear from the outset.
Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion ($54.20/share) [April through October ’22]. He sold Tesla shares, leveraged more and assembled a $25 billion investment group to cover the remainder. When the financing dust settled Musk controlled Twitter and investors were in for around $25 billion. Musk later created the ancillary company xAI and when the deadline terms of the Twitter investment were due, he essentially repaid the $25 billion debt by transferring the investors into $25 billion worth of xAI holdings. [Key Point – the originating $25 billion investment was not repaid, just modified]
In 2026, Musk then did an IPO on SpaceX. This culminated in stock sales, valuations and generating $100 billion in cash on hand. A few weeks later Musk then sold 7 tranches of SpaceX bonds worth $25 billion to generate liquidity. He then used the $25 billion offering as the financial mechanism to repay the $25 billion remaining in investor debt. Summary: Twitter’s $25 billion debt transferred to $25 billion xAI stock, then transferred to $25 billion in payout or bond holdings; the option is for the original Twitter investment group to take (cash out or hold SpaceX bond paying 5% annually). [Key point – the originating $25 billion to purchase Twitter is now inside the SpaceX bonds]
This was a smart financial gameplay over the past roughly 5 years. This is how it developed and this is the reality in June of 2026. The originating $25 billion borrowed to purchase Twitter is now either: (a) fully repaid, or (b) sitting in long term SpaceX bonds (depending on investor choice). Musk and his investment friends purchased Twitter for $52 per share. Current valuation is $12 to $15. Twitter investors, Musk’s friends and Musk himself, essentially lost 76% on the purchase (total loss -$33 billion). A loss isn’t a loss until it is realized. There was strong incentive to take each of the various repayment shifts. Twitter => xAI => SpaceX bonds.
[SIDENOTE: What’s the smartest way to get rid of a $33 billion loss without hurting the investors? ANSWER: Transfer the loss to someone else. How do you transfer a $33 billion loss? You IPO a larger holding, putting the depreciated asset in the hands of retail. SpaceX investors are now unwittingly carrying the loss.] In the next few years people will argue with me about this. That’s why writing this now is important. What is outlined above is factual. Most of the money borrowed from investors to purchase Twitter is now resting inside SpaceX bonds. People will deny this, because people have a short-term financial memory for things.
The biggest Twitter investment holdings belonged to Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Larry Ellison, Marc Andreessen and a host of investment funds including the sovereign state fund of Qatar.mWhen Elon Musk bought Twitter, he initially permitted sunlight into the background operation of the company. That sunlight was known as “The Twitter Files“.The files showed how the social media platform coordinated with various intelligence agencies within government on the approved information allowed to exist within the platform. Three journalists were allowed to ask the Twitter legal counsel to run search terms and review the responses (if approved by the legal counsel). That’s how the research worked.
The three journalists were Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger. Thanks to the Twitter Files and the public interest around them, Bari Weiss launched/expanded her online media network The Free Press. Bari Weiss was a Ron DeSantis supporter. Elon Musk was a Ron DeSantis supporter. Ron DeSantis 2024 campaign was launched on Twitter. The Twitter File research group was shut down by Elon Musk with no immediate public statement as to why.
Billionaire Larry Ellison (Oracle) retained his Twitter holdings as well as his relationship with Musk. When Twitter was under attack from Democrats (’22, ’23, ’24) Ellison was the financial backstop and stabilizing force. Larry Ellison then purchased the TikTok platform with Marc Andreeson. Larry and David Ellison then purchased CBS-Paramount. David Ellison then installed Bari Weiss as CBS News Editor in Chief and bought her company The Free Press. David Ellison, the technology heir son to Larry Ellison who controls Paramount, the owner of CBS, is poised to complete a $111 billion purchase of CNN’s parent company Warner Bros/Discovery as soon as July 2026.
Billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison now directly or indirectly controls and influences: Twitter, TikTok, CBS and CNN. As noted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September of 2025, control and influence of TikTok and Twitter was the #1 and #2 most important strategic geopolitical interests of the government of Israel. These were Prime Minister Netanyahu’s own words. Billionaire Larry Ellison is a very strong supporter of the Netanyahu government.
PREDICTION: If Marco Rubio stays out of the 2028 race [big ‘if’], then all of the Larry Ellison holdings will be used to promote or position Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over Vice-President JD Vance. The Israel -vs- Qatar narrative is based on an anti-Vance operation. Prepositioned politics. [My ‘out there’ suspicion is political narrative control is the entire reason Twitter was purchased]
Volkswagen is considering closing four German factories and cutting up to 100,000 jobs, Reuters has reported. Amid soaring energy costs and competition from China, the company’s profits have plummeted in recent years. Should the cuts go ahead, Volkswagen will close factories in Hanover, Zwickau, and Emden, as well as an Audi plant in Neckarsulm, Reuters reported on Friday, citing sources within the company. These closures would result in the loss of 45,000 jobs, on top of the 50,000 layoffs agreed upon with trade unions in 2024.
Volkswagen executives will discuss the cuts at a meeting next month. According to a separate report by Germany’s Manager Magazin, the company is also weighing a 15% cut in investment over the next five years. A spokesperson for the world’s second-largest carmaker said that they would not comment on “confidential documents,” but admitted that “the entire group, including its brands and subsidiaries, must undergo far-reaching change.”
Volkswagen employs more than 667,000 people worldwide, almost half of them in Germany. However, the company has been forced to scale back production at home since 2022, when Berlin’s decision to abandon Russian gas imports in favor of renewables and expensive American liquified natural gas (LNG) left the industry reeling from higher energy costs.
The German economy has experienced two years of contraction followed by two years of sub-1% growth. Volkswagen already closed one automobile assembly plant, in Dresden, last December – the first time it had closed a factory in Germany in its nine-decade history. BASF, Bosch, Continental, and more than a dozen other German manufacturers have closed one or more facilities over the last four years.
With energy costs eating into Volkswagen’s profits, the company’s electric vehicles are no longer able to compete with offerings from its Chinese rivals. Once the dominant automaker in China, Volkswagen now sells fewer vehicles there than domestic brands BYD and Geely. In Europe, BYD and fellow Chinese brands Chery, SAIC, and Leapmotor have all doubled their market share over the last year. Back in Germany, Volkswagen’s internal union and the IG Metall metalworkers’ union have vowed to resist the job cuts. “Should such plans go ahead, we would do everything in our power to prevent them,” the organizations said in a joint statement on Friday.
Joe Rogan believes that Thomas Matthew Crooks was likely a “product” of some organization that talked him into trying to assassinate President Trump.
Rogan said the whole situation doesn’t add up, especially the fact that Crooks’ apartment had been “professionally scrubbed.”… pic.twitter.com/m6uZ0ALPco
Make sure you take your time today for the Debt Rattle. I know it can seem overwhelming. Watch some videos. Use the time well. Everything goes faster than you think.
Then again, Elon Musk says we are In The Singularity. That means ALL predictions are off. Including Elon’s.
Miles Deutscher@milesdeutscher
Ok fine – maybe you don’t want to listen to me. I’m just a 25-year-old on the internet.
But maybe you’ll listen to them.
I documented every major warning from the people actually building AI.
Every CEO. Every founder. They’re all saying the same thing.
Read this slowly:
• Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI: “Being a lawyer, an accountant, a project manager, a marketing person – most of those tasks will be fully automated by AI within 12 to 18 months.”
• Elon Musk: “AI and robots will replace all jobs. Working will be optional.” Called AI his “biggest fear.”
• Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic: AI will eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs. Unemployment could hit 20%. Called it “unusually painful.” Then said: “Most lawmakers are unaware this is about to happen.”
• Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI: “Some areas, I think just like totally, totally gone.” Said changes that normally take 75 years will be compressed into a short period. Admitted he loses sleep over it.
• Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia: “Every job will be affected, and immediately. It is unquestionable.”
• Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase: “It will eliminate jobs. People should stop sticking their head in the sand.” Warned mass AI layoffs without safeguards could trigger “civil unrest.” Said he’d welcome a government ban on mass-firing for AI.
• Stuart Russell (author of the most-used AI textbook in history): Political leaders are “staring 80% unemployment in the face”.
• Kai-Fu Lee, VC & former head of Google China: Called predictions of 50% job displacement by 2027 “uncannily accurate.”
These aren’t journalists. These aren’t influencers. These aren’t politicians trying to get elected.
These are the people building it. Funding it. Deploying it.
And not one of them is saying your job is safe.
Elon Musk just gave retirement planning the most radical advice possible:
“Don’t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years — it won’t matter.
You won’t need to save for retirement.” His reasoning (from the same conversation):
We’re already in the singularity — “the event horizon” where prediction breaks down.
The accelerating timeline makes long-term saving irrelevant.
Services, homes, healthcare, entertainment — abundance will be so extreme that the old rules vanish.
Peter Diamandis: “The way this unfolds is fundamentally impossible to predict because of self-improvement of the AI and the accelerating timeline.”
Elon: “We’re in this beautiful sweet spot… like being at the top of the roller coaster about to drop. I don’t just have courtside seats — I’m on the court.”
If saving for retirement becomes pointless in the next 10–20 years because we’re already past the event horizon…
what’s the first thing you’d change about how you live right now?
Elon Musk just gave retirement planning the most radical advice possible:
“Don’t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years — it won’t matter. You won’t need to save for retirement.”
ELON MUSK: “You take a photograph of your blood work, upload it from your phone to Grok. It will understand what all the data results are and tell you if there’s something wrong. Even now, you can upload your X-rays and MRI images to Grok, and it will give you a medical… pic.twitter.com/ESTB29jDAS
Scientists have identified a reversal of the long-standing Flynn effect—the roughly 200-year trend of rising average intelligence (measured via IQ and cognitive tests) across generations.
For the first time in modern recorded history, Generation Z (born roughly 1997–2012) shows… pic.twitter.com/113X620gJ4
Stop scrolling. Seriously. This video explains exactly how AI is about to flip the world upside down over the next 10 years. Jobs. Money. Power. Everything. Best breakdown I’ve seen and it’s not even close.pic.twitter.com/dJ1J9eXILL
Economists call it the "K-shaped economy" – and the next 2-3 years will decide which line you're on.
• An overclass that uses AI as a lever to build wealth, automate income, and make decisions at a speed no human can compete… pic.twitter.com/pN8QZBz9cv
California Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke at the Munich Security Conference earlier on Friday, telling European elites that President Trump is “temporary” and will be gone within three years. Newsom, noticeably angered by Trump’s push for deregulation and the rollback of climate policy, lashed out at the president, calling him “more destructive” than the current occupant of the White House. The issue for Newsom is that he still operates within the climate crisis framework promoted by globalists, even as the West is moving on from two decades of nation-killing green policy regime that hollowed out parts of the industrial base and fueled inflation.
On Thursday, President Trump rescinded the 2009 Obama-era “Endangerment Finding,” a determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, which he said has been used by the radical left to justify $1.3 trillion in regulatory costs that have hurt American households and sent consumer prices soaring, especially for automobiles. “The single largest deregulatory action in American history. That’s a big statement in American history, and I think we can add the words by far,” Trump told reporters. Also this week, there was considerable discussion among industry leaders in Europe about Brussels watering down carbon-pricing markets, which have made electricity outrageously expensive and crushed the industrial base (Goldman explained more here).
And it is not just Trump and European industry leaders pushing to unwind green policies that have financially crushed working-class families and hollowed out the industrial base; major companies are also dialing back EV production plans and softening green targets as the net-zero dream collides with reality. Here’s what Newsom said earlier at the MSC (courtesy of Real Clear Politics):
GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM: “Donald Trump is doubling down on stupid. California has been a leader in climate policy going back to Ronald Reagan. In 1967, Governor Ronald Reagan established the first tailpipe emissions standards in the United States of America and created the California Air Resources Board. Three years later, a president by the name of Richard Nixon — another Republican — codified California’s leadership under the Clean Air Act.
Never in the history of the United States of America has there been a more destructive president than the current occupant in the White House in Washington, D.C. He’s trying to recreate the 19th century. He’s a wholly owned subsidiary of big oil, gas, and coal. He’s quite literally reopening coal plants in the United States of America. He’s received close to half a billion dollars in campaign contributions. He asked for $1 billion — look it up — in return for basically eliminating all regulations in the United States of America. De facto, he just did that yesterday with federal regulations and the endangerment finding.
It is code red in terms of American leadership in this space — low-carbon, green growth — and I know a thing or two about this. I represent the fourth-largest economy, from a GDP perspective, in the world, and we ran the fourth-largest economy last year nine out of ten days on 100% clean energy — two-thirds renewable energy. We’ve seen our GDP grow by 81% since 2000, and we’ve reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 21%. Seven times more clean energy jobs than fossil fuel jobs.
We’re proving at scale that we can implement, we can compete, and we can dominate. But Donald Trump is trying to turn back the clock. And so we’re showing up, but we’re also showing what can be accomplished — the power of emulation. We are in the great implementation in my state. Final word. I hope, if there’s nothing else I can communicate today: Donald Trump is temporary. He’ll be gone in three years. California is a stable and reliable partner in this space, and it’s important for folks to understand the temporary nature of this current administration in relationship to the issue of climate change and climate policy.
MODERATOR]: Governor, many have called Joe Biden the climate president, but that didn’t help with his re-election. So how important do you think climate issues will be for the 2028 presidential election?
GAVIN NEWSOM: Well, you may not believe in science, but you’ve got to believe your own eyes. I mean, people are burning up, choking up, heating up. We have simultaneous droughts and floods. Historic wildfires. You may know little about California, but you’ve seen those images of these wildfires. Talk about being as dumb as we want to be — places, lifestyles, traditions being wiped off the map. Greenville. Paradise, California. And so this issue has been brought home in a very personal way, not a political way. Senator Whitehouse is here — he’s also someone who deeply understands that climate risk is financial risk. It’s becoming uninsurable.
This is an economic issue, not just a moral issue. It’s not just a competitiveness issue. And so it’s incredibly important that we talk in those terms to address some of the political dynamics. But it’s again something we’re on the other side of in California. It’s a big blue state, but it also has more Republicans than most Republican states. And we have long moved beyond the partisanship on this issue, because there is no Republican thermometer, there’s no Democratic thermometer — there’s just reality.And people in my state have been mugged by reality. Those that have been in denial understand that we’re on the other side of the debate.
“And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.”
We Won’t Be ‘Polite and Orderly Caretakers of the West’s Managed Decline’
“The world is changing very fast right in front of us. The old world is gone… We live in a new era in geopolitics, and it’s going to require all of us to reexamine what that looks like and what our role is going to be.” That’s what Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the press before he boarded a plane to Munich, Germany on Thursday evening. Little did we know that this quote was setting the stage for what turned out to be a momentous speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday morning, a speech that framed the end of one major geopolitical era and the beginning of another. We may well look back on this speech in Munich as another defining moment in the secretary’s career.
Rubio told European leaders that the post–Cold War era is over, that the “euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion: that we had entered, quote, ‘the end of history;’ that every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood; that the rules-based global order – an overused term – would now replace the national interest; and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world.” He said that this idea was foolish and “ignored both human nature and it ignored the lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history.”
While championing the Donald Trump administration’s America-First foreign policy, he also reaffirmed the bond between our nations, saying that the Western Hemisphere may be our home, but we’re a child of Europe, and we share history, culture, and heritage. “We belong together,” he said. But he also made it clear that the world has reached a turning point and course correction is required. Europe must save itself because, “we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.” Rubio called on our European allies to revitalize their nations and reject policies leading to their decline.
That includes the embracing of “a dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade” and shuttering our plants, which resulted “in large parts of our societies being deindustrialized, shipping millions of working and middle-class jobs overseas, and handing control of our critical supply chains to both adversaries and rivals.” He continued: “We increasingly outsourced our sovereignty to international institutions while many nations invested in massive welfare states at the cost of maintaining the ability to defend themselves. This, even as other countries have invested in the most rapid military buildup in all of human history and have not hesitated to use hard power to pursue their own interests.
To appease a climate cult, we have imposed energy policies on ourselves that are impoverishing our people, even as our competitors exploit oil and coal and natural gas and anything else – not just to power their economies, but to use as leverage against our own.”n nAnd in a pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people. We made these mistakes together, and now, together, we owe it to our people to face those facts and to move forward, to rebuild.
Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past. And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe. But it wasn’t just a critique or warning about globalization. Rubio explained that it’s the fundamental part of national security. “The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life,” he said.
“And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.” Rubio also spoke of how “we can no longer place the so-called global order above the vital interests of our people and our nations,” and how we must reform global institutions. He used the United Nations as an example, explaining that it has potential to be a “tool for good” but right now, it’s basically useless. “But we cannot ignore that today, on the most pressing matters before us, it has no answers and has played virtually no role.”
It could not solve the war in Gaza. Instead, it was American leadership that freed captives from barbarians and brought about a fragile truce. It had not solved the war in Ukraine. It took American leadership and partnership with many of the countries here today just to bring the two sides to the table in search of a still-elusive peace. It was powerless to constrain the nuclear program of radical Shia clerics in Tehran. That required 14 bombs dropped with precision from American B-2 bombers. And it was unable to address the threat to our security from a narco-terrorist dictator in Venezuela. Instead, it took American Special Forces to bring this fugitive to justice.
He concluded: “…America is charting the path for a new century of prosperity, and that once again we want to do it together with you, our cherished allies and our oldest friends. We want to do it together with you, with a Europe that is proud of its heritage and of its history; with a Europe that has the spirit of creation of liberty that sent ships out into uncharted seas and birthed our civilization; with a Europe that has the means to defend itself and the will to survive.”
The speech, which ended with a long standing ovation, was similar to that of Vice President JD Vance’s Munich moment from last year but a bit softer, a bit more diplomatic. Rubio assured the Europeans that the United States is not abandoning them, but the old playbook is shelved. If the alliance is to continue, Europe must adapt and defend the true interests of its people and Western civilization unlike ever before. You could almost hear a sigh of a relief in the room, but how these European leaders will actually respons remains to be seen. I, for one, am not particularly hopeful.
Are voter ID requirements considered a controversial idea in the eyes of US citizens? If you watch the establishment media or follow leaders in the Democratic Party then you might think bills like the SAVE Act are the end of freedom as we know it However, outside the echo chambers of DNC propaganda, the vast majority of Americans have no problem whatsoever with people proving their US citizenship before they vote in local and federal elections. The widespread support for voter ID is undeniable. Surveys from the past year including those from Pew and Gallup show that, regardless of party or ethnicity, Americans citizens want elections to be protected from manipulation through mass illegal immigration.
A Pew Research Center survey from August 2025 found that 83% of Americans favor requiring all voters to show government-issued photo ID to vote. This includes:
95% of Republicans
71% of Democrats
Only 16% of people oppose it.
A Gallup poll from 2024 shows 84% support for requiring photo ID to vote, with 98% of Republicans, 84% of independents and 67% of Democrats in approval.A recent CNN segment featuring number cruncher Harry Enten confirms that the backing for the SAVE Act is also dominant regardless of ethnicity: 85% of white voter, 82% of Latino voters and 76% of black voters all want voter ID. It’s difficult to find many issues which the American public universally supports at this level.
Democrat leaders, however, don’t care that the majority of their own base wants voter ID laws. Party officials and the left-wing media have engaged in a shameless propaganda campaign designed to frighten the public into opposing the SAVE Act, despite their previous platforms defending majority rule. They consistently compare the new laws to “Jim Crow” era restrictions, claiming that minorities (and rural Americans) are too dumb to figure out how to get access to state IDs and birth certificates.
In truth, every state that already has some form of election ID laws has seen a spike in voter participation, not a decline. Only 8 states have laws demanding proof of citizenship before voting (half of the states are in legal battles to implement them); the other 42 only require that you check a box that says you are a citizen. When Democrats are asked why they are ignoring their majority of their constituents when it comes to the SAVE Act, they launch into tirades about racism and fascism, but never seem to be able to answer the question.
It’s difficult to reconcile the rhetoric of Democrats from 2024 when they wailed and screamed about conservatives being a “threat to democracy” compared to their rhetoric today. At bottom, the political left only supports majority public decisions when those decisions work in the favor of leftist elites. The majority of Americans continue to support the Trump Administration’s deportations of all illegal migrants (not just migrants with violent criminal records), but Dem leaders and their NGO partners continue trying to thwart the will of the people. By extension, voter ID makes it far more difficult for non-citizens to vote and makes it easier for voting records to be checked for discrepancies.
It’s clear that ID requirements and tighter controls on mail-in ballots will work heavily against Democrats and, if passed, they are likely to see a sharp decline in votes across the board. They are fighting against the SAVE Act because they want oligarchy, not “democracy.” They want minority elitist control over government policy. Voter ID is perhaps the most important legal question of our era; it will determine the course of elections for many years to come. Most western countries have laws in place to prevent illegal migrant voting and foreign manipulation of elections. The US is the only country in which this type of law is treated as “racist”.
So, barmaid, bring a pitcher, another round of brew
Honey, why don’t we get drunk and screw?
—Jimmy Buffett, Why Don’t We Get Drunk (and Screw)
It’s not just sex: Alcohol consumption has dropped by 54%, with youth (18 to 34) drinking falling ANOTHER 9% just between 2023 and 2025. From TIME magazine’s article, “Why Gen Z is Drinking Less”:
“[R]esearch from the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that lifetime drinking, past month drinking, and past year drinking among young people began to decline around the year 2000. That means that such declines have especially impacted Generation Z, defined as anyone born from 1997 to 2012, and some Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996. […]
“It is becoming clear that, for whatever reasons, today’s younger generations are just less interested in alcohol and are more likely than older generations to see it as risky for their health and to participate in periods of abstinence like Dry January,” said National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism George F. Koob in a statement. Maybe that’s not coincidental. Perhaps there’s a causal link (as famed philosopher Jimmy Buffett suggested). Maybe, just like peanut butter and jelly are complementary products, sex and alcohol are, too. Koob seemed to agree with Buffett:
“Another contributing factor has to do with the changing socialization patterns of younger generations. “Alcohol tends to be a social drug, even for young people, so part of the decline in underage drinking could be related to less in-person socializing,” said Koob. On average, the amount of time people spent with friends in-person decreased from 30 hours a month in 2003 to 10 hours a month in 2020, according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on the epidemic of loneliness. That decline was especially marked for people aged 15 to 24.
Back in 1991, more than half — 54.1% of all high school students — were sexually active. (The other 45.9% lied about it.) By 2007, the number fell to 47.8%. Four years later, it dropped again to 43%. By 2017, it was just 39.5%. As of 2023, it’s 31.6%. What’s going on with kids today, with their wild, out-of-control abstinence and crazy teetotalling?! It’s one of the strangest, most inexplicable cultural shifts in recent memory. I was certainly blindsided: I figured our sex drive was so biologically ingrained, it would never go away! But it has. And with it, so has the U.S. birthrate: It’s now at a 40-year low.
We need a birthrate of 2.1 babies per woman to maintain our population. We’re currently at 1.6.mnFor decades, our shrinking birthrate was masked by immigration growth. In 1991, the U.S. population was 253 million. By 2025, it grew to 343.6 million. = Since 2020, immigration has been the #1 driver of American population growth. With the new crackdown on illegal immigration, we’re flirting with our first-ever population decline. And it’s not just an American phenomenon — all over the world, birthrates have collapsed. At least one geopolitical strategist and demographic expert predicts it’ll lead to the end of China within the next 10 years:
“And three months ago, the Chinese government updated the data. They’re now reporting a 70% drop in the birthrate since 2017. That’s a faster decline than what was suffered by the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. And the Shanghai Academy of Sciences, which is kind of the Wiseman organization of statisticians in China that interprets all the data, says that this is still wrong. They estimate that the Chinese system has overestimated its population by over 100 million people. With all of the missing millions being people who would’ve been born during the one-child era, which is a rather sterile way of saying that all the missing millions are under age 40 suggesting that these yellow bars don’t even exist. China has, at most, 10 years before it faces national dissolution. They will not be a unified industrialized nation state 10 years from now. ”
The Trump administration has created an incentive for Americans to have more children within the next three years. Any baby born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028, is eligible for $1,000 of seed money in a tax-advantaged investment account known as a “Trump Account,” though any parent with a child under 18 can open an account for their son or daughter. The account operates similarly to an IRA, and parents, relatives, and friends can contribute up to $5,000 annually, though they do not have to make regular contributions.
“Your child’s funds will automatically be invested in American companies,” according to the Trump Accounts website.mWhen the child turns 18, they can either allow the account to continue to grow, or they can withdraw the funds for education costs or to purchase a home. If the maximum amount is contributed to the account annually from the time the child is born, the account will have grown to over $270,000 by the child’s 18th birthday.
Between the rapid increase in the cost of living over the past 20 years and many young people in debt with student loans, true financial freedom is a distant dream for many in their 20s and 30s, but Trump Accounts could change that for the next generation. If Americans take advantage of the program to its full extent, Generation Alpha, born between 2010 and 2024, and Beta, born between 2025 and 2039, can hope to avoid the financial situation many Millennials and members of Gen Z find themselves in today.
Europeans who face criminal charges for what they said or wrote warned that Europe’s speech laws can silence Americans as well, regardless of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections. While testifying before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Paivi Rasanen, a member of parliament in Finland, recounted how she has been prosecuted since 2021 for quoting Bible verses to church members and on social media that questioned her church’s participation in a Gay Pride march. Although she was acquitted, first by a local district court and then by an appellate court, prosecutors appealed the decision to Finland’s supreme court, where the case currently sits.
“My prosecution shows how quickly democratic societies can abandon free expression when the state decides which beliefs are acceptable,” Rasanen told The Epoch Times. “I never imagined that quoting the Bible in a Twitter post would lead to years of criminal charges, yet this is now the reality in Europe,” she said. “Americans should be concerned because once censorship is normalized, it never stays confined to one country.”
The trend among Western countries to restrict religious speech has spread beyond Europe, with the Canadian government currently advancing a bill that would remove a religious exemption from “hate speech” laws in the country’s Criminal Code. Similarly, newly proposed legislation in Queensland, Australia, would criminalize certain symbols and phrases, with penalties of up to two years in prison. While speaking before Congress, Rasanen was joined by Graham Linehan, an Irish writer and comedian who was arrested upon traveling through Heathrow Airport in 2025 for statements he had made in America on transgender issues. “For a decade, the British police have harassed me for expressing views that the majority of the public share,” Linehan stated. “We have simply been punished for objecting to fashionable yet incoherent orthodoxies.”
‘Foreign Censorship Threat’
Their testimony was underscored by the release of a Feb. 3 House report titled “The Foreign Censorship Threat,” which charged that “The European Commission, in a comprehensive decade-long effort, has successfully pressured social media platforms to change their global content moderation rules, thereby directly infringing on Americans’ online speech in the United States.” More specifically, the report states that “though ostensibly meant to combat ‘misinformation’ and ‘hate speech,’ nonpublic documents produced to the Committee show that for the last 10 years, the European Commission has directly pressured platforms to censor lawful, political speech in the European Union and abroad.”
This included regular meetings between U.S. tech companies and European Union regulators to put “content moderation” policies and algorithms in place to conform to European laws regarding “hate speech” and “misinformation,” the report states. The EU claims these initiatives were voluntary, but subpoenaed emails from tech executives stated that “we don’t really have a choice.” Judicial Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told hearing attendees that, based on subpoenas issued to U.S. tech companies regarding their correspondence with EU officials, a pattern of compelled censorship emerged that included U.S. citizens.
“The European Commission successfully pressured social media companies to change their global content moderation rules, directly harming the speech of Americans in the United States,” Jordan stated. He also referenced an incident in which European commissioner Thierry Breton warned X owner Elon Musk that his company may face penalties for posting an interview with Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. “The European Commission is trying to censor speech and meddle in elections worldwide,” Jordan said. “When the European Commission makes censorship demands, platforms have to listen.”
According to the European Commission’s website, the Digital Services Act (DSA) “empowers citizens by strengthening the protection of their fundamental rights online and giving them greater control and more choices when they navigate online platforms and search engines.” The DSA also requires platforms to “minimise the risks of exposing citizens, including children and young people, to illegal and harmful content.” nCritics of EU speech laws say they have become a tool to punish U.S. tech companies for allowing any content that a European country has deemed to be illegal. In countries such as Germany, that could include insulting government officials.
French member of the European Parliament Virginie Joron called the DSA a “Trojan horse for surveillance and control.” Joron accused government officials of having “seized upon the DSA as a political tool to control speech, particularly targeting platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram.” And legal analysts say that the reach of the DSA extends beyond Europe. The DSA “creates a pathway for foreign governments to influence public debate inside the United States without ever passing a single American law,” Lorcan Price, an Irish barrister who defended Rasanen and testified at the House hearing, told The Epoch Times.
“The EU’s Digital Services Act gives European regulators unprecedented leverage over American tech companies, which means European speech rules can end up shaping what Americans are allowed to say online,” Price said. “Once U.S. platforms are forced to comply with European censorship demands to avoid massive fines, those restrictions don’t stop at Europe’s borders.”
After Australia’s first-of-its-kind social media ban for adolescents under the age of 16 came into effect in December, more countries in Europe and elsewhere are taking steps to implement their own restrictions. As Katharina Buchholz reports, according to Statista research, France and the United Kingdom have gotten furthest, with laws passing in one chamber each of the countries’ bicameral legislatures as of early February. While the latter country is also aiming to ban social media for kids under the age of 16, France’s proposed law targets only those under the age of 15.
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Six more nations have seen country leaders announce initiatives aiming to ban social media access for adolescents. While Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand and Spain all have more restrictive regulations in mind, excluding those under the age of 16, Greece is aiming to exclude those under the age of 15 and Austria those under the age of 14 from social media.Social media, including personalized algorithms and the possibility to scroll endlessly, is receiving scrutiny for its effect on mental health, especially in younger people.
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Social media addiction can affect any age group, but it is seen as especially harmful in adolescents which are still developing social behaviors, body image and time management skills. Two more planned bans announced in Europe, by Portuguese and Danish leadership, are reportedly willing to leave a back door open for parental consent, putting them in a different category that already exists in several nations like France, Italy and, since recently, Brazil, where children of the applicable ages can access social media sites if their parents are in agreement.
While outright bans like the Australian one often plan implementation via a strict official age-verification mechanism, parental consent regulation can work by linking parents accounts, for example. Instagram has meanwhile already rolled out this feature in Europe, the U.S., Australia and Canada, with teenagers between the ages of 13 to 15 only in the position to disable a special restricted account mode with the consent of their parent’s account. Like other platforms, Instagram accepts users from the age of 13, but this restriction is so far not tied to verification. In the EU, social media sites are since 2018 under further restrictions concerning the use of personalized ads for minors.
The public fixation on the Epstein files has settled, predictably, on the most lurid elements of the story. This is understandable. Sexual exploitation, particularly of the young, is among the most corrosive of crimes, and the scale of Epstein’s abuse, as well as the apparent indifference of powerful institutions to it, demands moral outrage. But to focus exclusively on the sexual scandal is to miss the deeper and more unsettling lesson the affair reveals. What the Epstein files expose, above all, is the social and moral estrangement of American elites from the people they claim to govern.
Epstein was not merely a predator who gained access to power. He was a node within a closed world of wealth, influence, and immunity. The scandal is not that powerful people behaved badly in private—history shows many such examples—but that they did so with a confidence rooted in the belief they were insulated from the consequences of their behavior. They moved through a transnational elite culture that had largely severed itself from ordinary moral constraints, legal accountability, and civic obligation. That culture did not merely tolerate Epstein but normalized him.
This echoes the point Christopher Lasch made decades ago, long before private islands and hedge-fund philanthropy became familiar symbols of elite excess. In his 1994 book “The Revolt of the Elites,” Lasch argued that the modern American ruling classes had stopped seeing themselves as stewards of a shared national project. Instead, they increasingly saw themselves as a mobile, globalized caste, educated in the same institutions, moving through the same cities, governed by the same tastes, and primarily accountable only to each other. Citizenship was seen as a minor inconvenience. Nationhood and patriotism were just sentimental relics from less enlightened times.
The Epstein affair reads like a case study in Lasch’s thesis. Here was an individual whose wealth was opaque, whose sources of income were rarely scrutinized, and whose social standing seemed immune to ordinary reputational risk. He functioned as a social broker among financiers, politicians, academics, royalty, and celebrities, many of whom publicly advocated policies of moral uplift, social justice, and global responsibility. Yet in private, they inhabited a world defined by indulgence, entitlement, and a contempt for limits.
Elite detachment today is not only economic but also existential, and it is hardly confined to Americans. The governing classes of advanced democracies increasingly inhabit a world defined by mobility, abstraction, and insulation from consequence. Their loyalties are professional rather than civic, global rather than national, and managerial rather than moral. They experience society less as a shared inheritance than as a set of problems to be administered at a distance. In such a world, attachment to place, memory, and common fate appears parochial, even suspect, while belonging itself is quietly redefined as an obstacle to progress.
Those who create policies affecting immigration, policing, education, public health, and national security rarely face the consequences themselves. They do not send their children to failing schools, live in high-crime neighborhoods, compete for scarce housing, or navigate broken public institutions. Their lives are shielded by wealth, location, private services, and increasingly by law itself.
The Epstein files sharpen this reality because they reveal not just hypocrisy, but impunity. Despite extensive documentation, repeated warnings, and credible testimony, accountability arrived slowly and incompletely. This is not because the crimes were ambiguous, but because the accused moved within a protected sphere where consequences were negotiable and enforcement discretionary. Justice, like morality, was something applied elsewhere for other people.
What enrages the public is not prurience, but recognition. The scandal resonates because it confirms a growing suspicion among ordinary people that there is one moral universe for the governing class and another for everyone else. Elites preach restraint, sustainability, and responsibility while living lives of extraordinary consumption and indulgence. They urge social sacrifice while exempting themselves from its costs. They speak the language of progress while practicing a refined form of decadence.
Lasch warned that such a ruling class would eventually forfeit legitimacy, not because of ideology, but because of character. A society cannot be governed indefinitely by people who do not believe they belong to it. When elites become tourists in their own countries, financially global, culturally unrooted, and morally untethered, their authority rests on little more than coercion and spectacle. The Epstein files should therefore be read less as an aberration than as a symptom. They reveal a governing class that has lost the habits of self-restraint that once justified its power, and the sense of common fate that once bound leaders to citizens. For many, the salient point of the Epstein files is the scandal. I think it is more accurately seen as a disclosure.
The danger is not merely that such elites are corrupt, but that they are bored. Bored with limits, bored with norms, bored with accountability, and ultimately bored with democracy itself. That boredom, Lasch understood, is the precondition of revolt, not by the masses, but by those who no longer feel answerable to them. If the Epstein affair provokes lasting anger, it is because it crystallizes a truth many citizens already sense, that the people shaping the future live in a world apart, governed by different rules, and increasingly incapable of moral seriousness. No society can long endure that division without consequence. The question is not whether further revelations will emerge. It is whether the public will finally insist that elites once again live under the same moral and civic conditions as those they presume to lead.
“.. you made…all your money in California, you ungrateful piece of s***, you could figure out a way to pay more taxes, and we deserve the taxes from you, given you made your wealth here . . . so why don’t we just do shock and awe at this point, because you don’t seem to be availing yourself to thinking that you owe your state something more.”
This month, the anniversary of the California Gold Rush came and passed with little mention … for good reason. When James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill, millions traveled great distances to seek their fortune in the “Golden State.” Now, 178 years later, California has engineered an inverse Gold Rush, virtually chasing wealth from the state. Rather than covered wagons going West, there is a line of U-Hauls going anywhere other than California.
From boondoggle projects to reparations, California politicians continue to rack up new spending projects despite a soaring deficit and shrinking tax base. Rather than exercise a modicum of fiscal restraint, Democrats are pushing through a tax that takes five percent of the wealth of any billionaires left in the state. I have long criticized the tax as perfectly moronic for a state with the highest tax burden and one of the highest flight rates of top taxpayers. In my new book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I discuss the reversal of fortunes in California and other blue states as politicians unleash new “eat the rich” campaigns before the midterm elections.
The problem, of course, is that billionaires are mobile, as is their wealth. Liberals expect billionaires to stay put in a type of voluntary canned hunt. They are not. Billionaires are joining the growing exodus from the state, taking their companies, investments, and jobs with them. The latest billionaire to be chased off may be Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is reportedly heading for Florida. The growing departures have triggered outrage among many on the left, who are in disbelief that billionaires will just not stand still to be fleeced.
Former New York Magazine editor Kara Swisher captured that rage in a recent posting, declaring “you made…all your money in California, you ungrateful piece of s***, you could figure out a way to pay more taxes, and we deserve the taxes from you, given you made your wealth here . . . so why don’t we just do shock and awe at this point, because you don’t seem to be availing yourself to thinking that you owe your state something more.” By some estimates, California has already cost over a trillion dollars in lost investments and business. That is no small achievement. Here’s a mind teaser: How can you burn a trillion dollars (which would create a stack some 67,866 miles high) without taking years and destroying the environment? California politicians have a solution: Have people take it out of the state in a reverse gold rush.
In addition to saying that they want to grab 5 percent of the wealth of these billionaires, California Democrats are planning to base wealth calculations on the voting shares of corporate executives. Often, particularly with start-ups, entrepreneurs have greater voting shares than actual ownership. However, they will be taxed as if voting shares amounted to actual wealth. In other words, California is moving to nuke the entrepreneurs who created the Silicon Valley boom. Emmanuel Saez, the U.C. Berkeley economist who helped design the tax, insists that they may not want to stay, but they will still be tapped. They are planning to trap the wealthy fleeing the state retroactively: “The tax is based on residence as of Jan. 1, 2026, sharply limiting their ability to flee the state to avoid paying. Despite billionaires’ threats to leave, I think extremely few will have been able to change residence by Jan. 1, given the complexity of doing so.”
The effort to retroactively impose such a tax is legally controversial and will face years of challenges. In my view, this is unconstitutional, but admittedly it is a murky area. Regardless of the outcome, a wealth tax will affect a wide range of other wealthy taxpayers. If Democrats can get a retroactive wealth tax to be upheld, it is doubtful that they will stop with billionaires. Why should other top taxpayers stick around to find out where the next cull will fall in the tax brackets? Recently, Gavin Newsom boasted, “California isn’t just keeping pace with the world — we’re setting the pace.” That is undeniably true if the measure is the record number of U-Hauls fleeing the state — more than any other state. Indeed, the only thing harder to find than a wealthy taxpayer in California appears to be a U-Haul.
According to U-Haul’s data, the state is again leading blue states in the exodus. The Washington Post noted recently that “California came in last. Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey rounded out the bottom five. Of the bottom 10, seven voted blue in the last election.” Conversely, “nine of the top 10 growth states voted red in the last presidential election,” with Texas again leading the growth states. The Post put it succinctly, “People want to live in pro-growth, low-tax states, while the biggest losers tend to be places with big governments and high taxes.” The problem is that, while the economics are horrific, the politics remain irresistible.
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents part of Silicon Valley, recently mocked billionaires rushing to escape the state. Laughing at his own constituents, Khanna quipped, “I will miss them very much.” You will not be alone as California becomes known as the La Brea Tar Pit of taxation. They are on the verge of converting the state motto from “Eureka” to “Welcome to Hotel California, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
The FBI opened 1,200 probes related to politicians, journalists, religious leaders, academics and others tied to “sensitive investigative matters,” using a special investigative tool that requires no factual predicate to launch, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The GAO report, which was obtained by Just the News, was published last month but not made public, and it was titled FBI Investigative Activities: Oversight Efforts of Opening and Conducting Assessments Should be Strengthened.
The report, which assists in congressional oversight of the executive branch, provided details on the roughly 127,000 FBI “assessments” in all opened from 2018 to 2024, the vast majority of which were eventually closed without accusations of wrongdoing or criminal charges against those targets being scrutinized. The 57-page report did not include any names of those targeted for assessment. Among the total assessments, 1,200 were related to “sensitive investigative matters” that target public officials, news organizations, houses of worship or members of academia, which the bureau views as more sensitive in nature.
So-called “assessments” were established by Justice Department guidelines in 2008, providing the FBI with an investigative tool short of opening a full-fledged investigation requiring a factual predicate. The probes are used by the bureau to “address a potential threat to national security or potential violation of federal criminal law,” the congressional watchdog said. They allow FBI agents to open probes on authorized matters but without a factual basis and allow them to employ investigative such techniques as physical surveillance on subjects.
If sufficient basis is found, assessments can turn into preliminary investigations, full investigations or enterprise investigations. But most assessments are closed without meeting the standards for a full inquiry by the bureau, the GAO said. nn The revelations were detailed in the GAO’s January 2026 report, which was designated “For Official Use Only” because of the sensitive information it contains. GAO noted that the report should be “safeguarded when not being used and destroyed when no longer needed.”
The Trump administration covertly smuggled approximately 6,000 Starlink satellite internet terminals into Iran amid a nationwide unrest earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal has reported, substantiating Tehran’s claims of foreign interference behind the deadly riots. The operation, which senior US officials said involved State Department funding, came after Iranian authorities imposed a sweeping internet blackout in January. President Donald Trump was aware of the deliveries, officials told the WSJ on Thursday, though it remains unclear whether he personally approved the plan.
Iranian officials have repeatedly blamed Washington and Tel Aviv for fueling the unrest, which began in December as peaceful demonstrations over economic hardship but escalated into widespread violence. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated last month that more than 3,000 people had been killed, including nearly 700 individuals he described as “terrorists,” alongside civilians and security personnel. President Masoud Pezeshkian has accused the US and Israel of embedding “foreign terrorists” within protest crowds, alleging they have employed what an Iranian diplomatic source described to RT as “ISIS-like” tactics – including beheadings of law enforcement officers and civilians being burned alive.
At the height of the unrest, Trump openly encouraged “peaceful” Iranian protesters, posting on Truth Social: “All Iranian patriots, keep protesting. Take over your institutions if possible.” He also promised that “help is on its way,” and deployed a “beautiful armada” to the region, raising speculation of an imminent military intervention. The State Department supports a range of so-called “internet freedom” tools, including virtual private network (VPN) service providers to Iran. To purchase Starlinks, the department reportedly redirected funds from US-supported VPNs, which had allowed an estimated 20-30 million Iranians to stay online during the previous 2022 riots and the Israeli-US bombing last year.
Washington seeks to pressure Iran into accepting a new nuclear deal, after Trump unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 agreement (JCPOA) during his first term, reimposing sanctions against Tehran under a “maximum pressure” campaign. Decades of US economic pressure were the primary driver of the country’s economic deterioration, according to officials in Iran – the world’s second most sanctioned country after Russia. Despite the US administration’s public denials of involvement in fomenting anti-government riots, the reported Starlink operation reveals expanded covert support for what Moscow called an attempt to “destroy the Iranian state” through a “color revolution” playbook.
They finally have the votes. Now the real fight begins. The SAVE Act already cleared the House in a tight 218–213 vote, with just one Democrat, Henry Cuellar, willing to break with his party and support basic election safeguards. That tells you everything you need to know about where Democrats really stand on election integrity. Senate Republicans also just locked down the 50 votes they need to move ahead on the SAVE Act, thanks to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) finally jumping off the fence and signing on as a cosponsor. With Vice President JD Vance ready to break a 50–50 tie, Republicans now have the votes to pass the bill if it ever reaches a final vote. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that Democrats still have one powerful weapon left: the filibuster. In the Senate, the math is brutally simple. Republicans have the votes to pass the bill, but they do not have the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster. Not even Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) will support the SAVE Act — and he claims to support voter ID. So what’s the next move? Well, that’s up to the Senate GOP leadership. If they are serious about this bill, they have to force a real, old-school, stand-on-the-floor-and-talk-until-you-drop filibuster. Not the fake Cory Booker kind, either, but a real filibuster. It’s time for the Democrats’ abuse of the filibuster, effectively turning it into a de facto veto of the minority party, to be over.
Sen. Mike Lee laid out the path in a video message on X. “If senators want to debate this, if they want to filibuster it, make them work for it,” he said. “Make them stand up, make them speak. If we do it this way, we can continue this progress, and I think we can get this thing done.” The only problem is that even then, nothing is guaranteed. A talking filibuster is a tool, not a magic wand. It forces a showdown. It does not promise victory. “Look, there are no guarantees here,” Lee conceded. “But the only shot we’ve got at this is through the talking filibuster. Thanks for fighting. Keep going. We’ll get it done.”
There is, of course, a backup plan. On Friday, President Donald Trump announced that if the SAVE Act can’t pass the Senate, he plans to bypass Congress altogether and use executive action to require voter ID for the November midterms. “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” he wrote on Truth Social. “This is an issue that must be fought, and must be fought, NOW!” he wrote in a follow-up post. “If we can’t get it through Congress, there are Legal reasons why this SCAM is not permitted. I will be presenting them shortly, in the form of an Executive Order.” An executive order would not be ideal, but I’m hoping it won’t be necessary.
There is a new, troubling study on the financial status of most American workers. The National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) found that the median American worker has just $955 saved for retirement through defined-contribution plans such as 401(k) accounts. Given the expected job losses from robotics and AI, the study only deepens concerns about the economic and political pressures facing this country in the years to come.
In my new book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I discuss those impacts from robotics and AI on our democracy. Using the most conservative estimates of job losses, the book explores how a large population of unemployed citizens will affect their relationship with the state. We cannot maintain a “kept citizenship” while preserving the essential elements of the American republic. A large population of static, unemployed citizens poses challenges for what I call a “liberty-enhancing economy,” an economy that affords citizens independence from the state.
This study magnifies those concerns. If accurate, it suggests that even a short displacement in employment will return state support. Many jurisdictions are already launching Universal Basic Income (UBI) pilot programs. If this republic is to survive in the 21st Century, it will require developing new areas of “homocentric” jobs while avoiding predictable measures to subsidize positions that will inevitably be lost to robotics. Notably, the study found that among those with positive retirement plans, median savings were much higher at $40,000. Those with a defined contribution (DC) plan are far better off with an average savings of $179,082.
The takeaway from the report, for me, is the need to instill greater private savings. Some workers are barely paid above subsistence. However, we also need to educate citizens about the importance of setting aside retirement funds to the extent possible. As I previously wrote, I am a great fan of the Trump Accounts. The $6.25 billion gift of Michael and Susan Dell (now augmented by dozens of corporations) could offer the single best hope for the survival of our system. Millions of young people will be able to experience the benefits of investments, savings and, most importantly, economic independence.
The study also shows the growing dangers of the collapse of the social security accounts. Despite assurances made when Congress established the system, Congress has continued to draw on Social Security funds to avoid reducing spending levels. The system could fail for these workers, who will not be able to draw upon money taken from their paychecks for the purpose of retirement. It is one of the most outrageous betrayals in United States history.
To this day, Democrats are opposing efforts to make major changes to guarantee the viability of the system for future generations, including the use of private investment accounts that could no longer be raided by Congress for easy money. All politicians express alarm at the potential failure, but they attack any efforts to address the underlying problems as an attack on social security. As a result, we just drift toward this cliff knowing that most citizens have practically no other source of retirement support.
Among the consolations of youth is the certainty with which one holds beliefs about the world. There is comfort in the conviction that one’s moral bearings are firmly set, that one’s understanding of complex questions is not only sincere but also correct. The world appears legible; right and wrong seem sharply drawn; doubt and nuance are dismissed as weakness or evasion. There is rarely a single moment when these certainties collapse. They loosen instead through the slow accumulation of experience. Over time, one discovers that life resists easy judgments. Circumstances complicate principles. Good intentions collide with unintended consequences. Our friends betray us. The world proves denser, more conflicted, and less amenable to neat and tidy conclusions than youthful confidence would suggest.
This recognition of complexity, fallibility, and the limits of one’s own certainty is among the quiet achievements of maturity. It marks the point at which conviction learns restraint and moral seriousness acquires humility. Yet much of our public culture now moves in precisely the opposite direction. It rewards juvenile certainty while punishing hesitation, qualification, or good-faith disagreements. Confidence is applauded regardless of depth; slogans substitute for argument; restraint is recast as moral failure. That inversion was on clear display at the recent Grammy Awards, when Billie Eilish declared to enthusiastic applause that “no one is illegal on stolen land.”
It was left unspecified just whose land was being referenced, by whom it was stolen, and according to what historical or legal criteria that claim could be made. The audience, however, needed no clarification. Eilish’s statement was rewarded exactly because it avoided complexity and invited no questions. What was on display was not moral seriousness but a high school performance, an adolescent sense of righteousness delivered with absolute certainty and accepted as self-evident truth. One might charitably attribute such unthinking, categorical statements to Eilish’s youth. Alas, hers is a posture that we have come to expect from many of Hollywood’s men and women: confident, declarative, and curiously uninterested in the burdens of thought that genuine moral judgment requires.
This brings us to the core issue. The greatest threat to free expression today isn’t obvious censorship or government orders. Instead, it’s a more subtle and widespread force: cultural groupthink. This informal but influential system of rewards and punishments quietly limits the range of acceptable opinions, shaping what people feel allowed to say, what they hesitate to voice, and which questions are no longer askedn
Nowhere is this trend more evident than in modern celebrity culture. Hollywood and the broader entertainment sector have become models of ideological conformity, especially on divisive social and political topics.
From climate change and gender issues to racial justice and international conflicts, Hollywood repeats the same messages, all delivered with youthful confidence. The same moral language, slogans, and conclusions are echoed with ritualistic consistency. The Eilish episode was not an aberration but a symptom. It illustrated a broader pattern in which public speech functions less as a means of inquiry than as a test of ideological conformity. The cost of dissent is not a thoughtful and considered rebuttal. Rather, it takes the form of reputational damage through social media pile-ons, calls for boycotts, professional exclusion, or quiet blacklisting.
Under such conditions, silence is often the rational choice. Most people have families to support and livelihoods to protect.The greater danger lies in the lesson this celebrity culture teaches: that there is only one permissible way to think and speak about certain issues, and that deviation signals not error but moral failure. Political and social questions are reduced to dogma rather than debated. Once moralized in this way, disagreement becomes illegitimate by definition. This logic now extends well beyond Hollywood. Similar patterns can be found in journalism, medicine, academia, corporate governance, and even the legal profession.
Approved vocabularies narrow discussion; certain premises must be affirmed before conversation can begin; others may not be questioned at all. Arguments are no longer answered on their merits but dismissed as evidence of bad character or suspect motives.The consequences for democratic culture are profound. Democracies do not depend on unanimity but on citizens who can weigh competing claims, tolerate uncertainty, and revise their views in light of evidence and argument. Groupthink undermines these capacities by rewarding conformity and punishing independent judgment. Over time, public discourse loses its corrective function. Errors persist not because they are persuasive, but because questioning them carries too high a cost.
[..] Free speech, properly understood, is not a threat to democracy. It is its foundation.
:AI-driven equity disruption was everywhere this past week, spreading like wildfire beyond software into insurance, commercial real estate, financials, shipping, wealth management, and likely many more industries in the coming trading sessions.One industry in the crosshairs of AI disruption is Hollywood. Some of the publicly traded studios include The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global, Sony Group Corporation, Netflix, Lionsgate, and others.nOn Friday, Axios reported that the Walt Disney Company sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging that the Chinese tech firm has been infringing on its films to develop Seedance 2.0 without compensation.
Disney’s outside attorney, David Singer, wrote a letter to ByteDance global general counsel John Rogovin, accusing the AI company of “pre-packaging its Seedance service with a pirated library of Disney’s copyrighted characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and other Disney franchises, as if Disney’s coveted intellectual property were free public domain clip art.” “Over Disney’s well-publicized objections, ByteDance is hijacking Disney’s characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters. ByteDance’s virtual smash-and-grab of Disney’s IP is willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable,” Singer said.
He added, “We believe this is just the tip of the iceberg, which is shocking considering Seedance has only been available for a few days.” It’s not just ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 that has spooked Hollywood studios. A growing wave of video-generation models suggests that Hollywood’s moat is crumbling, and its control of the media game is nearing its end.
“Authorities should use every legal tool at their disposal to stop this wholesale theft,” the Human Artistry Campaign – a coalition that includes dozens of creative groups such as SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America – said in a statement on Friday. Seedance 2.0 model …
Seedance 2.0
Prompt: Sum up the AI discourse in a meme – make sure it’s retarded and gets 50 likes. pic.twitter.com/09yPdo3Tjy
RFK Jr. says medical journals are pure Big Pharma propaganda.
“Journals are utterly corrupt because they’re owned by the pharmaceutical companies.”
“Marcia Angell, who ran the New England Journal of Medicine for 20 years, has said, you can’t believe anything in the journals… pic.twitter.com/RfjLEkEah1
