Apr 052026
 


John Singer Sargent Palmettos, Florida 1917


EU ‘15 Years Too Late’ To Prepare For Energy Shock – Dmitriev (RT)
Trump Reminds Iran “48 Hours Before All Hell Will Reign Down” (ZH)
Rescue Operation Underway After Iran Downs Two US Fighter Jets (RT)
Has Concern Over Hormuz Made Us Forget the Red Sea? (ET)
What Exactly Is the Purpose of NATO in the Year 2026? (Josh Hammer)
The non-Zionist Israeli Population Could Save the Day (Paul Craig Roberts)
Kevin Hassett on Latest Jobs Data and Economic Impacts from Iran Conflict (CTH)
Will the Jones Act Waiver Undermine Trump’s Immigration Policy? (Landrith)
Kamala Calls to Oppose New Court Nominees “Before They Happen” (Turley)
Trump; Boycott Bruce Springsteen Over ‘Incurable’ TDS (JTN)
The New York Times Made a Humiliating Error (Matt Margolis)
DOJ Is Done Releasing Epstein Files (MN)
SpaceX IPO: Don’t Bet Against Elon Musk (Tim O’Brien)

 


 

https://twitter.com/lovetocook12345/status/2040068475922628876?s=20

 


 


Maybe opening with this will wake some people up.

And yes, I am in Europe. And the lack of competence and vision is scary.

EU ‘15 Years Too Late’ To Prepare For Energy Shock – Dmitriev (RT)

The EU has failed to offer any real solutions to the current energy crisis, Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev has said, arguing that Brussels is too late to start preparing for a supply shock. The remarks came in response to EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen’s interview with the Financial Times on Friday in which he said that the US-Israeli war on Iran was likely to have “structural, long-lasting effects” on the bloc’s energy security. He added Brussels was preparing for “worst-case scenarios” and “looking at all possibilities,” including releasing strategic oil reserves and possibly rationing jet fuel or diesel. “Still only warnings, NO REAL FIXES,” Dmitriev, who serves as President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, wrote on X on Friday.


“EU warns 15 YEARS TOO LATE it is not prepared for a ‘long-lasting energy shock.’ EU failed to diversify energy flows, guided by Russophobic, Green, and woke ideology,” he added.The EU implemented a set of energy reforms in 2009–2011 aimed at accelerating the transition to renewable energy and diversifying away from single suppliers, such as Russia. In his interview, Jorgensen ruled out a return to Russian energy imports, insisting that there would be no change to EU plans to end imports of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) by the end of 2026. The US and “other partners” will provide additional supplies, he said. Brussels will also phase out Russian pipeline gas imports by autumn 2027. Russia still accounted for an estimated 13% of total EU gas imports in 2025, according to official data.

President Vladimir Putin warned last month that Russia may withdraw from the EU gas market and redirect its supplies to “emerging markets” without waiting for Brussels’ ban to take effect. The energy crisis in the EU is the result of the “misguided policies” pursued by the bloc over “many years,” Putin said. The conflict in the Middle East has disrupted global supply chains and thrown energy markets into turmoil. On Thursday, the price of crude rose to around $111 per barrel, while the price of gas in the EU spiked to around €50 ($58) per MWh, a 56% increase from February.

Read more …

“Reign Down”?

Trump Reminds Iran “48 Hours Before All Hell Will Reign Down” (ZH)

With U.S. and Israeli air-delivered munitions still striking targets across Iran, and Tehran retaliating by hitting high-value sites around the Gulf area, while continuing to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz, the conflict is now entering its sixth week with no credible signs of near-term de-escalation. Add in President Trump’s speech last week, which warned that intense targeting could continue for a few more weeks, and it’s a very fair assessment that the conflict will carry into next week, with momentum and escalation to the upside.


On Saturday, the U.S. military continued search operations for an American airman who ejected after an F-15E fighter jet was shot down over Iran, marking the first downed U.S. aircraft in the conflict. One crew member was rescued, but the second remained missing, with Iranian forces also racing to find the missing pilot. The downed F-15 jet came shortly after a U.S. Black Hawk was hit by ground fire, and an A-10 Thunderbolt II reportedly crashed Friday near the Hormuz chokepoint. Friday was not a great day for U.S. aircraft as the conflict intensified. C-17 Globemaster IIIs are on the move.

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2040333544023621698

In a rapidly escalating phase of the US-Israel war on Iran (now around day 36+ since late February strikes that targeted Iranian leadership and infrastructure), Tehran has intensified its retaliation while the US and Israel press air campaigns. Iranian missiles struck central Israel on Saturday, triggering widespread sirens and causing visible damage, including to residential areas and an industrial zone near Beersheba. Reports mentioned cluster bomb effects and shrapnel injuries, though Israeli defenses intercepted many projectiles.

At the same time, Israel launched heavy strikes on Tehran, targeting Iranian air-defense and ballistic-missile sites, while a projectile also hit the perimeter of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, according to the semiofficial Iranian Tasnim news agency. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had notified them about the incident.

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2040412534751313983

Let’s not forget President Trump’s speech on Wednesday, in which he suggested the conflict could continue for weeks and insisted the missing airman would not alter efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict. Iran launched a fresh missile barrage at central Israel, causing fires, damage in areas like Negev, Rosh Haayin, Bnei Brak, and reports of cluster munitions; minor injuries reported, with one man hurt in Bnei Brak. An apparent Iranian drone damaged the Dubai headquarters of the U.S. tech giant Oracle on Saturday after Iranian forces threatened dozens of US firms. Iran has been targeting Gulf area data centers, and reports of a water desalination plant on Friday made headlines.

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According to American media, two of the three pilots have been located and brought to safety

Rescue Operation Underway After Iran Downs Two US Fighter Jets (RT)

Iran shot down a US fighter jet over its territory on Friday, prompting a rescue operation for the crew, according to US and Iranian media.m,According to multiple outlets citing US officials, one of the two crew members of the twin-seat F-15E Strike Eagle has been rescued, while the whereabouts and status of the second remain unknown. Although Iran claimed it had downed a newer F-35 aircraft, analysts say that images of the wreckage, including an ejection seat, are consistent with an F-15. A second US military aircraft, a single-seat A-10 Thunderbolt II, managed to leave Iranian airspace before its pilot ejected and was rescued, US media reported.


US President Donald Trump has threatened to step up strikes on Iran, saying Iranian power plants could be targeted next. The announcement came just hours after US forces hit the country’s tallest highway bridge linking Tehran and Karaj, rendering it inoperable.“Our Military… hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants! New Regime leadership knows what has to be done, and has to be done fast!” Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari responded, warning of immediate retaliation if Washington follows through.

“If the US proceeds with its threats regarding Iran’s power plants, immediate retaliatory actions will be taken,” he said in a video address, adding that Israeli energy and IT infrastructure – as well as regional companies with American shareholders – would face ”complete and utter annihilation.” The video featured footage of the Stargate UAE project, a major AI infrastructure hub under construction in Abu Dhabi, part of a US-backed initiative led by OpenAI. Zolfaghari said Iran would ”do whatever it takes” to defend its interests, suggesting these projects could become targets. Earlier, Iran said the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed ”in the long term” to US and Israeli ships. Trump urged Tehran to ”make a deal before it is too late.” Iranian officials have denied they are seeking a ceasefire or engaging in talks.

Latest developments: • Trump said he hopes that the pilot of a downed US aircraft will not be captured or harmed by Iranian forces. • Israel reportedly canceled some planned strikes on Iran to avoid interfering with the ongoing rescue operation. • An Iranian drone struck Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery, while the debris from an intercepted UAV set fire to the UAE’s largest gas processing hub, Habshan, authorities in the Gulf state have reported. • Iran has refused a 48-hour ceasefire offer from the US, delivered via a third country, according to Fars news agency. Indirect attempts to secure an armistice have “reached a dead end,” according to the WSJ. • Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said strikes on civilian infrastructure, including bridges, would not force Iran to surrender, calling them a sign of “defeat and moral collapse.”

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Colorful.

Has Concern Over Hormuz Made Us Forget the Red Sea? (ET)

Wartime concerns about the security of maritime energy traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—connecting the Indian Ocean/Gulf of Oman with the Persian Gulf—have overshadowed the fact that the related issue of Red Sea security is far from resolved and is, in fact, becoming more dynamic. The Red Sea–Suez link between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean is of equal strategic importance to global trade as the Hormuz choke point and is, through geography and common players, intrinsically linked with the Persian Gulf conflict.


But it is Ethiopia’s civil war, brewing with different factions and with varying intensity since the coup against Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1974, which is again moving in ways that could prove decisive. Always, in the background, is the reality that Ethiopia could revive its historical influence over the Red Sea–Suez sea line of communication (SLOC). Inside Ethiopia, the conflicts that have been raging since 1974 between different governments and different factions are at a new level.

The four different Fano opposition militia groups, representing different areas of the Amhara heartland, have been fighting against the central government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali for several years. In early 2026, they came together with a united manifesto of their intentions. This has revived the momentum of the threat to Abiy’s Prosperity Party government. A statement issued by a united Fano on Jan. 17, 2026 (Tir 9, 2018, in the Ethiopian calendar) noted:

“So that the Amhara struggle may become one, the leaders of the Amhara Fano National Force and the Amhara Fano People’s Organization, through a historic decision that demanded courage, open-heartedness, decisiveness, and trust in the people, have been able to make Fano unity a reality. … We have designated one leader, one organization.” Significantly, the leadership of the united Fano all titled themselves as “Arbegna,” a nod to the Arbegnoch, the Patriots, who, under the banner of Emperor Haile Selassie I, fought against the Italian invaders of Ethiopia from 1935 to 1941. This led to the ouster of the Italians at the Battle of Gondar, in late November 1941, the first major Allied victory of World War II, in the ouster of an Axis power (Italy) from territory it had seized.

Today, the result of the four separate Amhara Fano groups fighting against the Abiy government over the past several years was the creation—finally—of the Amhara Fano National Movement (AFNM) as an umbrella for all civil and military operations. AFNM, however, described itself as working on behalf of all Ethiopians desirous of the restoration of the multi-ethnic empire. (Ethiopia is home to some 80 ethnic and linguistic groups.) Prime Minister Abiy, half-Amhara and half-Oromo, has consistently identified with Oromo causes and first fought against a Tigrean-dominated government of Ethiopia, and then against the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) militia, which was forced into a ceasefire—essentially a military surrender by the TPLF—in November 2022.

Abiy’s Prosperity Party government has increasingly been rejected by his original Oromo militant supporters, who regard him as “insufficiently Oromo” in outlook, and the government’s writ—or its area of focus—now rarely extends beyond the capital, Addis Ababa. The exception for Abiy’s travels is to some major projects such as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in the Benishangul-Gumuz Region of western Ethiopia. The dam has been the subject of some hostility from Egypt, which sees its existence as infringing on Egypt’s “right” to control the waters of the Blue Nile, even though they originate in Lake Tana in the Amhara Highlands of Ethiopia, outside Egypt’s territories.

Read more …

NATO’s purpose was anti-Russia. That ended in 1989. Questions?

What Exactly Is the Purpose of NATO in the Year 2026? (Josh Hammer)

One month into Operation Epic Fury against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a long-overdue conversation has finally broken into the open: What, exactly, is the enduring rationale for NATO? For decades, this question has been treated in Washington foreign policy circles as heretical. But it isn’t. And to their credit, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are now saying so plainly. As Trump recently put it, “They haven’t been friends when we needed them. We’ve never asked them for much. … It’s a one-way street.” Rubio has been similarly blunt: “If NATO is just about us defending Europe if they’re attacked but then denying us basing rights when we need them, that’s not a very good arrangement. … So all that’s going to have to be reexamined.”


They’re spot-on. At best, America’s European “allies” have spent decades free-riding on the U.S. security umbrella. Despite repeated commitments to meet baseline defense spending targets, many NATO members still under-invest in their militaries and outsource their national defense to American taxpayers. The imbalance is staggering: The United States accounts for the overwhelming majority of NATO’s military capabilities, logistics, and strategic lift. Overall, American taxpayers contribute about 60% of total spending on NATO defense.

At worst, some of these same European allies actively undermine U.S. operations at critical moments. Major Western European countries such as Spain and France have restricted or complicated U.S. use of their airspace during Operation Epic Fury. That is farcical. A so-called alliance in which members obstruct one another’s ability to wage war is not actually an alliance — it is a liability.This raises the core question: Why, exactly, does NATO exist in the year 2026? Let’s recall its origins. NATO was founded in 1949 with a clear and urgent mission: to contain and, if necessary, defeat the Soviet Union. That mission was compelling — indeed, existential. Western Europe lay devastated after World War II, and the Soviet threat was real, immediate, and hegemonic. But that world quite literally no longer exists.

The Soviet Union collapsed three and a half decades ago. The Berlin Wall fell the year I was born. The Cold War is now a relic of history. By any reasonable metric, NATO achieved its raison d’etre by the early 1990s. But instead of declaring victory and recalibrating, the alliance drifted. It expanded ever further into Eastern Europe and shifted its ostensible mission into… well, something.Simply put, NATO is today an organization in search of a purpose.

Is NATO a collective defense pact against the geopolitical successor to the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation? If so, why do so many European NATO members fail to take that threat seriously enough to invest in their own national defense? Is NATO now instead a vehicle for global counterterrorism? If so, why have its members sat on the sidelines and refused to join the United States as it goes to battle against the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of jihad? Or is NATO nowadays just a political club for liberal democracies? If so, what does that have to do with a hardheaded conception of the U.S. national interest?NATO has become a catch-all institution, long on triumphalist platitudes but short on the strategic realities on which its existence was predicated.

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“Netanyahu’s party has 23.41% of the vote.”

The non-Zionist Israeli Population Could Save the Day (Paul Craig Roberts)

Trump’s blustering April Fool’s day speech would easily have served as a hilarious April Fool’s day joke. But it was just bluster to take the place of the discarded 10-day ultimatum that replaced the discarded 5-day ultimatum with a 3 or 4 week ultimatum. As I asked, if Iran is as totally destroyed as Trump asserts, what is the purpose of Trump’s ultimatum?


Time is running out for Trump, not for Iran. The last time an American president took America to war Constitutionally was 1941 when Congress gave the executive branch permission to enter the war with the Constitutionally required Congressional Declaration of War. As time went by Congress finally responded to presidential decisions to go to war without a Congressional declaration of war not by impeaching the President, which should have been done in order to protect the Constitutional political order and separation of powers, but by requiring the president who initiates military action without Congressional approval to come to Congress with a deadline of 60 days after initiating military action for congressional approval to continue the military action.

In other words, Congress failed to defend the Constitution’s Separation of Powers by allowing the executive branch to exercise a power it does not have to go to war and, afterward, to come to Congress for approval. In the past Congress has rubber-stamped the President’s decision. But this time it is different. Polls indicate that a majority of Americans do not share Trump’s concern about the Iranian threat to America. They do not support Netanyahu’s war. Even many American Jews do not support the war.

On April 2 the Times of Israel reported that “the US Democratic National Committee is set to consider a resolution at a meeting next week that “condemns the growing influence” of AIPAC. This is extraordinary considering that in the US Senate there are 9 Jewish Democrats and no Republican ones and that of the 25 Jews in the House of Representatives, 21 are Democrats. https://www.timesofisrael.com/democrats-to-weigh-resolution-against-aipac-fueling-concerns-about-undercurrent-of-antisemitism/

The Times of Israel reports that: “A recent NBC poll found that 57% of Democratic voters have a negative view of Israel, compared to 13% who have a positive view of the country. Meanwhile, a growing number of the party’s congressional candidates—and politicians thought to be seeking its 2028 presidential nomination—are swearing off AIPAC, and crossing its red line of supporting conditions on military aid to Israel.” What Trump has done is to ally the American Democrat Party against Israel and the Republicans with Israel Or to put it more correctly with the current Zionist government of Netanyahu.

Netanyahu’s party has 23.41% of the vote. To be in office Netanyahu has to rely on far right-wing extremist parties who fervently believe in Greater Israel from the Nile River to Pakistan. It is for this Greater Israel agenda that Americans have been fighting for the first quarter of the 21st century. But support for this agenda is not only weak in the US, it also seems to be week in Israel. Zionism has always been a minority position among Jews and the Israeli population. The Israelis tolerated Zionism because it did them no harm. No missiles fell upon them and the Americans protected them with money, weapons, and diplomatic cover.

But now the vaunted Israeli Iron Dome is penetrated at Iran’s will. The Iranian missiles have destroyed the American radar systems that enabled US defenses to prevent attacks on the Persian Gulf states and Israel. If Trump declares victory and goes home, Zionist Israel has no chance of survival. Israel’s nuclear weapons are cancelled by Iran’s demonstrated ability to hit the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona and Israel’s storage site of its nuclear weapons. Iran doesn’t need nukes to destroy Israel. A strike on the Dimona nuclear facility would suffice to spread radiation over tiny Israel.

Trump cannot stay in the war, because he cannot risk Congress rejecting his justification for attacking Iran and for continuing the war. For Trump, being defeated by Congress is worse than being defeated by Iran. Trump has until April 28 to extricate himself from the war. So what happens to Israel, defenseless from Iranian missile attack, when Trump leaves the scene? mNetanyahu, who is under indictment in Israel, also faces elections this autumn. What if he cannot put together another ruling coalition? What if the Israelis for the first time are experiencing heavy costs of the Zionist Agenda of Greater Israel and decide that the Zionist agenda does not serve the security of Israel?

There is a possibility that Trump and Netanyahu have made the Israeli population aware of the heavy cost of the Zionist agenda. I do not know what the odds might be, but it is not impossible that Israelis, with the cost of the Zionist agenda now brought home to them, will reject the Zionist agenda and announce that they are satisfied with Israel’s current borders. It is possible–I do not know the odds–that the non-Zionist population of Israel will take the agenda out of the hands of the Zionist war-mongers, and form a government that rejects the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel. This, other than Israel’s destruction, is the only avenue to peace in the Middle East.

Read more …

MAGAnomic .

Kevin Hassett on Latest Jobs Data and Economic Impacts from Iran Conflict (CTH)

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett appears on Bloomberg News to discuss the US March jobs report and oil market supply disruptions related to the military action in Iran against the impact of oil prices on the US economy. Director Hassett notes the continued goal of the Trump MAGAnomic plan is to build momentum, keep driving domestic investment and the short-term impact from Iran should mitigate quickly.

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“The Jones Act, formally known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920..”

Will the Jones Act Waiver Undermine Trump’s Immigration Policy? (Landrith)

There are moments when a temporary policy change forces an examination of deeper legal and strategic questions. The 60-day Jones Act waiver issued last month is one of those moments. While framed as a narrow national security measure, this waiver raises serious concerns about whether the very laws designed to protect American maritime strength and national sovereignty will be inadvertently undermined.


The Jones Act, formally known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, is a cornerstone of American maritime policy. It requires that goods transported between U.S. ports be carried on vessels that are built in the United States, owned by American citizens, and crewed by American mariners. The law was enacted as a vital national security safeguard. A strong domestic merchant marine provides critical sealift capacity during wartime or national emergencies, ensuring the military can move troops, equipment, and supplies without relying on potentially unreliable foreign vessels. On March 17, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) exercised its purported authority to issue a temporary waiver of the Jones Act for certain commodities.

Supporters argue this was a prudent, limited step to address immediate logistical needs amid ongoing global tensions. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has since implemented detailed compliance procedures: operators must provide advance notice, submit cargo manifests, meet vessel entry requirements, and file final voyage reports with the Maritime Administration (MARAD), which then posts them publicly.These steps show the government is attempting to maintain oversight. However, the waiver only suspends certain “navigation and vessel-inspection laws” under 46 U.S.C. § 501. It does not address — and cannot automatically override — other important bodies of federal law, particularly immigration regulations governing foreign crew members.

This is where the problem becomes serious. Most foreign mariners enter the United States under C-1/D or D crewman visas. These visas are intended for international voyages only. Federal immigration law is explicit: crewmen in this status “may not be employed in connection with domestic flights or movements of a vessel.” The law was written with the assumption that foreign vessels would engage primarily in international trade, not domestic shipping between U.S. ports. A Jones Act waiver may relax one statute, but it does not clearly authorize foreign crews to engage in purely domestic transportation under their existing immigration status.

This creates a gray area that has received far too little attention. During a time of heightened national security concerns — particularly with Operation Epic Fury underway against Iran — we should be increasing scrutiny of foreign personnel entering U.S. waters and ports, not potentially loosening controls. The risks are practical as well as legal. Immigration law imposes real obligations and penalties on both crew members and vessel operators. Overstays, unauthorized activities, and violations of crewman status carry civil and criminal consequences. Shipowners and charterers relying on this waiver may believe they are fully protected because CBP has approved the cargo movement. But satisfying one agency’s requirements does not necessarily satisfy every applicable federal statute.

Additionally, Congress recently strengthened the public reporting requirements attached to Jones Act waivers. Operators must now disclose the vessel name, flag state, ports of call, cargo details, and the specific national defense justification. MARAD is required to publish this information promptly. While transparency is generally positive, it also creates a public paper trail that could invite future congressional oversight, lawsuits, or enforcement actions if questions arise about immigration compliance.

This waiver is not occurring in a vacuum. America’s maritime industry has already been weakened over decades by high costs, regulatory burdens, and declining shipbuilding capacity. The Jones Act exists to prevent further erosion. Waiving it — even temporarily — sends a signal that domestic shipping rules can be set aside when convenient. If foreign-flag vessels and crews can now perform work traditionally reserved for Americans, there is a risk of accelerating the decline of our domestic merchant marine at the very time when great power competition and supply chain vulnerabilities make it more important than ever.

Supporters of the waiver argue it is narrowly tailored and time-limited. That may be true on paper. But policy often creates precedents. Once foreign vessels are allowed into domestic trade routes, pressure will build to extend or expand such waivers in the future. Shippers naturally prefer lower costs, and foreign operators will seek to expand their access to the lucrative U.S. domestic market and bypass visa requirements.

Before embracing this or future waivers, policymakers and industry participants should ask a disciplined set of questions: Exactly which laws have been waived? Which laws remain fully in force? Have we properly reconciled the conflict between navigation waivers and immigration restrictions? And most importantly, does this action strengthen or weaken America’s long-term maritime, immigration, and national security posture?

A temporary waiver may solve a short-term logistical problem. But if it creates uncertainty, invites legal challenges, or further weakens America’s domestic maritime capabilities or immigration enforcement capabilities, it could ultimately do more harm than good to national security. In an increasingly dangerous world, preserving the integrity and strength of the Jones Act should remain a high priority — not an afterthought.

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Nobody likes Kamala.

Kamala Calls to Oppose New Court Nominees “Before They Happen” (Turley)

Former Vice President Kamala Harris is rallying Democratic donors to oppose “additional justices” that might be nominated by President Donald Trump “before they happen.” Harris is heralding the fundraising by Josh Orton, president of the dark-money group “Demand Justice” (made infamous for its campaign to push Justice Stephen Breyer to resign). Demand Justice has pushed a radical agenda, including court packing. In a post on X, Harris highlighted a New York Times article on the “liberal organization” “preparing a multimillion–dollar effort to oppose potential Trump Supreme Court appointees before they happen.” Orton announced that “the project would cost $3 million to start and $15 million more if vacancies occurred.”


The group expressly cited the possibility of Justices Clarence Thomas (77) and Samuel Alito (76) retiring. Harris pushed people to contribute, posting that :“We must be clear eyed about what is at stake with the Supreme Court right now. We cannot allow Donald Trump to hand pick one, if not two, additional justices. The nation’s highest court must be stopped from becoming even more beholden to him.” Harris reportedly supports court packing and could use radical groups like Demand Justice to push through an expansion of the Court to produce an immediate liberal majority if Democrats take power. Harris is right about one thing. This is an clear-eyed, remorseless strategy on the left to remove an obstacle to an equally radical agenda.

Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.,mLikewise, Democratic strategist James Carville explained how this process of how the pack-to-power plan would work:

“I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen. A Democrat is going to be elected in 2028. You know that. I know that. The Democratic president is going to announce a special transition advisory committee on the reform of the Supreme Court. They’re going to recommend that the number of Supreme Court justices go from nine to 13. That’s going to happen, people.” The rhetoric for this renewed push for court packing and war chests on the left remains entirely unconnected to the actual record of conservatives on the Court, who have been repeatedly attacked by President Trump for voting against major cases by the Administration. From the tariffs decision to the expected birthright citizenship ruling, the conservative justices have routinely voted against the Administration.

Moreover, the vast majority of opinions on the Court remain unanimous or nearly unanimous. The ideological split on the Court is only present in relatively few cases each term. While those cases admittedly have significant impacts, this is not a rigidly or robotically divided court in most cases. Indeed, liberal justices have pushed back on the left calling for court packing or describing the Court as conservative or ideological. Yet, Harris continues to rally donors and voters with claims of an “activist” court.

What is most striking about the “clear-eyed” leadership of Harris is that her model for a new justice appears to be the only Biden nominee, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Both conservative and liberal justices have publicly criticized Jackson in past opinions. Jackson has lashed out at her colleagues while adopting analysis that would effectively gut areas like First Amendment jurisprudence. Many of us have found Jackson’s opinions to be unnerving and unhinged. However, liberal groups and Harris would like to replicate her approach to jurisprudence — suggesting not only a packed court but one populated by unrestrained jurists.

For her part, Justice Jackson shocked many by effectively endorsing Harris in her presidential run. Jackson publicly praised her nomination on ABC’s The View as “historic” and something that “gives a lot of people hope.” With the millions being raised and radical groups positioning themselves for a court-packing push, there are many who see a second Harris nomination as a cause for “hope.” For the rest of us, it is not just “clear-eyed” but unblinking dread at what could await this country if this strategy succeeds in the coming years.

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He’s Obama’s best friend. And the people he would sing about, all vote Trump.

Trump; Boycott Bruce Springsteen Over ‘Incurable’ TDS (JTN)

Springsteen has been a long-time critic of the president, stating in 2016 that the “republic is under siege by a moron,” and spoke out against Trump last year in Europe. President Donald Trump called for his supporters Thursday morning to boycott famed singer Bruce Springsteen and his concerts over the icon’s “incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.” The president’s call comes after Springsteen launched his new tour this week in Minneapolis, where he claimed: “The America that I love, the America … that has been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration.”


Springsteen has been a long-time critic of the president, stating in 2016 that the “republic is under siege by a moron,” and spoke out against Trump last year in Europe. He also released a song about the fatal shooting of two protesters earlier this year titled “Streets of Minneapolis.” “Bad, and very boring singer, Bruce Springsteen, who looks like a dried up prune who has suffered greatly from the work of a really bad plastic surgeon, has long had a horrible and incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, sometimes referred to as TDS,” Trump ranted in a post on Truth Social.

“The guy is a total loser who spews hate against a President who won a landslide election, including the popular vote, all seven swing states, and 86% of the counties across America,” he continued. “Under Sleepy Joe and the Dems, our country was dead, and now we have the ‘hottest’ country, by far, anywhere in the World. “MAGA should boycott his overpriced concerts, which suck,” he added. “Save your hard earned money. America is back!” Springsteen’s union, the American Federation of Musicians, slammed the president for “personally” attacking the singer, who it lauded as one of its “most celebrated members,” according to Deadline.

“Bruce Springsteen is not just a brilliant musician, he is a voice for working people, a symbol of American resilience, and an inspiration to millions in this country and around the world,” the union’s leaders said in a statement. “Musicians have the right to freedom of expression, and we stand in complete solidarity with Bruce and every member who uses their platform to speak their conscience. Local 802 and Local 47 will always defend that right.”

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“It’s hard to see how any European country will now be able and willing to trust the United States to come to its defense..”

The New York Times Made a Humiliating Error (Matt Margolis)

The New York Times set out Friday to embarrass President Donald Trump over his hardline stance on NATO. It wound up spectacularly backfiring on them. Several NATO nations have declined to join a U.S.-Israel military operation targeting Iran. Alliance members also refused Trump’s requests to deploy their forces to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, much to the chagrin of President Trump, who figures that if NATO allies won’t help the United States, then the alliance has become meaningless. So the paper ran a piece criticizing Trump’s threats to withdraw from the alliance, and the print edition’s headline asked a pointed question: “A North American Treaty Organization Without America?”


There’s just one problem. NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Times apparently forgot that detail, and, after being mocked on social media, quietly issued a correction through its communications team on X. Trump also joined in on the mocking. “The Failing New York Times, whose lack of credibility, and their constant Fake News attacks on your favorite President, ME, has caused its circulation to absolutely PLUMMET, referred to our severely weakened and extremely unreliable ‘partner,’ NATO, as the North American Treaty Organization,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Saturday morning. ‘The correct name is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – A very interesting mistake! The hiring and educational standards have gone way down at the NYT.”

He added, “Bring back, ‘ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT’ and, Make America Great Again!” Here’s what makes this especially painful for the Times. The article wasn’t some throwaway weekend filler. It was a deliberate piece designed to frame Trump as reckless for pushing back against an alliance his critics treat as sacred. “Since his re-election, President Trump has threatened to leave the NATO alliance several times. On Wednesday, he did it again, frustrated that European nations had refused to join the so-far indecisive United States-Israeli war against Iran,” the article began. “But the more he disparages NATO and threatens to abandon it, the more hollow it becomes.”

The alliance, built after World War II to deter the Soviet Union and keep the peace in Europe, is in crisis, with some questioning whether it can survive. The Mideast war has brought existing doubts about American commitment to the alliance to the fore, argued Ivo Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO. “It’s hard to see how any European country will now be able and willing to trust the United States to come to its defense,” he said. “Hope, perhaps. But they can’t count on it.” In his speech to the nation Wednesday night, Mr. Trump did not mention NATO, to the relief of allies. But a senior European official said he thought most Europeans did not believe that Article 5, the NATO commitment to collective defense, still had teeth.

The United States now seems part of the problem of world disorder, the official said, speaking anonymously given the sensitivity of the topic. The country is no longer the solution and the guarantor of last resort, he said. The whole premise depended on the Times looking like the serious, credentialed adults in the room. Instead, they demonstrated that they didn’t even know the true name of the organization they were defending — right there in the headline, in print, that no amount of corrections can erase.NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is scheduled to travel to Washington next week to try to smooth things over with Trump directly.

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And now they can all go after Todd Blanche..

DOJ Is Done Releasing Epstein Files (MN)

In a move sparking fresh skepticism among Americans demanding full accountability, the new acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has declared the Jeffrey Epstein files chapter closed. This came just hours after President Trump reassigned Pam Bondi, with Blanche – Trump’s former personal attorney – stepping in as acting AG and signaling it’s time to move on from the scandal. “The DOJ has now released ALL the files with respect to the Epstein saga,” Blanche stated on Fox News. He added, “I think that to the extent the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward.”

Jesse Watters pressed Blanche directly on whether he thought Bondi mishandled the Epstein files. Blanche responded, “First of all, I have never heard President Trump say that the Attorney General was, that anything that happened to her had anything to do with the Epstein files. So look, the Epstein files has been a saga that’s lasted for the entire for the past year.” He further defended the process, noting that Bondi and he “appeared in front of Congress voluntarily a couple weeks ago to answer any questions they had” and made documents available for review.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2039865199729983783

When Watters asked, “Who was Epstein spying for?” Blanche replied, “I don’t know that he was spying for anybody. Nobody’s ever said that.” He claimed there is “no evidence in the Epstein files” suggesting Epstein worked for a foreign country.

On the question of releasing names of men who abused girls, Blanche previously pushed back, asking “What does that mean? I don’t understand what that means.” He also stated plainly, “It’s not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein.”

https://twitter.com/Xx17965797N/status/2039969129382228244

Blanche doubled down on the administration’s position: “When Trump said let’s release the Epstein files… we did it.”The timing aligns with Trump’s decision to move Bondi to the private sector amid reported frustrations over her pace on key matters, including the Epstein files. Critics had highlighted her earlier claims of possessing a client list and distributing repetitive binders, followed by a DOJ memo stating no such list existed. Yet the assertion that “all files” are out faces immediate pushback. The DOJ reviewed roughly six million potentially responsive documents but released only about 3.5 million publicly, leaving millions still unreleased, redacted, or withheld.

This latest development deepens concerns over an Epstein cover up. FBI officers have raised alarms, with suspicions of document shredding after his death. Separately, a foreign hacker who cracked into the FBI’s Epstein files in 2023 was reportedly disgusted at the scale of child sexual abuse material uncovered, underscoring how much sensitive content may still remain hidden. Epstein survivor reactions and ongoing victim calls for transparency continue to highlight the stakes.

Blanche has remained guarded on specifics. His responses often circled back to congressional access rather than new public disclosures, while emphasizing a pivot to other fraud cases nationwide. The Epstein operation represented far more than one man’s crimes — it exposed a network that reached the highest levels of power, protected for years by institutional gatekeepers. Declaring the files “done” while millions of pages stay locked away does little to rebuild trust in a system long accused of shielding the elite. Americans who supported Trump’s mandate expect genuine sunlight on these matters, not a premature shutdown dressed as completion. The deep state’s habits of concealment die hard, and the demand for full disclosure — for the victims and the public’s right to know — will not fade quietly.

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Uomo Universalis?!

SpaceX IPO: Don’t Bet Against Elon Musk (Tim O’Brien)

Tesla isn’t just a car company, and SpaceX isn’t just a space exploration company. Elon Musk’s two marquee companies, and his many other ventures have a lot in common and complement each other by design. The common thread is that Musk wants to leave his mark on this world having changed civilization’s footprint. If he does that, he would be one of the most consequential humans who ever lived. To accomplish that, he had to create technologies that didn’t exist. Benchmark accomplishments have had to happen and still need to happen that, each one in its own right, is almost equivalent to the significance of Christopher Columbus discovering America.


In the course of creating self-driving, electric vehicles (EVs) at Tesla, Musk has been advancing robot and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. At SpaceX he’s led the way on space travel innovation in ways NASA once monopolized. He’s not doing these things just to say he did them. He’s got a vision, which he constantly talks about. He wants to colonize the Moon and Mars. He wants mankind to start to think bigger. His company Neuralink has created a brain-computer interface that translates neural signals into actions. The initial applications for this are for disabled people who can be aided by his devices which control computers and robotic arms with thought. As this technology evolves, it’s not hard to imagine how it can be used by able-bodied or disabled astronauts and human colonizers on other celestial bodies.

Musk’s satellite internet provider company Starlink is yet another capability that may become critical to realizing his vision in space. Already, the company operates thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit to give users on the ground wireless internet access. While rural users and people in Third World have been some of the early beneficiaries of the technology, its future applications are limited only by Musk’s imagination. Another little-known Musk company is called The Boring Company, which is a tunnel-building firm. Right now, that company’s technology and capabilities are used to more efficiently build affordable tunnels faster. In Las Vegas, you can go to the Convention Center Loop and see how Teslas are used underground to transport people rather than use rail cars.

It’s never a good idea to judge a tech company by the first uses of its technology or platform. If you did that when Amazon first started, you would have just seen that company as an online bookstore, which is what it was at first, but that was never founder Jeff Bezos’s full vision for the company. The same is true here. Long before anyone took him seriously on any of this, Musk started seriously looking at what it would take for him to realize his vision. He knew he had the money to get started, and he knew if his ventures were successful, the money to further invest in his ideas would come.

So he worked backward. He started with that wild vision, and then he followed the pathway back to our current reality. With that, he had a list of technologies and solutions that needed to be invented. He knew the kind of companies that needed to be started. And he knew what problems those companies needed to solve in their infancy before they could do the big stuff. To date, all the headlines around Tesla was its EV advantage, helping people and governments realize the benefits of electric vehicles. But already, it’s possible to see that this was just a baby step for Tesla. The autonomous vehicle development at the company made it as much a robot company as an automotive one. In March, Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX launched a joint venture to consolidate all phases of semiconductor production in the same plant. That venture is called Terafab.

Self-sufficiency To more fully appreciate what Musk is doing, a term comes to mind – self-sufficiency. Musk realized he couldn’t achieve his master vision if he were counting on others and other firms for key parts of the puzzle. He needed the self-sufficiency it will take to get to Mars. He needed it to generate all the sustainable energy you need from the sun, to use that energy to power satellite networks. He’s needed it to go about city-building, for underground tunnel construction, and to do all of this while creating your own chips, doing the work with your own people, your own robots, and using your own AI platforms.

Compatibility is just as important and is part of the self-sufficiency equation. Anyone who has worked in tech knows that once you have two separate companies, a good deal of time, effort and work is focused on helping two companies’ technologies to talk to each other and work with each other. Musk’s consolidated approach eliminates a lot of that. When you look at it that way, the tunnel company makes perfect sense. Underground tunnels enable you to create more controlled environments on planets and moons. They reduce certain risks associated with living in these harsh environments, and they make the notion of living there more sustainable and a pragmatic possibility.

My colleague Rick Moran wrote about the potential opportunities that could come from mining asteroids, and in the process, he touched on the planned SpaceX Initial Public Offering (IPO). He also mentioned Musk’s role in all of this, which cannot be overstated. At the moment, Musk is even looking at ways to build datacenters in space which would generate power to be used here on Earth. Once again, Musk focuses on solving a real problem on Earth that falls right in line with giving him the new tools he needs to achieve his goal of expanding the human race to the moon and beyond. Since Musk is who he is and has lived the life he’s lived, he’s learned not to hit people with his grand vision all at once. It’s too easy to laugh off a guy like that. He’s learned to reveal his master vision over time to provide context by emphasizing his near-term focus.

Henry Ford spent his entire life on the automobile, and society was never the same as a result. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates spent their active careers personalizing computer technology, and once again, society was never the same. Musk has always thought so much bigger than that, that he’s had to learn to rein himself in so that he tends to talk about each step in its own time. NASA’s Artemis mission to the moon, along with increasing disclosures centered on that SpaceX IPO are making it more obvious that Musk’s disparate ventures are starting to converge. It’s becoming more apparent what he’s ultimately trying to do, and it’s not just talk.

https://twitter.com/defense_civil25/status/2039482814031167526

NASA has already selected the SpaceX Human Landing System (HLS) for Artemis as the means to land people on the moon. SpaceX’s Raptor engines and reusable rocket technology may also come to play.

https://twitter.com/theinformant_x/status/1986890516043337983

Not coincidentally, SpaceX this week took a major first step towards its IPO which will generate the cash SpaceX will need to further realize its potential and Musk’s vision. According to Bloomberg, SpaceX’s IPO could be the largest public offering ever after filing with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). The newswire reported that SpaceX could raise up to $75 billion through the IPO.

Reuters has reported that while the company is valued at $1.25 trillion right now, Musk and SpaceX are seeking a valuation of $1.8 trillion through the IPO. While no official date has been disclosed, reports are to expect it in June. If you’ve only been casually paying attention to Musk and his various business ventures because they may have seemed too far out for you to get your head around, now may be the time to start paying closer attention. Even if all you have is a 401(k) or an IRA account, chances are pretty good that a part of your own nest egg will depend on Musk to achieve some of those goals of his.

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Mar 272026
 


John Falter The Windy City 1946


Ukraine War Aid May Have Been Funneled to Biden Campaign, DNC (Matt Margolis)
Ukraine Government Schemed To Funnel War Aid To Biden Campaign (ZH)
Epic Fury Is a Favor for the World. Step Up and Deal With It (Sarah Anderson)
Largest Fuel Price Crisis In History Is Approaching – Dmitriev (TASS)
Trump’s Psychological Smackdown of Iran — and What Will Happen Next (Pinsker)
Susan Kokinda Outlines the Shift in Strategic Alliances (CTH)
Kevin O’Leary Tells Everyone to ‘Chillax’ Over Iran (Matt Margolis)
Elon Musk Seeks To Remove Delaware Judge From His Cases (ZH)
Are We Safe Anymore? (Ben Shapiro)
“Don’t Be Evil”: Google’s Motto Becomes a Jury Verdict in Calfornia (Turley)
Mike Flynn Reaches $1.25m Settlement With Feds Over Russia Collusion Hoax (JTN)
The Economists Who Got It Right ((John Stossel)
Armageddon, Iran War & Why Peace is Impossible (Martin Armstrong)
Zelensky: Trump Pressuring Him To Give Up On Donbas And End War Soon
Has Trump Let Netanyahu Destroy America? (Paul Craig Roberts)

 


 

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2036815427624444336?s=20 https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2037134972583371094?s=20 https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2036973911397515653?s=20

 


 

 


 


My theory (and it’s mine) goes further than Margolis: The DNC specifically started and still maintains the Ukraine war as an instrument to finance its domestic activities. The amount of money that flows there is just about endless, and Europe will pay even more than the US. Major agency: USAID. It is perfect. And to think we were focusing on the corruption on the Ukraine side.

Ukraine War Aid May Have Been Funneled to Biden Campaign, DNC (Matt Margolis)

Have you ever wondered why Joe Biden and the Democrats were so insistent that Congress send endless billions to Ukraine? Well, new declassified intel drops a bombshell that raises some troubling questions about it, and it stinks to high heaven. In 2022, U.S. spy agencies discovered Ukrainian officials were plotting to divert hundreds of millions in American taxpayer cash meant for clean energy projects to Joe Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.


“Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently learned of the intercepts and has asked the U.S. Agency for International Development officials to scour for records to see if the plot actually was carried out and whether a criminal referral should be made to the FBI,” Just the News reports. “Gabbard’s team has not found substantive evidence the intercepted allegations were thoroughly investigated during the Biden administration, and the communications are not believed to be tied to Russian disinformation efforts, officials said.” Gee, I wonder why the Biden administration didn’t investigate the funneling of millions of dollars to the Biden campaign?

“The Ukrainian Government and unspecified U.S. Government personnel, through USAID in Kyiv, reportedly developed a plan that would provide hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund an infrastructure project for Ukraine that would be used as a cover to send approximately 90% of funds allocated to the DNC to fund Joe Biden’s reelection campaign,” the report reads. USAID? You don’t say. Another piece of the puzzle comes into place.Remember when Democrats were freaking out about Donald Trump closing USAID last year? They claimed USAID was saving lives. I mean, sure, if by “saving lives” you mean “funneling millions in cash to Joe Biden and the Democratic Party,” sure.

“They were confident the project would be funded initially, even though at some time in the future the project would be disapproved as unnecessary,” the report continued. “At this time, the money would already be allocated and impossible to return or use for a different purpose.” The money was reportedly laundered through two American subcontractors as part of the scheme to divert the money to Democrat campaigns, making the source untraceable. “The plan included details of how subcontractors would be funded through U.S. companies so that how the funds were spent and allocated would be difficult to track.” What a system, right? Some shady contracts no one could audit, and poof — your Ukraine aid becomes Biden bucks. And the Biden administration made no effort to investigate, so it’s unclear how much money may have been diverted to Biden’s campaign or the DNC.

A lot of things are starting to make sense, aren’t they? Biden failed to stop Russia from invading Ukraine. Biden seemed unable to end the war, and, based on this new information, he had every financial incentive to let it continue. That’s why it always felt like he was demanding blank checks for Ukraine and pushing us closer to deeper involvement. Trump, however, has always had peace as his main objective and has actually been trying to negotiate an actual peace deal.

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“The cover-to-transfer pipeline was engineered for maximum opacity.” [..] .. most of the U.S. funding would be diverted to Joe Biden’s election campaign without the ability to track where exactly the funds came from..”

Ukraine Government Schemed To Funnel War Aid To Biden Campaign (ZH)

According to a newly declassified intelligence report, U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted communications from Ukrainian government officials back in 2022 discussing a scheme to siphon off hundreds of millions in American taxpayer dollars. The funds, earmarked for clean energy projects in the war-torn country, were allegedly redirected to the United States to benefit Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The report, obtained by Just the News, summarizes raw intercepts gathered by U.S. spy agencies in late 2022. Officials familiar with the material say the communications are not believed to be tied to Russian disinformation efforts. The declassified summary is very specific.


“The Ukrainian Government and unspecified U.S. Government personnel, through USAID in Kyiv, reportedly developed a plan that would provide hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to fund an infrastructure project for Ukraine that would be used as a cover to send approximately 90% of funds allocated to the DNC to fund Joe Biden’s reelection campaign,” the document states. sThe mechanics described are textbook money-laundering architecture. “The plan included details of how subcontractors would be funded through U.S. companies so that how the funds were spent and allocated would be difficult to track,” the report explains. Two American subcontractors were named in the raw intercepts as conduits for funneling money toward Democratic coffers, though their identities remain redacted in the declassified version.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Ukraine became by far the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Russia’s invasion in February 2022 — the first time a European nation held that distinction since the Marshall Plan. As of December 31, 2025, Congress had made available $188 billion in Ukraine-related spending, with $164 billion flowing from just five pieces of legislation. The last of those bills passed in April 2024 — while Biden was actively campaigning for a second term.

What makes the alleged scheme particularly audacious is the built-in exit strategy. “They were confident the project would be funded initially, even though at some time in the future the project would be disapproved as unnecessary. At this time, the money would already be allocated and impossible to return or use for a different purpose,” the report added. In other words, the design assumed the fraud would eventually be discovered – and didn’t care. By then, the money would be gone and untraceable.

The cover-to-transfer pipeline was engineered for maximum opacity. “Additionally, contracts would be executed that would be difficult to verify. In this manner, most of the U.S. funding would be diverted to Joe Biden’s election campaign without the ability to track where exactly the funds came from,” the report read.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently learned of the intercepts and directed USAID officials to search agency records for evidence that the plot was actually carried out and to evaluate whether a criminal referral to the FBI is warranted. Perhaps the most disturbing find so far is that there is no substantive evidence that anyone during the Biden years made a serious effort to investigate what U.S. intelligence had intercepted. Officials reviewing the files noted a lack of investigative curiosity about allegations of foreign election interference.

Since President Trump took office, no new legislation authorizing additional spending for Ukraine has passed Congress. But now we need to find out how much of the funds for Ukraine were diverted to Biden’s campaign or the DNC, and whether the lack of an investigation reflects willful negligence, deliberate burial, or a conspiracy.

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“Like I said, very little of our energy comes through the Strait of Hormuz. It’s the world that has a great interest in that, so they should step up and deal with it..”

Epic Fury Is a Favor for the World. Step Up and Deal With It (Sarah Anderson)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke out on Operation Epic Fury twice on Thursday, first at Donald Trump’s Cabinet meeting and again before boarding a plane to head to Paris for the G7 Foreign Affairs Ministerial, where he’ll meet with world leaders to talk about security concerns, specifically the situation in the Middle East and the Russia-Ukraine War. He’s made one thing clear: Iran was not, is not, and will not be a United States-only problem. It’s a world problem. And it’s time for other countries to step up. In what many on social media are calling a “mic drop” moment, Rubio started by laying out the most important issue: Iran has been at war with the United States for 47 years, killing and attacking United States citizens.


“And other presidents had an opportunity to do something about it, and they all warned about how Iran was dangerous, but they refused to act,” he said. “And this president’s not someone that’s going to refuse to act. He’s not going to leave a danger like this in place. He’s going to address it, and that is what he is doing.” He then went on to explain that the people running Iran are “religious fanatics” and there was really no other way to stop them. “They’re attacking embassies and hotels,” he said. “Imagine what these people would do if they had a nuclear weapon. That is an unacceptable risk for the world,” he said, adding, “By the way, the president’s not just doing a favor to the United States and to our people. This is for the world. He defined very clearly on the first night of this operation what the goal was.”

Before boarding his plane on Thursday afternoon, a reporter asked him specifically if he was going to ask the G7 to help with the Strait of Hormuz. While he wouldn’t get into the specifics, Rubio again pointed out that it’s in these other countries’ best interests to get involved because many of them get more of their oil from the Strait of Hormuz than the United States does. Another reporter asked about Trump criticizing NATO earlier on Thursday, and Rubio pointed out something that’s sort of been a theme of his and Trump’s foreign policy for the past year: The U.S. is tired of having to step in and help everyone else out without getting anything in return):

I think he just made an observation, and the observation is that the United States is constantly being asked to help in a war, and we have more than any other country in the world, on a war that’s happening in another continent, in Ukraine. But when the U.S. had a need, he didn’t get positive responses. So, right now he’s just making the observation that — I think it was a couple of the leaders in Europe who said that this was not Europe’s war. Well, Ukraine is not America’s war, and yet we’ve contributed more to that fight than any other country in the world. So, it’ll be something to examine that the President will have to take into account down the road.

A reporter later asked if he was worried about the reception he might get at the G7 meeting and whether he was afraid the other world leaders might not be “happy” with him. Rubio basically laughed in the face of the press. “Well, again, I’m not there to make them happy. I get along with all of them on a personal level, and we work with those governments very carefully, but the people I’m interested in making happy are the people of the United States,” he said. “That’s who I work for. I don’t work for France or Germany or Japan. These are all good people. We’re going to have great meetings…But I work for the people of the United States.”

Finally, someone asked if he plans to ask his G7 counterparts for help with Iran. “Well, it’s not help for us. Like I said, very little of our energy comes through the Strait of Hormuz. It’s the world that has a great interest in that, so they should step up and deal with it,” he said. Boom. I don’t have much else to add — I just love hearing real leadership in action. It’s something our country has been lacking for a long, long time. We aren’t the world’s babysitters, and it’s time some of these countries, especially in Europe, step up and do their fair share in this and numerous other matters.

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“Without a doubt, Russia is in the strongest position because we are a major producer not only of oil and gas, but also of fertilizers.”

Largest Fuel Price Crisis In History Is Approaching – Dmitriev (TASS)

The most powerful crisis in fuel prices is approaching, which will lead to economic problems in the EU and the United Kingdom, presidential special representative for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries and CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev told reporters. “Discussions are now underway that it (oil — TASS) could cost $150 or even $200 per barrel. And why is this important? Because we have a number of very clear forecasts that we have also voiced regarding the European Union and the United Kingdom. They are very simple. We see that the most powerful energy crisis in the history of humanity is approaching. Neither Europe nor the UK is prepared for it at all. Moreover, they have shot themselves in the foot by abandoning Russian energy resources,” Dmitriev said.


He added that rising oil prices are positive for Russia, and Europe will beg for supplies. “Without a doubt, what is happening is generally positive for Russia, because our oil and gas reserves and our diversified supplies worldwide, including with a focus on BRICS countries, undoubtedly strengthen Russia’s position on global markets. Russia will certainly receive many requests from Europe and from the UK to obtain Russian energy resources and will decide whether to provide them or not. But our prediction is very clear — that Europe and the UK will beg for Russian energy resources, and Russia will make the appropriate decisions or choose not to,” Dmitriev said.

At the same time, Russia is in the strongest position on the global energy and fertilizer markets, Dmitriev told reporters. “Without a doubt, Russia is in the strongest position because we are a major producer not only of oil and gas, but also of fertilizers. And now a crisis is beginning in the fertilizers and agricultural sector markets. Therefore, Russia is currently in a very strong position,” Dmitriev said.

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“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle”

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Trump’s Psychological Smackdown of Iran — and What Will Happen Next (Pinsker)

If you could distill PR and marketing to a single sentence, it’d be, “What do I gotta say so you’ll do what I want?” Meaning, it’s 100% outcome based: Theories are fun, but reality is the ultimate litmus test. Which is why, to build a PR war plan, we only need three ingredients:
• An honest, accurate assessment of where we are today.
• An honest, accurate assessment of what motivates our target audience.
• A clear picture of where we want to be tomorrow (i.e., what “victory” looks like).


That’s it. All the rest is simply a roadmap between today and tomorrow (sprinkled with tactics, measurables, and mile markers). If you know where you are and where you’d like to be, everything else falls into place. “Know the enemy and know yourself” — Sun Tzu would’ve rocked at PR. The Iraq War introduced the phrase “shock and awe” into the public lexicon, relying on the PR power of big booming bombs. Undoubtedly, the psychological impact was significant; how could it not be? Whereas the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war in Iran was surely shocking and aweing to many Iranian mullahs (especially all the dead ones), it probably pales in comparison to either Iraq war. Iran, after all, is nearly four times larger geographically, and in Iraq, more air forces were running more bombing raids.

Stands to reason that more bombs in a smaller area would be more shocking and awe-inspiring. Plus, today’s U.S. and Israeli bombs and missiles are increasingly targeted, “smart,” and ultra-precise. In the Persian Gulf War, barely 9% of our bombs were smart bombs. It’s unclear what percent of U.S. and Israeli bombs are currently “smart,” but it’s certainly a much larger number. It’s also unclear what that means: Are ultra-precise, target-specific bombs and missiles MORE psychologically devastating? Or do larger quantities of randomly-landing bombs and missiles deliver a heavier psychological blow? These are relevant questions because war is a tool — a means to an end. And the endpoint we’re trying to reach is for the Iranian regime to capitulate, stand down, and cede to President Donald Trump’s demands.

Like Carl von Clausewitz said, “War is politics by other means.” Both Bush presidencies relied purely on military hardware to crack the enemy’s resolve. Their strategy was straightforward, loud, and booming — just like the bombs themselves. But one of the things that differentiates President Trump from his predecessors is his outside-the-box thinking. More than any other president in the past 100 years, he’s willing to try new and novel ways to slice the Gordian knot. Both Bushes were creatures of the status quo, but the current president marches to his own drummer. From tariffs to Greenland to “Governor Trudeau” to the Gulf of America, he’s unusually gifted at weaponizing psychological PR tactics.

The English used to be the best at it. From intercepting and publicizing Napoleon’s love letters to their Andrew Dice Clay-esque nursery rhymes about Adolf Hitler’s unfortunate deformities, they were so good at it, Joseph Stalin said at the 1943 Tehran(!) Conference that World War II would be won with “British brains, American steel, and Soviet Blood.” That was then. Today, U.S. intelligence and Israeli ingenuity have supplanted the Brits at psychological warfare. America’s capabilities are unrivaled anywhere in the world, and Israel’s winning streak of innovative psychological victories — perhaps most notably, its “Grim Beeper” operation that decapitated Hezbollah — keeps growing.

According to some reports, it was American intelligence that learned of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s secret meeting with Iranian leaders; others credit Israel. Either way, the combination of Mossad + IDF + CIA + U.S. Armed Forces has rattled Iran to its core.In fact, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Israelis are actually chatting with high-ranking Iranians:The Journal reviewed the contents of one call between a senior Iranian police commander and an agent of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign-intelligence service. “Can you hear me?” a Mossad agent can be heard, speaking in Farsi. “We know everything about you. You are on our blacklist, and we have all the information about you.” “OK,” the commander said in the recording. “I called to warn you in advance that you should stand with your people’s side,” the Mossad agent said. “And if you will not do that, your destiny will be as your leader. Do you hear me?”

“Brother, I swear on the Quran, I’m not your enemy,” the commander said. “I’m a dead man already. Just please come help us.”

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“.. the U.K., EU, and NATO are absent and increasingly irrelevant.”

Susan Kokinda Outlines the Shift in Strategic Alliances (CTH)

The rebranded Lyndon LaRouche PAC has another good outline on the new strategic alliances assembled by President Trump as the ongoing conflict with Iran continues. Susan Kokinda reviews how the United Kingdom and Europe have been sidelined as President Trump directly negotiates with key stakeholders in the middle east and Asia. Kokinda correctly notes the messaging from Russia indicates a strategic awareness that old systems are fracturing and the potential for new strategic alliances is rising.


“Susan Kokinda argues President Trump has opened a new diplomatic space to de-escalate the Iran conflict by working through a regional roster—Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Gulf States, and back channels into Iran—while the U.K., EU, and NATO are absent and increasingly irrelevant. Citing reporting that ministers met in Riyadh and that Egypt, Turkey, and Oman carried messages, she says this “Board of Peace” architecture is isolating Iran and weakening its proxies, pointing to Lebanon’s move against Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority’s condemnation of Iran, and Hamas considering disarmament. Kokinda links Europe’s exclusion to self-inflicted energy weakness from Green and anti-Russia policies, noting rushed LNG moves and a delayed Russian oil ban vote. She concludes Ukraine’s outlook darkens as Europe and Britain lack leverage, highlighting Zelenskyy’s scramble for support in London and Washington.”


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“Donald Trump is finally eliminating the threat posed by Iran once and for all after decades of inaction from presidents from both parties..”

Kevin O’Leary Tells Everyone to ‘Chillax’ Over Iran (Matt Margolis)

Kevin O’Leary has a message for everyone losing their minds over Operation Epic Fury and its potential economic fallout: chillax! The Shark Tank investor and business mogul appeared on Fox News to push back against the growing chorus of voices warning that U.S. military action against Iran is about to tank the economy. He began by framing the situation inside Iran in stark human terms, arguing that the status quo — for Iranians — is already unsustainable. “Everybody in the region wants to get Iran on board for peace and growth, and even the people there, they want the same thing. You’ve got 250,000 people making sixty million miserable. That’s not a long-term solution either,” O’Leary said. “That’s just in Iran. That’s why you’ve got to take the long view, and the long view here could be just sixty days.”


O’Leary wasn’t buying it — and he had the numbers to back up his claim. “Remember, to affect the US economy, you need oil. I’m talking about recession talk, or hurting the economy, or damaging small business. You need oil at over $93 for three months. We’re only one-third into it,” O’Leary said. “So, everybody, chillax and let this thing play out. There’s a really big opportunity here, a huge one, and everybody gets the upside, including all our trading partners.” That’s the core of his argument. If there’s anything that can trigger a recession, it’s high oil prices, but they haven’t hit the threshold that historically triggers real damage to the U.S. economy. Heck, prices aren’t nearly as bad as they were under Biden, so there’s not much reason to press the panic button.

In fact, the panic, in his view, is premature at best and wildly overblown at worst. One-third of the way through a potential sixty-day window, the doomsday crowd is jumping the gun. But O’Leary didn’t stop at defending the economics of the moment. He zoomed out and argued that a successful resolution could trigger a massive wave of trade deals across the Middle East and beyond. “We work this out, we’re selling stuff to Saudi Arabia, we’re selling it to the UAE, we’re selling it to Asia, we’re selling it to Japan,” he said. That’s a lot of markets. And O’Leary’s point is that critics are so focused on the short-term noise that they’re completely missing the long-term prize. For O’Leary, this whole moment needs to be looked at differently. “This is a huge opportunity,” he said. “I just see it for what it is. It’s history being made.”

History is being made. While the panickers on the left flood cable news with recession warnings, O’Leary is looking at an entirely different map that spells huge economic opportunity for us. So, don’t listen to the left. They want this to be an economic and political disaster for President Donald Trump, and they’ll never stop pretending that it is.

Editor’s Note: Donald Trump is finally eliminating the threat posed by Iran once and for all after decades of inaction from presidents from both parties.

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Just like Trump. The law is only what you want it to be.

Elon Musk Seeks To Remove Delaware Judge From His Cases (ZH)

Lawyers for Elon Musk and Tesla are seeking to have a Delaware judge removed from cases involving them, arguing her neutrality could be questioned after her LinkedIn account “liked” a post about Musk losing a recent trial in California, according to Financial Times. Musk’s firm said the interaction with the “inflammatory” post created “a perception of bias against Mr. Musk in these cases, recusal is necessary and warranted”. The post referred to a federal case where a jury concluded Musk had defrauded Twitter investors, a decision that could cost him billions if it stands. A consultant who worked with the plaintiffs even took a jab at Musk and his legal team in that same thread.


Judge Kathaleen McCormick responded that she didn’t realize the post had been liked until LinkedIn alerted her. She stated: “I either did not click the ‘support’ icon at all, or I did so accidentally. I do not believe that I did it accidentally,” suggesting uncertainty about how it happened. FT writes that the situation is another chapter in Musk’s strained relationship with Delaware’s courts. McCormick has previously ruled against him, including decisions to void Tesla’s massive $56bn compensation package—though it was later reinstated on appeal despite agreement with some of her criticisms.

Musk has long expressed distrust of the state’s judiciary, even relocating Tesla’s incorporation to Texas. During a prior dispute with Twitter, he told jurors: “We were unlikely to win the case in Delaware because the judge [McCormick] was extremely biased against me.” McCormick still oversees a separate Tesla-related case tied to shareholder claims about excessive director pay. She said she will consider stepping aside and also noted that she lost access to her LinkedIn account after the incident. The controversy reflects wider concerns about judges’ activity on social media. In 2025, another Delaware judge stepped away from LinkedIn after facing backlash over his posts.

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The fear of fear?

Are We Safe Anymore? (Ben Shapiro)

It’s time to ask some serious questions. As spring travel ramps up, a record 171 million Americans are expected to take to the skies. Airports will be crowded, security lines long, and for many travelers, a fundamental question will linger: Are we safe? That question extends far beyond the airport terminal. It surfaces at the southern border, in major American cities, and in the wake of tragedies like the killing of 18-year-old Sheridan Gorman in Chicago. Gorman, a student at Loyola University, was shot and killed while walking with friends along a pier in Rogers Park. According to prosecutors, the group encountered a man hiding near a lighthouse. As they fled, he allegedly opened fire, striking Gorman in the back. Authorities say the suspect, a Venezuelan national, had previously entered the United States illegally and had prior contact with law enforcement before being released.


The case has reignited debate over immigration enforcement, sanctuary policies and public safety. Critics argue that policies limiting cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities can have serious consequences. Chicago’s sanctuary status, they note, restricts such coordination. In this instance, the suspect had reportedly been arrested on suspicion of shoplifting months earlier but was not turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Supporters of stricter enforcement contend that more consistent cooperation could prevent repeat offenses. They argue that when individuals who are in the country unlawfully are released after prior arrests, the system has failed to mitigate potential risks.

Others, however, caution against drawing broad conclusions from a single case. Some local officials have emphasized the complexity of crime and the need to avoid politicizing individual tragedies. Chicago leaders have also reiterated longstanding concerns about overreliance on incarceration, arguing that deeper social issues contribute to violence. Still, the divide is stark. On one side are those who believe enforcement — whether at the border or within cities — must be strengthened to ensure public safety. On the other are those who argue that enforcement alone cannot address the root causes of crime and that policy responses must be broader in scope.

Meanwhile, the political backdrop adds another layer of tension. A funding dispute affecting the Department of Homeland Security has raised concerns about staffing and operations, including airport security. Reports of long TSA lines have only heightened public anxiety, even as federal officials work to manage the strain. Even traditionally critical voices have acknowledged that personnel shifts, including assistance from other federal agencies, have helped ease some delays. But for many Americans, the broader question remains unresolved.

Public safety — whether in neighborhoods, at the border or in transit hubs — continues to be one of the most powerful forces shaping political opinion. Incidents like the killing of Gorman bring that concern into sharp focus, forcing policymakers and the public alike to confront difficult questions about accountability, enforcement and priorities. As millions prepare to board planes in the coming weeks, those questions won’t be easily dismissed. And for voters, they may prove decisive.

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“For now, it will be left to the courts, not these companies, “to do the right thing” on social media liability.”

“Don’t Be Evil”: Google’s Motto Becomes a Jury Verdict in Calfornia (Turley)

Google once had a motto: “Don’t be evil.” In its reorganization in 2015, the motto was changed to “Do the right thing.” According to a California jury this week, neither motto stuck.In a historic verdict against both Google and Meta, a jury found that the companies maliciously designed their social media products to addict children, including the plaintiff, who was known only as Kaley or KGM. The jury heard testimony of efforts to “target” young users and feed an addiction to social media and YouTube. The jury awarded Kaley $3 million in compensatory damages divided between Meta (70%) and Google (30%). It then awarded another $3 million in punitive damages.


Those damages are nothing to companies worth billions. However, the verdict was like a dinner gong for plaintiffs lawyers. There are already thousands of cases filed against social media companies. That wave is about to become a tsunami. That is particularly the case after companies like TikTok and Snap settled before trial. In addition to this civil verdict, the New Mexico Attorney General secured a $375 million verdict the same week against Meta under the state’s consumer protection laws.But it will be a very long time before these companies cut a check. The California case is rife with compelling appellate issues that will take years to work out. Indeed, what makes this case so intriguing — and even more tempting for plaintiffs’ lawyers — is that it was actually not the strongest case.

The 17-year-old in California started using social media at age 6. Kaley had a troubled childhood with problems at home and bullying at school. She experienced depression, anxiety, and body dysmorphia that could be linked to other aspects of her life. Her use of social media was extreme: all-consuming and all-day. Meta argued that it does prohibit users under 13 from using any of its platforms. YouTube offers different platforms for children, like YouTube Kids.However, Kaley created dozens of accounts to drive her “likes” and increase her virtual interactions.The trial showed how complex such cases are in isolating what was the most substantial factor in Kaley’s harmful childhood. The case stretched the concepts of factual and legal causation to the breaking point.

I have taught torts for over 30 years and, in my view, the causation in this case is dubious. Even with tobacco, there was protracted litigation over other sources of cancer. However, that litigation was relatively straightforward in comparison to cases seeking to assign liability for depression, anxiety, or body dysmorphia. Children are bombarded with social and media imagery and messages from myriad sources. At the same time, many (like Kaley) come from homes with troubling or abusive elements.The companies have previously asserted immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934. These lawyers found a creative way to evade that immunity by claiming they are challenging the design of “the product” of social media companies, not suing over the specific content that appears on their sites.

That may prove too clever by half for some judges. Product liability law has previously been used to circumvent constitutional or legal barriers, as in the unsuccessful product liability and nuisance cases against gun manufacturers. Section 230 is designed to protect internet companies that serve as platforms for third-party postings. Here, the lawyers are arguing that you have immunity for what is posted, but your system itself is a product that is subject to a lawsuit. In finding negligence and a failure to warn, the jury clearly agreed with the complaint that the design of the sites was maliciously intended to create “a compulsion to engage with those products nonstop,” feeding “harmful and depressive content.” However, it is a difficult line between marketing and targeting.

It is not clear what warning these social media companies should offer beyond what they have previously posted. More importantly, it is unclear whether such warnings would have any impact on users.If Meta warned that social media can be addictive or harmful, would it have deterred Kaley? Her mother already tried to block her from such usage.There is no question that social media has a hold on children and adults because they like it. It allows them to create, observe, and communicate with an unprecedented range of people and sites. The question is whether this compulsive conduct reflects an intentional effort to addict minors or a product that is irresistible for many. The only certainty after these verdicts is that there will be more of them. As soon as this verdict was read, the “likes” from plaintiffs’ lawyers flooded in across social media. Those trials will continue despite great uncertainty about the very foundation of any liability.

For now, it will be left to the courts, not these companies, “to do the right thing” on social media liability.

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Yeah, he feels a tad better. But it’s nothing to do with justice. Lock up those responsible! They walk free now as the state pays their fines. IT IS Insane!

Mike Flynn Reaches $1.25m Settlement With Feds Over Russia Collusion Hoax (JTN)

Retired General Mike Flynn on Wednesday settled his lawsuit accusing the federal government of malicious prosecution during the now-discredited Russia collusion case and will receive $1.25 million in compensation. Flynn, who was forced to resign as President Donald Trump’s first national security advisor after a stellar career as a three-star general, overseeing the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Just the News he felt vindicated by the settlement after enduring what he called “the Russian Hoax FBI lawfare against me.” “Nothing can fully compensate for the hell that my family and I have endured over these many years—the relentless attacks, the destruction of reputations, the financial ruin, and the profound personal toll inflicted upon us all,” he said.


“No amount of money or formal resolution can erase the pain caused by a prosecution that should never have been brought.” “This ordeal stemmed from partisan government officials in a coordinated effort to pursue an innocent man as part of a broader campaign to undermine President Trump and his administration. It was a relentless, partisan pursuit that weaponized federal law enforcement in a brazen and unjust manner,” he said. Flynn sued the DOJ for $50 million in 2023 for malicious and politicized prosecution by Special Prosecutor Robert Muel Flynn thanked the Trump DOJ for entering into a settlement.

“Yet this settlement goes far in demonstrating that the current Department of Justice—under the leadership of President Trump, Attorney General Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Blanche, and other dedicated departmental leaders—is committed to bringing accountability for the bad acts of those partisan actors. It marks a meaningful step toward righting a profound wrong,” he said. “There should never again be such a brazen attempt to weaponize federal law enforcement against political opponents or innocent citizens. It is essential that we remain guardians of the rule of law. A huge part of that guardianship is accountability—holding those who abuse power to answer for their actions.”

Flynn’s lawyer, Jesse Binnall, said Flynn “is an American hero and he and his family should have never been put through this hell. That they had the courage to stand firm and fight back against the extremists in the Mueller investigation should be a testament to the strength of American character. “In this agreement, the Justice Department is doing more than simply cutting a check, they are admitting that General Flynn was seriously wronged,” he added.

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“Hayek and Mises were right. The socialist planners are wrong.”

The Economists Who Got It Right ((John Stossel)

Politicians say they can “make the economy work better.” I once believed they could. But years of reporting taught me that politicians’ attempts to “fix” the economy usually make things worse. Twenty years ago, Republicans and Democrats helped create the Great Recession by telling government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy more peoples’ mortgages because, as President George W. Bush put it, “Owning a home is a part of (the American) dream.” But that guarantee inspired lenders to approve dubious mortgages, given to riskier borrowers.Housing prices shot up in a government-created bubble. When many people stopped making mortgage payments and the housing bubble burst, we got the Great Recession.


It’s just one example of what Austrian economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises wrote about years ago. In “The Fatal Conceit,” Hayek writes, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” Mises’ “Human Action” points out that all economics start with individuals making purposeful choices. That “human action” determines prices, and markets coordinate the most efficient use of resources. But the media believed the socialists. The New Republic wrote: “the major task of our civilization is … to organize our great economic organs.” On the contrary, wrote Hayek: “To follow socialist morality would destroy much of present humankind and impoverish much of the rest.”

He was right. Every socialist government, everywhere, has failed. They fail because no political leader can ever know as much as millions of individuals doing our own thing. “That’s the idea that Mises’ introduced to the world,” says Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute. “Central planning doesn’t work because everybody has different ideas for themselves, wants to do different things with their property. If you take away their ability to do what they want, it eventually causes great impoverishment.”I assumed belief in socialism would die when the Soviet Union did — but bizarrely, it hasn’t. Recently, young people helped elect socialist mayors in Seattle and New York City. They promise rent control and government-run grocery stores.

“We don’t have to look any further than Mises to find an excellent explanation of why that doesn’t work,” says McMaken in my new video. Unfortunately, Mises and Hayek were never as popular as economists pushing central planning and government spending.”There’s a big advantage that the people who are in favor of inflation and more government regulation have. Everyone in government wants that same thing,” says McMaken. “‘Like to spend? Like to regulate the economy? Boy, have we got an economic theory for you.’ (That) of course became instantly popular with people in government.”And popular with the public. “Because the public wants government to spend on them as well!” says McMaken.

“Here was an economic theory telling them the government can give you boatloads of welfare nonstop forever and there’s no downside. … The reality is that there is a downside: recessions, unemployment, inflation and falling real wages.” We got that in the 1970s, after years of spending on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” programs. In total, American taxpayers have spent $30 trillion in the name of reducing poverty. Politicians said government agencies would spend the money efficiently. They rarely did, and the deficit spending contributed to 15% inflation.

“People then saw, ‘Everything we’ve been told for the last 30 years about managing the economy isn’t really true,'” says McMaken. “When you start to inflate the money supply, it sows the seeds for a future economic collapse. That is the cause of everything we’ve seen over the last century. It is Mises’ work that explains why the Great Depression happened … We have to study the economic side of things because if we don’t … we can’t see the ways that the state is ripping us off.” Hayek and Mises were right. The socialist planners are wrong. Books like “The Fatal Conceit”, “The Road to Serfdom” and “Human Action,” although I couldn’t get through all of it, are well worth reading today.

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Armstrong lost faith in Trump.

Armageddon, Iran War & Why Peace is Impossible (Martin Armstrong)

The Neocons running the Trump administration, as always, are a complete failure when it comes to thinking strategically about Iran or even the Middle East in general. Emails we receive from industry colleagues often mix statements with reality, and uncertainty about the future of a conflict is causing historic supply disruptions and upending industry planning. If Trump declares victory and pulls back the U.S. military, Iran would then say that it owns the Strait and declare victory. Rumors have circulated that Iran would then impose a tax on any ship passing through the Strait, perhaps resulting in a resumption of this crisis.


The overall U.S. and Israeli strategic objectives for Iran remain questionable. What I do know is that there was a private phone call in which Netanyahu manipulated Trump, stressing that he could “make history” by toppling the Ayatollah regime and taking revenge for Iranian efforts to assassinate him, which was central in Trump’s decision to strike when he did.The classic Neocon claim that America can fight a markedly limited war, and engage in airplane targetry, has never worked even once, and it only demonstrates their dishonest lack of strategy to sell these endless wars. Claiming that naval protection of ships is absurd, for that would prove an impossible challenge and leave major vulnerabilities for the US Navy. That is no more invincible than Israel’s Iron Dome.

Trump’s threats to target Iran’s energy sector over the Strait of Hormuz would have only escalated tensions if Iran had not reopened the Strait in 48 hours. He had to back down and then claim he was in talks with Iran, which they instantly denied. I have some info that Trump has gone to Pakistan to present a 15-point peace proposal, which may sidestep Netanyahu. However, I have sources who have also said IRAN will no longer deal with Steve Witkoff, or Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, both of whom are Jewish, and clearly a very serious affront to Iran and a major appearance of a conflict of interest. They have to be the worst possible people to negotiate with Iran, given the hatred that Netanyahu has publicly made clear about Iran.

Furthermore, the claims that the United States won the war against Iran within the first hour of military action and that the conflict quickly tilted in favor of the USA were also bravado. However, President Trump also said that American forces would remain deployed until the mission was complete. This has been proven to be just boastfulness and fake news. They also claimed that they destroyed most of Iran’s missile capacity. Yet, Iran launched waves of missiles at Israel on Tuesday, a day after U.S. President Trump said there had been “very good and productive” talks aiming at halting the war unleashed and unprovoked by the U.S. and Israel.

History is not going to come down in Trump’s favor. A year ago, in late March 2025, the U.S. Intelligence Community assessed that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” However, in a congressional hearing about that assessment, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also said, “Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.” Trump instead used Netanyahu’s bogus claims. They never had a missile that could reach the United States, Europe, yes, but not the United States.

That calls into question the Neocon/Netanyahu lies to start this war, just as the Weapons of Mass Destruction never existed in Iraq. They need to lie and create an immediate threat to circumvent Congress, and the last “war” was World War II. Everything else has been an abuse of executive power instigated by the Neocons. Trump is sending in troops, and Iran replied – come closer.

The Western press propaganda shows a ballistic missile being intercepted by Israel. What they fail to explain is that an Iranian Ballistic Missile costs $300,000 or less, while the Israeli interceptors cost $2-$3 million each. Israel typically launches at least 3 interceptors per Iranian missile, and some have said up to 6 interceptors have been fired. A Sling interceptor costs about $1 million each, and an Iron Dome interceptor costs $50,000 each. Iran is bleeding the West dry, and even Taiwan has expressed concern that the US is using its entire stockpile of cruise missiles, meaning they cannot be defended.

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See this in the light of the opening article. How he is financed.

Zelensky: Trump Pressuring Him To Give Up On Donbas And End War Soon

With the Ukraine war now marching into its fifth year, and with the next weather-driven “fighting season” underway, a frustrated Ukrainian President Volydymyr Zelensky says the Trump administration is pressuring him to give up the Donbas region in exchange for US security guarantees. He also claims that Russia is offering to stop providing intelligence to Iran if the United States stops giving intel to Ukraine. Last week, we reported that trilateral talks about the Ukraine war had been suspended, thanks to the United States now having to focus on executing Trump’s war on Iran with Israel. However, in an interview with Reuters, Zelensky said that Trump is now pressuring Ukraine to cave on its biggest demand just to wipe the war off his to-do list.


In his 2024 campaign, Trump told voters that he’d have the war settled “before I even arrive at the Oval Office.” “The Middle East definitely has an impact on President Trump, and I think on his next steps. President Trump, unfortunately, in my opinion, still chooses a strategy to put more pressure on the Ukrainian side,” he told Reuters. The principal thrust of that pressure: Ukraine giving up on its demand that the eastern Donbas region be returned to Ukraine, in exchange for US security guarantees for what’s left of the Ukraine after the shooting stops. Comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the great majority of the Donbas is already under Russian military control.


In addition to all of Luhansk and most of Donetsk, the Russian army has secured most of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts that lie to Donbas’ southwes “The Americans are prepared to finalize these guarantees at a high level once Ukraine is ready to withdraw from Donbas,” Zelensky said, adding that such a move would leave Ukraine and Europe vulnerable to Russian aggression, because ceding Donbas would also cede key defensive terrain. Zelensky also bemoaned what he says is an insufficient supply of interceptor missiles for Patriot air defense systems. “We were not stopped from deliveries. I’m very grateful to President Trump, and to his team, but this supply of Patriot missiles is not as large as we need.”

That gripe comes as both US and Israeli interceptor missile supplies are being rapidly diminished in responding to wave after wave of Iranian attacks — weeks after White House boasts that Tehran’s ballistic missile capability had been “functionally destroyed.” Meanwhile, Ukraine has apparently come up with an alternative air defense tactic straight out of a video game: mZelensky also claimed that his military intelligence had acquired “irrefutable” evidence that Russia is sharing intelligence with Iran, as the country continues to defend itself in the war launched by Israel and the United States on Feb. 28. What’s more, he claimed Putin is using that as a bargaining chip to persuade Trump to acknowledge Russian sovereignty over Donbas:

“I have reports from our intelligence services showing that Russia is doing this and saying: ‘I will not pass on intelligence to Iran if America stops passing intelligence to Ukraine.’ Isn’t that blackmail? Absolutely.” This latest stirring of the pot by Zelensky comes on the heels of Russia launching the largest 24-hour aerial attack since the Feb 2022 Russian invasion. Counting both drones and cruise missiles, 979 warheads poured into Ukrainian airspace, with about half of them coming in a very rare broad-daylight blitz on Tuesday. While we can’t verify its authenticity, this video seemingly shows that Trump isn’t the only one who’s unenthusiastic about Zelensky’s pipe dream of retaking the Donbas:

https://twitter.com/Panchenko_X/status/2036810754758754336

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” As the Democrat Sodom & Gomorrah Tower of Babel regime that succeeds Trump returns to office, it will be Netanyahu who destroyed America.”

What, not Hillary? Obama?

Has Trump Let Netanyahu Destroy America? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Donald Trump’s reelection as President was a hopeful development for Americans. Obama and Biden had dismantled America with open borders and DEI. Millions of people were walking into the country claiming health, food, and housing benefits. Merit was cast aside, and a system of race and gender privileges had taken the place of merit and equality under law. White heterosexual males had become second class citizens. Trump’s win was convincing. He found himself with a majority of the Supreme Court. Republicans had the House and Senate, although by narrow margins. AI and data centers were invigorating the economy. Trump pardoned the wrongfully convicted Jan 6 “insurrectionists.” The Justice Department was pursuing the Democrat officials who had weaponized law and committed felonies. The border was being closed. It looked like America would be put back on its feet.


But before the chance at renewal could be set in stone, Netanyahu and the Zionist Lobby intervened. Trump was moved from MAGA to MIGA. Trump gave American approval to the Israeli genocide of Palestine. He fortified the genocide with American money, weapons, and diplomatic cover. He attacked Iran for Israel twice. The first time after Israel’s attempt failed to destroy Iranian uranium enrichment capability used only for peaceful purposes, not for weapons. The second Trump attack on Iran was as Netanyahu’s partner in a sneak military attack on Iran, thus initiating a major war that has not turned out to be the cake walk Trump promised.

Currently the war is going against Israeli-America. Iran has demonstrated staying power and that its missiles can penetrate Israeli-American defenses. US air and naval bases in the Persian Gulf have been badly damaged, some apparently put out of action, and oil sheikdoms that hosted the American bases have had their energy facilities destroyed. Iran has demonstrated that Israeli-America cannot protect Dimona, the site of Israel’s nuclear facilities and weapons. The Gulf of Hormuz is selectively open according to Iran’s decision. Iran has demonstrated that its missiles can hit Diego Garcia and Crete, resulting in the removal of US carriers long distances from the conflict, thus reducing the effectiveness of range-limited fighter aircraft. The insecurity that the war has brought to gas and oil facilities has raised energy prices, binging inflation in its wake. On top of it all, it appears that, confident of quick victory, Netanyahu and Trump initiated a major war unprepared and whose interceptor missiles have run out, but Iran’s attack missiles have not.

Trump does not know what to do. His ultimatum to Iran expired last Monday, but Trump extended it 5 days. There is speculation that either he is creating conditions for declaring victory and going home or is stalling for time to assemble sufficient forces for an invasion, if not of the Iranian vast land mass then of Kharg Island. In other words, Trump is weighing up his choices: to declare victory and leave or to go in deeper. There are reports that Trump has ordered US Marines and paratroops to be sent to bases in the area. If so, it remains to be seen if Iran will strike the troops in their bases before they can invade. The number of American soldiers being sent is not sufficient for a land invasion force. If the intent is to occupy Kharg Island, how do the soldiers arrive alive? If they do arrive, what are they supposed to do, and how do they get out alive?

Considering the total failure of Pentagon planning for the war, it seems we are looking at more unaddressed questions. Meanwhile, the domestic agenda has fallen apart. The prosecutions of New York Attorney General Leticia James, James Comey, and the coterie of Democrat officials who framed Trump supporters and did their best to imprison and dispossess Donald Trump has gone by the wayside. It seems that the Democrats will not be held accountable for weaponizing law, thus leaving weaponized law unchallenged for future use.

With Trump’s attention directed elsewhere by Netanyahu, Minneapolis and Minnesota were able to defeat Trump’s deportation attempt. Moreover the Democrats refused to fund the Department of Homeland Security, thus closing down TSA airport security. Lines to board flights, thanks to Democrats, became four hours long. People missed their flights and connections and confusion reigned. What did Trump do? Did he point to the Democrats? No. Trump pulled ICE off of deportations and assigned them to take the place of TSA. In other words, Trump pulled the Democrats’ bacon out of the fire for them.

It is difficult to imagine a mistake of this magnitude if Trump was not preoccupied by the war Netanyahu, “America’s Greatest Friend,” roped him into. Having been roped into Netanyahu’s war for Greater Israel, Trump is trapped between a rock and a hard place. Thinking the war would be over in three days, no planning was done and Iranian capability was dramatically underestimated. Midterm US elections are on the scene. Trump has stupidly fractured his MAGA movement. He cannot survive politically with a war defeat. How does he obtain a victory? Will nuclear weapons be his and Netanyahu’s alternative to defeat by Iran?

Trump, so determined to demonstrate his support for Israel, this time faces impeachment and conviction and subsequent prosecution if Democrats regain control of Congress. If so, Donald Trump becomes the fall guy for Netanyahu. Trump will be blamed, but it is Netanyahu and Israel’s powerful Zionist Lobby that rules America who took Trump to war. As the Democrat Sodom & Gomorrah Tower of Babel regime that succeeds Trump returns to office, it will be Netanyahu who destroyed America.

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Mar 222026
 


Edward Hopper Hotel window 1955


Trump: US “Close to Meeting Objectives” and “Considering Winding Down.” (CTH)
US “Degrades” Threats To Hormuz Traffic As Iran Missile Strike Fails (ZH)
World’s Largest Gas Field Hit: How Close Is A Global Energy Crisis? (RT)
The Shadow War Against President Trump (Josh Hammer)
Robert Mueller Dies. Trump’s Reaction Was VERY Trump. (Matt Margolis)
Letitia James and Transgenderism Wreck America This Badly (O’Brien)
Report Reveals That Democrats Are Plotting Against Chuck Schumer (Matt Margolis)
BOMBSHELL Bill Clinton/Epstein Info Drops (MN)
Chicago Ramps Up Taxes and Debt in Familiar Death Spiral (Turley)
Elon Musk Offers Lifeline To TSA Agents As Dems Hold Paychecks Hostage (ZH)
The Democrats’ Strategy on the SAVE Act Is Imploding (Matt Margolis)
What Is It With The Fickle Europeans? (Victor Davis Hanson)
Battle for Hungary: How the EU Plans to Defeat Viktor Orban (RT)

 


 

https://twitter.com/PeriklesGREAT/status/2035037879546659070?s=20 https://twitter.com/Sassafrass_84/status/2035058582173990988?s=20 https://twitter.com/VictoriaSask/status/2035154376172478740?s=20

 


 


Contradictory messages?!

Trump: US “Close to Meeting Objectives” and “Considering Winding Down.” (CTH)

President Trump released the following message via Truth Social:

“We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran: (1) Completely degrading Iranian Missile Capability, Launchers, and everything else pertaining to them. (2) Destroying Iran’s Defense Industrial Base. (3) Eliminating their Navy and Air Force, including Anti Aircraft Weaponry. (4) Never allowing Iran to get even close to Nuclear Capability, and always being in a position where the U.S.A. can quickly and powerfully react to such a situation, should it take place. (5) Protecting, at the highest level, our Middle Eastern Allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others. The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — The United States does not! If asked, we will help these Countries in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn’t be necessary once Iran’s threat is eradicated. Importantly, it will be an easy Military Operation for them. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

~President DONALD J. TRUMP

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“Vastly Expands Threat Radius”

US “Degrades” Threats To Hormuz Traffic As Iran Missile Strike Fails (ZH)

President Trump’s late in the day Friday comments proclaiming “I think we’ve won” suggested he might be readying the announcement of an offramp or at least de-escalation, but that speculation has proven premature as things definitely escalated overnight. For apparently the second time of Operation Epic Fury, Iran’s flagship enrichment site at Natanz nuclear facility has come under attack. Iran’s nuclear agency confirmed the strike but is keeping details deliberately vague, saying nothing about how it was carried out or what weapons were used. What it did emphasize, however, is that “no nuclear radiation” was released.


Natanz – alongside the Isfahan nuclear facilities – sits at the core of Tehran’s nuclear program, long viewed as a prime target in the US-Israel campaign to cripple Iran’s ability to produce an atomic bomb – though it remains that even Iran’s current wartime leadership is saying it has no intent to produce a nuclear weapon. The AP says Natanz was earlier struck at least once at the opening of the conflict, writing: “The facility, Iran’s main uranium enrichment site, was hit in the first week of the war and several buildings appeared damaged, according to satellite images.” All of this, along with steady the overnight and early morning heavy bombing of Tehran marks a definite escalation despite Trump having floated the idea of “winding down” operations in the late Friday comments.

Iran Vastly Expands Threat Radius: Diego Garcia
Another huge escalation and development: British officials are staying tight-lipped after an attempted Iranian strike on the key Indian Ocean air base on Friday reportedly failed, offering no details on what exactly happened. But this risks pulling in the UK, which has appeared reluctant to directly participate in Trump’s operation. Britain has generally condemned “Iran’s reckless attacks.” Just hours after Iran targeted the Diego Garcia base, Britain confirmed US bombers can continue using UK facilities – including the same base – for operations aimed at stopping Iranian attacks on shipping in Hormuz.

“Iran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint U.S.-U.K. military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean, according to multiple U.S. officials,” The Wall Street Journal details. “Neither of the missiles hit the base, but the move marked Iran’s first operational use of IRBMs and a significant attempt to reach far beyond the Middle East and threaten US-UK interests.”

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“Rising LNG prices would be particularly bad news for Europe, which has become heavily reliant on LNG in light of its rejection of Russian pipeline gas. [..] The US, as a LNG exporter, would benefit from rising prices.

World’s Largest Gas Field Hit: How Close Is A Global Energy Crisis? (RT)

Although the natural gas reservoir housing South Pars is the world’s largest, Iran’s ability to export gas is limited by sanctions. Therefore, damage to the field or related facilities is mainly a domestic issue. The majority of the gas extracted from South Pars goes to the domestic market, although some is exported to Iraq and Turkiye. Israel struck the South Pars field and the infrastructure that services it at the nearby Asaluyeh processing hub on March 18. Iran retaliated with strikes on Saudi Arabia, the UAE and, most critically, Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest LNG export hub.


More concerning globally is not the South Pars strike but the retaliatory attack against the LNG hub at Ras Laffan. This is where the gas from the North Field, which is the Qatari side of the same reservoir that South Pars taps, is processed. The North Field – also called the North Dome – is responsible for about 20% of global LNG supply, practically all of which is processed at Ras Laffan. Qatar has admitted that the attacks caused “significant damage.”

While the complex had already been largely shut since early March due to the war, analysts at Wood Mackenzie now warn that damage to the hub could delay any restart and “fundamentally reshape the global LNG outlook. Rising LNG prices would be particularly bad news for Europe, which has become heavily reliant on LNG in light of its rejection of Russian pipeline gas. Other major consumers of LNG include Japan, Turkiye, and India. The US, as a LNG exporter, would benefit from rising prices.

The damage could be long term
Importantly, unlike many other leading gas fields, the geologically unified reservoir feeding South Pars and the North Field is only at 10% depletion, meaning 90% of the gas is still there. The significance of this cannot be overstated. The gas from the world’s largest reservoir – and one expected to play a critical role in meeting future global demand – may not be extractable if the infrastructure on both sides is destroyed. This becomes an issue not just of near-term prices but the state of structural physical supply. Any sustained disruption to Qatari production would reverberate across the global gas market. Losing even part of Qatari output for an extended period would tighten supply, drive prices higher, and leave import dependent economies scrambling for alternatives.

Unfortunately, alternatives may be scarce. The LNG market was tight even before the war. US LNG export capacity was already near its limits, meaning the country s ability to offset lost Persian Gulf supply is constrained. Meanwhile, repairing damaged LNG facilities is a highly complex and costly undertaking that could take years. Projects implemented in the Ras Laffan Industrial City cost $70 billion to build, according to Qatar News Agency. So even if a ceasefire is reached today, the damage already sustained could reverberate for years.

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“Kent resigned this week in flamboyant fashion, rationalizing his stunt with hyper-conspiratorial, antisemitic rhetoric better suited for a Code Pink rally than government letterhead.”

The Shadow War Against President Trump (Josh Hammer)

The joint American-Israeli military operation against the Iranian regime is now three weeks old, but there is another war — a more silent one — raging here on the home front. President Donald Trump’s second administration is facing a highly coordinated shadow war — one waged both by some influential outside voices on the right and, more dangerously, by their subversive allies within Trump’s very own government.


If this campaign is not confronted and decisively defeated, the result will be calamitous: a second Trump term that drifts into lame-duck status not due to a voter backlash but because of an insurrection from within. What this column has previously referred to as “Operation Divide MAGA” has reached fever pitch. And Trump, to his great credit, has begun to settle all the MAGA family business. But an even more concerted effort is needed to clean out the Augean Stables once and for all.

First, let’s take a step back.
In any healthy political coalition or movement, debate is inevitable and often desirable. But what we have seen from certain high-profile podcasters, such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, is nothing less than a full-scale assault on Trump and his agenda. These provocateurs first outed themselves last summer, when they all but accused Trump of covering up a global (Mossad-tied?) pedophile ring over his Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files. But above all, the podcasters’ subversion has focused on foreign policy — most recently, on Iran and Operation Epic Fury.

Trump is a conservative nationalist. His foreign policy is rooted in confidence and “peace through strength”-style deterrence. Yet Carlson, Kelly and their fellow travelers have blasted the Iran conflict as everything from “evil” (Carlson) to “clearly Israel’s war” (Kelly). The not-so-dynamic duo is thus accusing the man they quite literally campaigned for in 2024 of engaging in heinous acts and of being the unwitting dupe of a foreign government.

True, Carlson and Kelly do not actually speak for the MAGA base: A brand-new poll from J.L. Partners shows that 83% of Republican voters support Epic Fury. Moreover, Republicans agree with Trump over Carlson and Kelly on foreign policy by a whopping 84%-6% margin. But still: Their platforms are enormous. When Carlson, Kelly and their allies consistently excoriate the leading priorities of the administration they purport to support, the effect is Republican voter confusion, resentment and depression as we head toward November in a midterm election year.

Even worse, the shadow war subversives are not merely shouting into their microphones from the rafters. They have allies inside the administration, with whom they are all but assuredly coordinating, engaging in outright sabotage against the one man — the president of the United States — who was actually elected to wield the “executive Power” of the federal government and serve as commander in chief. The most alarming developments are emerging from within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. A former Democratic congresswoman with a pro-Moscow slant once seen as a heterodox ally, Gabbard now oversees an environment that increasingly bears the markings of an anti-MAGA coup.

Take Gabbard’s recent rehiring of Dan Caldwell. Dismissed last year by his (former longtime friend) Secretary of War Pete Hegseth amid allegations of leaking, Caldwell is now back in a highly sensitive role. Leaks of this nature are not bureaucratic slip-ups; they are direct assaults on national security and the integrity of the constitutional chain of command. It is difficult to interpret the isolationist-leaning Gabbard’s move as anything other than a direct shot across the bow at Hegseth — and, by extension, the boss Hegseth has so passionately defended since Epic Fury began, Trump.

Consider also Joe Kent, who until recently served under Gabbard as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent resigned this week in flamboyant fashion, rationalizing his stunt with hyper-conspiratorial, antisemitic rhetoric better suited for a Code Pink rally than government letterhead. Within hours after tendering his resignation, Kent announced he would be joining — who else? — Carlson to tell his story. An alleged serial leaker, Kent is now under FBI investigation for spilling national security secrets. Unsurprisingly, Iranian regime propaganda television gobbled up the interview and regurgitated it for an impressionable English-speaking audience.

That Kent came to Carlson’s platform to try to get ahead of the FBI investigation revelation is not coincidence. It is all orchestrated. After being fired by Hegseth last year, Caldwell similarly ran to Carlson to tell his side of the story. Moreover, one of Caldwell’s higher-ranking colleagues at ODNI, Will Ruger, shares Caldwell’s professional background in the isolationist Koch network. Surprise! The White House Presidential Personnel Office, formerly directed by ex-Rand Paul staffer Sergio Gor (since shipped halfway around the world to India), has allowed in individuals across the defense, intelligence and national security spaces that are functionally anti-MAGA. Perhaps this was done for self-serving reasons. Perhaps Gor and PPO were under the understanding that MAGA is something other than what the boss says it is.

Frankly, it does not really matter. Because the boss has now spoken. He’s cast Carlson and Kelly out of MAGA in emphatic fashion. And after Kent’s obnoxious resignation stunt, Trump said of those (like Kent) who do not believe Iran is a threat to the United States: “We don’t want those people.” Translation: Get out. The message could not possibly be clearer.

But is Trump’s PPO listening? Is Gabbard’s ODNI fully in line? Gabbard, in Senate testimony this week, couldn’t bring herself to agree with her boss’s assessment that Iran posed an “imminent threat” prior to the launch of Epic Fury. It’s time for the president to team up with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and other arch-loyalists, such as Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and clean house. The internal anti-MAGA sabotage must be ended, and the external anti-MAGA sabotage must be combated. The success of the remainder of Trump’s second term hangs in the balance.

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Mueller is defined by his stuttering performance in the hearing afterwards. Hard to believe that actually happened.

Robert Mueller Dies. Trump’s Reaction Was VERY Trump. (Matt Margolis)

Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who spent nearly two years investigating the Russian collusion hoax in the 2016 presidential election, died Friday night at the age of 81. His family confirmed the news Saturday in a brief statement asking for privacy. “With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away,” his family said in a statement Saturday. “His family asks that their privacy be respected.” Mueller’s death was not unexpected. In August 2025, his family disclosed that he had been battling Parkinson’s disease since 2021. He served as FBI director from 2001 to 2013, making him the second-longest-serving director in the bureau’s history after J. Edgar Hoover.


The New York Times has more: “A button-down, lockjawed rock-ribbed exemplar of a vanishing caste, the liberal Republican, Mr. Mueller became the F.B.I. director just a week before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He went on to impose the most significant structural and cultural changes in the history of the F.B.I., seeking to transform the bureau into a 21st-century intelligence service that could protect both national security and civil liberties. And his counterterrorism agents were the first to blow the whistle on abuses at the secret prisons that the C.I.A. had established after 9/11 to detain, interrogate and, in some cases, torture terrorism suspects.

But he may be best remembered for what he did after he left the F.B.I., when he was summoned to investigate a sitting president. The Justice Department named Mr. Mueller special counsel on May 17, 2017, eight days after Mr. Trump dismissed the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, who was investigating the interactions between the Trump campaign and a Russian covert operation to help him win the White House. The president’s reason for dismissing Mr. Comey was no secret. The next day, in the Oval Office, he told the Russia foreign minister and the Russian ambassador: “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy.” Mr. Trump continued: “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

It gets worse from there, so I’ll move on. Trump wasted no time responding to the news. Within hours of the news breaking, he posted on Truth Social: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”Mueller’s investigation was a constant sore spot for Trump, who was ultimately vindicated when Mueller failed to find the evidence of collusion that Democrats were counting on. Trump called the final Mueller report a “complete and total exoneration” after it was released.

Despite the Mueller report’s findings, Hillary Clinton has long claimed that the 2016 election was stolen from her. “You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you,” Clinton said back in 2019. Democrats and the mainstream media have all incorrectly implied or claimed that the Mueller report confirmed that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

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“James wants to bully doctors to keep providing ‘gender care’ treatments ..”

Letitia James and Transgenderism Wreck America This Badly (O’Brien)

If you need a reminder of just how much Joe Biden wrecked the country while he was in the White House, here is yet another example. A Biden judicial appointee in Oregon ruled against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on issues tied to controversial transgender medical treatments, and that’s just the start. While this would not come as a surprise to any thinking person, the more you peel the layers back on this story, the more it affirms just how bad Biden was for America. Judge Mustafa Kasubhai decided that in December, when the HHS issued a declaration that dubbed certain gender procedures and treatments unsafe and ineffective for minors, the federal agency went too far. These treatments included puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and sex-change bottom and top surgeries.


Kasubhai said that Kennedy did not follow the appropriate administrative processes when HHS made the declaration. HHS reportedly informed doctors and health providers that if they provide these treatments to minors, the administration might exclude them from such federal health programs as Medicare and Medicaid. What this latest ruling does is give certain relief to doctors and providers who want to continue to making bank by destroying the lives of children through such life-altering treatments. Here is where it gets worse. Celebrating the judge’s decision was a familiar name and face.

“Today’s win breaks through the noise and gives some needed clarity to patients, families, and providers,” said New York’s attorney general Letitia James, who served as lead counsel on the lawsuit. “Health care services for transgender young people remain legal, and the federal government cannot intimidate or punish the providers who offer them.” Not coincidentally, in another case we’ll get to in a bit, she is the one who is trying to intimidate a hospital that wants to shut its ‘gender care’ operation down, and she is trying to bully the hospital into keeping it going.

In this case, Judge Kasubhai said with regard to Robert Kennedy’s declaration, “The notion that ‘I will go forward and issue a declaration and see if we can get away with it’ is not a principle of governance that adheres to the overarching commitment to a democratic republic that requires the rule of law to be regarded and respected and honored as a sacred.” In this case, 21 states and the District of Columbia filed suit against HHS, Kennedy, and HHS’s inspector general over the declaration. The plaintiffs claimed that Kennedy’s declaration sought to coerce doctors to stop providing those controversial treatments for minors, while doing an end-around on certain legal requirements for when an administration seeks to institute a policy change.

One thing the suit contended that the Trump administration did not do and should have done was to give the public notice and a chance to comment before material changes were made to federal health policy. What HHS actually did was make its declaration after consideration of a peer-reviewed report and its conclusions. The report recommended that behavioral therapy be the first option provided to gender-confused minors. HHS called for doctors to give this option the best possible chance and more time to work, rather than choosing the chemical and surgical route right from the start. Separately, in February, I reported on the fallout from a $2 million award to a victim of “gender affirming care” treatments in yet another case.

Right after that judgment, the American Medical Association (AMA) renounced gender surgeries on children, and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) did the same. While the Trump administration and the real world have clarity on the risks to children of gender mutilation and treatments, the Democrats are dead set against fixing some massive problems they created on gender issues. As with anything where the left is involved, it only gets even more complicated at this point.

James wants to bully doctors to keep providing ‘gender care’ treatments
In yet another case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has had to step in and warn James that it might be compelled to defend New York hospital NYU Langone Health if she decides to push the healthcare provider to reverse its decision to stop providing certain “gender care procedures” for minors. That’s right. A hospital wants to stop messing with kids’ lives through “gender care,” and James wants to prevent that. This has led to a showdown between the federal government and James. The DOJ sent a letter to James on March 18, telling her that she cannot use her state’s anti-discrimination law to force NYU Langone to provide what Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche described as “sex-rejecting procedures” for minors.

 


 

During Kasubhai’s confirmation hearings in 2023, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and John Kennedy (R-La.) shredded the leftist judge with his own words. Cruz described the judge’s record as “so far out of the mainstream” that all of the Judiciary Committee’s questions were directed toward him. The Republicans then focused on a ruling Kasubhai handed down that invalidated Eugene, Ore.’s citywide curfew during the 2020 riots over George Floyd’s death.

Kennedy zeroed in on Kasubhai’s own courtroom rules, which instructed attorneys and others in his courtroom to provide their “pronouns and honorifics,” and to use them when referring to others in the courtroom. As Rush Limbaugh would say, “for those of you in Rio Linda,” honorifics are the titles we use as a preface to our names – things like Mr., Ms., etc. During Kasubhai’s confirmation hearing, all the red flags were there. Marxism, wokism, racism, “equity,” the whole bit. Even his rather bizarre poetry and writings. After watching this video from the confirmation hearings, it’s no wonder Kasubhai is doing his level best to carry out the Biden manifesto, which, though unsaid, amounts to one simple objective – destroy America as we know it.

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“.. a batch of senators dubbed “Fight Club” who are particularly incensed by Schumer’s approach to the midterms.”

Report Reveals That Democrats Are Plotting Against Chuck Schumer (Matt Margolis)

Based on the polls, Republicans may be sweating the midterms right about now, but Democrats are dealing with something uglier — a full-blown leadership crisis hiding in plain sight on Capitol Hill. The Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell on Friday: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is facing a level of internal revolt that has some members of his own caucus quietly counting heads to see if they can push him out. Schumer’s political future has been less than certain ever since he voted to keep the government open a year ago. His poll numbers tanked, and rumors flew of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) challenging him when he’s up for reelection in 2028. There have also been reports that Democrats were looking to oust Schumer from leadership, and it looks like that hasn’t died down.


According to this latest report, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) sat down to dinner with progressive activists at a French restaurant in Georgetown last month, during which Murphy told the group that some lawmakers had already done informal vote counts to gauge whether enough support existed to remove Schumer from leadership. Murphy added that Schumer had the votes to survive — for now. Murphy is among a group of senators and top advisers who have grown increasingly dissatisfied with Schumer’s leadership, according to people familiar with the conversations. That group includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has been initiating conversations with other senators to gauge frustrations with Schumer, some of the people said.

Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota has also been active in discussions about her frustrations with Schumer, and her advisers have spoken with other Senate staff about different scenarios to challenge Schumer’s leadership, other people said. In an interview, Murphy said he is frequently asked about Senate leadership, but he doesn’t have a count of who would vote to remove Schumer and doesn’t recall mentioning one. “Could someone infer from that that someone was keeping a count? Maybe, but that’s not what I meant,” Murphy said. “I meant that he has the support of the caucus.” He said he still supports Schumer.

Despite Murphy’s attempts to downplay the situation, more than four dozen interviews with Democratic senators, candidates, current and former aides, activists, and advisers point to the same conclusion: concern about Schumer’s leadership is widespread and growing. Apparently, routine meetings between Democratic chiefs of staff on Senate business that keep veering off script into conversations about Schumer and what can be done to pressure him to step aside after November’s elections.

Murphy, Warren and Smith are part of a batch of senators dubbed “Fight Club” who are particularly incensed by Schumer’s approach to the midterms. This group of progressives believes that Schumer favors centrist candidates in some key races and is disregarding the enthusiasm a new crop of outsiders is stoking. The senators maintain a Fight Club chat on Signal where they have discussed how to counter Schumer’s preferred candidates, according to people familiar with the conversations. The existence of the group was reported earlier by the New York Times. And there’s a money angle, too.

Donor frustration with Schumer has already been hurting a super PAC aligned with the Democratic leader, donors and consultants said. Senate Majority PAC was outraised by the Republican leadership-aligned super PAC last year; the Democratic super PAC started 2026 with $36 million in the bank and $12.4 million in debt, while its GOP counterpart had $100 million and no debt, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Schumer, for his part, remains defiant, but the report suggests that internal pressure is still building. The activist wing of the party is still sour over the government funding fights and apparently doesn’t think that he’s standing up to the Trump administration adequately. The GOP certainly has its midterm headaches. But division among the Senate Democrats is something that it could exploit.

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Not sure I understand this or what would make it relevant. What did the alter ego do that the ego did not?

BOMBSHELL Bill Clinton/Epstein Info Drops (MN)

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna appeared on Bill Maher’s show and confirmed what the Epstein document dumps have long hinted at: the former president wasn’t just flying on the Lolita Express — he was operating under an entirely different identity in the files. This revelation lands as the House Oversight Committee presses forward with its investigation, following the Justice Department’s release of millions of pages under the Epstein Files Transparency Act signed by President Trump. Lawmakers and victims are still pushing for the remaining 2.5 million documents that remain hidden or heavily redacted, according to recent reporting.

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2035218752015397090?s=20


Bill Clinton’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein runs deep and documented. The former president flew on Epstein’s private jet multiple times in the early 2000s, often for Clinton Foundation-related trips, and maintained social ties with both Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell long after red flags emerged. He has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes or visits to the island. Luna laid it out plainly during the interview. When Maher questioned bringing Hillary in, asking, “You have Hillary Clinton come in? This is like three gazillion pages of men behaving badly. And the witness you want is a woman?” Luna shot back: “She was issued a bipartisan subpoena, meaning the Democrats wanted her in, too. Cause Bill Clinton was all over those logs.”

She continued: “We can get at the whole Jeffrey Epstein ties because I actually talked to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton specifically about that, presenting them with the actual document that showed that he had a COMPLETE OTHER ALIAS.” Maher responded: “You get a lot of information that we don’t all have.” Luna replied: “I’m happy to come back.” Maher closed: “We want you. I appreciate it.” What was Bill Clinton doing with another alias? The question hangs heavy. In the files of a convicted child sex trafficker, a second identity isn’t a coincidence — it’s a red flag screaming for answers.This isn’t the first time the Clintons have scrambled to contain the Epstein fallout. Bill Clinton’s chief of staff raged after half-naked photos of the former president surfaced in the latest Epstein drop.

Back in 2024, reports also revealed Clinton allegedly threatened Vanity Fair to kill articles about his “good friend” Jeffrey Epstein. The pattern is clear: suppression, denial, and now — an alias. While the Clintons sat for depositions earlier this year, insisting they saw nothing wrong, Luna’s committee work keeps peeling back layers the deep state hoped would stay buried. The American people are watching. The files don’t lie, and neither do the subpoenas. Every new detail like this alias proves why the fight for real accountability matters — because when the powerful hide behind fake names in pedophile networks, it’s not just scandal. It’s a warning that the old guard still thinks the rules don’t apply.

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I smell a bailout.

Chicago Ramps Up Taxes and Debt in Familiar Death Spiral (Turley)

As a Chicago native, I have watched my home city unravel under the policies of Mayor Brandon Johnson and the ultra-left city council. Controlled by groups like the teachers’ union, the city has continued to spend lavishly on progressive causes and bloated pension funds while destroying its own economy. The city has a more than $1 billion budget gap, with a roughly $150 million deficit. Roughly, two-fifths of the budget is now going toward debt service and pension costs. The city council is following a familiar death spiral. It is turning to higher taxes against the very industries that it needs to drive the economy. That now includes a roughly 20 percent tourist tax on hotels. These politicians are doing what the Chicago fire failed to achieve: kill a major city.


Johnson has been pushing for irresponsible measures to grab cash now and pay later schemes. Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) lost a fight to secure a $200 million loan to avoid having to reduce the budget or staff. Johnson and the union pushed for a corporate “head tax.” Barely able to convince many companies to stay in the state, Chicago would actually make it more costly to hire Chicagoans with an additional $ 21-per-employee tax. The city council just approved an $830 million borrowing plan to finance infrastructure projects by selling bonds. Notably, the council had to bar Johnson from giving the money to the teachers’ union, given his history of dependency on the union. However, the bond will now make the debt crisis even more acute. The bond agreement allows someone else to pay the massive accrued debt after 20 years.

Chicago now spends 40% of its money on debt servicing. At the same time, Johnson has pushed for city-run grocery stores, and his government has stopped buying treasury bonds for political reasons. Now, pursuant to Ordinance 2026-0022544, the city will raise the tax on hotel rooms within that district to 19% from 17.5%, which includes a combined city, county, and state tax, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The increase will apply to any hotels with more than 100 rooms. Hotel costs are already prohibitively high, and the added tax hits the convention tourism side of the economy. The editorial board of the Washington Post took note of Chicago’s worsening situation and wrote “it takes a long time to kill a city, and the bigger the city, the longer it takes.”

The city is following the same pattern of blue states driving businesses and high earners away. After taking control with Abigail Spanberger’s election, Virginia Democrats immediately pushed for a slew of new taxes and spending plans. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul, who during her campaign told wealthy New Yorkers to “just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, OK?” She added, “Get out of town. Because you do not represent our values. You are not New Yorkers.”

They took her advice in droves. Now she is bewailing that her tax base is collapsing. This week, she asked “high-net-worth” people to support the “generous social programs we want to have in our state” and go to Florida to “see who you can bring back home, because our tax has been eroded.” The point is to preserve the “generous social programs” by asking people to come back who fled due to the high taxes needed to support such programs. New York City, which is pushing for higher taxes, currently has a $115.9 billion budget for 8.48 million people. That is almost as much as the $117.4 billion budget for the entire state of Florida with 23.3 million people.

This week, a study showed that New York is now spending $81,000 per homeless person in a town where the average take-home pay is $40,600. It is projected to increase to nearly $97,000 in the coming year. From Chicago to New York City, Democratic leaders continue to spend wildly as top earners and employers flee. They are quickly learning that, as Margaret Thatcher noted, it works until you run out of other people’s money.In Chicago, the city council is now drifting toward bankruptcy like a ship of fools. For those of us who love our home city, it is a painful thing to watch. Despite a history of corruption under the Daley machine, the city was always a pro-growth town that attracted industries. It is now following Detroit’s path toward insolvency as politicians kick the debt can down the road for someone else to pay.

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“Remember, these illegals are the future voting bloc of the Democratic Party, meant to seize political control by disenfranchising citizens ..”

Elon Musk Offers Lifeline To TSA Agents As Dems Hold Paychecks Hostage (ZH)

The Department of Homeland Security shutdown entered its 36th day on Saturday after Senate Democrats blocked yet another funding bill for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, and other federal agencies, triggering weeks of chaos at airports nationwide, including long TSA checkpoint lines during the peak of the spring break travel season.Early Saturday morning, Elon Musk, closely tracking the DHS funding lapse, wrote on X that he would personally pay the salaries of TSA agents to get them back to airports and help avert further chaos.


On Friday, a motion to advance a funding bill failed 47-37, falling short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster. John Fetterman (Pa.) was the only Democrat to vote “yes” on the DHS funding bill. Sixteen senators from both parties were absent for the vote. This marks the fifth time Democrats have blocked the Homeland Security Appropriations bill since DHS funding ended in mid-February. Democrats have been absolutely furious over any funding bill for ICE and Cust oms and Border Protection (CBP) that does not include reforms to immigration enforcement operations. That is mostly because they are watching President Trump erode their political power by deporting the very illegal aliens their party allowed to invade the nation under the Biden-Harris regime.

Remember, these illegals are the future voting bloc of the Democratic Party, meant to seize political control by disenfranchising citizens. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) is planning to force a vote sometime today on a proposal to fund the TSA. “The chaos at TSA is reaching a boiling point. We need to reopen it as quickly as possible. That is what Senate Democrats are intent on doing,” Schumer said. By the end of the week, 10% of all TSA workers did not show up for work – just below the record 10.22% absentee rate set at the start of the week. Nearly 400 agents have quit so far in the months-long shutdown, according to DHS.

These workers have been without pay since mid-last month, when the Democratic Party began using these agents as political pawns. The severity of the government shutdown this time has not yet reached the crisis level of travel disruption seen during the 43-day shutdown late last year, when air traffic controllers were used as leverage in political disputes, disrupting air travel nationwide. To prevent such issues in the future, perhaps privatization talks for these agencies should begin. Is it possible that an unhinged, eft-wing judge might try to block Musk from offering to pay TSA agents’ salaries during the funding lapse?

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“65% of Democrats, 95% of Republicans, 79% of independents, 80% of white voters, 80% of black voters, and 77% of Hispanic voters.”

The Democrats’ Strategy on the SAVE Act Is Imploding (Matt Margolis)

Chuck Schumer stepped onto the Senate floor Thursday and lied about the popularity of the SAVE America Act. “But what have MAGA Republicans chosen to focus on this week?” Schumer asked. “Voter suppression. That is what the Republican Senate is wasting our time on, pushing a voter suppression bill that most Americans do not support — a bill that appeals to only the most fringe element of the MAGA base.”


We’ve tracked the numbers on this bill closely, and the polls are about as one-sided as it gets in American politics. A recent Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll found that 71% of Americans support the SAVE America Act, including 69% of independents and even half of Democrats. A whopping 81% support Voter ID, with 79% of independents and 70% of Democrats on board. Requiring proof of citizenship to vote get 75% support. Removing non-citizens from voter rolls pulls 80%. Even sharing unredacted voting rolls with the Department of Homeland Security — arguably the bill’s most contentious provision — gets 61% backing.

Oh, that’s just one poll, right? Wrong. Pew Research puts support for voter ID at 83%, with wide majorities across racial and partisan lines. Gallup found 84% favor voter ID, including 67% of Democrats. And Rasmussen puts support at 75%, with support trending upward over the past decade. Poll after poll, the same story keeps emerging. But wait, it’s been a few months now, and Democrats have been blasting the SAVE America Act the entire time. Surely, the numbers have changed, right? Wrong. We have a brand-new CBS News survey on the subject, conducted this week. It found that 80% of Americans support requiring a photo ID to vote, including 65% of Democrats, 95% of Republicans, 79% of independents, 80% of white voters, 80% of black voters, and 77% of Hispanic voters.

Proof of citizenship to register draws 66% overall, with 93% of Republicans, 61% of independents, 60% of black voters, and 63% of Hispanic voters in favor. The only cohort that didn’t support the citizenship requirement was Democrats, with only 43% supporting.

https://twitter.com/IAPolls2022/status/2034767257226629317

Democrats have spent weeks hammering the SAVE America Act with “voter suppression” messaging, hoping repetition turns fiction into fact. It hasn’t worked. The polling has held steady. Support hasn’t budged. If anything, this CBS poll just confirmed that the public isn’t buying the narrative they’re selling. Trust me, Chuck Schumer knows how to read a poll, and you can bet Democrats are tracking public opinion on the issue, looking for any nugget in the crosstabs that gives them a glimmer of hope. But there isn’t any. Americans have spoken on this issue.

Schumer has been in Washington long enough to know exactly what the data says. This means his floor speech wasn’t about ignorance; it was a calculated decision to stand on the Senate floor and call the most broadly popular election integrity bill in recent memory “unpopular” and a “fringe” priority. That tells you everything about how seriously Democrats take the voters they claim to represent.

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What, Vic?

“You know, this is the third time Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.”

What Is It With The Fickle Europeans? (Victor Davis Hanson)

What is it with the fickle Europeans? I know that they have different interests than ours, but we’re both Western entities. You’d think that we’d be more collaborative on the effort to disarm and denuclearize Iran. But a lot of strange things are happening. The traditional use of the Diego Garcia critical airbase in the Indian Ocean, run by the British, but often leased to us and allowed us to have a very valuable base for our long-range bombers. The British initially refused to allow us to use it. And then, only under conditions that it would be used for defensive purposes. I don’t know what that means. But I think they forgot the 1982 Falklands War. They were in big trouble going all the way across the world to attack a country in the Western Hemisphere.


We were trying to be on friendly relationships so that [Argentina] wouldn’t join the other communist nations. And of course, we offered them 2 million gallons of gasoline. We offered them the use of a carrier if they needed it. We gave them sophisticated intelligence. Without the United States’ help, they would’ve had a very hard time retaking it. So, what’s happened?And then Spain has said that we can’t use at all the NATO base there in Spain. [President Emmanuel] Macron in France and [Chancellor Friedrich] Merz in Germany have also said they’ve expressed reservations.

President Donald Trump is now trying to say, you know, we’re using all of our assets to disarm this common threat to the West. Could you just send a few ships to help us, you know, patrol the Strait of Hormuz? And they’re reluctant. This gets back to the United States, who pays an inordinate amount of the NATO budget. And it keeps having to, you know, to harangue and hammer. “Please, please defend yourself. We are here to help you, but we’re across the ocean, 3,000 miles away. And this is in your interest. You know, this is the third time Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.”

So, don’t they have a fear of Iran? I mean, there was a joint missile defense project. Obama canceled it, in that infamous quid pro quo hot mic conversation where he made a deal with the Russians to give him space so he could get reelected. He would dismantle the Czech and Polish project to have missile defense. That was primarily for the protection of Europe. The United States was going to pay a great deal of it. Protection from Iran.= So, what’s going on? What explains this European schizophrenia? That they want to be an ally, but they don’t want to be an ally. They’re scared to death of a nuclear Iran, but they don’t want to do anything about it. They want the United States to handle it, but they want the United States to handle it and keep them out of it.

But most of their oil comes from the Middle East or North Africa. So, they are adamant that they want the supplies, reliable. They want the Strait of Hormuz open. They want the United States to ensure that. They want the United States to clear the Red Sea of Houthi attacks. We know all that, but they’re not there when we need them at all. And a very, you know, a very reasonable request. And so why is this? Well, I think there’s a lot of reasons. I think they’ve made some disastrous, internal and external choices in their policies. First of all, Germany has 16 percent of its population are immigrants that weren’t born in Germany. The vast majority of them are unassimilated, unacculturated, unintegrated Muslims.

Many of them, or most, under Angela Merkel policy. She was the German version of Alejandro Mayorkas, who opened the border and pretty much enacted this destructive policy. In other countries at 6 percent to 10 percent to 12 percent. But the key is there’s a force multiplier of these open-border illegal immigration policies. And that is the Muslim communities that immigrate are more radical often than the countries they left that were radical enough. They don’t want to be part of the West. They feel that their birth rate and their increased immigration will soon swamp these European governments. And the European governments are terrified of them.

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Not so fickle when it comes to power.

Battle for Hungary: How the EU Plans to Defeat Viktor Orban (RT)

Three weeks out from the most consequential European election of the year, the EU has aimed every weapon in its arsenal at Hungary, as Brussels prepares for its best shot yet at taking out Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Orban’s animosity toward the EU establishment runs deep. For more than a decade, the Hungarian prime minister has often been the bloc’s sole dissident: railing against its open-door migration policies, embrace of LGBT ideology, and “suicidal” plan to welcome Ukraine into the union. Orban has secured carve-outs from the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions that enabled Hungary to continue purchasing Russian oil, and is currently vetoing a €90 billion loan package for Kiev.


The EU has responded by withholding funds equal to 3.5% of Hungary’s GDP over his banning of LGBT propaganda and refusal to accept non-European migrants. With the future of its Ukraine project now on the line, Brussels has pinned its hopes on Peter Magyar and his Tisza party, which promises to overturn Orban’s domestic reforms and Budapest’s opposition to the EU’s designs in Ukraine and beyond. After the European Council failed to find a workaround to Orban’s veto at a March 19 meeting, the EU’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, hinted that work was underway on a “Plan B.” Based on the strategy playing out in Budapest, ‘Plan B’ clearly involves a full-scale campaign of censorship and subversion to influence Hungary’s upcoming elections.

On March 16, European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier quietly announced that the EU had activated its Rapid Response System (RRS) to “combat potential Russian online disinformation campaigns” in the runup to the Hungarian election. The mechanism will be active until one week after the vote, Regnier said. While most Europeans have never heard of this system, the RRS has been a key tool in the commission’s censorship arsenal for years. It empowers EU-approved “fact-checkers” to flag online content as “disinformation” and request its removal from platforms – Regnier cited TikTok and Meta as two examples.

Theoretically, platforms such as Meta and TikTok participate in the system voluntarily. All major social media companies have to sign up to the EU’s ‘Code of Practice on Disinformation’. However, a trove of documents published by the House Judiciary Committee in Washington this year revealed that these companies were threatened – often explicitly – with punishment under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) if they refused to tow the EU line.

The premise resembles a Mafia-style protection racket, with the deputy chief of the commission’s communications directorate telling platforms in 2024 that refusal to sign the codes of conduct “could be taken into account… when determining whether the provider is complying with the obligations laid down by the DSA.” The DSA is now in force, giving Brussels’ fact-checkers the final say over what constitutes “disinformation” ahead of the election.


The argument that these fact-checkers favor Magyar is well founded. Over four European elections in which the Rapid Response System was activated, the Judiciary Committee found that fact-checkers “almost exclusively targeted” right-wing and populist candidates and organizations. “Moreover, the requirement that these fact-checkers be approved by the European Commission creates a clear structural incentive for the participants to censor Euroskeptic opinion and content,” the committee noted.

Hungarian MEP Dora David, a former Meta employee and member of Magyar’s Tisza party, boasted last year that “we’ve seen companies change their behavior” based on the threat of DSA enforcement, citing Meta’s removal of pro-Orban content as an example.

The fact-checkers can count on sympathetic staff within the social media companies. After several members of Orban’s Fidesz party claimed that Meta has already started restricting the reach of their Facebook posts, commentators Joey Mannarino and Philip Pilkington identified Oskar Braszczynski as the employee likely responsible. Braszczynski, who works as Meta’s ‘Government and Social Impact Partner for Central and Eastern Europe’, has shared pro-Ukraine, anti-Orban, and pro-LGBT content on his personal social media accounts.

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https://twitter.com/birdscolour56/status/2035131647243559005?s=20

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 142026
 


Paul Cézanne Village derrière des arbres, Île-de-France 1879


Iran’s New Supreme Leader Wounded, Likely Disfigured, Hegseth (Reuters)
Mojtaba Khamenei Is Nowhere to Be Seen (Rick Moran)
There Are Many Who Complain About ICE (Michael A. Letts)
Sec 301 Trade Investigations Into 16 Economies Including The EU (CTH)
Witkoff and Kushner Meet Russian Delegation in Florida (CTH)
Bessent Greenlights Sale Of Russian Oil At Sea To “Promote Stability” (ZH)
Bessent: “Narrowly Tailored, Short Term Sanction Relief” for Russia (CTH)
Merz Slams Trump Admin For Temporarily Lifting Russian Oil Sanctions (JTN)
Nearly 1 Out Of Every 2 Muslims Under 40 Has ‘Islamist’ Attitudes (RMX)
Order of Battle (James Howard Kunstler)
Zelensky Plotting Suspending Elections For Years – Media (RT)
Mamdani’s Wife Worked With Author Who Called Jews ‘Rabid Demons’ (Salgado)
Ex-Columbia Professor Calls for Violence, Glorifies Murder of Jews (Turley)
Musk Whips Out ‘Macrohard’ In Disruptive Tesla-xAI Bid (ZH)
Honda Just Lost Billions on EVs It Can’t Sell (Stephen Green)
Gavin Newsom Has a ‘Hillary Clinton Problem’ (Robert Spencer)

 


 

https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/2032639700196786606?s=20 https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/2032597866611408953?s=20

 


 


He has some info on that which he holds behind.

Iran’s New Supreme Leader Wounded, Likely Disfigured, Hegseth (Reuters)

Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is wounded and likely disfigured, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday, questioning Khamenei’s ability to govern after nearly two weeks of U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran. No images have been released of Khamenei since an Israeli strike at the start of the war that killed much of his family, including his father and wife. The Reuters Iran Briefing newsletter keeps you informed with the latest developments and analysis of the Iran war. His first comments came in a statement read out by a television presenter on Thursday. In the statement, he vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz shut and called on neighboring countries to close U.S. bases on their territory or risk Iran targeting them. ntinue


“We know the new so-called not so supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured. He put out a statement yesterday. A weak one, actually, but there was no voice and there was no video. It was a written statement,” Hegseth told a briefing. “Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders. Why a written statement? I think you know why. His father – dead. He’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run and he lacks legitimacy.” An Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday that the newly appointed supreme leader was lightly injured but was continuing to operate, after state television described him as war-wounded.

Hegseth was joined by General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a briefing in which they emphasized U.S. military strikes to knock out Iran’s missile and drone capabilities and its navy. ‘NO QUARTER’ During the briefing, Hegseth said that the United States would show no mercy in the war. “We will keep pressing, keep pushing, keep advancing. No quarter, no mercy for our enemy,” Hegseth said. “No quarter” is the refusal to spare the life of someone who has expressed their intention to surrender – something prohibited by law. “International humanitarian law prohibits the use of this procedure, that is, ordering that there shall be no survivors, threatening the adversary therewith, or conducting hostilities on this basis,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

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“The February 28 airstrike that took out Ali Khamenei also killed his wife, his daughter, Mojtada’s wife, Ali Khamenei’s son-in-law, and at least three grandchildren.”

Mojtaba Khamenei Is Nowhere to Be Seen (Rick Moran)

Mojtaba Khamenei, the new Supreme Leader of Iran, was “elected” Supreme Leader of Iran on March 8. In fact, the Assembly of Experts, the body charged with electing the Supreme Leader, met virtually only once and then only to confirm Mojtaba’s choice as leader. Reports from sources like Iran International indicate that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) applied significant “psychological and political pressure” on the clerics to ensure a quick victory for Mojtaba, aiming for regime continuity during the war. Khamenei the Younger is a cutout, a stand-in for the IRGC. On March 9, the regime held “Allegiance rallies” to “celebrate” Khamenei the Younger’s elevation (installation?) to the Islamic version of the Peacock Throne.


At the rally in Tehran’s Revolutionary Square, a life-sized cardboard cutout of Mojtaba was hauled on stage to be properly venerated. “State media broadcast regime loyalists hailing and swearing allegiance to a cardboard Khamenei,” writes Amit Segal of The Free Press. If that’s not bizarre enough, consider this: the only word we’ve heard from Mojtaba Khamenei was third-hand. The first Official Statement was written only and read by an anchor.mIs Mojtaba Khamenei still alive? The February 28 airstrike that took out Ali Khamenei also killed his wife, his daughter, Mojtada’s wife, Ali Khamenei’s son-in-law, and at least three grandchildren. Mojtaba was injured, according to the official reports, on his legs, hands, and arms.

“At the most critical juncture in the history of the Islamic Republic, its new Supreme Leader is a ghost,” reports WOIN. The fact that Khamenei did not use his own voice in the statement poses a significant problem for intelligence agencies.Even if Tehran eventually releases an audio tape claiming to be Mojtaba, there is almost zero baseline to verify it. He has spent his entire adult life operating in the shadows of the security establishment. In fact, the only publicly known recording of his voice in existence is a brief, years-old, one-minute clip of him telling seminary students that his theology classes were canceled.In today’s AI world, anyone can use an AI software like Elevenlabs and create an entire speech in Khamenei’s voice just for $11 a month.

Audio is the easiest medium to manipulate in the world of AI and a country obsessed with camera and public appearances using audio tapes, is raising suspicions among the experts. And down the rabbit hole we go. “Iranian opposition groups in the diaspora are openly claiming that Mojtaba is actually in a deep coma, being treated in absolute secrecy,” according to the WOIN report. “The theory suggests the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forced the Assembly of Experts to name Mojtaba as leader to maintain a facade of dynastic stability.”If Khamenei is dead or in a coma, who is in charge? The same people who have been in effective control of Iran for the last 30 years: the Revolutionary Guard Corps senior commanders.

Amit Segal writing in The Free Press: “The truth is that even if the conspiracy is false and Khamenei is only suffering from minor leg injuries, that may still be the case. It is far from unheard of for the successor to a powerful dictator to serve primarily as a military figurehead. The regime needs Khamenei to have a pulse, but not much more. In a Freudian slip early in the war, Iran’s foreign minister claimed that the attacks on neighboring states were “not our choice,” indicating that IRGC elements may have acted independently of the government.

The regime’s official narrative is that Khamenei is being kept away from the public for security reasons. Israel has already announced its intention to reunite the son with the deceased father. But if this is truly about security, it is still a dangerous game. There are times when absence increases a leader’s mystique—a regime in crisis is not one of them. Since Khamenei’s election in 1989, the Revolutionary Guard Corps has been aggrandizing power unto itself. They’ve appropriated most of the largest and most profitable businesses, giving pieces of the corporations to favored clerics and military commanders.

Following the death of the Supreme Leader, the Guards really turned the screws on the Assembly of Experts.“The pressure from the Revolutionary Guard to announce Mojtaba Khamenei as his father’s successor as quickly as possible was so intense that the IRGC Intelligence Organization forced several dissenting members of the Assembly of Experts into this choice by threatening them and their family members. Their silence following the selection is likely a result of those same threats,” according to Iran Wire.

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“ICE continuously reports progress made across the United States with new arrests every single day – and no, not in a “Gestapo” manner. More like “we know which criminals to track down and arrest” manner. Just look at their track record.”

There Are Many Who Complain About ICE (Michael A. Letts)

Negative talk about ICE agents these days is very commonplace. Just take a good look at social media and across various news outlets. You’ll see it everywhere. “They’re causing chaos in Minneapolis!” But you know what you don’t see with all this negative talk? What they’re actually doing when it comes to their job.President Donald Trump didn’t put this group together just to spite the American public. He put them together to make a difference and clean up the mess left behind by Joe Biden – that mess being the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants that seeped their way into the United States thanks to his lazy border policies.


And while they all aren’t criminals, a good portion of them all – including a number of child sex offenders. The worst of the worst, if you ask me. After all, these are full-grown men who are going after kids. And abusing them in the most awful way you can imagine. Well, good news, folks. Based on this report, ICE has really cracked down on this particular group of criminals. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Houston recently arrested 414 criminal illegal aliens charged with child sex offenses of some kind during Trump’s first year in office. That’s nearly twice the amount of similar predators arrested during the final year of the Biden administration, when he was scrambling to make up for his previous years of screw-ups. (Only 211 were arrested at that time.)

“While elected officials and media pundits across the country were zealously trying to manipulate the American public with fake news stories about ICE’s public safety mission, the brave men and women of ICE were quietly going about their business to arrest and remove more than 400 dangerous child predators from our local communities,” ICE ERO Houston acting Field Office Director Gabriel Martinez noted in a statement. “Thanks to their tireless efforts, parents across southeast Texas can sleep a little better tonight knowing that these pedophiles and child rapists are no longer a threat to their children.”

And keep in mind that this is only one specific city. ICE continuously reports progress made across the United States with new arrests every single day – and no, not in a “Gestapo” manner. More like “we know which criminals to track down and arrest” manner. Just look at their track record. But this is nothing new. Law enforcement officials have always buckled down in the face of criticism and continued doing the job to the best of their ability – even when the tide was turned against them.

This reminds me of several years ago when the “defund the police” campaign kicked off following the death of George Floyd. Because of the act of a certain few, thousands of police officers went through a wave of hatred and unfair restraint at the hands of foolish Democratic officials who felt the need to drain their funds in favor of other programs. And why? Online hatred. But while some of these officers retired or simply didn’t want to deal with such restraints anymore, many persevered. In the face of this newfound hatred, they continued doing their job – and effectively, as such. And because of that, many of these officers remain in the field, continuing to fight for what’s right – despite what’s being said about them.

That’s kind of the point overall here. ICE is facing all sorts of criticism, a majority of it undeserved. But they’re still persistent in getting the job done. As a result of this, over 400 criminals are headed back to their home countries – and, again, this is just from one region of the United States. Imagine the overall effectiveness of the program, which goes into thousands or higher. Say whatever you want about law enforcement officials. It’s your right to have an opinion. Just keep in mind it’s an opinion. The facts are right there. ICE is getting the job done. Police are getting the job done. Anyone can say whatever they want. But remember, actions speak louder than words. Here’s to the actions of our law enforcement officials. Keep going!

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Tariffs still.

Sec 301 Trade Investigations Into 16 Economies Including The EU (CTH)

When the Supreme Court made their ridiculous decision to nullify the import tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) use, the high court noted several alternate approaches would not be legally problematic. One of those approaches would be the use of Section 301 trade tariffs. Yesterday USTR Jamieson Greer quietly announced that a Section 301 review would be taking place for the following countries: China, the European Union, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Japan, and India.” Section 301 tariffs are a trade enforcement mechanism established under the Trade Act of 1974. They allow the U.S. government to impose tariffs on imports from countries that are found to be engaging in unfair


USTR PRESS RELEASE – WASHINGTON — Today, United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced the initiation of investigations regarding the acts, policies, and practices of various economies under Section 301(b) of the Trade Act of 1974 relating to structural excess capacity and production in manufacturing sectors.The investigations will determine whether those acts, policies, and practices are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S. commerce. The economies subject to these investigations are: China, the European Union, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Japan, and India.

“The United States will no longer sacrifice its industrial base to other countries that may be exporting their problems with excess capacity and production to us. Today’s investigations underscore President Trump’s commitment to reshore critical supply chains and create good-paying jobs for American workers across our manufacturing sectors,” said Ambassador Greer.

“The Trump Administration’s reindustrialization efforts continue to face significant challenges due to foreign economies’ structural excess capacity and production in manufacturing sectors. Across numerous sectors, many U.S. trading partners are producing more goods than they can consume domestically. This overproduction displaces existing U.S. domestic production or prevents investment and expansion in U.S. manufacturing production that otherwise would have been brought online. In many sectors, the United States has lost substantial domestic production capacity or has fallen worryingly behind foreign competitors.”

Additionally, Section 232 [Steel and Aluminum examples] of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (19 U.S.C. §1862, as amended) authorizes the President to impose trade restrictions—such as a tariff or quota—if the Secretary of Commerce determines, following an investigation, that imports of a good “threaten to impair” U.S. national security. Section 232 is currently covering all the steel and aluminum import tariffs. Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows the U.S. president to impose tariffs of up to 15% to address “large and serious” balance-of-payments deficits. This authority can be exercised without prior congressional approval for a limited duration of 150 days. After this period, any tariffs must be extended by Congress.

Section 122 has already been deployed to retain the “baseline reciprocity tariffs.” USTR Greer is now walking through the process of deploying Section 301 and will eventually become the legal underpinning to replace Section 122 and retain all tariff status without congressional extension needed. Most of this is technical and legal compliance as several of the aforementioned nations have already finalized free trade agreements.

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A very practical meeting. In the same way that sanctions are unpractical.

Witkoff and Kushner Meet Russian Delegation in Florida (CTH)

The fact that Team Russia and Team USA would be discussing a strategic economic alliance on the issue of energy is not a surprise to those who watched both President Putin and President Trump outline that same content discussion in Alaska last August. However, given the current conflict with Iran and the escalating oil price issue, Russia and the USA discussing Russian oil capacity and U.S. sanctions therein takes on a new angle.


It has been obvious that domestic U.S. politics, in combination with the Russia-Ukraine war, has impeded President Trump from organizing a strategic reset with Russia pulling away from historic conflicts. However, CTH is also clear-eyed on the longer-term ramifications for Eastern Europe when contrast with Putin’s ambitions to fix what he perceives as prior Russian Federation mistakes regarding the West (more on that at the end). As noted in social media exchanges from Witkoff and Dmitriev, the discussion was productive.


All indications of this meeting give the appearance of less focus on progress in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, and a higher focus on current economic conditions -created by the Iran conflict- that could be enhanced with cooperation between the U.S. and Russia. According to Kirill Dmitriev, Russian special presidential envoy for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries and director general of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), relayed through the Russian News Agency (TASS), “he visited the US upon orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin, taking part in a meeting of the heads of a working group on economic cooperation between the two countries.”

According to the envoy, the meeting addressed both promising projects that can help restore Russia-US relations and the current crisis on global energy markets. The US is becoming increasingly aware of the role of Russian oil and gas in ensuing the stability of the world economy, as well as of the [in]effectiveness of sanctions against Russia, Dmitriev said after the meeting. “We discussed promising projects that could contribute to the restoration of Russian-American relations and the current crisis on global energy markets,” Dmitriev also wrote in a Telegram post. “Today, many countries, primarily the United States, are beginning to better understand the key, systemic role of Russian oil and gas in ensuring the stability of the global economy, as well as the ineffectiveness and destructive nature of sanctions against Russia.”

With the strong likelihood that Russia’s restart of their flagship LNG terminal Arctic-2 was directly related to the August summit in Alaska {SEE HERE}, there is already a baseline established for strategic cooperation President Trump would have no problem with Russia introducing millions of barrels of oil into the global market given the issues created by conflict in/around the Strait of Hormuz. However, obviously the issues for streamlined Russia oil exports surround (1) preexisting sanctions, (2) domestic U.S. anti-Russia politics and (3) the political and economic position of the anti-Russia European Commission leadership.

As we previously outlined with the Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) benefit, Russia previously extracted, liquified and pumped massive amounts of LNG into floating storage platforms from Arctic-2. Those LNG supplies doubled and tripled in value in a few days once Qatar shut down their production facilities and are now being sold to various Asian countries.

Europe has a massive energy problem with severely low LNG storage rates and now a shortage of oil, with EU gasoline prices rising much higher & faster than the rest of the world. Europe is facing a severe energy crisis overall and now their preexisting economic troubles are being amplified. More than ever Europe needs the Russian oil/gas, but ridged ideologues will never compromise on their anti-Russia position. They have even steeper sanctions against Russian oil/gas scheduled to trigger at the end of this month. It will be interesting to see how President Trump navigates the potential benefit from Russian energy products into the global market against the backdrop of all the geopolitical angst and political opposition against Russia.

[..] Here’s where/why Trump is being careful and pragmatic. President Trump doesn’t want to see an outcome where Russia is eventually stronger than Europe. There’s not enough frictionless history between the USA and Russia to trust Putin when he says the Federation has no plan to expand into Europe. The USA can/should be strategic allies with Russia. However, it would be much better if a strong Europe existed at the same time. Hence, Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio continuing to emphasize that Europe needs to stop cowering in politically correct wokeness. The EU is destroying itself at the same time Russia is getting stronger.

.


Last point, the Lyndon LaRouche team, Promethean Action PAC, are very happy with the ongoing fracture of the USA away from the UK/EU group. However, be cautious around Political Action Committees who say, “President Trump needs people to understand what he is doing” and we are here as his official policy interpreters.

Remember, President Trump doesn’t need policy interpreters.

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In the global market.

Bessent Greenlights Sale Of Russian Oil At Sea To “Promote Stability” (ZH)

In a statement late Thursday on X, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the U.S. will allow countries to purchase Russian crude oil already at sea. The move aims to temporarily boost global supply availability, as the IEA warned earlier that the Middle East conflict has sparked one of the worst energy shocks on record. “To increase the global reach of existing supply, @USTreasury is providing a temporary authorization to permit countries to purchase Russian oil currently stranded at sea,” Bessent said.He continued, “This narrowly tailored, short-term measure applies only to oil already in transit and will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government, which derives the majority of its energy revenue from taxes assessed at the point of extraction.”


UBS analyst Nana Antiedu told clients earlier this morning that about 124 million barrels of Russian-origin oil were at sea across 30 locations worldwide. More specifically, Bloomberg analysts said about 30 Russian tankers are in Asian waters and may be available for purchase. These tankers carry about 19 million barrels of Russian crude and 310,000 tons of refined products. Bloomberg data show these Russian tankers are signaling “for orders” or, in other words, have no clear destination yet. They could be unloaded in Singapore or Malaysia.

Robert Rennie, head of commodity research at Westpac Banking, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying, “Of course, any supply helps, but this is a smaller help than it looks.”Rennie estimated that of the 125 million to 150 million barrels of Russian crude on the water, about a third is off China and is likely to end up in storage, while 30 million to 40 million barrels are in India and are likely to be consumed there. Rennie said the rest is in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. “We are only really talking about replacing maybe four or five days of lost Gulf exports. Sure, it helps, but it is no panacea,” he added. Bessent’s office also issued India a 30-day waiver at the beginning of the month so that New Delhi could buy Russian oil at sea to build reserves and cushion against an oil shock.

Brent crude futures are largely unchanged from when Bessent posted on X overnight. President Trump said the U.S. has “plenty of time” in the Iran war. Brent hovers around $100/bbl as of 0630 ET. The Trump administration has taken several steps to combat triple-digit Brent and WTI prices, including the planned release of 172 million barrels from the U.S. SPR. The release is part of a much larger 400-million-barrel SPR dump worldwide, agreed upon by the 32-nation IEA. This comes as the IEA warned about the worst-ever energy shock to hit the world. Also, the Trump administration is waiving a century-old law that requires U.S. ships to transport goods between American ports, so that domestic supplies can be shifted around more quickly.

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Relief at the pump.

Bessent: “Narrowly Tailored, Short Term Sanction Relief” for Russia (CTH)

President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are facing mounting criticism for creating a window for Russia to sell oil and gas to the global market via “narrowly tailored, short-term” sanction relief. However, few people are putting the issue into context, and the background here is exceptionally interesting. According to the terms announced by Secretary Bessent, the license to sell applies solely to Russian crude or petroleum products loaded onto vessels as of March 12 and is valid through midnight Washington time on April 11.


The sanction relief license to sell will be done in globally recognized petrodollars and applies only to preexisting oil and petroleum products that are already in transit at sea. However, here’s where it gets very interesting and the ramifications are significant. Immediately following the Alaska summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump, Russia restarted Arctic-2 LNG terminals and began increasing oil production for storage on ‘floating platforms.’ President Trump met with Putin on August 15, 2025, and the curious increase in Russian production began on August 18, 2025. In the past six months Russia has been pumping sanctioned oil and gas and storing it on ships and mobile sea platforms, seemingly (at the time) with no customers.

Suddenly, against the background of the Iran conflict, all of that previously stored ‘on the water‘ production, now worth double, is authorized for global sale (in petrodollars). Either Russian President Putin is the luckiest guy in the world, or Russia knew something. In 2025 what Russia did following the Alaska summit did not make sense; now it does and the ramifications are stunning.President Trump was looking for a way to organize a strategic partnership with Russia on the issue of energy production but was hampered by the preexisting sanction regime and strong opposition from domestic and international politics. The ‘coincidental’ timing’ of Trump meeting with Putin and then subsequently Russia producing massive amounts of oil and gas for storage on the water suddenly starts to take on an entirely new light.

Did Putin know something was coming, something that would eventually make the Russian over production and ‘on the sea’ storage worth billions. The implications here are quite remarkable; however, they simultaneously explain most of the behaviors since the Iran confrontation began. Media reports highlight that Vladimir Putin was asked about a previous joint agreement for military support between Iran and Russia and why Russia did not respond when Iran was attacked. Foreknowledge would explain that reaction. Additionally, the Russian Federation president never responded to the Trump operation to take down Venezuelan dictator Maduro and seize control over Venezuela’s oil production.

If there was some discussion inferring that a ‘limited sanction relief’ protocol might be possible, that would explain why Russia began storing oil and gas at sea. This fact pattern would also indicate that President Trump’s decision toward Iran was made at least six months ago, with a set of geopolitical events planned between the Alaska summit and the eventual confrontation with Iran. TIMELINE: Trump and Putin meet. Three days later Russia begins pumping oil/gas and storing it at sea. President Trump then triggers the Venezuela western hemisphere security operation; Russia stays silent. President Trump then triggers the confrontation with Iran; Russia rejects involvement. And then two weeks after the Iran confrontation begins, Trump removes sanctions on Russian oil/gas “in transit” at sea.

Suddenly all of the Russian produced and stored product ‘on the water’ has greater value and new customers. Just a coincidence? No way. The United States needs the oil/gas market stability that Russia can provide. Venezuela was/is to Trump as Ukraine was/is to Putin. We’ll keep watching. Enjoy the rest of your day.

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Merz doesn’t mind if gas is $3,00. Beating Russia is what counts.

Merz Slams Trump Admin For Temporarily Lifting Russian Oil Sanctions (JTN)

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Friday fumed over the White House’s decision to ease sanctions on Russian oil amid the ongoing Iran war, warning that it would bolster the Russian war effort against Ukraine. “We think that’s wrong,” he said, according to Politico. “There is currently a price problem, but not a supply problem. And in that regard, I would like to know what other factors led the U.S. government to make this decision.” “We want to ensure that Russia does not exploit the war in Iran to weaken Ukraine,” Merz said. “Nor will we allow Moscow to test NATO on its eastern flank and up here in the north.”


Merz made the remarks during a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minster Jonas Gahr Støre. The German chancellor was joined by French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, both of whom shared his sentiments. The administration lifted sanctions on Russian oil this month on a temporary basis. As of press time, Brent crude oil stood just shy of $100.00 per barrel.

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“This study should set off all the alarm bells. It is a societal time bomb. We must not only talk about migration, but also about integration and religion”

Nearly 1 Out Of Every 2 Muslims Under 40 Has ‘Islamist’ Attitudes (RMX)

A newly released study by the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), nearly 50 percent of Muslims under the age of 40 in Germany hold “Islamist” views, with these Muslims expressing an attraction to Islamism, a preference for Sharia law over the German Basic Law, and harboring anti-Semitic prejudices. The findings, described as “explosive in nature,” were featured in the latest edition of the “Motra Monitor.” The study reports that as of 2025, Muslims in Germany under the age of 40 (45.1 percent) hold “latent or manifestly Islamist attitudes.“ Some German politicians have already voiced their views on the study’s release. Wolfgang Kubicki, a prominent politician in the Free Democrats (FDP) and former MP, stated on X:


“This study should set off all the alarm bells. It is a societal time bomb. We must not only talk about migration, but also about integration and religion. The policy of naively looking away has favored this development. The naivety must stop.” He further stated that “anyone who demands a caliphate is an enemy of democracy. Enemies of democracy without German citizenship must leave the country. Neighborhoods where ghettoization provides fertile ground for radicalization must be restructured. Islamic associations without a clear demarcation from extremists must not be interlocutors for politics. Germany must act secular and self-confident.” He further called for an end to headscarves in schools and other state institutions “not to harass or suspect the wearers, but to make it clear that the only binding source of our values is the Basic Law.”

Beyond rising crime rates, terrorism offenses, and demographic change, the soaring numbers of Muslims in Europe also raise fundamental questions about worldview and society.mThe “Motra monitor,” a monitoring system tracking radicalization, spans 598 pages. It is published by the BKA and receives funding from several entities, including the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Family Affairs. While the report addresses various forms of extremism, including right-wing movements, it places a significant focus on Islamist extremism.

Evidence of these tensions surfaced in the summer of 2025 when “young Muslims and radical left-wing Germans occupied the Gutenberg Memorial in Frankfurt to demonstrate against Israel, some of them willing to use violence.“ The study’s researchers highlight a concerning core demographic, noting that “manifest Islamist attitudes are most prevalent among Muslims under 40, at 11.5 percent.“

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“History doesn’t move in straight lines. What looks like stagnation can be prelude. Let’s not lose hope.” —RVassil on X

Order of Battle (James Howard Kunstler)

Don’t lose your shit over mines in the Strait of Hormuz and the oil price shooting up. Iran has many thousands of mines. But something has to lay them out in the water. Iran has no more naval ships. They have small boats. The US can see everything moving on the surface, or sitting at docks. We are blowing them up methodically. The news outlets who want the US to fail in this operation (because: Trump) want you to think that we had no plan for dealing with this problem. That’s not so.


There are very few mines actually laid so far. Tankers are not going through the Strait of Hormuz because their captains are nervous. Their ships and their cargos are worth millions and the insurance costs millions. So, they’re waiting in place, hanging back. The US still has work to do destroying Iran’s shoreline defenses of missile and drone launch sites. Iran is firing all they’ve got left. Whenever they launch something, we see the geo-location on our satellites and radars. The mobile launchers are a little trickier because, obviously, they shoot and move. But they don’t always move fast enough, and there isn’t an endless supply of them.

The US Navy decommissioned its four Avenger-class minesweeper ships in the Persian Gulf in September, 2025, but replaced them with more agile Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) capable of countering submarines and clearing mines. Two LCS ships — USS Santa Barbara and USS Canberra — quietly deployed in March 2025. An LCS uses an Airborne Laser Mine Detection System and an Airborne Mine Neutralization System via helicopter. In the water, it uses mine-hunting sonar and the Unmanned Influence Sweep System — all operated from unmanned surface vessels. The unmanned sweep vehicle triggers magnetic, acoustic, or combination mines, with the LCS at a safe distance.

The LCS vessels are armed with an 11-cell SeaRAM launcher for point defense that fires Rolling Airframe Missiles — fast, radar-guided missiles designed to knock down incoming anti-ship missiles and drones at short range. They also carry Longbow Hellfire missiles with updated software and hardware specifically to counter drones. The Longbow Hellfire uses radar-guided technology enabling it to engage targets through battlefield clutter, with a range of up to eight kilometers — giving the LCS the ability to engage drones before they get close. The LCS ships will be accompanied by Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with Aegis and full missile defense suites for protection against the full spectrum of Iranian threats.

The oil markets are extremely sensitive to any changes in the oil environment, and war induces the most extreme changes. Even outside of war, weird things happen. April 20, 2020, was the apex of Covid-19 paranoia when everyday life was shutting down all over Western Civ. The price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures — specifically the May 2020 contract, which was expiring the very next day — crashed to an historic low of negative $37.63 per barrel. That is, sellers were literally paying buyers to take oil off their hands. By the following day, April 21, prices had rebounded back into positive territory, though still at very depressed levels around $10–$15 per barrel.

The current situation with oil in the $100 range is not going to be a one-day event, but it won’t last forever, either, so do your deep-breathing exercises and calm down. Of course, in America right now, a seditious news media will take every opportunity to induce exquisite anxiety in the public-at-large to deflect from the order-of-battle that President DJT is carrying out to 1) improve America’s geopolitical position and relations, and 2) to defeat the forces both external and domestic that seek to wreck the country.

Which is why you might see that the next move in the order of battle will be against the wrecking crew in our own country, including the political figures behind the decade-long conspiracy to undermine the president, the administrative rogues running the “resistance” in government agencies, the Lawfare ninjas queering the justice system, and the big money that funds the hundreds of NGOs attempting to instigate a color revolution here. I have visions of perp walks and indictments coming in on the zephyrs of spring.

It looks just now like Majority Leader John Thune and his RINO herd will trample the SAVE Act (election reform) into failure. But consider that Mr. Trump’s FBI has had more than a month to analyze the Fulton County, Georgia, ballot evidence from the 2020 election (while only last week it seized the Maricopa County, AZ, records, and for all we know the agency also has 2020 ballot evidence from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada, too). So, prepare for the public to be shocked and amazed at what has been discovered, and expect to see a sharp attitude change among embarrassed US Senators who will be compelled to come on-board for election reform.

Somewhere in all that, you might expect Cuba to fall — a momentous event, actually, considering the cumulative mischief Cuba’s government has provoked all over the western hemisphere since 1958. We don’t even have to do anything to make it happen, just respond in the aftermath with emergency food and fuel relief, and perhaps some help averting the vengeful slaughter of the old Castro governing network. We don’t want a bloodbath there.

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“Ukraine is facing a “financial catastrophe” that could halt its war effort and collapse the economy..”:

Got to feed the ever growing hunger for money.

Zelensky Plotting Suspending Elections For Years – Media (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky has ordered his advisers to plot out a scenario where elections in Ukraine are suspended and the country commits to years of war, Ukrainskaya Pravda has reported, citing government sources. The tenure of Zelensky and of the Ukrainian parliament has long expired, but the Ukrainian leader has refused to hold elections since early 2024, citing martial law imposed amid the conflict with Russia. The situation has prompted international concerns over the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government, particularly from Moscow, which has repeatedly questioned Zelensky’s authority and suggested he may not be in a position to sign any peace agreement should a deal ultimately be reached.


Ukraine’s European backers want Kiev to continue fighting for up to two more years, though the country is facing a “financial catastrophe” that will consume not only its war budget but also its economy as a whole, the newspaper reported on Thursday. “The Europeans said: ‘Fight for another year and a half or two. We will give you money.’ Under their influence, [Vladimir] Zelensky gave the task to the political leadership to develop a plan to hold off elections in Ukraine for several more years and how the parliament will work in such circumstances,” an anonymous source from Zelensky’s administration told the outlet.

The risk of Kiev running out of cash has been growing rapidly. With a proposed €90 billion ($105 billion) EU emergency loan remaining blocked by Hungary, growing dissent within the Ukrainian parliament has slowed down the adoption of measures needed to receive funding from the International Monetary Fund, the newspaper warned on Thursday. The EU emergency funding scheme ended up derailed amid the oil standoff between Ukraine and Hungary and Slovakia. In late January, Kiev halted the Druzhba pipeline, which used to carry Russian crude to the two EU nations, citing alleged damage to the artery. While Moscow has denied attacking the pipeline, Budapest and Bratislava have accused Kiev of deliberately disrupting supplies for political reasons. Hungary has vetoed the €90 billion loan in retaliation, while Slovakia warned it could opt to block the proposed package as well.

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Muslims vs jews in Christian territory.

Mamdani’s Wife Worked With Author Who Called Jews ‘Rabid Demons’ (Salgado)

New York socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife is already in the midst of a scandal about her jihad-aligned views after she was caught liking and promoting posts about Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre online, but it turns out she also translates that virulent antisemitism into her “art.” Rama Duwaji Mamdani is an artist, but in the socialist trend that all art is politics. One of the works she provided a leading graphic for was an essay by Susan Abulhawa called “A Trail of Soap.” Abulhawa has repeatedly issued the most outrageous accusations against and labels of Jews, including an unhinged rant about “Jewish supremacist vampires.” Abulhawa also claimed she wanted to vomit every time she hears the Hebrew language, and insanely argued, “Most of the people killed on October 7 were actually killed by Israel.”


Abulhawa further referred to Oct. 7, when Palestinian terrorists filmed themselves massacring families, raping women to death, and laughing as they gunned down civilians, as a “preemptive strike” after “seven decades of provocation.” Last year, again referring to the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, she raved: To any reporter who thinks to ask me about October 7, go to hell and don’t bother to contact me or my agent. I do not worship at the alter of October 7. I do not worship at the altar of the WWII holocaust. I do not worship at the alter of Jewishness, antisemitism, or any other penance imposed by zionists on the world. Zionism is a disease of jewish supremacy that rots your brain and dulls even minimal critical thinking skills.

It is people like Abulhawa who fuel real-world violence and the massive rise in antisemitic attacks ever since Oct. 7, 2023. As important context, God granted Israel as a “perpetual possession” (Genesis 17:8) to the Jewish people more than a millennium before Islam was even invented or the Arabs first conquered Jerusalem. The reestablishment of Israel in the modern era was exceptionally legal, and yet Muslims have been waging almost incessant war against Israel ever since then. Despite the constant Jihad, Israel has generously given land grants to the Muslim Arabs, including Gaza and Bethlehem, land which the Muslims have immediately turned into hotspots of terrorist activity. There has never been a state of Palestine in history, and Muslims in the modern day have been refusing offers of a state for decades, because they don’t want their own state (they already have 50 nations), they want to destroy Israel. Abulhawa is as dishonest as she is vicious.

There are numerous posts on Abulhawa’s X feed referring to Jews as “parasites,” which seems to be her favorite go-to insult. For example, she re-shared a video asserting that groups of Israelis were moving into Gaza to capitalize on genocide (there was no genocide in Gaza; the only attempted genocide was on October 7). “F*****g parasites on this planet. I want to puke every time I hear that fake language pretending to be Hebrew, without a trace of Semitic sounds, rejoicing in carnage, trying to get their greedy grubby hands on more of what does not belong to them. There’s something horribly wrong with these people,” Abulhawa spat. In another post, she called Israelis “soulless parasites.”

In February, she reposted a clip of Congress welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a claim that almost every member of the United States government is either Jewish or married to a Jew. Abulhawa screeched, “the whole world is zionist occupied, except Palestine. They’ve stolen our land and home and heritage, but we’ve at least kept our dignity, refusing to submit to these parasites on earth.” Apparently, burning Jewish babies to death is maintaining dignity — who knew?

In January, Abulhawa shared a completely unconfirmed report that Israeli soldiers had murdered a mother and daughter. Abulhawa gibbered, “they are demons on this earth. virulent parasites who suck the lifeblood from others, not even for their own survival, but for their sadistic amusement.”I could provide dozens more examples from Abulhawa’s X feed of the most vile antisemitic rhetoric (see more above, found by Jon Levine), but I think the point is clear, which is that Abulhawa is a pro-genocide Jew-hater, and Mamdani’s wife created artwork for one of her essays. If you can know a person by the friends he or she keeps, then Rama Duwaji Mamdani has some serious explaining to do.

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Go home.

Ex-Columbia Professor Calls for Violence, Glorifies Murder of Jews (Turley)

Professor Muhammad Abdou, who until recently taught students at Columbia University, appeared online this week to spread calls for religious-based violence and glorify the murder of Jews. He did so as part of an event at the Union Theological Seminary, an institution associated with Columbia. While the university recently ended Abdou’s teaching, it is important to remember that this unhinged fanatic was previously chosen by Columbia faculty and administrators to teach their students. Those individuals remain at Columbia, and Abdou is just the latest example of the radical chic of higher education.


The Islamic studies scholar called on students to “be a threat” as part of the event titled “Death to the Akademy: How to be a thorn in their throat amidst snakes in the grass.” Teachers in higher education are often called “the academy.” According to a video on X from Manhattan Institute investigative analyst Stu Smith, the talk involved deeply disturbing and hateful comments.

Abdou told the students: “Let us engage in jihad, and there are rules for jihad, and Muslims know that Allah has commanded rules. We don’t engage in wanton violence, but we don’t accept the negative peace either.” One of the most chilling moments came when he praised Elias Rodriguez, the man facing multiple charges for the murder of a young Jewish couple. In what Abdou called the “assassination of two Zionists,” Rodriguez is accused of murdering Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, the two Israeli employees in 2025 in Washington.

Abdou does not discuss how this young couple dreamed of a life together or sought to bridge religious divides. They are just a couple of “Zionists” in his eyes. He then reportedly praised their accused killer: “God bless him. He took action. … Take action. Not only that kind of action, just to be very clear, because there’s also building. We need to destroy. We need to create alternatives.” The seminary stopped his in-person appearance, which led to condemnations from student groups. In an Instagram post, Queer Muslims NYC accused the seminary of “flagrant Islamophobia and utter disregard for Muslim students.” However, they claimed that the union continued to support the event with a virtual component.

This video is reminiscent of the speech of other radical faculty like Cornell Professor Russell Rickford, who celebrated the massacre in Israel on Oct. 7th. Their extremism was not a barrier to being hired. It was likely an enhancement. They are examples of why faculty members are unlikely to change the overwhelmingly liberal appointments. Conservatives and libertarians have been largely purged from most departments. While even a moderately conservative faculty candidate will often face organized opposition, radicals like Abdou and Rickford find an eager audience on faculties.

I encourage you to watch this video. This is the man who was interviewed and selected by faculty and administrators, not just at Columbia but at Cornell University and the University of Toronto. He was appointed as the Arcapita Visiting Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Middle-Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) Program at the Middle-East Institute. He was also a Postdoctoral Fellow/Visiting Scholar at Cornell.

According to his bio, “he is a self-identifying Muslim anarchist and diasporic settler of color.” His credentials include “his organizing towards BIPOC and Palestinian liberation and involvement with post-anti-Globalization Seattle 1999 movements.”That appears to be the perfect resume for someone who wants to teach at leading universities. Those faculty and administrators are still at these institutions, and so is the radical culture that has taken hold of higher education in the United States. What is most striking about this video is how Abdou offers just pure hate. There is no discernible intellectual content or insight. Just rage masquerading as scholarship.

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Keeping busy.

Musk Whips Out ‘Macrohard’ In Disruptive Tesla-xAI Bid (ZH)

Elon Musk on Wednesday announced a joint project between Tesla and his AI startup xAI, which he dubbed “Macrohard” or “Digital Optimus” that can ‘basically automate entire companies’ by observing and intelligently simulating their functions. The way it works, per a Wednesday post on X: “Grok is the master conductor/navigator with deep understanding of the world to direct digital Optimus, which is processing and actioning the past 5 secs of real-time computer screen video and keyboard/mouse actions. Grok is like a much more advanced and sophisticated version of turn-by-turn navigation software.”


So Digital Optimus is the ‘instinct’ while Grok is the ‘thinking part of the mind’ according to Musk. The setup will run “very competitively on the super low cost Tesla AI4 ($650) paired with relatively frugal use of the much more expensive xAI Nvidia hardware,” and “will be the only real-time smart AI system. “In principle, it is capable of emulating the function of entire companies. That is why the program is called MACROHARD, a funny reference to Microsoft.” -Elon Musk.It gets even more wild; Musk says it works “in all AI4-equipped cars, so your car can do office work for you when not driving,” and he will deploy millions of dedicated Digital Optimus units at Supercharger stations.

Grok itself suggested 10 use cases;
1. Auto data entry from invoices/docs.
2. Real-time code fix from error messages.
3. Deal hunting while shopping online.
4. Contextual email response generation.
5. Seamless enterprise software ops.
6. Auto video edits from timeline.
7. Live stock trade execution.
8. Tutorial step automation.
9. Instant security threat spotting.
10. Entire company workflow emulation.

According to Musk, Digital Optimus will be ready to rock in 6 months. xAI was acquired by SpaceX last month in an all-stock deal that valued the rocket maker at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion, which comes ahead of a potential SpaceX IPO later this year.

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All carmakers obeyed politics and lose. Except for Toyota, which didn’t jump in head first. And Tesla.

Honda Just Lost Billions on EVs It Can’t Sell (Stephen Green)

Japanese automaker Honda just cancelled the production of three planned made-in-the-U.S.A. electric cars, including the 0-Series SUV, the 0-Series Saloon, and the Acura RSX — and the company says it will write off massive losses as a result. Still, better than building EVs nobody wants to buy. The company said the EVs had to go to avoid future losses, complaining about the “current business environment where the demand for EVs is declining significantly.” I follow these things, and I’d somehow never even heard of Honda’s 0-Series vehicles — assuredly for “zero emissions” — introduced at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and were supposed to go on sale in the U.S. later this year.


The company’s 0-Series English-language and Japanese brag sheets are still up on the Honda website, for whatever that’s worth. Honda blamed U.S. tariffs (I’ll come back to those in a moment), the “volatile policy environment surrounding EV incentives,” (as Car and Driver put it), fossil fuel regulations, and changing consumer priorities in China. Honda says total write-downs could total $15.8 billion. While the epic losses won’t all come at once, Honda says it expects to lose between $2 billion and $3.5 billion in the current fiscal year, ending this month. According to Financial Times, that’s Honda’s first-ever annual recorded loss since going public 50 years ago.

What’s maybe most impressive about losing nearly [dr_evil_voice] SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS [/dr_evil_voice] on EVs is that Honda didn’t even try that hard, at least not compared to certain other automakers I could name — and am about to. GM said in January that it would suffer $7.6 billion worth of write-downs on its overblown EV plans, and in December, Ford announced a $19.5 billion write-down on its EV investments. That’s one of the largest in history. Europe-based Stellantis took one look at Ford’s losses and said, “Hold my beer.” Headquartered in the Netherlands, the Euro-giant also owns the old Chrysler Group brands, including Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, and Jeep.

Despite Europe offering even bigger subsidies and stricter mandates for EVs than this country does, Stellantis last month announced a whopping $26.6 billion in EV losses. Then there’s fussy old Toyota, which remained largely focused on hybrids and fuel-efficient ICE vehicles. That company seems to be doing just fine. American tariffs might have complicated Honda’s poor planning, but as you can see, they weren’t primarily to blame. Those same tariffs were supposed to help GM and Ford sell their cars — including EVs — but American EV makers took their lumps, too.

The real culprit here, of course, is Big Government. Washington, Brussels, and Beijing went all-in on subsidizing and even mandating a market into existence — a market that there simply wasn’t enough demand to serve. Not even with all the subsidies and mandates. So automakers retooled manufacturing facilities, built massive battery factories, and designed EVs (and pricy software to run them) from the ground up. Now they have to throw out some of the designs, scale back the battery production, and re-retool the plants.

Thanks, Big Government!

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Newsom is a good sign the Dems don’t have anyone.

Gavin Newsom Has a ‘Hillary Clinton Problem’ (Robert Spencer)

The destroyer of California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, wants very, very much to be president of the United States, and if he ever attains his goal, he will do to the entire country what he has done to California. That’s why all reasonable Americans who value the nation as a relatively economically stable and free society should be deeply alarmed at the prospect of a Newsom presidency. Newsom is such a bad candidate that even some leftists are alarmed, albeit not for the same reasons that patriots are. On the left, the concern is that Gavin has a “Hillary Clinton problem.”


The term “Hillary Clinton problem” could refer to so very many difficulties and categories of difficulties that it veritably boggles the mind. Did Newsom use a private email server to conceal government business from watchdogs? Did he abandon our people to jihadis at Benghazi and then lie about it? Does Newsom intend, after losing (as all patriots hope) the 2028 presidential election, to frame his victorious opponent for collusion with Russia? Does Newsom have reputation for lamp-throwing temper tantrums? Do Newsom’s enemies have strange suicidal tendencies?

In this case, the “Hillary Clinton problem” phrase comes from MS NOW host Chris Hayes, who said: “I think Newsom has the Hillary Clinton problem, which is that Hillary Clinton was perceived outside of the Democratic Party and Democratic coalition as the ultimate lib, the libiest lib who ever lived, and was never actually like that much of a lib. It was like — and also had a record that was fairly centrist, particularly as a U.S. senator.”

Oh, good grief. Hayes is trying to sell Newsom – and Hillary Clinton — as centrists? They may be centrists if Chairman Mao is at one end of the spectrum and Uncle Joe Stalin at the other end, but that’s about it. Newsom has presided over California’s first-ever population decline. Luminaries including Elon Musk and Steven Spielberg have fled the state to avoid Newsom’s ever-growing tower of taxes and regulations. All Newsom promises for the nation if he moves into the White House on Jan. 20, 2029 is an open border, spiraling crime, and a federal government that bleeds the taxpayer even more than his California state government does now. What is centrist about all that?

Hayes added: “And that’s like the worst uncanny valley for a Democratic politician to be in, where the base doesn’t trust you because you don’t have a kind of organic relationship with the left parts of the party. And then the swing voter just thinks like, that’s a lib.” Right. Because the swing voter is still marginally sane, while the “left parts of the party” think that men can become women, that Old Joe Biden was a competent president, and that ever-expanding government control over every aspect of Americans’ daily lives is a positive development.

Whether the Democrats run Newsom in 2028 or some other nutbar, it is virtually certain that no one will be able to secure the nomination without appealing to the party’s socialist, anti-American, pro-Islamic Republic of Iran, pro-Hamas base. Hayes says that the “Democrats needed someone who had an authentic relationship with the party’s left-wing base, but also ‘communicates broadly’ and is viewed as nonpartisan.” This is like saying that V. I. Lenin has a chance to be elected if he “communicates broadly” with anti-Communists and is viewed as nonpartisan: it isn’t going to happen.

Hayes, however, thinks Newsom can do it: “I just think right now — and this could change — Newsom has the opposite set of factors. He has made very clear attempts to show that he’s bipartisan, centrist, independent.” How on earth has Gavin Newsom ever attempted to be “bipartisan”? This is the man who has sponsored a gerrymandering scheme that will totally disenfranchise the millions of Californians who are still Republicans.

Despite the facts, Hayes insisted that “substantive things he’s done” showed that Newsom had moved toward the center, and lamented: “But I haven’t seen evidence that that comes through. I just think there’s a reputational thing that’s very problematic. Also, the governor of California is a tough place to get the next Democratic nominee from.”

That may be. Newsom’s problem is indeed California, albeit for different reasons from the ones Hayes imagines. Newsom’s problem is that he has been governor of the nation’s most populous state since Jan. 7, 2019. He has a lengthy track record. Contrary to Chris Hayes’ imaginings, there is nothing centrist about it. So will America choose for president a socialist whose policies have wrecked his state? We shall see, but Gavin’s “Hillary Clinton problem” is not so much that he is wrongly not perceived as a centrist, but that like Hillary, he has always left a catastrophe in his wake. Ask Christopher Stevens about that.

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https://twitter.com/OluwaGbasten/status/2032110885594955948?s=20 https://twitter.com/MichaelARothman/status/2031972970621501937?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Feb 192026
 
 February 19, 2026  Posted by at 10:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  51 Responses »


Ceiling painting from the palace of Amenhotep III, New Kingdom ca. 1390–1353 B.C.


Ukraine Should Come To The Table ‘Fast’ – Trump (RT)
Under Pressure To Reach Deal, Zelensky Explodes: No Time “For All This S**t” (ZH)
Putin Aide Urges Retaliation To ‘Western Piracy’ (RT)
US and Dutch Pilots Flying F-16s For Ukraine – Western Media (RT)
Hungary’s Opposition Made ‘Secret Pact’ With EU On Ukraine – Orban (RT)
18 Ways To Reverse The EU’s Immigration Disaster (RMX)
Judge Orders ICE Not to Re-Detain Abrego Garcia (ET)
Disinformation Board Member Jennifer Daskal Appointed as FISA Court Advisor (CTH)
Fear Is The Only Thing The EU Understands – Karaganov (RT)
Can You Buy A Country? (RT)
Former Trump Strategist Defends Ties with Epstein (RT)
The Last Temptation of the Least Dangerous Branch (Turley)
German Public Broadcaster Ran Fake Ai-Generated Clip of ‘ICE Troops’ (RMX)
Macron Calls Free Speech Online ‘Pure Bullshit’
Trump Posts Tribute to Rush Limbaugh on the Anniversary of His Death (Margolis)

 


 

Optimus

 


 

 


 


They don’t want peaxe. They want to beat Russia.

Ukraine Should Come To The Table ‘Fast’ – Trump (RT)

Ukraine must swiftly give up its uncompromising stance in the negotiations to settle the conflict with Russia, US President Donald Trump has warned. He made the comments ahead of talks between Russia, the US, and Ukraine in Geneva, Switzerland on Tuesday and Wednesday. The parties previously held two trilateral meetings in Abu Dhabi in January. Territorial issues – namely Ukraine’s refusal to abandon its claim to Donbass – reportedly remain the key item hampering progress towards peace. When asked about his expectations from the Swiss negotiations by journalists aboard Air Force One on Monday, Trump said they will be “very big.”


“Ukraine better come to the table fast. That’s all I’m telling you… we want them to come,” the president insisted. During his speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky again ruled out any territorial concessions, claiming that it “would be an illusion to believe that this war can now be reliably ended by dividing Ukraine.” Instead, he demanded more weapons from Kiev’s European backers and called for Ukraine to be included in NATO, which is one of Moscow’s clear red lines. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier that only a few issues remain to be addressed by the sides in Geneva. “The bad news is they’ve been narrowed to the hardest questions to answer,” he stressed.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that the members of the Russian delegation in Geneva, led by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, “intend to discuss a broader range of issues, including the main questions concerning territories… and those related to the demands we have.” Moscow maintains that any sustainable settlement requires Ukraine to withdraw from the areas still under its control in Donbass – which voted to join Russia in referendums in the fall of 2022 – give up on its NATO aspirations, and commit to demilitarization and denazification.

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Zelensky represents a corrupt cabal. He’s getting rich doing it.

Under Pressure To Reach Deal, Zelensky Explodes: No Time “For All This S**t” (ZH)

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has increasingly made his frustrations with the Trump administration public, but he may have just crossed the line with the US President, who Zelensky admits can be tough and unbending. Zelensky has newly complained amid the latest Geneva trilateral talks that the US delegation could pressure him to make “unsuccessful decisions” and he is urging Washington to back off, even using expletives to make his point. For starters, he claims that the Ukrainian public won’t let him cede territory to Russia for the sake of peace even if he wanted to, as we highlighted previously.


But the latest colorful verbal broadside, cited by Axios on Tuesday as Russian and Ukrainian delegations convened in Geneva, saw Zelensky take direct aim at the head of Moscow’s negotiating team, Vladimir Medinsky. Kiev’s frustration at the state of dialogue has been boiling over. Medinsky has argued – along with numerous Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin – that the conflict’s historical roots must be addressed as part of any settlement, especially given the bulk of the Ukrainian population in the east (Donbas) has always been Russian speaking and looked to Moscow historically.mZelensky dismissed that approach outright: “We don’t have time for all this shit,” he told the outlet. “So we have to decide, and have to finish the war.”

Regardless, the Kremlin has lately made clear its aims to take the full Donbas either through talks or by force. Ukraine’s military still holds 10% of the Donbas, however, and Kiev is rejecting a US proposal for it to draw back its forces as part of a conflict freeze leading to settlement. The White House this month has finally appeared to be ratcheting up the pressure directly on Zelensky to make some kind of serious land concession. This was evident in the latest comments by President Trump on the topic of Geneva issued near the start of the week. Frustration with Kiev was evident when he told reporters aboard Air Force One, “Well, we have big talks.” He stated that “It’s going to be very easy. I mean, look, so far, Ukraine better come to the table fast. That’s all I’m telling you.”

Zelensky after this bitterly complained that it’s ‘not fair’ for Trump to take aim at Ukraine and not Russia, and suggested maybe it’s simply easer for Trump to do this given he doesn’t want to upset the far larger, more formidable country. Meanwhile, Medinsky has said Wednesday that the U.S.-mediated peace talks in Geneva had been “difficult but business-like, and that a new round of talks would be held soon,” according to Reuters.

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Patrushev is an important voice.

Putin Aide Urges Retaliation To ‘Western Piracy’ (RT)

Russia’s response to “Western piracy” targeting its maritime trade should be forceful and not limited to diplomatic means, an aide to President Vladimir Putin has said. Nikolay Patrushev, a veteran national security official who heads a naval policymaking body, called for stronger action against Western moves targeting vessels described as part of an alleged Russian ‘shadow fleet’. Attempts to paralyze Russian foreign trade will only intensify, Patrushev warned in an interview with Argumenty i Fakty published on Tuesday. “Unless we push back forcefully, soon the English, the French, and even the Balts will get brazen enough to try and block our nation’s access to at least the Atlantic,” he said.


“The Europeans are in essence making steps to impose a naval blockade, deliberately pushing towards a military escalation, testing the limits of our patience and provoking our retaliation. If the situation is not resolved peacefully, the Navy will be breaking and lifting the blockade,” Patrushev said. “Let’s not forget that plenty of vessels sail the seas under European flags. We may get curious about what they are shipping and where,” he added. Patrushev expressed skepticism that tensions could ease, saying “there is little hope that the West has an ounce of respect for diplomacy and the law.” He argued that “the old practice of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ is being revived,” citing US operations targeting Venezuela and Iran.

Washington has used warships to target suspected drug smuggling boats off Venezuela and intercept outgoing oil tankers, including one sailing under a Russian flag. The Pentagon is now concentrating assets in the Middle East as President Donald Trump pressures Iran to accept restrictions on its missile deterrence against Israel. In today’s world, the Russian Navy is “a geopolitical tool that combines might with flexibility and is suitable for both peacetime and armed conflicts,” Patrushev said. Its strength is needed to protect Russia’s “ability to export oil, grain and fertilizers, and the normal functioning of the state.”

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“.. intelligence, planning, troop training, and maintenance of complex Western hardware – are handled by foreign personnel.”

US and Dutch Pilots Flying F-16s For Ukraine – Western Media (RT)

The Ukrainian military is secretly using a squadron of veteran NATO pilots to fly donated US-made F-16 fighter jets, the French outlet Intelligence Online reported on Monday. Moscow has long warned that Western nations are moving closer to direct conflict with Russia. The report, which Kiev has denied, said the covert mission relies primarily on experienced US and Dutch air force veterans. The foreign personnel are deployed far from the front lines and focus on intercepting Russian long-range weapons, the outlet said. They are no longer part of their original militaries and reportedly work for Kiev as civilian contractors, without military ranks and outside the Ukrainian chain of command.


A shortage of trained Ukrainian pilots was previously identified as the main obstacle to using F-16s donated to Kiev. Training courses were reportedly undermined by language barriers, a lack of qualified trainees, and other issues, and were simplified for speed. Shortly after the first F-16s arrived in Ukraine in August 2024, Kiev began losing pilots in botched air defense missions, with four such incidents acknowledged. The secret foreign squadron provides pilots with the experience needed to operate advanced F-16 equipment, Intelligence Online said.

Moscow views the Ukraine conflict as a NATO proxy war against Russia, in which key elements of Kiev’s military effort – including intelligence, planning, troop training, and maintenance of complex Western hardware – are handled by foreign personnel. Western specialists were reportedly involved in Ukrainian strikes using Storm Shadow/SCALP air-launched cruise missiles on Russian territory. German officials opposed supplying Taurus missiles because Ukrainians cannot launch them independently. Russia also says Western nations tacitly support Kiev’s recruitment of mercenaries from among their military veterans. Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik estimated that around 20,000 foreign fighters have taken part in the conflict on the Ukrainian side.

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“… an election he has framed as a choice between “war or peace.”

Hungary’s Opposition Made ‘Secret Pact’ With EU On Ukraine – Orban (RT)

Hungary’s opposition parties are colluding with EU leaders to fast-track Ukraine’s accession to the bloc, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was claimed, warning that should the pro-Brussels Tisza Party come to power, it could drag the country into a direct conflict with Russia. Hungary’s April 12 parliamentary election is expected to be a tough test for Orban’s longstanding conservative rule, during which time he has criticized the EU’s financial and military support for Kiev and its sanctions on Russia. Orban also opposes Ukraine’s bid for EU membership. Recent polls show a tight race between his Fidesz party and the opposition, led by former party member Péter Magyar, who met with European leaders at last week’s Munich Security Conference.


“Last weekend, the Tisza Party made a secret pact with Brussels in Munich. Part of this pact includes giving up its veto power, supporting the migration agreement, and accepting Ukraine into the EU. They are following Brussels’ orders and thus dragging us into war,” Orban remarked at a meeting of Fidesz and its coalition partner, the Christian Democratic People’s Party, which was broadcast on Hungary’s M1 television. Magyar met EU leaders on the sidelines of the conference last week, where he held talks with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, according to his office.

“Our friends belong to the international peace camp led by the United States. Their friends are leaders of the European military camp led by the German chancellor,” Orban said, referring to his political opponents. He claimed that Merz had openly signaled readiness to support Magyar’s party in the April vote because he wanted Hungary to relinquish its veto power within the EU. “The chancellor needs this to establish Germany’s sovereign rule in Europe,” Orban stated. The Hungarian leader has previously accused Magyar of acting under Brussels’ influence, saying the bloc uses “censorship, intervention, and manipulation” to undermine his government in an election he has framed as a choice between “war or peace.”

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“European Union member states can reclaim effective authority over migration and asylum policy without changing the EU treaties.”

18 Ways To Reverse The EU’s Immigration Disaster (RMX)

Due to years of uncontrolled mass migration, many Europeans are asking what concrete options there are to reverse course, with many feeling that the situation is hopeless and cannot be significantly reversed. However, a new report titled “Taking Back Control from Brussels: The Renationalization of the EU Migration and Asylum Policies” — produced by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), Hungary’s Migration Research Institute, and Poland’s Ordo Iuris Institute — provides comprehensive solutions to the crisis.


The paper’s core thesis offers bold and practical solutions today, noting that the power still rests with member states. The authors write: “European Union member states can reclaim effective authority over migration and asylum policy without changing the EU treaties.”

The report outlines how asylum policy has “completely collapsed” in the EU and reached a point of “total failure.” The authors contend that the current system lacks democratic legitimacy and has turned the Schengen area into a “sieve” that facilitates illegal migration and prevents effective border protection. Given the recent legalization actions of the far-left Spanish government, aimed at regularizing approximately 500,000 migrants who can then move freely across Europe, the paper’s proposals may be more relevant than ever.

The paper calls for a fundamental “paradigm shift” to restore migration sovereignty to individual nation-states, asserting that renationalization is a necessity for Europe to regain control over its borders and territory. The following 18 proposals from the second part of the paper outline a roadmap for this renationalization. The paper itself provides far more details about each proposal and is recommended reading for any European party looking for a blueprint to regain control of immigration.

https://twitter.com/RMXnews/status/2016823717800624625
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“The illegal immigrant from El Salvador is also facing federal human smuggling charges.”

Judge Orders ICE Not to Re-Detain Abrego Garcia (ET)

A federal judge has blocked U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) from re-arresting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, one of the men at the center of the Trump administration’s deportation battles.The Salvadoran national’s case attracted attention across the country, including widespread protests, after the federal government detained him in March 2025 and shipped him to El Salvador’s maximum security prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center, along with an airplane full of other deportees. He was later returned to the United States, where he has had long-running legal battles with the administration.


U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who ordered the administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return last year, ruled on Feb. 17 that he cannot be deported again because the federal government has not presented a feasible plan for removing him from the country. The judge said that despite releasing Abrego Garcia, the government appeared to be making plans to re-detain him, so Abrego Garcia filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order to prevent being re-detained. The court previously granted the requested order.In the new order, the court granted Abrego Garcia’s request to upgrade the temporary restraining order to an injunction to prevent him from being re-detained.

Abrego Garcia, who entered the United States illegally more than a decade ago, had been living in Maryland when federal agents arrested him. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security takes the position that Abrego Garcia is a “violent criminal illegal alien, and MS-13 gang member,” who “belongs behind bars and off American soil.”Abrego Garcia, who is facing separate criminal charges, denies being a member of MS-13, which has been designated a terrorist organization. Xinis previously ordered his release on Dec. 11, 2025, finding that because the federal government had never issued a final order of removal against him, it could not detain him in order to force him from the country.

The government said in a brief last month that Abrego Garcia may be detained because an immigration judge issued an order of removal on Dec. 11, 2025, that became final on Jan. 13 of this year. Detention after that order “does not require that the country of removal be certain in order for detention to be lawful,” the brief said. The judge suggested the federal government is not serious about removing Abrego Garcia from the United States.Since he secured release from criminal custody in August 2025, the government has “made one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success,” she said.

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“.. one of the core officials who used the term dis-mis-mal-information to censor speech on social media platforms ..”

Disinformation Board Member Jennifer Daskal Appointed as FISA Court Advisor (CTH)

A good catch by Chuck Ross at WFB drawing attention to the latest Amici curiae appointed to the FISA Court. Adding to a string of leftist ‘advisors to the court’ Jennifer Daskal has been appointed by FISA Court Presiding Judge Anthony Trenga. Daskal was the Biden administration principal deputy general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security who launched the Disinformation Governance Board (Ministry of Truth) ultimately led by Nina Jankowicz. Jennifer Daskal’s career has centers around controlling information from a leftist perspective and was one of the core officials who used the term dis-mis-mal-information to censor speech on social media platforms around COVID-19 and the vaccination protocol.


Daskal’s reach and control into big tech and social media is well documented. Appointing her as an advisor to the FISA court is troubling as she has joined Amy Jeffress, appointed amicus curiae in 2015 (Biden’s personal attorney), David Kris, a 2016 amicus curiae selection (denied Carter Page FISA application contained fabrications), and the infamous Mary McCord appointed amicus curiae in 2021 (sits at the center of every stop-Trump operation).

“Washington Free Beacon – A Biden administration official who launched the Disinformation Governance Board and served as co-chair of the so-called Ministry of Truth has been appointed to advise the powerful Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, prompting concerns from some Republican lawmakers. The presiding judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review appointed Jennifer Daskal on Feb. 1 to serve as amicus curiae for the court. Amici curiae, known as “friends of the court,” advise judges on legal issues related to foreign surveillance warrants in national security cases. Daskal served as acting principal deputy general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security under Biden. In that role, she drafted the charter for the Disinformation Governance Board, according to a Jan. 31, 2022 memo. (read more)”

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“Our strategy must change fundamentally. The objective is to accelerate the United States’ withdrawal from Europe. The method is firm deterrence.”

Fear Is The Only Thing The EU Understands – Karaganov (RT)

The current phase of the West’s conflict with Russia may be nearing its end. It has dragged on longer than necessary. The principal reason is a lack of determination to employ active nuclear deterrence. This is the only mechanism capable of resolving the “European problem,” which has once again become an existential threat to our country.The Ukraine military operation has acted as a powerful catalyst for Russia’s internal renewal. It has mobilized society, awakened patriotism, and allowed people to demonstrate their best qualities. Pride in the Fatherland and respect for service to it have grown. Engineering, science, the military profession, and skilled labor have regained their rightful status. The economy and science have revived. Teachers, regrettably, have not yet received similar recognition, but that is a subject for later.


By drawing Western hostility onto ourselves, we have seriously weakened the position of the comprador bourgeoisie and its Western-educated allies. The Portuguese once used the word compadres to describe local merchants who served colonial interests. After the reforms of the 1990s, this class expanded in Russia to unhealthy proportions. Fortunately, the process of cleansing the country of this Western-oriented stratum has begun. It has been achieved without mass repression, but with historical inevitability. This revival has come at a terrible cost. Tens of thousands of brave soldiers lost their lives at the opening stage of national recovery. They deserve eternal gratitude. When – or rather, if – the unfinished war resumes, such losses must not be repeated.

In 2013, I personally warned a group of Western European leaders that their policy of dragging Ukraine into the EU and NATO would lead to war and mass casualties. No one met my gaze. They looked down at their shoes, then continued talking about democracy, trust, and human rights. In reality, they wanted to exploit another forty million people. Something they have partly succeeded in achieving through the creation of millions of refugees. They spoke of containing Russia, which was still loyal at the time. Our response to NATO’s aggression in Libya in 2011 was weak. We are now paying for years of appeasement and the comprador instincts of part of our elite.

Russia briefly slowed down the EU’s march toward military adventurism by returning Crimea in 2014 and intervening in Syria in 2015. Then we relaxed. Had an ultimatum on NATO expansion been issued in 2018–2020 and backed by credible nuclear deterrence, the current war might have been avoided. Or at the very least it would have been far less bloody. By 2022, it was obvious that both the West and the Kiev authorities were preparing for war.Ukraine is not a homogeneous entity. In the east and south live people culturally close to us. West of the Dnieper lies a different historical and cultural community, shaped by Austro-Hungarian, Polish, and Western influence and infused for decades with anti-Russian ideology. We must accept this reality and pursue a rational separation from both Ukrainian and European pathologies, forging our own healthy model of development.

Militarily, we are winning. Politically, we have yet to respond adequately to a series of openly aggressive actions: pirate seizures of Russian vessels, threats to close straits, attempts to impose a de facto economic blockade, attacks on oil terminals, and efforts by the Kiev regime to sabotage our tankers. Often with Western European connivance. Our response so far has been intensified strikes on Ukrainian targets. This is not a strategic solution. Ukraine was deliberately thrown into the furnace so that the fire would spread to Russia. EU elites do not care about Ukrainians. The conflict will continue until its true source is addressed: Western Europe’s degenerated ruling classes, intellectually, morally, and materially exhausted, who cling to power by fueling war.

Unlike 1812–1815 or 1941–1945, we have not yet destroyed a hostile coalition or broken its will. The war has entered what chess players call the middle-game. The remnants of Ukraine, supported by the West, will continue sabotage and terrorism. Sanctions will remain. The EU is preparing for a new confrontation, potentially involving rearmed Ukrainian forces and mercenaries from poorer European states. Any violations of future agreements will require military responses. We will again be accused of aggression. Open conflict will likely resume. Our strategy must change fundamentally. The objective is to accelerate the United States’ withdrawal from Europe. The method is firm deterrence. The task is to defeat Western Europe’s current elites, who see Russophobia as their last political lifeline.

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It’s getting harder as time goes by.

Can You Buy A Country? (RT)

When US President Donald Trump revived the idea of buying Greenland – and refused to rule out stronger measures if Denmark declined – the reaction across Europe was swift and indignant. The proposal was framed as an anachronism: a throwback to imperial horse-trading that modern international politics had supposedly outgrown. But the outrage obscures an uncomfortable historical reality. The United States was not only forged through revolution and war; it was also built through transactions – large-scale territorial purchases concluded at moments when the balance of power left the seller with limited options. From continental expanses to strategic islands, Washington has repeatedly expanded its reach by writing checks backed by leverage. If the idea of buying land now sounds jarring, it is worth recalling that some of the largest such deals helped shape the United States into the country we know today. To understand why the Greenland debate resonates so strongly, we should revisit the major acquisitions that redrew the American map.


Louisiana: The biggest purchase
French explorers ventured into the Mississippi Valley in the late 17th century, claiming new territories and naming this vast expanse Louisiana after King Louis XIV. In 1718, they established New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi, gradually populating the colony not just with French settlers but also through policies enacted by Louis that granted freedom to children born of unions between white settlers and black slaves. Still, the population remained sparse. The region’s bad climate and complex relationships with Native Americans made settlement difficult. As a result, France didn’t particularly value this territory, despite its huge size: French Louisiana encompassed not just modern-day Louisiana but, either partially or wholly, the modern states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Texas, New Mexico, and even parts of Canada. Despite this, however, it was hard to find a Frenchman beyond New Orleans.

New France in 1750 before the French and Indian War. © Wikipedia


In 1763, following the Seven Years’ War, France ceded Louisiana to Spain. The Spanish administration didn’t oppress the French settlers and managed the colony quite competently. However, much of this enormous land remained largely uninhabited aside from the Native Americans. The total number of settlers, including black slaves, amounted to several tens of thousands of people. By the early 19th century, Europe saw many changes. Napoleon regained control of Louisiana, aiming to revive France’s overseas empire. However, this ambition crumbled when his attempt to restore French rule in Haiti failed. A force sent by Napoleon was decimated by black rebels and succumbed to tropical diseases.

Against this backdrop, Napoleon quickly realized that he could not hold onto Louisiana, and the English or Americans would easily seize it. As for the US, it had mixed feelings about Louisiana; controlling the mouth of the Mississippi was crucial, but Americans were also wary of potential French aggression. Finally, US President Thomas Jefferson initiated negotiations with France for the purchase of Louisiana. Napoleon saw this as a big opportunity. He recognized that he could get real money by selling the territory which France didn’t really need and couldn’t control.

Jefferson and the American side initially aimed to purchase only New Orleans and its surrounding areas, offering $10 million. However, the French surprised their American counterparts: they asked for $15 million, but as part of the deal, offered vast territories stretching up to Canada. However, beyond New Orleans, the French essentially sold the freedom to claim land inhabited by the Native Americans. The French had very little control over this vast territory, and the Native Americans didn’t even understand what the sale entailed. In fact, aside from the Native Americans, the vast territory was inhabited by only about 60,000 settlers, including black slaves.

Regardless, the deal was concluded, and America’s territory effectively doubled overnight. Robert Livingston, one of the Founding Fathers and then US ambassador to France, famously declared, “We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our whole lives… From this day the United States take their place among the powers of the first rank.”

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“The strategist’s spokesman said he conducted about 12 hours of interviews with Epstein for the documentary. ”

Former Trump Strategist Defends Ties with Epstein (RT)

Steve Bannon, a former White House strategist and prominent MAGA figure, has defended his extensive communications with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, insisting they were part of an effort to produce a documentary. His comments come after the release of millions of pages of Epstein-related files by the US Justice Department, which reveal a far cozier relationship between Bannon – a former adviser to President Donald Trump – and the financier who was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell in August 2019.


According to the New York Times, Bannon’s name appears in the Epstein emails nearly every day in the six months leading up to financier’s July 2019 arrest on sex trafficking charges. In April 2019, Bannon texted Epstein a strategy to rehabilitate his image. “First we need to push back on the lies; then crush the pedo/trafficking narrative; then rebuild your image as philanthropist,” he wrote. Epstein also appears to have offered Bannon lavish perks, including private jet travel, lodging at his Manhattan townhouse, and medical care. While Bannon’s spokesman denied he accepted the jet or medical care, records suggest he had stayed at Epstein’s Paris apartment on at least one occasion in March 2019.

In a statement to the New York Times, Bannon said his interactions with Epstein were strictly professional, noting that he is “a filmmaker and TV host with decades of experience interviewing controversial figures.” “That’s the only lens through which these private communications should be viewed – a documentary filmmaker working, over a period of time, to secure 50 hours of interviews from a reclusive subject,” Bannon insisted. The strategist’s spokesman said he conducted about 12 hours of interviews with Epstein for the documentary.

However, so far only two hours have been released by the Justice Department. In the footage, Epstein acknowledged being “a criminal” and a sexual predator, but Bannon did not focus on his treatment of women and instead discussed finance and science. His spokesman said he planned to address the topic later on.The Epstein files, totaling over 3.5 million pages, include multiple mentions of numerous global elites, including Bill Clinton, Elon Musk, and the former Prince Andrew. Attorney General Pam Bondi has declared all the Epstein files released, though critics claim this represents only a fraction of the seized data.

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” These judges are using their offices to amplify their personal outrage over policies. The result is that they are erasing the distinction between our courts and our politics.”

The Last Temptation of the Least Dangerous Branch (Turley)

This month, the U.S. Judicial Conference issued new ethics guidelines, a publication that rarely attracts attention beyond a small circle of legal nerds. These guidelines, however, are not just the usual tweaks on rules governing free meals or travel. They include a new policy that could materially alter the character of the American courts, allowing judges to engage in commentary to rebut what they deem “illegitimate forms of criticism and attacks.” It is not just injudicious, it is dangerous.


Over two centuries ago, the Framers had to sell the Constitution to skeptical states, leery about yielding power to a central government, including federal courts. In Federalist #78, Alexander Hamilton sought to put these fears aside and assured the states that the federal judiciary is “the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.” One can certainly disagree with Hamilton whether history has borne out his prediction that the court would have the least capacity to “annoy” others in our system. However, Hamilton’s pitch would later be reinforced by the adoption of apolitical ethical standards in our courts that separated them from political activities and commentary.

It did not begin that way. Early federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, were often openly partisan. Federalist judges took active roles in hunting down Jeffersonians under the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts. That changed as the nation embraced a new model of judges who would stand apart from politics. While judges often reflect the ideological views of the presidents who nominated them, they have largely followed rigid rules that have prevented them from engaging in political commentary. Judges are expected to address the legal issues in their opinions and leave political commentary to others regarding the implications or basis of those opinions.

It has not been a perfect system. Recently, some of us have criticized judges who have made overtly political statements in their opinions or in public. The deviation from the traditional line of judicial silence has grown in recent years. I previously wrote about this pattern of extrajudicial commentary, including inappropriate commentary in court statements and opinions. These comments often undermined the integrity of the court and the public’s faith in the neutrality of our judges.

District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, was criticized for failing to recuse herself from the Special Counsel’s case against President Donald Trump after she made highly controversial statements about him from the bench. Chutkan lashed out at “a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” That “one person” was still under investigation at the time, and when Trump was charged, Chutkan refused to let the case go. Chutkan later doubled down when asked to dismiss a case due to Trump pardoning Jan. 6 defendants. After acknowledging that she could not block the pardons, she proclaimed that the pardons could not change the “tragic truth” and “cannot whitewash the blood, feces and terror that the mob left in its wake. And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”

One of Chutkan’s colleagues, Judge Beryl Howell, also an Obama appointee, denounced a Trump policy as “a revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement.” Then there is Judge Amit Mehta, another Obama appointee, who has been criticized for conflicted rulings in Trump cases and his bizarre (and ultimately abandoned) effort to banish January 6th defendants from the Capitol. He called Trump’s policies “shameful.” D.C. Circuit Judge Reggie Walton called Trump a “charlatan.” U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt of the Southern District of Iowa made public comments calling Trump a “criminal.” Other federal judges have made other public statements denouncing Trump and Republican priorities. Even before this change, these judges felt that they could engage in such political declarations.

Even Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson declared publicly how she sees her position as a judge “as a wonderful opportunity to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues, and that’s what I try to do.” Last year, the Supreme Court condemned U.S. District Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, for his attacks on Trump as a bully bent on “retribution.” He also accused the administration of “racial discrimination” and “discrimination against the LGBTQ community,” and asked in one order, “Have we no shame?” There is no paucity of such criticism in our country. Many pundits have leveled such attacks against the President, but this was a sitting judge. These judges are using their offices to amplify their personal outrage over policies. The result is that they are erasing the distinction between our courts and our politics. ccu

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Here’s one use of AI.

German Public Broadcaster Ran Fake Ai-Generated Clip of ‘ICE Troops’ (RMX)

The German public broadcaster ZDF has admitted to a significant editorial oversight after its flagship news program, Heute Journal, aired AI-generated images featuring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arresting an immigrant family. After uproar on social media over the fake news segment, which included a visible OpenAI’ “Sora” watermark on the screen, the broadcaster expressed regret over the error and has since updated the report to remove the synthetic content. Critics pointed out that while it is becoming harder to differentiate fake AI content from real events, the appearance of the Sora watermark made it clear that this was AI content.


https://twitter.com/RMXnews/status/2023482983303573586


The controversy from the Feb. 15 report featured fake AI scenes of a woman and two children being led away by ICE. During the segment, ICE agents were referred to as “troops.”m When questioned about the incident, ZDF stated that the images should have been clearly marked. The broadcaster explained: “This marking was not transferred when the article was transferred for technical reasons.”nThe question now is whether ZDF generated these images in-house. ZDF has declined to comment on whether the editorial staff was aware that the footage was AI-generated at the time of the initial broadcast.

If ZDF created them, the fact that arguably the biggest public broadcaster is creating AI-generated content for public broadcasting is raising concerns about how often AI-generated content has been produced without proper labeling in the past. In response, ZDF reiterated its commitment to transparency, noting: “ZDF’s AI principles stipulate that AI-generated images are always transparently labeled.” The incident caused further confusion when the original broadcast was temporarily removed from YouTube and the ZDF media library, leading some media outlets to report that the broadcaster had “deleted its fake video.” ZDF clarified that the removal was only a temporary measure while the editorial team replaced the AI sequences with authentic video and still images.

A revised version of the program is now available in the media library, accompanied by a disclaimer stating: “Video subsequently changed for editorial reasons.”All German households are required to pay nearly €20 per month to fund ZDF and other public broadcasting outlets like ARD. That translates to billions every year. The outlets are routinely accused of bias against conservatives, including negative reports targeting the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a high rate of rejection for AfD guests on the networks .

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“.. Elon Musk slamming Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, when he wrote “Dirty Sánchez is a tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain.”

Macron Calls Free Speech Online ‘Pure Bullshit’ (ZH),

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that the notion of free speech on social media platforms – is “pure bullshit,” because algorithmically served content can lead to hate speech (such as the right to say his elderly wife has a penis and gives him black eyes). The comments come after the US recently imposed bans on a former European official and pro-censorship activists for trying to police online speech, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio justifies the moves as pushback against the “global censorship-industrial complex.”


Europe, including Germany and the UK, have been weighing social media bans for minors, a move that could impact critical advertising revenue for companies and platforms such as Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Snap, X, and others. “Having no clue about how their algorithm is made, how it’s tested, trained and where it will guide you — the democratic consequences of this bias could be huge,” Macron said in New Delhi on Wednesday, Bloomberg reports. “Some of them claim to be in favor of free speech — OK, we are in favor of free algorithms — totally transparent,” he continued. “Free speech is pure bullshit if nobody knows how you are guided to this so-called free speech, especially when it is guided from one hate speech to another.”


Earlier this month, Macron said he expects a battle with the Trump administration over the bloc’s regulation of digital services, and that countries such as France and Spain could be punished if they move forward with proposed social media bans for children. nThe Trump administration has vowed to oppose efforts by foreign nations to “censor our discourse” or otherwise limit free speech that has been used to disadvantage anti-immigration political parties, and that the US would foster “resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.”

Vice President JD Vance, speaking last year at the Munich Security Conference, accused the EU of suppressing free speech and said Europe’s retreat from its fundamental values was a bigger threat to the continent than Russia or China. Calling Trump Washington’s “new sheriff,” Vance slammed attempts to moderate speech on social media. Some EU officials were concerned that the US was using free speech as a pressure point to cow the bloc into softening its regulation of technology platforms, Bloomberg reported earlier. -Bloomberg In response, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that freedom of speech ends with hate speech. Hilariously, Bloomberg highlighted Elon Musk slamming Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, when he wrote “Dirty Sánchez is a tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain.”

As the FT’s Stephen Bush opines regarding the UK’s push: Children are a lot like terrorists, and I don’t mean that as a commentary on their behaviour. I mean that being defined as one in a liberal democracy means that you lose at least some of the rights and freedoms that other citizens take for granted. Your freedom to marry who you want, to work or not work, to vote, to seek or not consent to medical procedures; these and many other rights granted to adults are curtailed for anyone the state defines as a child.

Another way in which they are like terrorists is that invoking children is a good way to get people to stop asking difficult questions and arguing against policy proposals. One big reason why banning under-16s from social media is taking off as a policy idea is that it is more palatable than banning all of us. But it is far from clear that any of us are well served by algorithms that dish up addictive material, violent pornography or endless footage of atrocities. Nor is it clear that “protecting” the under-16s will not make 16, 17 and 18-year-olds more vulnerable. The large number of first-time internet users who are taken in by fraud or are susceptible to harmful behaviour online, suggests that all it may do is move the problem along.

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“I’ll never forget, 2015, and I got a call, all excited, that Rush Limbaugh just endorsed you.”

Trump Posts Tribute to Rush Limbaugh on the Anniversary of His Death (Margolis)

It’s hard to believe it, but it’s been five years since the passing of Rush Limbaugh. Five years. Conservative talk radio has never been the same since. Honestly, I wish I had listened to him more, but as a writer, I found anything other than music distracting from my ability to write.mI did listen occasionally, and any time Rush read one of my articles, I would get a whole bunch of texts from people alerting me to it, which was pretty awesome. The last time he read one of my articles (that I know of) was the day of Biden’s inauguration, less than a month before he passed. Limbaugh had unmatched insight. In fact, even before Biden took office, Rush observed that Democrats were still very much afraid of Trump and would indict him to try to take him down.


“I know they desperately want Trump gone and I know that they desperately want it codified that Trump cannot run again because make no mistake, they remain scared to death of you and they remain scared to death of Trump, Trump — 75 million, 80 million votes — and I’m going to tell you, you’re not going anywhere,” Limbaugh said in January 2021. “Even if Trump does, you’re not. They can’t separate you from Trump, and more importantly, they can’t separate you from the ideas. They can’t separate you from MAGA. They can’t separate you from Make America Great Again, which I think remains one of our big campaign strengths going forward.”

On Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump released a video tribute honoring Limbaugh and reflecting on their friendship. Trump called it “the fifth anniversary of the loss of a really great man.” He described Limbaugh as “a great conservative, somebody that loved our country, loved his family, loved a lot of things.” He added on a personal note, “he was a friend of mine, Rush Limbaugh.” Trump recalled that the two had never met when he first launched his presidential campaign in 2015. “I’d never met Rush when I announced that I was running,” he said. Then came a moment he still vividly remembers. “I’ll never forget, 2015, and I got a call, all excited, that Rush Limbaugh just endorsed you.”

At the time, Trump said, Limbaugh’s support came purely from what he heard. “I’d never met him. He liked my opening speech.” Trump pointed to his campaign launch that June, when he descended the now-famous escalator alongside the woman who would become first lady. Limbaugh, he said, responded to the message immediately. “He liked, uh, when I got up in June, and I said, ‘You know, uh, we got bad borders, we got bad crime, we got bad everything,’ and he liked it,” Trump said. “I came down the escalator with now our first lady, and he thought it was great, and, uh, he endorsed me, and then I got to know him, and I realized what a great guy he was.”

Five years after Limbaugh’s death, Trump said the loss is still deeply felt. “But it’s five years, and we miss Rush,” he said. Echoing a frequent refrain from Sean Hannity, Trump added, “As Sean Hannity would often say, ‘There will never be another Rush Limbaugh.’” He closed by offering condolences to Limbaugh’s loved ones. “So to his family, his great wife and family, I just wanna say we miss you all,” Trump said. “We miss him, and there’ll never be anybody like him. Thank you very much.” A year before his death, Trump awarded Rush with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the 2020 State of the Union address, honoring him days after Limbaugh revealed his Stage 4 cancer diagnosis.

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Cybercab https://twitter.com/EvaFox/status/2023710868207292719?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Feb 122026
 
 February 12, 2026  Posted by at 11:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Camille Pissarro The Boulevard Montmartre at Night 1897


Elon Musk Vows To Establish A MOON CITY Within 10 Years (MN)
Economy Adds 130,000 Jobs in January, Unemployment Rate Falls to 4.3% (CTH)
Trump Orders CIA To Give 2020 Election Intel To ‘Stop The Steal’ Lawyer (ZH)
30 Years Later Massie Discovers Les Wexner Was Associate of Epstein (CTH)
Steve Bannon Messages About Trump Included in the Epstein File Release (CTH)
The Trump Admin Just Won the Mask Decision . . . Now it Should Appeal (Turley)
Jordan Opens Bondi Hearing By Railing Against Sanctuary Cities (JTN)
Lawmaker Probing J6 Worried US Capitol Police Intel Politicized vs GOP (JTN)
Munich 2007: Putin’s Warning To The West (RT)
Russia Will Stick To Nuclear Arms Limits If US Does The Same (ZH)
All the Media’s Men: When Journalism Became the Story -Part II of II (Wilson)
Texas Judges Strategize Ways to Block DHS From Enforcing Immigration Laws (CTH)
‘No Privacy’ CBDCs Will Come, Warns Billionaire Ray Dalio (CT)

 


 

https://twitter.com/BryceMLipscomb/status/2021305065852547259?s=20

 


 


Musk ponders his own mortality. He won’t make it to Mars in time to be the first settler.

“Priority Of SpaceX becomes a self-sustaining lunar metropolis to safeguard humanity’s future..”

Elon Musk Vows To Establish A MOON CITY Within 10 Years (MN)

Elon Musk and SpaceX are charting a bold new course for American space dominance, prioritizing a thriving city on the Moon to shield civilization from earthly perils like natural disasters or geopolitical chaos. With frequent launches and rapid iteration cycles, the Moon offers a practical launchpad for multi-planetary life, free from the constraints of overregulated space agencies that have stalled progress for decades. SpaceX’s announcement comes amid a renewed push for lunar exploration, where private enterprise is outpacing sluggish international efforts.


According to reports, the company aims to establish a “self-growing city” on the Moon within a decade, leveraging the proximity for hundreds of test cycles that Mars’ distant orbit simply can’t match. Musk elaborated on X, stating, “SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years.” He emphasized the logistical edge: launches to the Moon every 10 days with a two-day trip, versus Mars’ 26-month windows and six-month journeys.

This allows for swift advancements in life support, construction, and energy systems—key to breaking free from Earth’s vulnerabilities.

The shift doesn’t abandon Mars entirely. Musk noted that SpaceX will still pursue a long term plan for a Red Planet city, but the Moon takes precedence as a faster safeguard for civilization.

“The overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster,” Musk posted. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2020962635156684920

This pragmatic approach exposes the folly of pie-in-the-sky promises that have dominated space policy, often mired in wasteful spending and political gamesmanship. Musk also teased democratized space travel:

This development echoes broader frustrations with establishment space programs. NASA’s Artemis missions, while ambitious, are bogged down by delays and ballooning costs. SpaceX, unencumbered by such bureaucracy, is poised to deliver tangible wins, potentially including lunar data centers powered by constant solar energy, boosting U.S. tech supremacy. By prioritizing the lunar city, SpaceX advances an independent, resilient humanity—free from reliance on fragile international alliances that often prioritize control over innovation.

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In a time of large scale revisions, OK numbers.

Economy Adds 130,000 Jobs in January, Unemployment Rate Falls to 4.3% (CTH)

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics releases the employment figures for January today [BLS DATA HERE]. Overall, in the establishment survey, 130,000 jobs were added and the unemployment rate fell to 4.3%. This is much stronger than anticipated and there are indications of significant movement back to work as the exfiltration of illegal alien workers continues.


Via WSJ – “The U.S. added 130,000 jobs in January, surging past expectations and marking a strong start to the year following a weak year of job growth. The January numbers from the Labor Department were above the seasonally adjusted 48,000 jobs added in December, which were revised slightly lower. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal were expecting 55,000 jobs in January.The unemployment rate, which is based on a separate survey from the jobs figures, fell to 4.3% from 4.4%.” (more)

What I find interesting in the Household ‘Employment’ Survey is the number of people going back into the workforce. I am left to wonder if the ICE removals are starting to create employer driven incentives, increased wages etc. that seem to be pulling sidelined workers back to the labor market.


528,000 more people employed. The unemployed dropped by 141,000, and the number of people not in the labor force dropped by 221,000. https://twitter.com/i/status/2021581691798618596

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“The administration last year hired Kurt Olsen, who more than five years ago took part in the “Stop the Steal” campaign that promoted baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, to investigate the 2020 election.”

Trump Orders CIA To Give 2020 Election Intel To ‘Stop The Steal’ Lawyer (ZH)

President Donald Trump has instructed the CIA and other spy agencies to hand over intelligence related to the 2020 election, a bunch of (presumably panicked) US intelligence officials told Politico and NBC News. The records are to be handed over to Kurt Olsen – now a temporary government employee in the White House – who four years ago was involved in the “Stop the Steal” campaign to determine whether Joe Biden won the 2020 election via cheating. And you know they’re freaking out by the way they tell us this… “The administration last year hired Kurt Olsen, who more than five years ago took part in the “Stop the Steal” campaign that promoted baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, to investigate the 2020 election.” -NBC News


… President Donald Trump has directed top U.S. spy agencies to share sensitive intelligence about the 2020 election with his former campaign lawyer, known for pushing debunked theories of electoral fraud, according to four people with knowledge of the effort. -Politico. Indeed:

“The president has asked Mr. Olsen to look at intelligence related to the 2020 election and the agency is ensuring that he has the access necessary to do his work,” a CIA official told NBC in an emailed statement (probably right after hanging up with the reporter). When asked about Olsen’s role, the White House told the outlet “President Trump has the authority to provide access to classified material to individuals as he deems necessary. The entire Trump administration is working together to ensure the integrity of U.S. elections.”

The admin did not specifically respond to questions about whether Olsen was focusing only on the 2020 election, or possible security threats to future elections. The freakout comes after the FBI’s recent search of an elections center in Fulton County, Georgia – where they seized ballots from the 2020 election. Now check out the tone over at Politico: “The decision to provide some of the government’s most sensitive spy material to Olsen is unusual, given that he has no known experience working with the U.S. spy community and only joined the Trump administration as a short-term special government employee in October 2025. Special government employees are supposed to work no more than 130 days during any period of 365 days, suggesting his time at the White House could end soon.”


The first person said that Olsen has passed a background check and a polygraph exam. It is not clear how close Olsen is to completing his report on the 2020 elections. Intelligence analysis is supposed to be nonpartisan, and it appears Olsen’s views on electoral fraud in prior U.S. elections are so deeply held that even some people close to the president question his ability to evaluate the material shared with him. “This guy has no background” in intelligence, said the second person, a close Trump ally. Olsen “will find some super classified report, say it’s evidence of fraud, but really it’s just completely out of context.”

… Olsen rose to prominence by working closely with Trump to undermine the results of the 2020 election under the slogan “Stop the Steal.” He urged several DOJ officials that year to file a complaint to the Supreme Court scrutinizing Trump’s loss, and even called the president multiple times during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Wow! As we noted earlier Tuesday, an affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans last month, which was unsealed Tuesday, lays out five categories of confirmed problems in Fulton County’s handling of ballots, raising questions that have simmered for over five years since Trump and his allies raised questions about the election in Georgia and other states where irregularities were alleged.

According to a report from Just the News, Evans filed the affidavit last month to establish probable cause for a raid that seized around 700 boxes of ballots from an Atlanta-area storage warehouse. The investigation stemmed from a referral by Kurt Olsen, President Trump’s election integrity czar. Evans interviewed roughly a dozen unnamed witnesses about allegations tied to the contested Georgia race, where Joe Biden edged out Trump by less than 12,000 votes in the official results. “This warrant application is part of an FBI criminal investigation into whether any of the improprieties were intentional acts that violated federal criminal laws.”

Fulton County admitted it lacks scanned images of all 528,777 ballots counted during the initial count and of the 527,925 ballots tallied during the state’s first recount. County officials also confirmed that during the recount, some ballots were scanned multiple times. Ballot images obtained through public records requests show identical markings appearing on duplicated images.During the Risk Limiting Audit, hand counters reported vote totals for batches that didn’t match the actual votes inside those batches. According to the affidavit, “The State’s Performance Review Board reported that Secretary of State investigators confirmed inaccurate batch tallies from the Risk Limiting Audit.

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“Wexner’s money was the originating capital for what would later become Epstein’s influence empire…”

30 Years Later Massie Discovers Les Wexner Was Associate of Epstein (CTH)

I said Monday on Twitter: “Seriously. Correct me if I’m wrong. For more than a decade we have known that billionaire Les Wexner from Victoria’s Secret was the originating money man behind Jeffrey Epstein. This should not be some kind of revelation, as it was widely discussed by those who researched Epstein over a decade ago. Wexner’s money was the originating capital for what would later become Epstein’s influence empire. Additionally, and again, stop me if this old news is incorrect, well over a decade ago it became openly known that the “PINK” brand of Victoria’s Secret was specifically created due to the sexuality of young girls becoming part of the marketing influence of Epstein. Wexner created the original VS girls, and the influence of Epstein (underage sexual perversions) then led to the adding of the VS “PINK” sub-brand.


Are we supposed to understand this is all new information? Honest question. No snark. I’m just confused by this sudden newness of it. We been knew.”The above VH1 segment was from 2007; however, even ten years prior to that it was commonly known that Les Wexner from Victoria’s Secret was the source of most of Jeffrey Epstein’s start-up finances. The resulting social network was fraught with sexual weirdos, and the VS brand alignment just fit with the club. Suddenly, Representative Thomas Massie, a Sea Island asset if ever there was one, is proclaiming the Epstein file information outlining the relationship with Wexner is new information, stunning in scope and worthy of extraordinary time to explore. It’s all weird.

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2021055705826943265?s=20

VIA NBC – […] The newly released version of the 2019 document shows eight people are listed as co-conspirators, including four whose names are not redacted: Wexner, the former CEO of Victoria’s Secret, Lesley Groff, Epstein’s longtime secretary, the late modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, and Ghislaine Maxwell, the only person who was charged in connection with Epstein. She was convicted of sex trafficking charges and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. Four other names on the document are still redacted. It’s unclear who those people are but prosecutors have said that Epstein used women he preyed on as recruiters. A separate document dated August 2019 indicated that some of the others were victims as well, and had been cooperating with investigators.

A Wexner legal representative said in a statement to NBC News Tuesday that “The Assistant U.S. Attorney told Mr. Wexner’s legal counsel in 2019 that Mr. Wexner was neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect. Mr. Wexner cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.” Wexner had a long relationship with Epstein that dated back to the 1980s, and hired him to manage his personal finances. He’s said he cut ties to Epstein after he was accused of sexually abusing minors in Florida. It was after that Wexner said he “discovered that he had misappropriated vast sums of money from me and my family.”

Wexner’s name was also mentioned in a July 2019 FBI email about possible co-conspirators that was made public as part of the DOJ release. Another August 2019 FBI email said there was “limited evidence regarding his involvement.” He is scheduled to be deposed by the House Oversight Committee next week. (more)The first time I heard the information about Wexner and Epstein was sometime in the mid 1990’s. It was well known. There is a lot of horrible, creepy and perverted stuff in the Epstein file releases that is factually new information. However, the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Les Wexner is not new. Perverse, yes -as it was even then; but not new. There were even documentaries about it, one of them I think was called “Angels and Demons“. Maybe it wasn’t as widely known as I thought?

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“Trust your instincts folks, and always remember…. It’s ALWAYS about the money”

Steve Bannon Messages About Trump Included in the Epstein File Release (CTH)

Apparently, Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein had a considerable relationship together. Bannon is cited frequently in the 3 million+ Epstein files that were released by the DOJ. Unfortunately, part of the document production includes text messages between Steve Bannon and an unknown individual. Within a segment of the text messages Bannon calls Jared Kusher “the idiot son-in-law,” and frames himself as more important that President Donald Trump who Bannon sees as “transitory.”


STEVE BANNON (SB) – “To do that shows that [Trump] is center of gravity of this movement and not me — will never do — they are transitory figures — the dc game is to succumb to that — it’s why I never did before joining campaign — I could have been the trump whisperer years ago — avoided on purpose” This rather elevated sense of self-importance likely explains why Bannon was the source for Michael Wolf via leaks, and why President Trump seems to have kept distance from Mr. Bannon. However, people who walk the deep weeds of U.S. politics will also remember when Steve Bannon was the editor of Breitbart and together with financial owner Robert Mercer in 2015/2016 was backing Ted Cruz in the run-up to the 2016 election.


Both Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway were original political consultants and financial beneficiaries connected to the failed Ted Cruz presidential effort, before they abandoned the Cruz Crew and jumped aboard the MAGA movement. The Cruz Crew has essentially morphed into the Ron DeSantis coalition and this superiority attitude expressed by Bannon is one of the key characteristics of the group we affectionately call the “alligator emojis. Perhaps the best two words to describe the brilliant political strategies of Steve Bannon are ‘Roy – Moore’. I digress.

Trust your instincts folks, and always remember…. It’s ALWAYS about the money!

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“Judge Synder came to the right conclusion for the wrong reason.”

The Trump Admin Just Won the Mask Decision . . . Now it Should Appeal (Turley)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has become increasingly Orwellian in his declarations of success. Last week, Newsom was proclaiming the great success of his high-speed train to nowhere – a project delayed by decades, reduced to a fraction of the original plan, and set to cost tens of billions over budget. This week, he is proclaiming victory after a court struck down his signature law requiring federal agents to unmask. The preliminary injunction issued Monday by Senior status Judge Christine Snyder against California’s No Secret Police Act was a victory for the Trump Administration. However, it should still appeal Judge Snyder’s flawed decision. In other words, the Administration won for the wrong reason.


Snyder, an Obama appointee, faced two laws passed in September 2025 with great fanfare in California: the Secret Police Act and the No Vigilante Act. As their titles indicate, they are not serious efforts at legislating but unconstitutional acts designed to pander to the politics of the moment. In the oral argument, some of us were concerned over the curious position staked out by Judge Synder. DOJ counsel Tiberius Davis tried to explain how such state laws usurp federal authority and violate the Supremacy Clause. He drove that point home by asking “Why couldn’t California say every immigration officer needs to wear pink, so it’s super obvious who they are? The idea that all 50 states can regulate the conduct and uniforms of officers … flips the Constitution on its head.”

That would seem an unassailable point, but not to Judge Synder. She asked, “Why can’t they perform their duties without a mask? They did that until 2025, did they not? How in the world do those who don’t mask manage to operate?” I remarked at the time that the court seemed to miss the central point. The question is not whether the federal government can continue to function under limitations imposed by various states, but whether those states have the authority to impose such conditions. I do not believe that they do. Nevertheless, Judge Synder came to the right conclusion for the wrong reason. She enjoined the mask requirement, but did so on the basis that California exempted its own officers.

“Even though the United States has failed to demonstrate that the facial covering prohibition of the No Secret Police Act unduly interferes with federal functions, the court acknowledges that it is nonetheless an incidental regulation on law enforcement officers. The intergovernmental immunity doctrine prohibits imposing such a regulatory burden, albeit minimal and incidental to operations, in a discriminatory manner against the federal government.” By adopting this narrow basis, the court was able to enjoin the No Secret Police Act while rejecting an injunction against the No Vigilantes Act and certain other provisions of the No Secret Police Act. I think the court is wrong and should be reversed.

Snyder rejected the rationale of the federal government that these masks are being used to protect ICE agents from “doxing,” even though various agents have been targeted and threatened. Synder waved off the concern and said that the government had not shown by such masking is essential to carrying out such functions. Her opinion relies on broad, unsupported assumptions. Because officers are facing these security concerns, she concludes that they will continue regardless: “Security concerns exist for federal law enforcement officers with or without masks. If anything, the court finds that the presence of masked and unidentifiable individuals, including law enforcement, is more likely to heighten the sense of insecurity for all.”

It is a bizarre rationalization. The court is simply imposing its judgment on what will make officers safer, rather than emphasizing whether these agencies have the discretion to make such judgments in the execution of federal law. Yet the court still enjoins the law because it discriminates between federal and state officers. (Not surprisingly, Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, the author of the mask ban, immediately declared that they would amend the law to add state law enforcement).

The Court then upheld a state requirement that federal officers cannot conceal their identities in a discussion more befitting a legislative committee than a court: “The Court finds that these Acts serve the public interest by promoting transparency, which is essential for accountability and public trust. Moreover, the Court finds no cognizable justification for law enforcement officers to conceal their identities during their performance of routine, non-exempted law enforcement functions and interactions with the general public.” In my view, Judge Snyder twists the analysis into knots to try to preserve as much of these laws as possible while giving the Administration the minimum level of deference.

Under the intergovernmental immunity doctrine, the Supreme Court has mandated in cases such as McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 317 (1819), that “the states have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control, the operations of the constitutional law enacted by congress to carrying into execution the powers vested in the general government.” A state cannot intrude into this authority absent a “clear and unambiguous” authorization from Congress, Goodyear Atomic Corp. v. Miller, 486, U.S. 174, 180 (1988).

Snyder finds that the California laws discriminate but do not constitute direct regulation of the federal government. She does so through a “functionalist” approach that avoids bright lines of supremacy. She simply dismisses the objections, saying the federal government has not shown that wearing masks is “essential” to carrying out these functions. Consider that approach for a second. A wide range of state regulations on federal officers could be deemed permissible, since federal officers can still functionally carry out arrests. States could dictate everything from uniform requirements, such as masks, to vehicle conditions to verbal commands or warnings.

The opinion is spotty in its analysis and sweeping in its implications. It is, in my view, ripe for reversal either before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court.

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“..almost 1/3 of the American people live in a city, county or state where the left wing leadership tells local law enforcement not to work with federal law enforcement..”

Jordan Opens Bondi Hearing By Railing Against Sanctuary Cities (JTN)

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on Wednesday opened a hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi by railing against sanctuary cities and their impact on Americans.”The chairs now recognize 18 cities, 11 states, excuse me, three counties and the District of Columbia are sanctuary jurisdictions, accounting for 31% of the population in this country, 31% of the American people, almost 1/3 of the American people live in a city, county or state where the left wing leadership tells local law enforcement not to work with federal law enforcement,” he said.


Jordan then turned to the case of Abraham Gonzalez, an illegal alien whom Colorado authorities released from prison after ignoring a detainer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who later assaulted an officer. He then highlighted the voluminous instances of ICE detainers issued in sanctuary jurisdictions for violent offenders said that such policies were “helping create the environment that results in the tragic deaths.” Jordan made the remarks as part of his opening statement.

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“Now, why would you need these intelligence guys, these plain clothes guys, to just show up? It just stinks to high heaven, but I believe I was a target,”Now, why would you need these intelligence guys, these plain clothes guys, to just show up? It just stinks to high heaven, but I believe I was a target..”

Lawmaker Probing J6 Worried US Capitol Police Intel Politicized vs GOP (JTN)

The House chairman tasked with investigating law enforcement and intelligence failures related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot says he is probing whether U.S. Capitol Police intelligence gathering was weaponized by House Democratic leadership against their Republican colleagues in the aftermath of the Capitol riot. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who is the Chairman of the Select Subcommittee on January 6, said he suspects that Democrats used the department to gather information on Republican lawmakers concurrent with the Justice Department’s wider Arctic Frost probe into alleged efforts by President Donald Trump and his followers to contest the 2020 election results. Loudermilk told Just the News that what former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund and others told his committee raises questions about how the department’s intelligence arm might have been used to further what he says was “weaponization against members of Congress.”


“Political weaponization against members of Congress”
“There may be some evidence out there that this [Arctic Frost] extended all the way into Congress, that there was investigation and political weaponization against members of Congress that may even have ties with the Select Committee on January 6,” Loudermilk told the Just the News, No Noise TV show on Tuesday, referring to the Democrat-led committee that probed the Trump administration alongside the Justice Department. “There’s others who have spoken to us about efforts within the political element of Congress, within the Democrat Party, who were actively seeking access to the Capitol Police database and their intelligence, and they were using that intelligence against sitting members of Congress,” Loudermilk added.

The probe into Trump and his allies in the aftermath of Jan. 6, code named “Arctic Frost,” was led by an openly anti-Trump FBI supervisor, and was eventually taken over by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith. The probe treated the effort by Trump’s allies to submit alternate electors to Congress to sway the certification of the 2020 election as a criminal conspiracy, even though two prior episodes in American history were not prosecuted as crimes. Experts told Just the News last year the FBI memo that officially launched the investigation, around the time that Trump announced he would run for president again, was thin on evidence and legal justifications.

Snooping and snapping
The House Judiciary Committee, the parent of Loudermilk’s subcommittee, released FBI records last year showing that the Arctic Frost investigators targeted more than 160 Republicans in Donald Trump’s orbit, including members of the president’s staff and Republican officials from the House and Senate. Loudermilk pointed to the case of Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, a member of his subcommittee, who claims that Capitol Police searched his office. Nehls alleged in a lawsuit last year that an officer improperly entered his office during the 2021 Thanksgiving break and snapped a photograph of his office whiteboard. Later, plainclothes officers returned to the office and questioned a staffer about the whiteboard without the congressman’s permission, the court documents allege.

“That is totally outside the realm of anything acceptable here,” Loudermilk said of the Nehls search. “He was investigated as a member of Congress by the US Capitol Police, and I know he has litigation regarding that going right now, but I think this is just the tip of the iceberg of what may have been happening, not only in the Wray FBI, but under the Pelosi House of Representatives as well.” “It just stinks to high heaven, but I believe I was a target,” Nehls say Nehls also told Just the News that he believes the Capitol Police spied on him because of his outspoken criticism of the department in the wake of Jan. 6. “I think that the Capitol Police, they found a few weaklings in there to go out there and spy – I will say ‘spy’ – and look into members of Congress that were very, very outspoken and critical of January 6,” Nehls told the John Solomon Reports podcast.

“We found out that these employees worked for the intelligence division of the U.S. Capitol Police. Now, why would you need these intelligence guys, these plain clothes guys, to just show up? It just stinks to high heaven, but I believe I was a target,” Nehls added. Former Capitol Police Chief Sund confirmed that even before Jan. 6 he faced increasing pressure from Democratic leadership for access to the Capitol Police intelligence unit, which he called “very concerning.” Sund told Just the News that “it was an ongoing process where we had, you know, people, senior staffers, like from [Senator Chuck] Schumer’s staff that wanted to be involved in intelligence briefing, wanted to have access into the Capitol Police Headquarters, specifically to be able to access into the intelligence unit.”

Though he pushed back on those efforts, Sund told the John Solomon Reports podcast that he does not know what happened after he resigned on Jan. 16, 2021, just ten days after the riot during which hundreds of protesters entered the secured Capitol building. “My concern is, what happened after January 6? You know, did these people then all of a sudden, now get involved? They’re now on the intelligence calls, intelligence briefings, things like that. Now, are they using that for any political benefit?” Sund questioned. Loudermilk has doggedly investigated the Jan. 6 security failures and politicization related to the Democrat-led Jan. 6 Select Committee for years. He exposed a key witness who changed her story that was damaging to Trump and documented failures to secure key entry points at the U.S. Capitol before protesters entered.

Pipe bomb mystery solved by Patel’s FBI
He also relentlessly pursued accountability for what was the biggest unsolved mystery of that day, how the FBI had failed to identify a suspect in the planting of two pipe bombs at the Democratic and Republican Party headquarters. That case was blown open last year when the new FBI Director, Kash Patel, and his then-Deputy Director, Dan Bongino, brought a new team and a fresh perspective to the mountains of data collected by investigators. The new approach led to the arrest of suspect Brian Cole Jr. of Virginia. Earlier this month, Loudermilk subpoenaed T-Mobile for the phone records that it had turned over to the FBI and had languished in its possession until last year.

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19 years ago he spelled it out. Who listened?

Munich 2007: Putin’s Warning To The West (RT)

Exactly 19 years ago on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the podium at the Munich Security Conference and demolished the myths and falsehoods underpinning the American-led world order. Did anyone heed his warning? To Russia, the “rules-based international order” has always been shorthand for a system in which the US makes the rules and issues the orders. “However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making,” Putin told the audience in Munich. “It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.”


Under the auspices of protecting this order, the US carried out “unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions,” in “disdain for the basic principles of international law,” he declared.In the decade before Putin’s speech, the US invaded Afghanistan, invaded Iraq, and led a NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia on behalf of Kosovo separatists. Four years after his speech, NATO forces dropped more than 7,000 bombs on Libya, ending Muammar Gaddafi’s rule and handing the keys of the country to jihadists and slave traders. “No one feels safe,” Putin stated in 2007, “because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them.”

Putin warned that NATO’s broken promises to halt its eastward expansion after the Cold War represented “a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.” The Russian president noted that the US-led bloc had already placed its “frontline forces on our borders,” and asked “against whom is this expansion intended?” The following year, NATO published its infamous Bucharest declaration, assuring Ukraine and Georgia that they “will become members” at an unspecified future date. The consequences of this declaration – which flew in the face of warnings from Putin and American strategists – are playing out in Ukraine today.

No, the Atlanticist neoliberal establishment roundly ignored Putin’s layered and impassioned warning. But Russia kept trying. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov echoed Putin’s complaints when he spoke at the conference in 2018, pointing out that “NATO troops and military infrastructure are accumulating on our borders,” and that “the European theatre of war is being systematically developed.” By that stage several thousand people had been killed in Donbass. Lavrov urged European leaders to abide by the Minsk agreements, which were ostensibly aimed at ending hostilities in Donetsk and Lugansk and granting autonomy to the two predominantly Russian-speaking regions.

Following the collapse of the accords, and the escalation of the conflict in 2022, European and Ukrainian leaders admitted that the agreements were a ruse to enable Ukraine to buy time to prepare for a war with Russia.The organizers of the Munich Security Conference have not so much as attempted any introspection over the last 18 years. Instead, in their latest report, they blame US President Donald Trump for taking a “wrecking ball” to the so-called “rules-based international order.”

All the Europeans could do was cry. Literally, conference Chairman Christoph Heusgen broke down in tears during his closing comments, sobbing as he lamented the decline of the “rules-based international order” and proclaiming that “our common value base is not that common anymore.”nVance’s speech “illustrated just how different the current administration’s perspective on key issues is from the bipartisan liberal-internationalist consensus that has long guided US grand strategy,” Munich Security Conference Foundation President Wolfgang Ischinger wrote in a report ahead of this year’s conference, which kicks off on Friday. As such, discussion in Munich this year will focus almost entirely on “the United States’ evolving view of the international order,” he wrote.

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” For the first time since 1972, Russia (the former USSR) and the US have no treaty limiting strategic nuclear forces..”

Russia Will Stick To Nuclear Arms Limits If US Does The Same (ZH)


One of the globe’s biggest developing stories this month, but which has been largely underreported in mainstream TV networks and other press, is the collapse of New START – the last major nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the United States. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that Moscow will in good faith stick to the nuclear limits outlined in the now-expired arms control treaty, provided Washington does the same. It expired earlier this month after Washington declined to respond to President Vladimir Putin’s proposal for a one-year extension capping both sides’ nuclear arsenals.

The Trump admin has long wanted a more comprehensive agreement which brings China’s arsenal into the scope; however, there’s been no formal process on this front with Beijing or Moscow. Lavrov said Russia has no intention of rapidly expanding or deploying additional weapons, clarifying remarks from his ministry last week that suggested Moscow no longer considered itself bound by the treaty. “We proceed from the fact that this moratorium, which was announced by our president, remains in effect, but only while the United States does not exceed the outlined limits,” Lavrov told Russia’s parliament.

Some key aspects to the treaty have gone unobserved for some time, especially the regimen of mutual nuclear site inspections.President Trump has in the recent past called New START “badly negotiated” and said it “is being grossly violated. He has in mind Russia having blocked inspections of its nuclear facilities under the treaty framework in 2023, as tensions with Washington escalated over the proxy war in Ukraine. Moscow has in turn complained that Washington is the chief violator, and that it now refuses to respond to Putin’s overture to extend it by one year, while a more comprehensive and extended deal is negotiated.

That’s it. For the first time since 1972, Russia (the former USSR) and the US have no treaty limiting strategic nuclear forces. SALT 1, SALT 2, START I, START II, SORT, New START – all in the past. pic.twitter.com/D3TBZM9ffC — Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) February 4, 2026


Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave insight into why the White House has let New START expire: “Obviously, the president’s been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile,” he explained.

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Did the Internet make journalism worse?

All the Media’s Men: When Journalism Became the Story -Part II of II (Wilson)

There was once a professional rule in American journalism that functioned as a real constraint: report the story; do not become the story. It was not a claim of purity. Ego, ambition, and moral certainty were known dangers, and the rule existed to keep them from overwhelming the work. Journalism was never perfect. Nothing is. But it was once constrained by this rule and by rivalry among competing papers, by scarcity of publishing platforms, by reputational risk, and by audiences willing to walk away. Those constraints mattered more than ideology.mThe first visible crack came with Nellie Bly, fairly described as a stunt reporter. Her work was brave and effective, exposing abuses that would otherwise have remained hidden.


But it also introduced a dangerous precedent: the journalist as protagonist. Readers followed the reporter as much as the facts. The tool proved powerful and reusable. The profession corrected itself for a time. Through the 1940s and 1950s, likely learning from war reporting norms, American journalism emphasized impersonality and restraint. Authority came from distance. Reporters were meant to be interchangeable. Credibility rested on institutional voice rather than personality. Television eroded that equilibrium. Once news had faces, voices, and time slots, personality became unavoidable. The anchor was no longer merely delivering information but performing steadiness and judgment.

Journalism did not yet see itself as entertainment, but it had begun using entertainment tools: lighting, camera angles, makeup, vocal intonation, even on-scene reporting.The decisive rupture came with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. What they uncovered mattered. Watergate took advantage of a nascent mythic template: the journalist as lone truth-seeker standing between power and the people. Reporting, fed by classic Hollywood movies that romanticized the crusading reporter, became an identity rather than a function.mFrom that point forward, becoming the story was no longer a lapse. It was aspirational.

Hollywood, Myth, and Moral Authority
Watergate supplied the moment. Hollywood, already primed to heroize the reporter, crafted the meaning. Films like All the President’s Men dramatized and then sanctified the Heroic Journalist. The journalist was patient, tenacious, hard-working, incorruptible, and uniquely qualified to Bring Truth to the public — a pattern that perfectly follows the Hero’s Journey. Opposition was framed not as disagreement but as ignorance or corruption. Journalism absorbed that image. It began to see itself as a secular clerisy: interpreters of reality rather than accountable informers. A clerisy assumes its authority by right of wisdom and superior knowledge. Questions are permitted only within bounds. Dissent is treated as moral failure rather than feedback.

Skepticism became asymmetrical. Journalists remained suspicious of every institution except one: their own. Tone displaced argument. Moral urgency crowded out evidentiary discipline. Entertainment tools such as emotion, narrative compression, repetition ceased to be aids and became substitutes for reasoning. And any pushback became grounds to cast the questioner out as a heretic.The pattern is familiar enough to be lampooned, as in my favorite satirical novel The Narrative, which captures how story replaces fact once the reporter becomes the hero and the audience becomes a problem to manage.

How Journalists Rise on the Left Today
Once journalism adopted that heroic clerical self-image, advancement followed a different logic. Status stopped coming from readers and started coming from institutions adjacent to power.Journalists rise by demonstrating narrative reliability, not truthfulness or factuality. Their stories must follow the Approved Narrative. Editors and other gatekeepers learn who can be trusted to frame events without destabilizing the approved story. This is rarely enforced explicitly. It works through selection. Those who create friction are sidelined; those who anticipate expectations are rewarded.

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“.. openly strategizing ways to work around that higher court ruling and keep giving bond releases to illegal aliens under the guise of “liberty interest.”

Texas Judges Strategize Ways to Block DHS From Enforcing Immigration Laws (CTH)

This is one step further than simple Lawfare, this story is about lower court judges openly strategizing ways to stop the enforcement of laws they are supposed to uphold. Last week the Fifth Circuit Cout of Appeals ruled that detaining illegal aliens during the deportation proceedings is entirely following current immigration law. Now, according to Politico, federal judges in Texas are openly strategizing ways to work around that higher court ruling and keep giving bond releases to illegal aliens under the guise of “liberty interest.”

POLITICO – […] two federal district court judges in Texas, who are bound by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit’s ruling, said the 2-1 decision left an opening for them to continue granting immigrants’ release on other grounds, primarily constitutional arguments against detaining people who have established roots in the U.S. without due process. Those roots amount, in legal parlance, to a “liberty interest” that the Constitution says cannot be taken away without at least a hearing before a neutral judge. “This conclusion is not changed by the Fifth Circuit’s recent decision,” Judge Kathleen Cardone, an El Paso based appointee of George W. Bush, ruled late Monday in at least five cases, concluding that the circuit’s decision “has no bearing on this Court’s determination of whether [the petitioner] is being detained in violation of his constitutional right to procedural due process.”


Judge David Briones, an El Paso-based Clinton appointee, reached a similar conclusion. “The Court reiterates its original holding that noncitizens who have ‘established connections’ in the United States by virtue of living in the country for a substantial period acquire a liberty interest in being free from government detention without due process of law,” Briones wrote. The decisions from the Texas-based judges are notable in part because the administration has often rushed detainees there after their arrests in other states such as Minnesota.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.n A Justice Department official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said the rulings were in keeping with the view that there are rogue judges who continue to make results-oriented decisions to suit their personal policy preferences.The 5th Circuit’s ruling has yet to percolate through federal courts across Texas and Louisiana, where detained immigrants have been filing so-called “habeas” petitions in extraordinary numbers to seek freedom from what they say is illegal detention without the opportunity for bond. The losing parties in Friday’s ruling may still appeal the decision to the full bench of the 5th Circuit or the Supreme Court. (more)”

Lower courts trying to circumvent higher court rulings, even before any plaintiff brings them a case or argument. This is judicial activism in the extremes.
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Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio warns that CBDCs will eliminate financial privacy and enable governments to tax, seize funds and cut off political opponents.

‘No Privacy’ CBDCs Will Come, Warns Billionaire Ray Dalio (CT)

American billionaire and hedge fund manager Ray Dalio has warned that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are coming, offering benefits but also potentially allowing governments to exert more control over people’s finances. “I think it will be done,” said Dalio on CBDCs in a wide-ranging interview on the Tucker Carlson Show on Monday, which also included topics on the US debt crisis, gold prices, and even a potential civil war. Ray Dalio is a billionaire hedge fund manager who has been co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates since 1985, after founding the firm in 1975.


During the interview, Dalio said CBDCs could be appealing due to the ease of transactions, likening them to money market funds in terms of functionality, but he also cautioned about their downsides. He said there will be a debate, but CBDCs “probably won’t” offer interest, so they will not be “an effective vehicle to hold because you’ll have the depreciation [of the dollar].” Dalio also cautioned that all CBDC transactions will be known to the government, which is good for controlling illegal activity, but also provides a great deal of control in other areas. “There will be no privacy, and it’s a very effective controlling mechanism by the government.”

A programmable digital currency will enable the government to tax directly, “they can take your money,” and establish foreign exchange controls, he said. mThat will be an “increasing issue,” particularly for international holders of that currency, as the government can seize funds from nationals of sanctioned countries. mDalio also said that you could be “shut off” from a CBDC if you were “politically disfavored.” An American CBDC is unlikely to be deployed in the near future, as US President Donald Trump has been vocally opposed to them.

Soon after taking office in January 2025, Trump signed an executive order prohibiting “the establishment, issuance, circulation, and use” of a US CBDC. According to the Atlantic Council’s CBDC tracker, only three countries have officially launched a CBDC: Nigeria, Jamaica, and The Bahamas. Another 49 countries are testing CBDCs, including China, Russia, India and Brazil. Twenty nations have a CBDC in development, and 36 are still researching central bank digital currencies. India’s central bank reportedly proposed an initiative in January linking BRICS CBDCs to facilitate cross-border trade and tourism payments.

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https://twitter.com/upholdreality/status/2021316872277266889?s=20

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Feb 112026
 
 February 11, 2026  Posted by at 10:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , ,  61 Responses »


Henri Matisse The Blue Window 1913


Trump Called Police About Epstein in 2006 (Weiss)
Epstein Files: Victims Buried at Zorro Ranch? (Catherine Salgado)
Musk Shifts Gears: Moon Megacity Beats Mars Colony (Stephen Green)
US to Fund Free Speech Initiatives in Europe, Trump Official Reveals (ET)
French Defense Chief Says Europe Has Until 2030 For War (RMX)
Lavrov: US No Longer Wants To Pursue Its Own Ukraine Peace Proposal (Antiwar)
Ukraine Launching Arms Exports At Centers Across Europe (ZH)
Judge Blocks California’s Law Mandating Federal Agents Remove Masks (ET)
Trump Threatens Blockade of Almost Completed Michigan-Ontario Bridge (CTH)
Fetterman Breaks Ranks With Democrats, Supports Federal Voter ID Measure (AmG)
Hollywood Is Sick — but It’s L.A. That’s Dying (Stephen Green)
New York Post Publishes Long Excerpt From “Rage and the Republic” (Turley)
Adam Smith and The Importance of Capitalism (Turley)

 


 

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2021039707984101393?s=20 https://twitter.com/Ellieinspace/status/1902069908608782472?s=20

 


 

 


 


Everybody has the story. But what will they do with it? They just love linking Trump to Epstein.

Trump Called Police About Epstein in 2006 (Weiss)

Newly unsealed Department of Justice documents reveal that in July 2006, then businessman Donald Trump was one of the first to call police to warn them about sex predator Jeffrey Epstein. The documents include a previously unreported 2019 FBI interview summary with former Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter. Trump had contacted the department shortly after reports of Epstein’s criminal sex investigation became public. The future president contacted Reiter to express relief that authorities were finally acting, suggesting his associates in New York had described Epstein’s behaviors as “disgusting,” and advised investigators to focus on Ghislaine Maxwell, whom he described as “evil.” The Miami Herald first reported on the development.


The first mention of Trump in the FBI interview summary notes that he told investigators that he “threw Epstein out” of Mar-a-Lago, something he has maintained consistently over the years. “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” Trump reportedly told the Palm Beach Police Department. “TRUMP told him people in New York knew EPSTEIN was disgusting. TRUMP said MAXWELL was EPSTEIN’s operative, ‘she is evil and to focus on her,’ the report continues. The president also noted that he had witnessed Epstein in the presence of teenagers and was apparently dismayed by what he saw and “got the hell out of there.”

This bombshell document release is narrative-busting stuff. Democrats, desperate to land a punch on President Trump with the Epstein files, have repeatedly attempted to tie the two together as close associates. Epstein, the late financier, was convicted of procuring for prostitution a girl below the age of 18 in 2008 and was facing sex trafficking charges until he died, according to authorities, by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019. Maxwell is currently serving 20 years in prison for her involvement in the late billionaire pedophile’s crimes.

The media, of course, is framing the latest revelation not as ‘Trump tried to warn authorities’ but rather, as ‘this contradicts the president’s previous claims.’ From the Miami Herald: “That stands in sharp contrast to what Trump told reporters in July 2019 when he was asked if he had any knowledge that Epstein had molested girls. “No, I had no idea. I had no idea,” Trump said at the time It’s a misleading and dishonest spin, something one comes to expect from the media. Trump’s comment came in direct response to reporters asking if he had any knowledge that Epstein had molested girls. He was denying awareness of Epstein’s crimes or the allegations of molestation/sex trafficking that surfaced prominently around Epstein’s 2019 arrest.

Nowhere in this FBI interview does it indicate he had specific knowledge of the criminal molestation, sexual abuse, or trafficking details that later emerged in the full Epstein investigation or his 2008 plea deal. It’s Trump saying he had heard from others about “disgusting” behavior and how he was so creeped out that he had to remove Epstein from his club. Countless people in Palm Beach social circles noticed Epstein had a pattern of questionable behavior with young women, without having direct evidence or knowledge of the felony-level crimes. Good try, media. Maxwell repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify before the House Oversight Committee during a closed-door virtual deposition on Monday. Her lawyer declared that she would “speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump.”

“Both President Trump and President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing,” the lawyer said. “Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to hear that explanation.”

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I don’t think so. But that’s just me.

Epstein Files: Victims Buried at Zorro Ranch? (Catherine Salgado)

One message in the Justice Department-released Epstein files claims that two girls, victims of the abusive trafficker, are buried at Zorro Ranch after they died as a result of sexual abuse there. Convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who died under suspicious circumstances while in jail in 2019, owned one property that reportedly has yet to be raided by federal authorities: Zorro Ranch outside Santa Fe, N.M. Multiple victims have testified to Epstein’s criminal and horrifying sexual abuse there, and multiple powerful men, including a former governor, reportedly visited the place. And an eerie message in the Epstein files seems to indicate that the powerful pedophile was trying to cover up the reason for the deaths of two young women.


Award-winning journalist Catherine Herridge discussed the email and the possibility of investigating the allegations concerning the dead girls with a former FBI special agent and investigator, Jonathan Gilliam. A former staffer at the ranch wrote in the email, “Did you know somewhere in the hills outside the Zorro, two foreign girls were buried on orders of Jeffrey and Madame G? Both died by strangulation during rough, fetish s*x.” Madame G is likely Epstein’s partner-in-crime, Ghislaine Maxwell. Herridge mentioned the possibility of video evidence in the case of the dead girls and asked Gilliam, of the allegation, “Could that be investigated at this stage?”

He affirmed, “That could absolutely be investigated. There is no statute of limitations on that, and then also, if they have testimony or some type of witness saying that that is where they were killed, they can then go out and do a search and potentially find a body.” Gilliam did caution, “It’s going to be difficult years later to prove something like sexual assault, but if you can find the evidence that somebody was killed, that’s totally different. And again, there’s no statute of limitations. But, see, this is also, Catherine, why you don’t just say, ‘Oh, that crime that that person committed is dropped off, we’re not gonna investigate that any further.’ [Because] you never know who these loop back around to.”

He went on to say that if, as some victims’ testimony indicates, “this was a society of people abusing women, then, and some of them died, you really don’t know who was connected to them… and who has knowledge of that. So that’s why you would continue to look into all these different subjects.” This “ongoing conspiracy” involves people still prominent in the media, Hollywood, business, and politics. Powerful pedophiles and sex abusers should NOT get away with their crimes just because they are wealthy and influential. What is the point of being a Republic if our oligarchy always evades accountability? We might as well have an official aristocracy. That’s what the Justice Department ought to understand.

Herridge asked if the released email about the dead girls was blackmail. Gilliam warily answered, “It looks like it could be any of several things. It could be blackmail. It could also be that somebody had some type of information, and they wanted to make it known somewhere along the way that they had nothing to do with that. We’ve seen that in other cases.” He concluded, “I don’t think there’s enough evidence at this point for me to say blackmail or not, but is there a possibility? Of course.” Sounds as if federal authorities need to pay a visit to Zorro Ranch.

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“I’d like to die on Mars, just not on impact…”

Musk Shifts Gears: Moon Megacity Beats Mars Colony (Stephen Green)

“I’d like to die on Mars, just not on impact,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk half-joked to a capacity SXSW crowd in 2013, reiterating the launch company’s core mission of establishing a self-sustaining human colony on the Red Planet within his lifetime — and his lifelong dream of being one of those colonists. It seems almost impossible that just 13 years ago, SpaceX had yet to land a Falcon 9 booster rocket, much less reuse one. Yet since then, the Falcon is now so inexpensive and reliable that it launched more than 150 times in 2025 alone, accounting for more than 80% of all the mass lifted into orbit last year. While no other company has yet to master it, reusable boosters are the norm for SpaceX, and its Starship rocket — still in development — promises to reduce launch costs by at least one order of magnitude.


Times change. So do dreams. “For those unaware,” Musk posted to X (another Musk company) on Sunday, “SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years.” “It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month trip time), whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2 day trip time). This means we can iterate much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city.” That’s always been true — orbital mechanics are unforgiving in the extreme — but Starship development stalled badly enough in 2025 that a change in focus was perhaps inevitable.

Musk had hoped to launch multiple Starships late this year on an unmanned exploratory/proof-of-concept mission during the next Mars launch window (the optimal Earth-Mars transfer opportunity using a fuel-efficient Hohmann transfer orbit). But too many technologies and processes remain unproven, including the orbital refueling that makes it possible for Starship to reach Mars. Or even Luna, for that matter. Starship’s unprecedented cargo capacity for deep-space missions is only possible through orbital refueling performed by other Starships acting as LEO gas stations. Direct-transfer windows to Luna — with flight times of just three to five days — open roughly twice per month. The Hohmann window to Mars opens about every 26 months, with a flight time of up to nine months. Another technology SpaceX has yet to fully iterate is crew protection from radiation during such a long flight.

Iteration is the key, and at 54 years old, Musk probably can’t afford the time it will take to iterate Starship for manned Mars missions — certainly not on the scale needed to make life even semi-tolerable for, say, an aging launch company founder “It’s not any easier landing on the moon,” space photographer Andrew McCarthy added, “but once getting mass to the moon is a solved problem Mars becomes so much easier.” Indeed. Musk also said that SpaceX’s core mission remains unchanged, to “extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars.” “Aim for the moon,” they say, because “If you miss, you may hit a star.” I’d still love to see human footprints on Mars in my lifetime, but if the alternative is a large and growing American population on Luna, I’ll take it.

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”.. the policy “has got nothing to do with racism” and is “a classic example of how the EU proceeds to amass for itself more powers to regulate orderly life and get involved in politics.”

US to Fund Free Speech Initiatives in Europe, Trump Official Reveals (ET)

The Trump administration announced plans to direct funding toward promoting free speech in Western allied democracies, a senior State Department official said on Monday. The initiative bolsters efforts to counter European online regulations categorized by Washington as censorship. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers discussed the initiative during a trip to Europe. It includes grants to support free expression, a result of concerns about rules such as the European Union’s Digital Services Act and Britain’s Online Safety Act. These laws, which E.U. officials say aim to deter hate speech and misinformation, have been scrutinized by U.S. officials as restricting the free speech of American tech firms and suppressing immigration policy critiques.


“One way my office is going to operate differently is we’re going to be very forthright and transparent about everything we do,” Rogers said during a panel discussion in Budapest on Monday. She added that her role allows directing U.S. funding through grants, stating, “I want to promote free speech in Western allied democracies, and … that’s what my grantmaking is going to be doing.”Rogers, appearing alongside a top aide to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, underscored the importance of free speech for democracy. “The United States government, via me, but not only me, has been engaging aggressively on the issue of free speech, because you don’t have self-governance without freedom of speech, you can’t have a democratic deliberation if viewpoints are proscribed from the public square,” she said.

Rogers is scheduled to stop in Dublin, Budapest, Warsaw, and Munich to discuss digital freedoms with officials and others. The administration’s December National Security Strategy said that European leaders were censoring speech and suppressing opposition to immigration policies, warning of the continent’s “civilizational erasure.” Rogers said European polls showing European views on migration are similar to those in the United States.The United States imposed last month visa bans on a former European Union commissioner and four anti-disinformation activists. The administration labeled them agents of censorship for working to regulate U.S. social media platforms. European leaders lambasted the bans. They defended the commissioner and activists’ rights to push for regulations on foreign companies operating locally.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed the designations on Dec. 23, 2025. He called the individuals “agents of the global censorship-industrial complex” and blocked their entry to the United States.The European Commission unveiled a new “anti-racism” strategy on Jan. 20, aiming toward a “Europe free from racism” with increased anti-discrimination enforcement and training. The Commission said the training will help civil servants “recognise and tackle racial bias, while fostering greater cultural awareness and sensitivity.” It also requires European educators to “address teacher training and professional development on diversity and inclusion, as well as promoting diversity in the teaching profession itself.”

Eric Kaufmann, a professor at the University of Buckingham, said the strategy “betrays an illiberal moralizing worldview” that could lead to “suppressing free speech and asphyxiating the historical pride and culture of Europe’s ethnic majorities.” Jacob Reynolds of think tank MCC Brussels called it a “slide to cultural socialist ideas.” Reynolds previously told The Epoch Times that he believes that the policy “has got nothing to do with racism” and is “a classic example of how the EU proceeds to amass for itself more powers to regulate orderly life and get involved in politics.”

“This is not [anti-racism], as ordinary people understand it,” he said. “This is the kind of woke [diversity, equity, and inclusion] agenda that has come to dominate the way that lots of civil servants, lots of academics, lots of civil society organizations think.”

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They really want war. Trump really doesn’t.

French Defense Chief Says Europe Has Until 2030 For War (RMX)

France and Europe have four years to prepare for war, said Fabien Mandon, chief of the defense staff of the French Armed Forces, who cited Russia as Europe’s biggest threat. His speech at a major naval conference outlined that France, as well as its allies, must take into account that this war will break out in the near future and that the French military must be ready by 2030. “Today, we are preparing for war,” he said, according to BreakingDefense. During his speech at the naval conference, Mandon stated that France is not prepared for war and the country had “an insufficient number of ships and armaments.” He stated the nation needs “more missiles with greater range and lethality.”


Mandon recently made headlines for stating that Europeans and the French must be ready to lose children in a war, stating: “You have to accept that you will lose your children,” which is necessary to defeat Russia during a November speech at the National Congress of French Mayors. His words caused national shock, while the representatives of the parliamentary parties protested sharply in connection with his comment. As in November, he named Russia as the main source of the threat of war.

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“Lavrov claimed that the US and Russia came to an agreement on Ukraine during President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s summit in Anchorage, Alaska, back in August 2025.”

Lavrov: US No Longer Wants To Pursue Its Own Ukraine Peace Proposal (Antiwar)

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said in an interview published on Monday that the US no longer wants to implement a Ukraine peace deal that it previously proposed, the latest sign that there’s little chance the grinding war will come to an end anytime soon. Lavrov claimed that the US and Russia came to an agreement on Ukraine during President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s summit in Anchorage, Alaska, back in August 2025. He didn’t elaborate on the details of the potential deal, but it’s believed to involve Ukraine ceding territory it still controls in the Donbas, a condition included in a 28-point peace plan that was later drafted by the Trump administration.


“In other words, we were told that the Ukrainian issue must be resolved. In Anchorage, we accepted the United States’ proposal. To put it straightforwardly, they proposed, and we agreed – the problem should be solved,” Lavrov told TV BRICS. “The position of the United States was important for us. Having accepted their proposals, we essentially fulfilled the task of resolving the Ukrainian issue and moving toward comprehensive, broad, mutually beneficial cooperation.”

The Russian diplomat said that despite the “positive” summit, the US began imposing sanctions on Russia a few weeks later and has continued the economic pressure. “New sanctions are imposed, attacks on tankers are staged in international waters in violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and India and other partners are discouraged from purchasing affordable Russian energy, while Europe has long prohibited such purchases, forcing them to buy American liquefied natural gas at significantly higher prices,” he said.

Lavrov added that he didn’t see a “promising future in economic terms” when it comes to US-Russia relations. “Thus, in the economic sphere, the United States has effectively declared a goal of economic domination,” he said. Elsewhere in the interview, which focused on Russia’s relationship with other BRICS nations, Lavrov said the Biden administration has turned the US dollar into a “weapon,” prompting Russia and other countries to reduce their reliance on the US currency. “Under the Biden administration, the United States has taken every step to weaponize the dollar against those it considers inconvenient,” he said, adding that the policies have continued under the Trump administration.

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“Moscow’s allegations specify that modern, Western-supplied stockpiles are being used far outside the actual Ukrainian battlefield, and that the illicit trade has enriched powerful Ukrainian officials, while increasing crime and terrorism.”

Ukraine Launching Arms Exports At Centers Across Europe (ZH)

Ukraine has another money-making idea – instead of begging for urgently needed funds from Western partners, it plans to start exporting weapons, instead of only buying them. But there is a big and unexpected catch to the whole scheme. Flush with external funding connected to the war with Russia, President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced ambitious plans to open ten arms export hubs across the European continent by the end of 2026. Given Ukraine is still an active warzone, and given the likelihood that Russian forces will continue targeting defense manufacturing sites, Ukraine is seeking to have European allies play host to Ukrainian arms production plants.


For example, Ukrainian-made drones are expected to be in production on German soil later this month. Zelensky laid out new details of Ukraine’s move into foreign arms markets, describing it as a long-term economic necessity, in a speech before the Kyiv Aviation Institute on Sunday night. Ukraine’s defense sector rapidly grown as a result of the war, accounting for roughly 7% of GDP, according to July 2025 estimates from the Kyiv School of Economics Institute. “Today we are opening up exports. In Europe in 2026 there will be 10 export centers. These are the Baltic countries and the countries of Northern Europe. In 2026, 10 representative offices will operate,” Zelensky said, as quoted in Reuters.

“This is a [production] line that is already working. The production lines are already operating in the UK. These are Ukrainian technologies,” Zelensky added – though without providing much more in the way of specifics. In essence, Ukraine is seeking to sustain its war effort while locking in a long-term economic leverage by expanding its defense production sector, but in a protected and safe way far from the front lines. Simultaneously, Moscow has complained that Ukraine is already deep in the black market export of arms siphoned off from Western deliveries, which Russian media alleging as follows:

Russian officials have long accused Kiev of fueling global arms proliferation through the black market and have specifically alleged that Ukraine has supplied weapons, including those it received from the West, to militant groups in Africa. Last week, Russian envoy to the UN Vassily Nebenzia reiterated the accusations and told the Security Council that “the Kiev regime is actively involved in… supplying terrorists with weapons, including drones, and training fighters,” citing the Sahel region as an example. Mali’s Prime Minister Abdoulaye Maiga has accused Kiev of supplying kamikaze drones to terrorists. Some serious question remain, however…

Of course, Russian weapons also often make their way to African battlefields. But Moscow’s allegations specify that modern, Western-supplied stockpiles are being used far outside the actual Ukrainian battlefield, and that the illicit trade has enriched powerful Ukrainian officials, while increasing crime and terrorism.

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Keep cops safe, why don’t you.

Judge Blocks California’s Law Mandating Federal Agents Remove Masks (ET)

A federal district court judge partially blocked a California law barring law enforcement officers from wearing masks in a Feb. 9 ruling, finding the law discriminated against federal officers. District Court Judge Christina Snyder ruled in favor of the Trump administration, prohibiting the state from enforcing its No Secret Police Act—which was scheduled to go into effect earlier this year—against federal law enforcement officers. The federal government sued California, challenging the law as well as with another law—the No Vigilantes Act, that requires federal officers to wear identification. Snyder ruled that the second law was not discriminatory. California had agreed to pause enforcement of the laws, which went into effect on Jan. 1, while the Trump administration challenged them in court.


Attorney General Pam Bondi praised the court’s decision on Feb. 9. “These federal agents are harassed, doxed, obstructed, and attacked on a regular basis just for doing their jobs,” Bondi posted on X. “We have no tolerance for it. We will continue fighting and winning in court for President Trump’s law-and-order agenda—and we will always have the backs of our great federal law enforcement officers.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed both bills into law last year in response to federal immigration enforcement operations in the state. The No Secret Police Act prohibited any law enforcement officer from wearing a facial covering while performing official duties unless the agency employing the officer has a policy regarding the covering. Some exceptions were made for SWAT teams and in other cases.

The No Vigilantes Act requires any law enforcement officer operating in the state to visibly display identification indicating his or her agency and name or badge number when working. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) argued the two state laws violated the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which mandates that if state laws conflict with federal laws, the federal law takes precedence. The department also argued that the laws violated the intergovernmental immunity doctrine, which prevents federal and state governments from interfering with each other’s operations.The DOJ argued that prohibiting facial coverings and requiring identification put officers’ safety at risk as violent crime against federal immigration officers has skyrocketed in recent months.

Snyder found the No Secret Police Act did not apply equally to all law enforcement officers in the state, and therefore it “unlawfully discriminates against federal officers,” according to her ruling.“Because such discrimination violates the Supremacy Clause, the court is constrained to enjoin the facial covering prohibition. California may not enforce the facial covering prohibition of the No Secret Police Act, SB 627 … against federal law enforcement officers,” she ruled. The judge denied the federal government’s other challenges. The state’s law was already receiving pushback by the largest metropolitan police agency in the state. Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell said his officers would not enforce it.

“The reality of one armed agency approaching another armed agency to create conflict over something that would be a misdemeanor at best—or an infraction—it doesn’t make any sense. It’s not a good public policy decision and it wasn’t well thought out, in my opinion,” McDonnell said during a news conference on Jan. 29.

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He uses Canadians as toys. It’s what you get for electing Justin.

Trump Threatens Blockade of Almost Completed Michigan-Ontario Bridge (CTH)

Writing on a Truth Social post earlier this evening, President Trump is threatening to block the U.S. side of a new bridge that links Detroit, Michigan to Ontario, Canada: (Truth Social) – “As everyone knows, the Country of Canada has treated the United States very unfairly for decades. Now, things are turning around for the U.S.A., and FAST! But imagine, Canada is building a massive bridge between Ontario and Michigan. They own both the Canada and the United States side and, of course, built it with virtually no U.S. content. President Barack Hussein Obama stupidly gave them a waiver so they could get around the BUY AMERICAN Act, and not use any American products, including our Steel.


Now, the Canadian Government expects me, as President of the United States, to PERMIT them to just “take advantage of America!” What does the United States of America get — Absolutely NOTHING! Ontario won’t even put U.S. spirits, beverages, and other alcoholic products, on their shelves, they are absolutely prohibited from doing so and now, on top of everything else, Prime Minister Carney wants to make a deal with China — which will eat Canada alive. We’ll just get the leftovers! I don’t think so.

The first thing China will do is terminate ALL Ice Hockey being played in Canada and permanently eliminate The Stanley Cup. The Tariffs Canada charges us for our Dairy products have, for many years, been unacceptable, putting our Farmers at great financial risk. I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve. We will start negotiations, IMMEDIATELY. With all that we have given them, we should own, perhaps, at least one half of this asset. The revenues generated because of the U.S. Market will be astronomical. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” ~PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

The USMCA renegotiation plan likely plays a big part in this announcement. Don’t react, just watch.

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Who doesn’t love him?

Fetterman Breaks Ranks With Democrats, Supports Federal Voter ID Measure (AmG)

Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) has broken ranks with Democratic leadership and has come out in favor of requiring photo ID for voting in elections across the nation. Fetterman appeared on the Fox News program “Sunday Morning Futures” yesterday and told host Maria Bartiromo that voter ID wasn’t an “unreasonable” requirement, saying, “It’s not a radical idea for regular Americans to show your ID to vote.”


Fetterman pointed to states like Wisconsin that have similar protections requiring proof of citizenship for federal voter registration and photo ID at the polls. He noted that 60% of voters in Wisconsin support such safeguards, despite having elected liberal justice Susan Crawford in 2025 to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. House Republicans plan to vote this week on the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act with national polls showing 83% of Americans support the measure, including 71% of Democrats. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries continued to decry the SAVE America Act as “voter suppression” and accused President Trump and GOP leadership of trying to steal the upcoming midterm elections by nationalizing them.

Fetterman rejected comparisons of the SAVE America Act to resurrecting Jim Crow laws as Democratic leaders have claimed. The Pennsylvania Senator also broke with his party leadership on the issue of funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which is expected to run out on Friday unless lawmakers can break a deadlock.

https://twitter.com/i/status/2020564856663884171

Fetterman came down on the side of border enforcement and said he does not support shutting down the government, saying, “I don’t ever want to vote to shut our government down again.” Fetterman told Bartiromo that he expects Democrats and Republicans to remain divided beyond Friday’s funding deadline.

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“They have what we call the Noah’s Ark problem,” Willems continued, “which is, if they effectuate this deal, they’re going to have two of everything.”

Hollywood Is Sick — but It’s L.A. That’s Dying (Stephen Green)

Hollywood as we know it is sick — not the kind of sick you might usually think of with the woke agenda pushing, child-actor grooming, and all the rest — but the “sick and dying” kind of sick. Netflix’s Chief Global Affairs Officer warned Monday that Hollywood will suffer billions of dollars worth of job losses if rival Paramount Skydance succeeds in buying Warner Bros. Discovery out from under the streaming giant’s buyout bid. During an interview on Fox Business Network, Clete Willems said, “Paramount has identified $6 billion in synergies in the offer that they made, which is code for $6 billion in job cuts.” “They have what we call the Noah’s Ark problem,” Willems continued, “which is, if they effectuate this deal, they’re going to have two of everything.”


There’s also the matter of debt. The Paramount offer is generous, but requires billions in financing — including personal security guarantees from Oracle multibillionaire Larry Ellison, whose son David runs Paramount. So when Willems says Paramount will “have to cut, cut, cut,” if the studios merge, he’s probably right. But similar downsizing wouldn’t happen when and if Netflix buys Warner, instead? Color me skeptical that Netflix’s bid magically spares the axe — especially when it already churns out content like it’s going out of style (which, quality-wise, it often is). Netflix wants Warner more for its old intellectual properties for streaming than it does for its production facilities or crews.

Netflix already spews out plenty of content on its own, seemingly without much care about actual quality in most cases. The last thing Netflix needs is probably more output; it just needs that sweet, sweet Warner IP to fill the streaming hours. “Cut, cut, cut,” indeed.mRegardless, either buyout likely means the end of Warner Bros. as Hollywood has known it for just over a century — and that, gentle reader, is the absolute least of Hollywood’s troubles. Or maybe I need to rephrase that bit. Maybe Hollywood is the sickness, and Los Angeles is the patient at risk of dying. The Hollywood Reporter featured a telling report in recent weeks, headlined with a dire warning for the City of Angels: “Los Angeles’ Hold on Hollywood Is Slipping.”

When 2025 wrapped, Hollywood tallied up its Los Angeles-based production figures, and the numbers were stark at best. “Superhero movies have fled to London,” HR’s Erik Hayden wrote, and “three major studios (Netflix, Paramount and Lionsgate) have inked expansive deals to build or lease in new production bases in New Jersey; states like Georgia, Louisiana and New Mexico are fighting for their share of projects with generous tax incentives while Illinois is becoming a player in its own right.” The result is that in 2025, there were almost as few productions in L.A. as there were during the panic-fueled COVID lockdowns. Read that again — and it’s close, too. Hollywood’s Los Angeles shoots dropped almost in half during COVID, from over 36,000 in 2019 to just under 19,000 in 2020. Things bounced back almost immediately when the lockdowns ended, right back up to 37k.

But something happened in 2023, and that number dropped precipitously to 24,000. Last year? Just 19,694 shoots in L.A.— barely above the 2020 lockdown abyss, yet it’s boom times anywhere that isn’t business-hostile California. Streaming killed Hollywood’s movie theater cash cow without even pretending to look for a golden goose first. Instead of enjoying a night out at the movies, anonymous Hollywood screenwriting veteran George MF Washington warned in 2022, “streaming subscribers expect a constant firehose of content fired directly into their faces 24/7/365.” Now the largest streamer is about to buy one of Hollywood’s oldest and most storied studios, just as Los Angeles plumbs COVID-era depths of disaster with no relief in sight.

Hollywood is sick, but it might be Los Angeles that’s dying.

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Loooong excerpt.

New York Post Publishes Long Excerpt From “Rage and the Republic” (Turley)

I am delighted that the New York Post decided this week to run a long excerpt from my new book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.” I wanted to share the full excerpt and a clip from the audiobook below. Here is the description and excerpt that appeared in the New York Post:


America’s Revolutionaries: We’re Our Own Greatest Creations, As Tom Paine Proved.
In his new book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” Professor Turley explores the meaning and future of democracy on the American Revolution’s 250th anniversary. The first half looks back at the unique confluence of people and events that led to the establishment of the American republic.The second half looks forward, exploring whether the American republic can survive in the 21st century in light of changes ranging from artificial intelligence to robotics to global governance systems. Turley believes the American republic is uniquely suited to address those challenges, but it will require a return, not a rejection, of the core values that defined the American Revolution.

Excerpt: “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.” Those words from journalist Jacques Mallet du Pan during the French Revolution referred to the Roman God Saturn, or Kronos in Greek. Kronos attempted to defy his mother’s prophesy that he would be overthrown by one of his children by them upon their births. When his son Zeus was born, Kronos’s consort Rhea decided to trick him by wrapping a stone in a swaddling blanket and handing it to him to devour. She then hid Zeus on Crete. Once he reached adulthood, Zeus returned and, fulfilling the prophesy, defeated his father. The story of Kronos held obvious meaning for Mallet du Pan, who watched with alarm as the French Revolution devoured first its aristocratic foes and then its own supporters.

It is a story played out over and over again in history as ambition becomes activism, activism becomes extremism, and extremism becomes authoritarianism. Call it the Saturn gene. We are all Saturn’s children with an inherent impulse that rests within each of us: the capacity of all mortals to become monsters. The lesson of Saturn would also be raised in the American Revolution by none other than Thomas Paine. Long before Jefferson put pen to parchment on the Declaration of Independence, it was Paine who would speak of the natural and inalienable rights as the basis for the American Revolution. It was Paine, in his pamphlet Common Sense, who made the case for “independency.” It was also Paine who saw, firsthand, the ability of a revolution to consume itself.

Paine would play a significant role in two revolutions that took strikingly different paths in America and France. Among the best-known figures of the American Revolution, only the Marquis de Lafayette could make a similar claim. Paine learned the dangers of unrestrained popular government in the hardest possible way. It came close to killing him in France. He would learn that what was lost in Paris was precisely what he had left in Philadelphia—a system that could channel tremendous political and economic pressures into a stable Republic.

We are again living in revolutionary times. It is not just classic revolutions where governments are overthrown, but rather revolutions that can change countries from within. We refer to the Industrial Revolution and the Information Revolution to signify the transformative changes that they brought to society. Often those new realities produce countervailing political changes in government. The twenty-first century has seen the acceleration of new technology like artificial intelligence (AI) that is reframing every aspect of human existence. These changes will redefine not just the workplace but also the place of citizens in society at large. The question is whether American democracy can survive in the twenty-first century or collapse under the same forces of democratic despotism that brought down its contemporaries. It is the unfinished story of the American Revolution.

Thomas Paine saw this up close in Paris at the height of the French Revolution. He had been among those voices early on among the French Jacobins who cheered the stripping away constitutional protections to unleash the “general will.” The insatiable appetite of Saturn took hold of the liberators.bFor Paine, the ultimate collapse of his ideals came in December 1793. He had just been stripped of his seat in the French National Convention in a vote of no confidence. In watching the executions in Paris, Paine lamented to a friend, “Ah France, thou hast ruined the character of a revolution virtuously begun, and destroyed those who produced it.”

The long-awaited knock at his bedroom door came on December 28, 1793. There stood five policemen and two representatives of the feared Committee on General Safety. When asked for the charge, they just shrugged. Such details were now largely meaningless in France. It would not be democratic ideals but poor ventilation that would save Paine from joining his decapitated colleagues in Paris. After opening the door to allow more air into the cell, guards missed the chalk mark designating him and his cellmates for death. Paine would soon walk out of the Palais du Luxembourg as the Terror came to an end with the death of Robespierre..[..]

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“The Importance of Capitalism…in the Founding and the Future of the American Republic..”

Adam Smith and The Importance of Capitalism (Turley)

Capitalism is under attack from classrooms to town halls to voting booths. According to polls, a rising segment of the population is calling for socialism or even communism as young people embrace a radical chic in the country. And this week, another socialist looks ready to join a growing “squad” in Congress. On our 250th anniversary, the fight over capitalism and economic freedom could prove critical to the future of this republic. However, there is an unexpected change that could help reverse this trend. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently announced that one million families have already signed up for the new tax-privileged Trump Accounts, which will be seeded with $1,000 in taxpayer funds for children born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028.


With an anticipated 25 million participants, the initiative is one of the most ambitious and potentially impactful in U.S. history. But its true impact may be far greater than the wealth that it could generate for families. It may just be the determinative factor in preserving this Republic in this century. This month, Simon and Schuster released my new book on the founding and the future of the American republic — “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.” The book asks whether this unique republic can survive in the 21st century amid growing economic, political, and social challenges.

What many celebrating our 250th anniversary do not appreciate is that this is also the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, released around the same time as the Declaration of Independence. The book was not a great success in Great Britain. In addition to its foundational support for capitalism, it challenged the mercantilist policies of the British Empire and supported the claims of the colonies in seeking greater economic freedoms. Smith, however, was immediately embraced by the founders, who saw his work as the perfect economic theory to advance their political theory. Ours was the first Enlightenment Revolution based on a belief in natural rights that came from God, not governments.

Yet, the founders knew that true individual liberty could not be achieved without economic freedom. Smith’s idea of the “invisible hand” offered an idea of individual economic freedom where whole economies were driven by the individual tastes and choices of citizens. The combination would prove transformative, as the U.S. became not only the world’s oldest large-scale democracy but also history’s greatest economy. We will need that combination in the years to come to maintain what I call a “liberty-enhancing economy.” The book looks at the expected impact of new technology, from robotics to AI, in the possible creation of a large population of unemployed, unproductive citizens.

The question is how the likely state support for a large segment of our population will change their relationship to the government, changing the dynamic of what it is to be a citizen. The danger of a “kept citizenry” is that we will lose the essential independence that our founders wanted to instill in new Americans from their government. As we face these challenges, we are seeing a rise in support for socialism and communism in the West. It is the rage among young people who have no experience or memory of the socialist governments that collapsed in the prior century. Their understanding of socialism comes from armchair revolutionaries in colleges and the sloganeering of figures like Zohran Mamdani about introducing them to “the warmth of collectivism.”

That brings us back to the Trump accounts. The insidious aspect of past socialist systems is that their consistent failure often resulted in demands to “double down,” to increase state subsidies, nationalizations, and central planning. For their part, citizens can become accustomed to government support. When socialist François Mitterrand came to power in France in 1981, promising a “rupture with capitalism,” he quickly destroyed the country’s economy. However, he continued to dazzle French citizens with promises of free money, even appointing Andre Henry as the Minister of Free Time to assist citizens in their new socialist leisure.

The same seductive appeal is evident today in the U.S. and other Western countries. Sixty-five percent of Democratic voters have a favorable view of socialism. An even greater percentage of young Britons want to live under socialism, and 72 percent favor nationalization of industries.Capitalism was key to the success of the American Republic, and it will be even more important in the coming years. As jobs are wiped out through robotics and AI, we will have to shift to homocentric jobs and productivity to preserve not just economic but also political liberty. We cannot preserve that liberty as some arts-and-crafts citizenry, entertained with state-subsidized leisure and distractions.

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. It has the benefit of being a tangible lesson about capitalism — not simply an abstraction pulled from the pages of the Wealth of Nations. As socialist experiments replicate the failures of past eras, these accounts will offer a stark contrast for a rising generation. It is an investment that must be extended beyond 2028 to inculcate values of economic and political independence in the 21st century.

For young Americans, there has been a continual barrage of anti-capitalist sentiments. However, there is still muscle memory in this country of the gifts that free markets brought to a free people.

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https://twitter.com/RussiaIsntEnemy/status/2021242773395968061?s=20 https://twitter.com/STANISKRAPIVNIK/status/2021226671307706762?s=20

 

 

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Feb 062026
 
 February 6, 2026  Posted by at 10:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Albert Cuyp Cows in a river 1650


UBS: SpaceX-xAI Merger Signals Rise Of “Orbital AI” (ZH)
This is When Volatility Kicks In – Martin Armstrong (USAW)
Netherlands To Tax Unrealized Gains: EU Wealth Grab And Global Implications (Kolbe)
Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman Deny Epstein Malarkey, And Here’s Some Weird Sh*t (ZH)
DHS Secretary Noem Identifies Another Leaker and Refers to DOJ for Prosecution (CTH)
Why Democrats Fight Immigration Enforcement (Matt Margolis)
How Many Handshakes From Epstein Are You? (Akhmedova)
Nancy Mace Demands SUBPOENA For Bill Gates In Epstein Case (MN)
Vance Slams ‘Incestuous’ US Elites Over Epstein Files (RT)
Vance To Lead Sweeping Anti-Fraud Task Force Investigating California (ZH)
Vance and Rubio Lead ‘Critical Minerals’ Strategic Ministerial Gathering (CTH)
How Fast Is The Asian Population Ageing? (ZH)

 

 


What would YOU do with your days in a world where robots fulfill every need and want?

https://twitter.com/HustleBitch_/status/2019282180187291921

 

 

 

 


“… the merger of Musk’s SpaceX and xAI earlier this week, a transaction that has lifted his net worth to $850 billion..”

UBS: SpaceX-xAI Merger Signals Rise Of “Orbital AI” (ZH)

In September 2024, we penned a note that Elon Musk was on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2027, driven by what we described as “space race bets.” That call looks increasingly correct following the merger of Musk’s SpaceX and xAI earlier this week, a transaction that has lifted his net worth to $850 billion. By contrast, former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, who once famously said in 2019 that he wanted to live forever and be the first trillionaire, must be watching Musk’s empire soar to new heights in disgust. Musk’s decision to fold xAI into SpaceX is already being framed by UBS as an “orbital AI” investment angle, positioning Musk at the center of low-Earth orbit dominance and next-generation AI compute.


UBS trader Jephine Wong provided clients on Wednesday with what has caught her eye with the xAI-SpaceX deal:

“X” marks the spot as Elon Musk moved swiftly to fold xAI into SpaceX – an all stock deal valuing the combined entity at ~$1.25T (~$1T for SpaceX; ~$250B for xAI). The signal is clear: SpaceX is planting a flag in orbital AI, betting that a meaningful share of compute -essentially data centers in space- will be operating within 2–3 years. It’s a bold storyline to take into a potential summer/fall ~$50B IPO, but it also introduces new complexity for investors: SpaceX is generating ~$8B in EBITDA while xAI is burning approximately $1B per month. The roadshow narrative shifts from a pure- play space champion to a space-plus-AI hybrid -asking investors to balance operating strength against AI scale capex. EchoStar, a holder of SpaceX- linked assets, slipped on the news – a sign that not everyone is converted just yet.”

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“Europe needs war. You already had the finance ministers of France and Germany say that they may need IMF bailouts. This is why they want war. It’s a distraction.”

This is When Volatility Kicks In – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong warned in late December to be ready for the “Perfect Storm for Debt, Economy, War, Gold & Silver.” The rain and thunder started at the beginning of February, and the storm is just beginning. Armstrong says, “This is where the volatility starts kicking in. I think Europe is so desperate for war. My concern with the Trump Administration is I would not step a foot in there. Europe needs war. You already had the finance ministers of France and Germany say that they may need IMF bailouts. This is why they want war. It’s a distraction.


Without war, people are going to figure out what the hell is going on. My pension fund is gone. Everything is defaulting. What’s going to happen? They are basically going to be storming the parliament with pitch forks.” Where are you going to see volatility? Armstrong says, “The volatility is in everything. You just saw the metals come down. They will probably consolidate before they go back up when people realize that Europe is going to go to war. What will happen? The dollar will go up. Metals will go up. It will be like WWI and WWII. The US became the financial capital of the world because Europe blew its brains out twice. Now, they think the third time is going to be the charm. . .. If there is war in Europe, it will be maybe in the summer. It does not look good.”

One bright spot was the Ukraine/Russia peace plan Armstrong put together at the request of President Trump. Armstrong says, “I did get a letter from President Trump . . . thanking me for writing it. So, it was sanctioned by Trump, and that’s pretty much everything he is doing except for NATO . . .. At the meeting, they told me you are correct. We know we are not going to be at war with Russia.” Let’s hope the US stays out of a coming Russia/Europe war. If we do, you can thank Martin Armstrong who put his peace plan together for Trump for free.

Armstrong also says the illegal alien invasion created by Democrats is the way they are trying to stay in power. Don’t be fooled by the close Dem wins in recent special elections. Armstrong’s “Socrates” computer has seen no advantage for either side for the midterms this year–yet. Armstrong sees the dollar staying strong and says, “You can’t park money in Canada, Mexico, Japan, or Europe. . ..Where are you going to put serious money? The United States is the only place—sorry. This is why the United States is what it is. Big money needs a place to park.”

On gold and silver, Armstrong is decidedly bullish on both metals and says, “This is not the major high. We have too much craziness on the horizon, from sovereign debt default to war. You are just getting a pullback and consolidation. . .. I am looking at the $165 to $200 per ounce area for silver. For gold, I am looking at resistance at the $8,500 per ounce level and, after that, $10,000 per ounce . . . in the next few years.”

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Taxing the money you haven’t yet made…

Netherlands To Tax Unrealized Gains: EU Wealth Grab And Global Implications (Kolbe)

A fiscal storm is brewing in the Netherlands. With the potential introduction of a tax on unrealized capital gains, The Hague is set to become a testing ground for the systematic transfer of wealth from the private sector to the state. Across all government levels, the European Union is increasingly transforming into an aggressive parasitic system. A fundamental clash between the public and private sectors is intensifying across the EU. In March, both chambers of the Dutch parliament will decide on the implementation of an annual tax on unrealized gains. Going forward, all increases in value—from real estate and stocks to bonds and cryptocurrencies—would fall under this fiscal framework.


This move significantly accelerates the extraction of capital from the private sector, constituting a political rule violation. Already taxed income and assets would be hit again based on hypothetical gains, severely impeding private wealth accumulation. Support for this measure spans both right- and left-wing parties. It reflects a form of fiscal horseshoe logic, apparently anticipating a severe national financial crisis. For the EU as a whole, this is disastrous. That a nation with a debt ratio of just 46% and new borrowing of slightly over 2% of GDP would effectively declare war on private capital signals profound economic distortions in one of Europe’s most successful economies. One naturally asks: if this is happening in the Netherlands, what does it say about the rest of the European Union?

The End of the Productive Economy

A glance at Eurozone manufacturing suggests a storm is brewing. Deindustrialization in Germany, the largest industrial base in Europe, began in 2018 and has accelerated ever since, with massive capital flight. What applies to Germany applies even more so to the fragile peripheral European economies. For decades, Europe’s economy has shifted from production toward financial and wealth-rentier models. As financialization advances, production and value creation increasingly relocate abroad. This mirrors a process the United States underwent for decades and attempted to reverse under President Donald Trump.

European states see no escape from the economic death spiral created by expanding welfare systems, uncontrolled migration, and slowly shrinking core industrial productivity. Politicians are buying time through the expropriation of citizen savings to evade growing reform pressure. Once societal patience reaches a tipping point, Europe may witness scenes similar to those currently unfolding in the U.S., where the government has effectively declared war on illegal immigration amid a media-driven defensive battle coordinated by far-left forces, globalist media, and foreign foundations.

The pressing question for Europe: how long will native populations tolerate financial assault from the state without demanding corresponding migration and welfare reforms? Several EU states already levy progressive inheritance and gift taxes. Norway recently introduced a wealth tax of roughly 1% on net assets above €160,000 per person, raising eyebrows in one of Europe’s richest nations. Spain applies a progressive wealth tax up to 3.5%, plus a solidarity wealth levy for assets above €3 million—“solidarity,” a political buzzword used to rhetorically justify impending fiscal expropriation.

This expropriation is imminent. Coalition parties have spent the past year laying the groundwork for a massive expansion of inheritance taxes. It would be unwise to rule out Germany’s politically influenced Constitutional Court approving a national wealth tax in the future.

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Lots of them.

DHS Secretary Noem Identifies Another Leaker and Refers to DOJ for Prosecution (CTH)

The good news is the process to identify the subversive agents inside the various offices of the administration continues to yield results. The bad news is there’s a lot of them to identify and remove. Dept of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem shares another leaker has been identified and removed. Additionally, she is referring their conduct to the Dept of Justice for criminal prosecution.

Both Noem and Gabbard appear to be continuing their methodical approach without fear or favor. Secretary Noem facing down the internal resistors within the FBI, who have been leaking about ICE enforcement operations. Director Gabbard working through the tentacles of the Intelligence Community to identify similarly minded IC agents. Meanwhile there was some media controversy about the FBI Special Agent in charge of the Atlanta Field office being removed from his position just prior to the execution of a federal search warrant in Fulton County. The reason for that removal now seems to come to light with the release of letter former Agent Paul Brown sent to Elections Director Nadine Williams giving her a head’s-up on the material the FBI was going to seize.

FBI Agent Brown asks Ms Williams to voluntarily hand over the material, which has the result of giving Fulton County a heads-up about the specifics of the material the FBI were going to gather and review in their search warrant. [..] Another positive outcome amid all of this, is honestly exposing FBI Director Kash Patel’s lack of operational control over the agency he heads. Each day more people are starting to realize what many of us have noted from the outset. Without first admitting the scale and scope of the problem within the FBI, there was no way Kash Patel was ever going to address it.

The issues with the FBI are obvious; a few examples: There were 40 FBI agents on the Robert Mueller investigation into Trump-Russia collusion. Why would any of them still be employed? Additionally, think about the J6 investigations and Arctic Frost, are those FBI agents still employed within the FBI? There is no apple, it’s all worms.

FEBRUARY 9, 2025:

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“…huge majorities of Republicans, Democrats, whites, Latinos, and black Americans all agreeing that you should show a photo ID to vote.”

Why Democrats Fight Immigration Enforcement (Matt Margolis)

Democrats have spent years insisting illegal immigrants do not vote, yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries just gave the whole game away. In a letter to GOP leadershi p, they demanded a slate of “reforms” to immigration enforcement as the price for funding the Department of Homeland Security, including targeted enforcement, no masks, mandatory use of body cameras, and other demands, several of which I suspect are nonstarters. I don’t see Democrats getting anywhere with these, but the big thing is that buried in that list is a rather revealing demand:


“Protect Sensitive Locations – Prohibit funds from being used to conduct enforcement near sensitive locations, including medical facilities, schools, child-care facilities, churches, polling places, courts, etc.”

huge majorities of Republicans, Democrats, whites, Latinos, and black Americans all agreeing that you should show a photo ID to vote. Polling places? They went out of their way to include polling places right alongside hospitals, courts, and churches. There is only one thing that happens at polling places that would matter to illegal immigrants, and it is not the bake sale. Democrats have insisted for years that illegal immigrants cannot and do not vote, and that the whole issue is a right-wing myth. If that is true, then why is “polling places” even on their list of protected zones for immigration violators? No one accidentally adds “polling places” to a policy letter being negotiated at the leadership level. This is deliberate. It gives away what they are worried about… and what they are counting on.

“Democrats just admitted they think illegal aliens need to be protected at polling places. Why exactly would illegal aliens be at polling places? We MUST fully fund DHS AND pass the SAVE America Act,” Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) posted on X. That is the obvious question Democrats do not want to answer. If illegal immigrants are not supposed to be anywhere near the ballot box, then immigration enforcement near polling sites ought to be a non-issue.This comes as Republicans are pushing election reform through Congress with the SAVE Act. The SAVE Act is a straightforward concept: safeguard federal elections by ensuring only American citizens can cast ballots, and that an ID is required to vote.

Schumer’s response has been to smear the SAVE Act as “Jim Crow 2.0” and brand it “racist” and “dead on arrival.” That is the Democrats’ go-to play whenever Democrats feel threatened: slap a “Jim Crow” label on common-sense election rules and scare minorities into thinking Republicans are trying to stop them from voting. The problem is that even minorities aren’t buying it. As PJ Media previously reported, polling has shown consistent and overwhelming support for Voter ID laws for years. That consensus cuts across both party and race, with

Why are Democrats pushing so hard against common sense and trying to help illegal immigrants vote even though they’re not supposed to? Recent census projections show blue states are bleeding population while red states are gaining it, which will shift House seats and electoral votes after the 2030 reapportionment. As people flee high-tax, crime-ridden, Democrat-run states for freer red states, Democrats face shrinking power at the national level. That gives them every incentive to import a new population, shield it from enforcement, and eventually convert them into votes, one way or another.

That’s why Democrats have no qualms fighting so aggressively against overwhelmingly popular election reforms. For them, it’s a matter of survival.

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“Some Weird Sh*t” alright.

Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman Deny Epstein Malarkey, And Here’s Some Weird Sh*t (ZH)

As the latest Epstein Files release continues to provide premium toilet reading and no arrests, tech billionaires Bill Gates and Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman are in full damage control mode, while President Donald Trump – whose name is all over the files as well, is back to asking if we can just move on. Other notables mentioned in the release are Steve Tisch, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Harvey Weinstein, Leon Black, Peter Mandelson (who just imploded), Sergey Brin, Jason Calacanis, Howard Lutnick and the Nobel Prize committee (more on that later, it’s a fun one), and of course Ehud Barak.


To review – Gates, whose ex-wife Melinda says he ‘needs to answer to those things’ in the Epstein files – was featured in a 2013 email Epstein sent to himself – three months after the disgraced financier appears to have brought top Gates ‘assistant’ Boris Nikolic and ‘two Russian girls’ to Richard Branson’s island for a crypto summit. According to Epstein, Gates – who apparently severed ties with Epstein after some incident involving Boris, ‘implored’ Epstein to ‘delete the emails regarding your std, your request that I provide you with antibiotics that you can surreptitiously give to Melinda and the description of your penis.’ Gates responded to the latest email, claiming it was ‘never sent’ (incorrect) and that it’s ‘false,’ (though he did offer $100k to anyone that can make a ‘next generation’ condom earlier that year).

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2019045284689424764

Hoffman vs. Musk Meanwhile, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman – who went to Epstein’s island, was invited to his weird fertility ranch, and apparently left his passport in a ‘gift bag’ for Epstein – has been trading Epstein ‘gotchas’ with Elon Musk, who asked Epstein if he could bring his ex-wife to the island for a ‘wild’ party. Hoffman claims he was only on Epstein’s island to fundraise with former MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito, while Musk claims Epstein used the fact that Hoffman was on the island to try to get him to go.

Feb 1: Musk drops ‘reid was on the island last weekend,’ email Epstein sent him, and notes that Hoffman brought ‘gifts’ to Epstein. Hoffman, who says he deeply regrets associating with Epstein post-conviction, defended his visit, replying to ZeroHedge after we asked to clarify that he went to Epstein island to raise money for MIT.

When asked if President Trump deserves the same ‘assumption of innocence’ that you are claiming, Hoffman pivots, saying he’s “been calling for an investigation,” adding “No one will need to assume anything if Trump releases all of the files, and we conduct a transparent investigation into those implicated in crimes.” Shockingly, not everyone is buying Hoffman’s story…

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2018958358607520099 https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/2019051610400280982

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“Look at Ukraine. The same political class that now shocks you with its private depravity has been overseeing the destruction of a country in public. These political cannibals may not literally devour people, but the result is much the same. They would have consumed Russia too, had it not resisted.”:

How Many Handshakes From Epstein Are You? (Akhmedova)

The US Department of Justice has released another batch of files connected to Jeffrey Epstein, so extensive that even Russia’s “foreign agents” and émigré commentators felt compelled to sift through them. “It seems this isn’t a conspiracy theory after all,” they muttered, suddenly uneasy. “It seems the American and global elite really did indulge in depravity with children. And… perhaps even something worse.” Stunned, they asked each other: Will nothing change now that the truth is out? Is the world simply evil? But the world is not “doomed.” What these revelations provoke is disgust, outrage and, for many in Russia, very little surprise.


What exactly is new here? That parts of the global elite are morally rotten? But haven’t they behaved that way in full public view for years? Was it not the same elite – acting through NATO coalitions and political blocs – that bombed countries, toppled governments, and plunged entire regions into chaos? For over a decade, the world has lived with the consequences of decisions made by a tight circle of self-styled “civilized” leaders. The problem is not just a few twisted individuals. It is the elite as a collective. It’s cohesive, protected, smug, and convinced of its own impunity. When you see how casually they destroy weaker nations in politics, it’s not hard to imagine an island where the same people feel entitled to indulge their private vices.

Political cruelty and moral corruption rarely exist separately. Yet many of Russia’s liberal émigrés, who fled in 2022 hoping to merge into this very “global elite,” seem only now to be waking up. Journalist Anna Mongait, for example, wrote that she spent an entire day studying the Epstein files as if sorting through rubbish. She says it looks unreal, as though generated by artificial intelligence: “Old men I know from official chronicles groping teenage bodies. One frame would be enough for a universal scandal, but there are thousands.”

By evening, she said she was wondering whose handshake had indirectly connected her to Epstein. The thought, she wrote, made her want to wash her hands “up to the elbow.” Now she fears Epstein will drag down not only the American establishment, but “many of our own people.” But two things must be said. First: not everyone is linked to Epstein by some chain of social proximity. Many of us are not connected to that world at all. Not by one handshake, not by ten. He will not drag down “our people,” because we were never part of that circle.

Second: you did not need to know about Epstein’s island to recognize the moral bankruptcy of the global elite. Look at Ukraine. The same political class that now shocks you with its private depravity has been overseeing the destruction of a country in public. These political cannibals may not literally devour people, but the result is much the same. They would have consumed Russia too, had it not resisted. Those who left Russia did not support that resistance. Now they recoil from the elite they once admired. But is this a moral awakening, or simple disappointment? Perhaps they distance themselves now because the political winds have shifted, because figures like Trump do not favor them. If a smiling Western politician returned who embraced their worldview, would they not stretch out their hands again?

Cleansing oneself is actually simple. Stand on firm moral ground. Judge people by their actions, not their smiles, slogans, or fashionable reputations. Understand that evil persists as long as people remain fascinated by it and eager to belong to its circle. There are fewer such admirers left in Russia today. Not least because many of them have already left, and no longer lecture the rest of us about what we should be ashamed of.

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“And I am so happy to be away from all the muck.”

Nancy Mace Demands SUBPOENA For Bill Gates In Epstein Case (MN)

Congresswoman Nancy Mace is turning up the heat on Bill Gates, pushing for a subpoena that could force the tech tycoon to spill the beans on his shady ties to Jeffrey Epstein—exposing how deep the rot runs in the elite circles that have long evaded justice. With the DOJ dropping three million pages of Epstein docs packed with stomach-turning allegations, Mace isn’t buying Gates’ denials, demanding he testify before Congress to set the record straight or face the consequences. Mace wasted no time after seeing Melinda Gates’ eye-opening comments about her ex-husband and Epstein during an NPR interview.

The Rep. announced a push to subpoena Bill Gates in a social media blast, revealing she has asked House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) to haul the Microsoft founder in “immediately.” “We’re calling for Bill Gates to testify under oath on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in front of the Oversight Committee,” Mace declared. She added: “[Three] million pages of Epstein documents were just released by the DOJ and the allegations are SICK. If these allegations are false, Bill Gates should have no problem saying so under oath before Congress.” “Nobody is above the law. Not billionaires. Not the powerful. Nobody,” Mace added.

The latest Epstein files, unleashed by the Department of Justice, include a 2013 email from the predator himself alleging Gates caught an STD after “sex with Russians girls” and schemed to slip antibiotics to Melinda without her knowing. Another 2017 email hints at Epstein blackmailing Gates over an alleged affair with Russian bridge player Mila Antonova. Melinda’s response on NPR’s Wild Card podcast lit the fuse for Mace. Melinda said Gates and other Epstein cronies “need to answer to those things.”

“I think we’re having a reckoning as a society,” she told host Rachel Martin. “No girl should ever be put in the situation that they were put in by Epstein and whatever was going on with all of the various people around him.” Reflecting on the victims, Melinda added: “It’s beyond heartbreaking. I remember being those ages those girls were; I remember my daughters being those ages.” The Gates’ 2021 divorce announcement cited: “[W]e no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.” But Melinda tied the Epstein mess directly to her pain: “So, for me, it’s personally hard whenever those details come up because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage, but I have moved on from that.”

She pointed the finger squarely: “whatever questions” that remain on the Epstein debacle “are for those people, and even my ex-husband. They need to answer to those things, not me. And I am so happy to be away from all the muck.” Gates’ camp fired back through a spokesperson: “These claims are absolutely absurd and completely false.” They claimed: “The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame.”

This push comes amid a broader reckoning, with the DOJ’s massive file dump shining a light on elite entanglements. Fresh scrutiny hits figures like Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick over their Epstein links, proving no one is immune. Gates’ own squirming defense on Australia’s 9News—claiming he was “only at dinners” and never met women—got shredded on The View, with hosts like Joy Behar mocking: “I know nothing. I did nothing.” Even that leftist stronghold is turning, signaling Gates’ PR fortress is crumbling.

The Clintons have also finally caved under pressure, agreeing to testify in the Epstein probe after dodging subpoenas for months. Facing contempt charges, Bill and Hillary bent the knee, with depositions set for late February— a win for transparency against deep state stonewalling. This cascade signals that the elite pedophile network’s protectors are finally cracking. As Mace leads the charge, it’s clear the Epstein saga is far from over. Globalists like Gates, long shielded by their billions and media allies, now face real oversight. The Clintons’ testimony could unleash more bombshells, exposing how power corridors enabled this horror.

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“… Gates sought help obtaining drugs “in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls.”

Vance Slams ‘Incestuous’ US Elites Over Epstein Files (RT)

US Vice President J.D. Vance has said new documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein expose what he described as an “incestuous” culture among America’s political and business elites. The documents, released by the US Justice Department last week, include previously unpublished records from Epstein’s estate and related investigations. The trove spans more than 3 million pages, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images, renewing scrutiny of his connections to political, business, and tech figures and revealing how he maintained ties with prominent individuals even after his 2008 conviction.


Vance told the Daily Mail on Tuesday that the files expose a “pretty incestuous nature” among America’s elites, calling the revelations “pretty gross.” He singled out figures including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, former US President Bill Clinton, and billionaire Bill Gates, saying the disclosures reflected “very poorly on them.” The documents show Musk discussing plans in 2013 to visit Epstein’s private island, asking about “a good time to visit,” with Epstein offering to send his helicopter. The trip never happened, and Musk said he never traveled to the island.

A separate 2013 email shows Epstein sending himself a document claiming Gates sought help obtaining drugs “in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls.” A spokesperson for Gates dismissed the claim as “absolutely absurd and completely false.” Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee in its investigation into Epstein. The ex-president has previously acknowledged flying on Epstein’s private jet in the early 2000s but denied wrongdoing. The couple had initially resisted subpoenas, calling them “invalid and legally unenforceable.”

Speaking about Trump, whose name appears in the files on at least 3,000 occasions and who has denied being friends with Epstein, Vance said the president “knows a lot of these people” due to his wealth and status but “is very much outside of the social circle” and was not closely involved. Trump himself has accused Epstein of plotting against him, writing on social media: “I never went to the infested Epstein island but, almost all of these Crooked Democrats, and their Donors, did.” Epstein died in a New York jail in 2019, in a death ruled a suicide, which has fueled conspiracy theories, including claims he was killed to prevent the disclosure of compromising material involving prominent figures.

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“Hospice is crazy here,” Dr. Oz said. “You’ve got hospice that’s grown seven-fold in the last five years. They represent about three and a half billion dollars of fraud, we believe, just in LA County.”

Vance To Lead Sweeping Anti-Fraud Task Force Investigating California (ZH)

Vice President JD Vance is poised to chair a new White House task force aimed at rooting out potential fraud and abuse in government programs in California, according to CBS News. Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, is expected to serve as the task force’s vice chairman and handle day-to-day operations, CBS News reports. President Donald Trump is anticipated to issue an executive order in the coming days to formally establish the group, the news outlet said. The White House task force would operate separately from a related Justice Department effort led by Colin McDonald, a Trump nominee for a new fraud-investigation role at the department. McDonald is expected to also probe fraud in Minnesota uncovered by YouTuber Nick Shirley and other independent journalists.

https://twitter.com/NJGOP/status/2017397171604115771

California has long grappled with documented issues of waste, fraud, and weak oversight in state and federally funded programs. State auditors have for more than a decade flagged problems including persistent cost overruns, inadequate internal controls, and unimplemented reform recommendations across various initiatives, CBS News reported last month. California’s Employment Development Department faced acute criticism during the pandemic, when unemployment-insurance fraud resulted in an estimated $20 billion or more in improper payments, while many eligible claimants endured lengthy delays in receiving benefits, according to NPR News. Separately, federal officials have recently scrutinized fraud risks in hospice and home-health services, particularly in Los Angeles County.

Last week, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz visited the area to draw attention to the issue, citing the rapid proliferation of hospice providers and potential billions in improper billings. One physician in California reportedly billed the government $120 million in a single year while claiming oversight of 1,900 patients -an volume that has raised questions about feasibility and potential abuse. The county is home to nearly 2,000 licensed hospice agencies, a number exceeding the combined total in more than 36 states and roughly 30 times the count in states such as Florida or New York. “Hospice is crazy here,” Dr. Oz said. “You’ve got hospice that’s grown seven-fold in the last five years. They represent about three and a half billion dollars of fraud, we believe, just in LA County.”

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“… has made a policy decision to create a critical mineral reserve [..] The initiative is called “Project Vault.”

Vance and Rubio Lead ‘Critical Minerals’ Strategic Ministerial Gathering (CTH)

In the past few years people have heard the term “rare earth minerals” or “critical minerals” as they relate to the manufacture of component goods that are vitally important in the lives of everyone. However, the term “rare” is somewhat of a misnomer. The minerals themselves are not rare; indeed, they have been around for hundreds of millions of years in abundant supply. It is the processing of those minerals into stable second stage commodities that has become rare.


As a result of western environmental rules and regulations, U.S, EU and developed nations have outsourced critical mineral processing (the dirty stuff) to China and Asia. We then import the finished commodity after processing. This becomes a problem when you realize the processor can weaponize western dependency, as we have recently seen with China controlling the export of processed minerals needed for manufacturing. President Trump has made a strategic decision to bring back the manufacturing of critical minerals to the United States and has made a policy decision to create a critical mineral reserve. Just last Monday President Trump announced a $12 billion strategic mineral reserve to combat China’s domination of critical mineral supply chains, a major step toward tackling China’s advantage in a crucial sector of the U.S. economy. The initiative is called “Project Vault.”

“For years, American businesses have risked running out of critical minerals during market disruptions,” President Trump said. “Just as we have long had a strategic petroleum reserve and a stockpile of critical minerals for national defense, we are now creating this reserve for American industry,” Trump said during the Oval Office announcement. Today in Washington DC, Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio led a critical minerals discussion at the State Dept., where they are organizing an effort to get all nations to invest and create their own critical minerals strategic reserves. WATCH:

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Faster than us?!

How Fast Is The Asian Population Ageing? (ZH)

The latest revision of UN World Population Prospects reveals that demographic shift is no longer a distant projection but an accelerating reality across parts of Asia, with the share of people aged 65 and over rising fast in several countries. As Statista’s Tristan Gaudiaut reports, this trend poses a significant challenge in the region for labor markets, public finances and care systems within a single generation. The figures (UN medium-scenario projections) show Japan already far ahead, as older adults made up already around 29 percent of the population in 2020, and are projected to surpass 30 percent in the coming years: 31.1 percent by 2030 and 35.4 percent by 2040. But, as our infographic shows, the more striking story is the pace of change elsewhere.

South Korea and China are among the standout accelerators. Both countries are expected to see their 65+ population shares more than double between 2020 and 2040. In South Korea, this figure is projected to surge from 15.8 percent (2020) to 33.8 percent (2040), while in China, it is expected to rise from 12.7 percent to 26.6 percent.

Those trajectories mirror intensifying national concerns about future labor supply and pension burdens, amid persistent low fertility and a shrinking workforce. Meanwhile, rapid ageing is not confined to the region’s richest economies. Thailand and Vietnam start from lower baselines, yet both trend sharply upward by 2040. Both South-East Asian countries are projected to see their 65+ population shares double in twenty-years: Thailand to 25.6 percent and Vietnam to 15.8 percent.

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https://twitter.com/MarioBojic/status/2019010007887478792 https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2019025650099855464

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Feb 042026
 
 February 4, 2026  Posted by at 11:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , ,  65 Responses »


David Hockney The Big Tree in Autumn 1 November 2020


U.S. Navy Shoots Down Iranian Drone Approaching Aircraft Carrier (Salgado)
Europe’s Russian Gas Ban Is Set to Trigger a New Wave of LNG Tanker Demand (Slav)
New York Released Almost 7,000 Criminal Illegal Aliens (Salgado)
The Trump Coalition Wins, But the GOP Brand Doesn’t (Daniel McCarthy)
Brussels Can’t Make Peace With Moscow Until It Breaks Its Habits (Ryumshin)
Musk’s X Office In Paris Raided By Cybercrime Unit (ZH)
‘Not a Free Country’: Telegram CEO Slams France’s X Office Raid (Salgado)
Gabbard Defends Presence at Fulton County Election Warrant Execution (ET)
UK’s Mandelson Accused Of Leaking Bombshell Financial Data To Epstein (ZH)
Ghislaine Maxwell Claims Dozens of Epstein’s Accomplices Got Off Scot-free (RT)
British PM Calls On Ex-Prince Andrew To Testify Over Epstein Links (RT)

 

 


Make power in space.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2018703572016287879/

 

 

 

 


Harmless contraption. But the story sells back home.

U.S. Navy Shoots Down Iranian Drone Approaching Aircraft Carrier (Salgado)

The U.S. Navy reportedly shot down an Iranian drone apparently threatening one of our aircraft carriers on Tuesday, as tensions continued to mount between the two countries’ governments. Reuters reported that U.S. military officials confirmed to it that the Navy shot down an Iranian Shahed-139 drone, which “aggressively” approached the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea today. An F-35 fighter jet took out the drone after it exhibited a pattern “with unclear intent.”


U.S. Central Command spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins told Reuters, “An F-35C fighter jet from Abraham Lincoln shot down the Iranian drone in self-defense and to protect the aircraft carrier and personnel on board.” Fortunately, no American servicemen or equipment were injured in the incident. The United States has built up its naval presence in the Middle East as it seemed to be preparing for Donald Trump’s promised strike on the Islamic regime in Iran. The regime has massacred 30,000+ freedom protesters in the country (per TIME), and Trump originally indicated he was going to take military action to support the protesters. He has not done so, and diplomats have been trying to keep Trump from taking any military action.

The Iranian Islamic regime is one of America’s most aggressively hostile enemies, as Ayatollah Khamenei and his fellow terror-sponsoring authoritarians say that “death to America” is an official policy. Khamenei has repeatedly threatened to assassinate Trump. U.S. Central Command does not appear to have issued an official statement on the incident aside from its comments to Reuters. The outlet reported:

Trump, who stopped short of carrying out threats to intervene during the crackdown, has since demanded Tehran make nuclear concessions and sent a flotilla to its coast. He said last week Iran was “seriously talking,” while Tehran’s top security official, Ali Larijani, said arrangements for negotiations were under way. The U.S. military’s Central Command said in another incident on Tuesday, hours later in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces harassed a U.S.-flagged, U.S.-crewed merchant vessel. Hawkins stated, “Two IRGC boats and an Iranian Mohajer drone approached M/V Stena Imperative at high speeds and threatened to board and seize the tanker.”

There is some debate as to why Trump pulled back from striking the Islamic regime, with some reports indicating he did so after talking with pro-Khamenei Qatari officials and other Gulf dictators. It remains to be seen if the Trump administration will take more decisive action after this.

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Europe pretends it’s rich. It’ll pay double for US gas

Europe’s Russian Gas Ban Is Set to Trigger a New Wave of LNG Tanker Demand (Slav)

The European Union’s plan to ban LNG imports from Russia will prompt a surge in demand for LNG carriers to the tune of 30 new vessels, a senior Vortexa analyst said ahead of the LNG Qatar gathering that starts today. According to Ashley Sherman, senior LNG analyst at the company, if the EU sanctions leave currently unsanctioned Yamal LNG free to deliver liquefied gas to European buyers, at least 30 new low ice-class or non-ice-class LNG carriers to satisfy demand for the fuel from the second-largest importing region after Asia.


In December last year, the European Union agreed a legally binding, gradual reduction in both LNG and pipeline gas imports from Russia, eventually resulting in a full ban on these exports, with the deadlines set for the end of 2026 for LNG and the autumn of 2027 for pipeline gas. Last month, the European Council gave the final approval to the ban. It also gave EU members until March to “prepare national plans to diversify gas supplies and identify potential challenges in replacing Russian gas.” Hungary and Slovakia have protested the move on the grounds it would raise their energy costs to unacceptable levels.

The Yamal LNG facility, operated by Novatek, has been excluded from direct sanctions so far due to the Europea Union’s strong demand for gas, but the EU has sanctioned vessels loading from the Western Siberian LNG plant. Novatek’s second LNG plant, however, Arctic LNG 2, along with Gazprom’s Portovaya LNG plant, are under Western sanctions. They still export liquefied gas to China, despite the sanctions on both production facilities and LNG carriers servicing them. Meanwhile, the EU imported record volumes of LNG last month amid harsh winter weather, with the total calculated at 12.7 billion cu m, Russia’s TASS news agency reported, citing figures from Gas Infrastructure Europe.

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Anti-ICE.

New York Released Almost 7,000 Criminal Illegal Aliens (Salgado)

New York released almost 7,000 criminal illegal aliens last year as a result of sanctuary policies, rewarding killers, rapists, robbers, and burglars while defying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). On Feb. 2, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release about the arrest of Gerardo Miguel-Mora, a criminal illegal alien with an extremely lengthy rap sheet for strangulation, rape, grand larceny, burglary, sexual assault, and drug possession.


New York City released Miguel-Mora because city officials refuse to honor ICE detainers, so ICE had to re-arrest him on Jan. 30 of this year. But Miguel-Mora is no exception. He is one of thousands of illegal aliens who benefitted, at least temporarily, from sanctuary policies. At the end of the release on Miguel-Mora, DHS included two illuminating paragraphs of data covering Jan. 20, 2025, when Donald Trump took office, up to the present time. DHS said that New York, in defying ICE detainers, freed 6,947 criminal illegal aliens.

DHS explained further: The crimes of these aliens include 29 homicides, 2,509 assaults, 199 burglaries, 305 robberies, 392 dangerous drugs offenses, 300 weapons offenses, and 207 sexual predatory offenses. There are currently 7,113 aliens in the custody of a New York jurisdiction with an active detainer. The crimes of these aliens include 148 homicides, 717 assaults, 134 burglaries, 106 robberies, 235 dangerous drugs offenses, 152 weapons offenses, and 260 sexual predatory offenses. And since Commie Mamdani is now mayor of New York City, expect such numbers to grow even more out-of-control.

Since the DHS used Miguel-Mora as an example, I will too. Between July and August of 2011 — more than a decade ago — authorities charged Miguel-Mora with various crimes including strangulation and rape. The New York State Supreme Court convicted the illegal alien of burglary in 2012, and sentenced him to 42 months in jail, plus 10 years of post-release supervision. In 2023, Miguel-Mora was still in the United States for some insane reason, and the New York Police Department arrested and charged him with false personation and grand larceny. NYPD subsequently arrested and charged the criminal illegal alien with crimes twice in 2024, releasing him the very day after the arrest both times to avoid ICE detainers. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a criminal warrant for Miguel-Mora for illegal reentry as an aggravated felon in 2025.

In January of this year, NYPD arrested Miguel-Mora twice, but released him both times despite the federal arrest warrant and ICE detainer. So ICE finally had to arrest Miguel-Mora themselves. Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin emphasized, “These are the types of public safety threats New York Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani are releasing from their jails onto the streets to perpetrate more crimes and create more victims. We need local law enforcement to cooperate with us to get these heinous criminals out of our neighborhoods. 7 of the 10 safest cities in the United States cooperate with ICE. We are once again calling on Governor Hochul to commit to turning the more than 7,000 heinous criminals in New York’s custody over to ICE.”

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What will the GOP do in 2028, when Trump can no longer be elected?

The Trump Coalition Wins, But the GOP Brand Doesn’t (Daniel McCarthy)

Just how badly did Republicans do in two Texas special elections last weekend? Not as badly as apocalyptic headlines in liberal-leaning outlets would suggest — but badly enough that Republicans nationwide have to learn some searing lessons. Although the GOP lost both races, one was for a U.S. House seat that’s been in Democrats’ hands for decades: Christian Menefee’s victory narrows the GOP’s congressional majority, but only because that safely blue seat had been vacant since Rep. Sylvester Turner died last March.


The other contest, which yielded an upset, was for a Texas state senate seat that will be up for election again before the legislature convenes. In other words, the victorious Democrat, Taylor Rehmet, won’t get to vote on anything before Texans get another vote on him, and the November race that really matters is certain to have stronger turnout than last Saturday’s special election. The trouble is Rehmet didn’t just win, he won by more than 14 points in a red-leaning Ft. Worth-area district.

Democrats and much of the media converged on the same message: this was a district Donald Trump won by roughly 17 points in 2024, so the swing away from the GOP was more than 30 points, a staggering humiliation that augurs a Republican wipeout in November. But comparing presidential elections to state senate elections — and a January special election, at that — is absurd. Never mind presidential years: Saturday’s turnout was pitiful even in comparison to typical off-year state legislative races. Merely 94,000 or so people voted last weekend, barely a third as many as participated the last time the seat was up in a general election, back in 2022, when nearly 278,000 ballots were cast.

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“Peace with Russia? Not until the EU changes its political class..”

Brussels Can’t Make Peace With Moscow Until It Breaks Its Habits (Ryumshin)

Relations between Russia and the European Union are now at their lowest point since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The economic and cultural ties that once connected us were largely severed in 2022. Today, our neighbors are effectively finishing the job. They are doing so in two ways: by introducing ever more trade restrictions, and by sustaining a climate of military hysteria that justifies higher defense spending and the gradual dismantling of Western Europe’s welfare model.


Yet even in this bleak landscape, a faint glimmer of hope has appeared. The recent confrontation with the United States over Greenland has forced EU leaders to rethink their place in the global order. For years, the bloc’s members treated the US as a reliable strategic rear. That allowed them to align almost automatically with Washington. But this year, Western European capitals were reminded that America is a power with its own interests, which may sharply diverge from theirs. Unconditional loyalty has suddenly begun to look like a strategic risk.

From this realization flow conclusions that, until recently, would have been politically unthinkable in Western Europe. Dependence on American gas, it turns out, is no better than dependence on Russian gas. Except that imported LNG from across the Atlantic is far more expensive. More broadly, the United States, given its capabilities and assertiveness, can itself become a source of pressure and even a military risk. These thoughts are still spoken quietly, but they are no longer taboo.

Against this backdrop, the first cautious voices in favor of renewing dialogue with Russia have emerged inside the EU. What is notable is that they are not coming from marginal far-right forces, but from mainstream figures such as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Finnish President Alexander Stubb. Their statements remain hedged: we need to talk, they say, but the time is not yet right. Still, the very fact that the possibility of future relations with Moscow has returned to the political discourse marks a qualitative shift in the thinking of Western Europe’s elites.

If the EU is serious about standing on its own feet, it will eventually have to resolve the Russian question. For now, however, Brussels remains trapped in an outdated worldview. Its foreign policy is still overly ideological, rooted in the early 2010s. Its leaders continue to speak about a “rules-based world order” and to treat states whose political systems differ from their own liberal democratic model as inherent threats. This mindset also explains the EU’s confrontational approach to China, which from the outside often looks strategically self-defeating.

A genuine and pragmatic dialogue with Russia would require Western Europe to move beyond these assumptions. It would also mean abandoning the posture of moral superiority that flows from them. This is not a simple shift: it involves rethinking how the bloc understands power and sovereignty.

A second necessary step would be a sober recognition that the EU’s interests end where Russia’s begin. Just as Moscow once accepted the Baltic state’s accession to NATO as a geopolitical reality, Brussels must accept that Ukraine, in one form or another, will remain in Russia’s strategic focus. Western European policy should be built around this fact, not around ideological narratives about an existential struggle between democracies and autocracies.

Finally, before relations with Moscow can truly improve, the EU would need to distance itself more decisively from Washington. Despite current tensions with the Trump administration, many leaders still hope that the storm will pass and that transatlantic relations will return to their old pattern. But this is likely an illusion. Only once this illusion fades will Western Europe be able to define its own long-term interests clearly, and to see how important cooperation with Russia could be in that context.

None of this will happen quickly. Meaningful change will probably begin only with a partial generational shift in the EU’s political class. Leaders who built their careers on confrontation with Russia will gradually give way to more pragmatic figures. The first signs may appear within a year, with elections in France and Italy. A more decisive turning point could come with the electoral cycle in Germany and Britain in 2029, unless early votes intervene. A European parliament vote is also scheduled for that year.

If, by the end of that cycle, figures like Kaja Kallas are replaced in European diplomacy by politicians closer to the pragmatic line of Giorgia Meloni, it will signal that Western Europe is finally adjusting to a more realistic understanding of the world. That, in turn, could open the door to a gradual de-escalation with Russia. Until then, confrontation will likely remain the dominant framework. Not because it is inevitable, but because the EU has not yet completed its own political and strategic rethink.

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Naked power game. “..child abuse images, sexually explicit deepfakes, Holocaust denial content..” We’re supposed to think Elon promotes those things? Really, Macron?

Musk’s X Office In Paris Raided By Cybercrime Unit (ZH)

One week after the European Commission opened a new formal investigation into Elon Musk’s X under the Digital Services Act (DSA) and expanded a separate probe launched in December 2023, X’s Paris office was raided by France’s cybercrime unit as part of an investigation into the distribution of sexual deepfakes and Holocaust denial content. “A search is being carried out at the French premises of X by the cybercrime unit of the Paris public prosecutor’s office, together with @CyberGEND and @Europol , as part of the investigation opened in January 2025,” the Paris prosecutors’ office wrote on X early Tuesday.


The Paris public prosecutor’s office also said it is leaving the X platform and will post exclusively on Reid Hoffman’s LinkedIn and Meta-owned Instagram. In a statement, the public prosecutor’s office said that both Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino (former X CEO) had been summoned for voluntary questioning “in their capacity as de facto and de jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events.” The prosecutor’s office set the date for April 20, a day frequently associated with Musk, suggesting the activists chose it as a pointed jab.

Back to the X message: “Find us on Lkd and Insta.” What a ridiculous statement from the prosecutor’s office. It only reinforces the idea that this is pure political theater, emblematic of Europe’s left-wing, unhinged censorship regime targeting a U.S. billionaire who has done more to uphold free speech than anyone else in the West. X previously described the probe’s widening last year as “politically-motivated”… The prosecutor’s office said it was examining “alleged complicity” in offences related to the platform, including the spreading of child abuse images and sexually explicit deepfakes via the AI chatbot on X called “Grok.”Yet, no investigation into other chatbots?

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Pavel Durov has a strange story with France by now.

‘Not a Free Country’: Telegram CEO Slams France’s X Office Raid (Salgado)

The French government is one of the worst European persecutors of free speech, and it just added another flagrant abuse to its list by raiding X’s office in what many, including the CEO of Telegram, allege is a politically-motivated move. The UK, Germany, and France have all become as synonymous with aggressive government censorship as openly dictatorial and socialist regimes. Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has some personal experience with how biased the French government can be against free speech, as the nation’s officials actually arrested him back in 2024 over his reluctance to comply with extreme demands.


Durov posted on X Tuesday morning, “French police is [sic] currently raiding X’s office in Paris. France is the only country in the world that is criminally persecuting all social networks that give people some degree of freedom (Telegram, X, TikTok…). Don’t be mistaken: this is not a free country.” One might contest his inclusion of TikTok, given that it is still partially owned by the genocidal and anti-West Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but it is true that the French government — which frequently panders to the CCP — seems to base its investigations into and persecution of platforms not so much on real national security threats (after all, French officials are fine with allowing in hordes of unassimilating Muslims), but on whether it can sufficiently repress free speech on those platforms.

The Paris prosecutor’s office and Europol were involved in the raid on X’s office in France, according to Fox Business. It appears that the raid is the result of a fairly new Paris investigation, added to the investigation that has already sparked controversy both in France and abroad. One might almost say, in fact, that French politicians have drawn inspiration from the CCP in cracking down on free speech. The French government certainly does not model its actions on democratic principles anymore. Like Durov, X Global Government Affairs has previously made the case that the ongoing French government investigations into the company are an excuse to pressure X into more authoritarian censorship policies.

For example, last July, X Global Government Affairs accused French politician Eric Bothorel of triggering an investigation as an effort to undercut “X’s fundamental right to due process and threatens our users’ rights to privacy and free speech.” The X department argued, “French authorities have launched a politically-motivated criminal investigation into X over the alleged manipulation of its algorithm and alleged ‘fraudulent data extraction.’ X categorically denies these allegations.”

I cannot, of course, pronounce one way or the other as to whether X is guilty of the allegations, and I must acknowledge as a separate point that X does have a track record of complying more than it ought to with dictatorial governments. That said, the French government is also extremely corrupt. When the authoritarian and corrupt hurl allegations against others of exactly what they themselves do, it naturally inspires suspicions.

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“Tulsi Gabbard has been tapped by the president to oversee the sanctity and the security of our American elections.”

Gabbard Defends Presence at Fulton County Election Warrant Execution (ET)

National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard on Feb. 2 defended her presence at a Fulton County elections office while FBI agents executed a search warrant there, saying President Donald Trump had requested that she go to the Georgia office and that she has the authority to take action related to election integrity and security. “Interference in U.S. elections is a threat to our republic and a national security threat,” Gabbard said in a letter to members of Congress.


“The president and his administration are committed to safeguarding the integrity of U.S. elections to ensure that neither foreign nor domestic powers undermine the American people’s right to determine who our elected leaders are.” She said that Trump tasked her office with taking appropriate action under the authority granted by Congress toward ensuring the integrity of elections, and specifically directed her to observe the execution of the warrant in Fulton County near Atlanta on Jan. She also said she facilitated a call in which Trump briefly thanked the agents for their work. Trump did not ask any questions during the call, and neither the president nor Gabbard issued directives, she said.

“Tulsi Gabbard has been tapped by the president to oversee the sanctity and the security of our American elections. She’s working directly alongside the FBI Director Kash Patel,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday. “This is a coordinated, whole-of-government effort to ensure that our elections are … fair and transparent moving forward. I don’t see anything wrong with the president tasking a cabinet member to pursue an issue that most people want to see solved.” FBI officials previously described agents as executing a court-authorized warrant about a month after the Trump administration filed a lawsuit against the county seeking voting records from the 2020 presidential election.

County officials have said the records were under seal and could not be produced absent a court order. Trump has alleged that he lost in Georgia in 2020 because of election fraud. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), top Democrats on congressional intelligence committees, in a Jan. 29 letter said Gabbard’s presence was “deeply concerning.” “The intelligence community should be focused on foreign threats and, as you yourself have testified, when those intelligence authorities are turned inwards the results can be devastating for Americans privacy and civil liberties,” they wrote.

The lawmakers asked for Gabbard’s reasoning for attending the FBI operation and legal authorities for her involvement and that of other intelligence officials.n Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) was among other critics of Gabbard’s actions. “The seizure of ballots in Fulton County may trace back to Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 loss, but the danger is forward-looking. Tulsi Gabbard has no legal role in domestic law enforcement, and the FBI should not be seizing ballots,” he said on social media on Feb. 1.

Gabbard said in response that personnel from the National Counterintelligence and Security Center traveled with her to Fulton County but were not present during the execution of the warrant. She said that she has not seen the warrant, which is under seal, or evidence submitted to the court by the Department of Justice.mShe also said that to preserve the integrity of American elections, officials must determine whether there has been malign interference and whether election systems are vulnerable to future exploitation.“Election security is a national security issue,” Gabbard wrote.

The National Security Act gives the Office of the Director of National Intelligence the authority to coordinate and integrate national intelligence, including intelligence related to elections, Gabbard said. mShe promised that the office would not “irresponsibly share incomplete intelligence assessments” concerning election interference. Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said on X this week that Gabbard had found 2020 election fraud. Kent, who did not elaborate, later shared Gabbard’s letter to Warner and Himes.

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What did a gay guy like so much about Epstein? Blackmail? Makes no sense.

UK’s Mandelson Accused Of Leaking Bombshell Financial Data To Epstein (ZH)

Former U.K. Cabinet minister Peter Mandelson – who was fired last September from his new role as ambassador to the United States due to his ties to Jeffrey Epstein – is facing mounting political and legal pressure following disclosures that he may have shared market-sensitive government information with Epstein during the global financial crisis. Documents released Friday by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of the so-called Epstein files appear to show that Mandelson, then business secretary in the Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, forwarded confidential policy discussions and draft plans to the disgraced financier while the government was grappling with the collapse of global credit markets.


As the Guardian notes, emails forwarded to Epstein from the very top of the UK government include:

• A confidential UK government document outlining £20bn in asset sales.
• Mandelson claiming he was “trying hard” to change government policy on bankers’ bonuses.
• An imminent bailout package for the euro the day before it was announced in 2010.
• A suggestion that the JPMorgan boss “mildly threaten” the chancellor.
• Epstein asked Mandelson to confirm a €500bn bailout – which the then business secretary said would be announced that evening. The following day, Mandelson also appeared to give Epstein an early tipoff about Gordon Brown’s resignation.

The revelations have prompted Prime Minister Keir Starmer to order an investigation by the cabinet secretary and to demand that Mandelson resign from the House of Lords. Brown has separately asked the cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald, to investigate the alleged disclosures.Opposition parties have escalated the matter further. The Scottish National Party and Reform UK have reported Mandelson to police, alleging misconduct in a public office. Emily Thornberry, Labour’s chair of the foreign affairs select committee, said the allegations should be examined as a potential criminal matter.

[..] According to the disclosures, emails forwarded to Epstein from senior levels of the British government included a confidential document outlining £20 billion in potential asset sales, discussions about changing policy on bankers’ bonuses, details of an imminent eurozone bailout package ahead of its public announcement in 2010, and references to pressuring the chancellor through senior banking executives. In one email sent on June 13, 2009, Nick Butler, then a special adviser to Brown, circulated a memo detailing policy measures under consideration and suggesting that the government had £20 billion in saleable assets. Mandelson forwarded the message to Epstein, writing, “Interesting note that’s gone to the PM.”

Epstein replied asking, “what salable (sic) assets?” A response from a redacted email address stated: “Land, property I guess.” Four months later, the government announced plans to sell surplus real estate in a bid to raise £16 billion. Butler said he was considering reporting the matter to police. “We worked on the basis of trust, which allowed us to float ideas,” he told the Times. “I am disgusted by the breach of trust, presumably intended to give Epstein the chance to make money.”

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Bought off.

Ghislaine Maxwell Claims Dozens of Epstein’s Accomplices Got Off Scot-free (RT)

Twenty-nine alleged accomplices and co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein have avoided prosecution, most of them through “secret settlements,” the disgraced financier and sex offender’s partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, has claimed in court documents.Several media outlets on Thursday reported on Maxwell’s filing dated December 2025. On Friday, the US Department of Justice announced the release of a new batch of the so-called Epstein files. Epstein was found dead in 2019 in his cell at a Manhattan correctional facility while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.


Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison term over her role in the infamous sex-trafficking ring. In the court papers cited by the media, Maxwell petitioned the court to overturn her conviction, citing what she described as “new evidence of the collusion between the plaintiff’s lawyers and the government to conceal evidence and the prosecutorial misconduct.” Epstein’s former partner claimed that “new evidence reveals that there were 25 men with which the plaintiff lawyers reached secret settlements.” According to the filing, another four of Epstein’s co-conspirators never faced charges. It is not clear from Maxwell’s motion whether she contends that the individuals in question had also sealed similar deals with federal authorities.

Asked by a reporter about Maxwell’s allegations, Deputy Attorney General Blanche said on Friday that “to the extent that such arrangements exist, I’m not aware of them.” Disclosures from the so-called Epstein files indicated that he had associated with many high-profile politicians and business people, including ex-US President Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, US President Donald Trump, and ex-US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to release the ‘Epstein files,’ but as president he has bristled at the issue, dismissing calls to make the documents public as a politically motivated “hoax.” Late last year, amid sustained public pressure, Trump mandated the Department of Justice to release the first batch of heavily redacted Epstein-related documents.

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Formerly known as Prince

British PM Calls On Ex-Prince Andrew To Testify Over Epstein Links (RT)

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to testify before the US Congress after the former royal was featured extensively in the latest tranche of Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice. The documents were published under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law by US President Donald Trump in November last year, which requires the Justice Department to release federal records linked to investigations into Jeffrey Epstein. Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his royal titles last year, appears in emails and photographs included in the cache released Friday.


Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Starmer was asked whether the former prince should apologize and give evidence to US lawmakers if requested. “Firstly, I have always approached this question with the victims of Epstein in mind. Epstein’s victims have to be the first priority. As for whether there should be an apology, that’s a matter for Andrew,” he said. “But yes, in terms of testifying, I have always said anybody who has got information should be prepared to share that information in whatever form they are asked to do that. You can’t be victim-centered if you’re not prepared to do that,” he added.

The brother of King Charles III has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has previously claimed he ended his relationship with Epstein after the financier’s first conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008. However, the latest release includes photographs and email exchanges between the two from 2010, two years after the disgraced financier pleaded guilty in Florida.The images show the former royal kneeling over an unidentified woman lying on the floor, with no context provided as to when or where they were taken. The emails also feature Epstein proposing that Andrew have dinner with a “beautiful, trustworthy” 26-year-old Russian woman.

Last year, the king stripped his brother of his royal titles and honors following renewed controversy linked to Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April. In 2022, Andrew settled a civil lawsuit with Giuffre, who alleged she was trafficked to the then-Prince for non-consensual encounters while still a minor under New York law.

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https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2018488089325289899/

 

 

 

 

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Oct 032025
 
 October 3, 2025  Posted by at 9:14 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  82 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn Student at a table by candlelight c.1642

 

Vance Destroys Jeffries’ Claim That Sombrero Meme Is ‘Racist’ (Cantrell)
Ukraine’s Patriots Can’t Tackle Russian Missiles – FT (RT))
Merz Rivalry With Von Der Leyen Heating Up – Bloomberg (RT)
Musk Becomes First Person Worth $500 Billion – Forbes (RT)
Large Training Center For Ukrainian Troops Opens In Poland (RT)
When Tomahawk Meets Bear, The Hazel Tree (Oreshnik) Wins (Helmer)
We Are Approaching The Oreshnik Moment (Paul Craig Roberts)
Bessent Outlines Ramifications of Dem Shutdown Day #2 (CTH)

 

 

https://twitter.com/ricwe123/status/1973657381872562557
https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1973671919305028041

 

 

 

 

How could you not laugh?

Vance Destroys Jeffries’ Claim That Sombrero Meme Is ‘Racist’ (Cantrell)

Vice President JD Vance shrugged off liberal outrage over President Donald Trump sharing a meme video of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero, saying he couldn’t understand claims that it was “racist.” The radical left truly has no sense of humor. Is it any wonder they always look miserable, mean, and nasty to anyone who holds different beliefs? Maybe if they learned how to laugh once in a while, they wouldn’t be so violent. A reporter asked Vance on Wednesday if Trump’s meme helped efforts to reach a government funding deal. “Oh, I think it’s funny. The president’s joking and we’re having a good time,” Vance replied. “You can negotiate in good faith while still poking fun at the absurdity of Democrats’ positions—and yes, even the absurdity of Democrats themselves.”

Then he added with a grin: “I’ll tell Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make this solemn promise to you—help us reopen the government, and the sombrero memes will stop.” Vance appeared at a White House briefing on Wednesday to discuss the government shutdown, which took effect after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach a funding deal. The Trump administration blamed Democrats, saying they tried to sneak in healthcare for illegal migrants. Leftists denied it, of course. But given the left’s agenda, I’d bet the administration is right.Fox News reported the now-infamous meme appeared on Truth Social. The video showed Jeffries with a sombrero and mustache while mariachi music played in the background. Honestly? That sounds hilarious.

Jeffries’ buddy, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, also made a cameo in the video. An AI-generated voice mocked Democrats for their “woke, trans agenda” and quipped that “nobody likes Democrats anymore.” Again—hilarious. The video, laced with profanity, mocked Democrats for pandering to illegal immigrants as potential new voters. Predictably, Jeffries and his liberal pals pulled the tired “racist” card. “Mr. P resident, the next time you have something to say about me, don’t cop out through a racist and fake AI video,” Jeffries fumed to reporters Tuesday. “When I’m back in the Oval Office, say it to my face.” Vance pushed back, blasting liberal media outlets for obsessing over the fact that the video was AI-generated.

“Hakeem Jeffries said it was racist, and I know he said that,” Vance noted. “And I honestly don’t even know what that means. Is he a Mexican-American who feels offended by a sombrero meme?” He laughed off the media’s pearl-clutching: “One of the major networks even showed the meme and solemnly announced it was AI-generated. But the guy had a curly cartoon mustache and a sombrero! Do you really think Americans believe Jeffries walked into the White House dressed like that? Give the country a little credit.”

Democrats assume Americans are both stupid and uneducated. It’s the very line of thinking that made them so arrogant as to believe they could get away with the destruction wrought during the Biden administration and still defeat Republicans in 2024. Once again, the perpetually offended Democratic Party exposed itself as the party of intolerance, anger, violence—and absolutely no fun.

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No defense.

Ukraine’s Patriots Can’t Tackle Russian Missiles – FT (RT))

The Russian military has modified its missiles to better evade Ukrainian air defenses, including US-made Patriot systems – often seen as a key linchpin of Kiev’s shield – the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing officials in Kiev and the West. According to officials interviewed by the FT, Russian missiles can now follow a normal arc before veering into a steep terminal dive or executing maneuvers that “confuse and avoid” Patriot interceptors. The outlet cited recent strikes against Ukrainian drone facilities as a strong indication that Russia has likely upgraded the Iskander-M mobile system and the air-launched Kinzhal.

One former Ukrainian official called the added maneuverability “a game changer for Russia,” the newspaper reported, adding that deliveries of US-supplied Patriot interceptors, essentially the only weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal capable of tackling Moscow’s ballistic missiles, are not coming as quickly as planned. The paper also noted that data released by the Ukrainian Air Force shows that the rate of interception of Russian ballistic missiles improved over the summer, reaching 37% in August, but then fell to just 6% in September. Ukraine shares data on Patriot battlefield performance with the Pentagon and weapons producers, according to the FT. Officials told the outlet that while efforts are being made to improve the Patriots’ performance, they often lag behind Moscow’s evolving tactics.

Ukraine’s Air Force flagged similar concerns in May. Spokesman Yury Ignat said that the ballistic trajectories of the Iskander-M missiles “have been improved and modernized” while the projectiles could fire off radar decoys. He also complained that Ukraine’s domestically designed air defenses are unable to shoot down most of the Russian missiles, while those produced in the West are used to cover key infrastructure and other high-priority targets. Moscow has repeatedly said its strikes only target military-related infrastructure, defense industry, and troop deployment bases and are never aimed at civilians.

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“We must now put a stick in the wheels of this machine in Brussels,” Merz told business leaders..”

Merz Rivalry With Von Der Leyen Heating Up – Bloomberg (RT)

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is seeking to claw back decision-making power from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing diplomats familiar with the matter. Merz, increasingly critical of Brussels, wants Berlin to have greater influence over issues directly affecting EU members, according to one of the sources. He has already opposed von der Leyen’s proposals for new EU taxes and her plan to send peacekeepers to Ukraine, while also clashing with her over a tariff agreement with the US and climate regulations. “We must now put a stick in the wheels of this machine in Brussels,” Merz told business leaders on Friday, Bloomberg noted.

Ahead of an informal EU leaders’ summit in Copenhagen on Wednesday, he again pressed for a “fundamental correction” of what he described as excessive regulation. “It is simply too much,” he said, as quoted by the German Press Agency. The European Commission has introduced several measures to cut red tape this year, including the Defense Readiness Omnibus, aimed at streamlining EU defense market procedures. The initiative is part of von der Leyen’s broader effort to raise up to €800 billion ($938 billion) in investments for weapons and ammunition procurement by 2030.

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And now Optimus comes…

Musk Becomes First Person Worth $500 Billion – Forbes (RT)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has become the world’s first person to reach a net worth of $500 billion, according to Forbes. Musk’s fortune has been boosted recently by a rally in Tesla shares and soaring valuations of his private firms. Tesla stock jumped nearly 4% on Wednesday, adding $9.3 billion to Musk’s fortune and pushing it to $500.1 billion, according to the Forbes Billionaires List. Musk’s 12% stake in the carmaker is valued at $191 billion. Analysts credit the recent surge in Musk’s wealth to his renewed focus on business. Tesla shares have nearly doubled since April, when he first announced during an earnings call that he would step down from his post as head of US President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to devote more time to the automaker and his other business interests. Musk departed the agency after a rift with the president over a major tax-and-spending bill.

Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm said last month that Musk was again “front and center” after months of distraction. Days later, he bought nearly $1 billion worth of Tesla stock, signaling confidence as the company expands into AI and robotics. Outside Tesla, Musk’s space venture SpaceX was valued at $400 billion in an August tender offer, up from $350 billion in December. His 42% stake is worth $168 billion. Musk also owns 53% of xAI Holdings, the company formed when he merged his AI startup with X. Currently valued at $113 billion, reports suggest xAI could soon target $200 billion.

Musk has repeatedly set net worth records. He first topped Forbes’ list in January 2021 at $190 billion, hit $300 billion that November and crossed $400 billion in December 2024. He now outpaces Oracle founder Larry Ellison, the second-richest person, by $150 billion. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which uses a different wealth tracking method, places Musk’s fortune slightly lower – at $470 billion – but still the highest among the world’s top 500.

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Norway has a camp in Poland for Ukr soldiers…

Large Training Center For Ukrainian Troops Opens In Poland (RT)

A Norwegian-led training center for Ukrainian soldiers opened in southeastern Poland on Wednesday. Camp Jomsborg, constructed by engineers from Norway’s Brigade Nord in the town of Lipa, can host up to 1,200 troops at a time, Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote on X. He added that the base will focus on “developing drone capabilities.” Kosiniak-Kamysz stressed that NATO would also benefit from Ukrainian combat experience. “This is not a one-way street. An important element is that we will draw on Ukrainian experience. Right next to us is a drone launch strip,” he said.

Poland has been a key logistical and training hub for Western military aid to Ukraine since the outbreak of open conflict with Russia in 2022.Also on Wednesday, EU leaders agreed to create a “drone wall” along the bloc’s eastern flank, following Polish claims last month that Russian UAVs had violated its airspace. Estonia likewise alleged that three Russian fighter jets entered its airspace in September. Moscow dismissed both accusations as baseless and accused the EU of warmongering.

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“I believe the Russians will secure victory using the Oreshniki rather than a massive ground offensive.”

When Tomahawk Meets Bear, The Hazel Tree (Oreshnik) Wins (Helmer)

A week ago on September 23, President Donald Trump called President Vladimir Putin’s military power a “paper tiger”, and declared ”this is the time for Ukraine to act”.By that he said he meant “to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that!” Five days later, the successor president, Vice President J D Vance, explained that deployment on the Ukrainian battlefield by NATO-supplied Tomahawk cruise missiles, with a 2,500-km range, is the next step he and Trump are considering. “Russia is really stalled,” Vance claimed, “The Russian economy is in shambles. The Russians are not gaining much on the battlefield… The Russians have refused to sit down in any bilateral meetings with the Ukrainians. They have refused to sit down in any trilateral meetings with the President…

The Russians have got to wake up and accept reality here… About Tomahawks, it’s something the President is going to make the final determination on. What the President is going to do is what’s in the best interest of the United States of America.” The scheme, Vance intimated, is to allow NATO member states with Tomahawk batteries – at the moment this means the UK and Germany – to deliver them to Kiev, or for other European states to buy the missiles from the US and send them on. This means that the crews operating the Tomahawk systems in the Ukraine would be British, German, or other Europeans. “What we’re doing,” Vance said, “is asking the Europeans to buy that weaponry that shows some European skin in the game. I think that gets them really invested in both what’s happening in their own backyard, but also in the peace process that the president has been pushing for, for the last eight months,” Vance said.

The skins at risk of Russian counterattack, Vance meant but omitted to acknowledge, would be European, not American. The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, responded with the obvious followed by a placebo. “We have heard these statements. We are thoroughly analyzing them. Our military specialists are closely monitoring it.” “Even if it happens that the United States sends its Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, currently there is no cure-all that could be a game changer on the front lines for the Kiev regime. No magical weapons exist, and Tomahawk or other missiles simply won’t be a game changer.”

Then Peskov muffled a warning: “The question… is this: who can launch these missiles…? Can only Ukrainians launch them, or do American soldiers have to do that?” The answer is already obvious – Vance made it plain. The operators of the Tomahawks would be Europeans. Peskov’s questions also avoided Vance’s and Trump’s strategic point. They are now aiming to intensify the domestic damage they can inflict deep inside Russian territory – Moscow and St. Petersburg if they can — in the belief this will trigger loss of Russian morale and voter opposition to Putin. “This war is terrible for their economy,” Vance repeated several times, as has Trump. The Russians, Vance declared, “have to ask themselves how many more people are they willing to lose…for very little military advantage.”

What is happening from the Russian point of view which isn’t public?The US “understanding” from the Anchorage summit meeting on August 16 is no longer the Russian interpretation as Putin himself first explained it. “Hopefully, the understanding [singular] we have reached will bring us closer to this goal and open up the road to peace in Ukraine,” Putin said at his brief press conference after meeting with Trump. “We see that the US President has a clear idea of what he wants to achieve, that he sincerely cares about his country’s prosperity while showing awareness of Russia’s national interests. I hope that today’s agreements [plural] will become a reference point, not only for resolving the Ukrainian problem but also for resuming the pragmatic business relations between Russia and the United States.”

Escalation to Tomahawk attacks on the Russia hinterland is also not the “understanding” with the US which the Russian Foreign Ministry announced after Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met at the United Nations with Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “The heads of the foreign offices exchanged opinions on the Ukraine crisis settlement as a follow up to the understandings [plural] reached at the Russia-US summit in Anchorage. The parties have reaffirmed mutual interest in the search for peaceful solutions. Sergey Lavrov emphasised our country’s readiness to adhere to the line developed by the Russian and US leaders in Alaska, including to coordinate efforts with the US side to remove the root causes of the Ukraine conflict. The minister stressed the unacceptability of the schemes intended to protract the conflict promoted by Kiev and some European countries. The parties compared their positions on the entire bilateral agenda including the prospects of restoring their socio-political contacts. They have reaffirmed the importance of using the impetus given by Russian and US presidents to the process of normalising bilateral relations.”

Speaking to Russian reporters, Lavrov then added: “We operate on the premise that everything we have heard from our US colleagues at the top and other levels tells us that they want to help us end this conflict by addressing and eliminating its root causes. There are no other countries in the Western camp that abide by such a position. I have no doubt that the US President is genuinely interested in this outcome. Some people are trying to have influence on him, but that’s another matter… The 2022 borders are off the table today. What we are now discussing are the borders as enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation.”

The “reality on the ground”, as Vance and Trump say they understand it on the battlefield, is plainly now not the reality on the ground as the Russian side sees it. The US is announcing that Russia the paper tiger has lost escalation dominance on the battlefield, and is vulnerable to even greater domestic insecurity than it faced three years ago, when the Special Military Operation began. If that was the “root cause” of the war, as Putin and Lavrov say they have explained to their US counterparts, Trump and Vance are now dismissing “root cause” as the basis for terms to end the war.

When Vance announced that the Tomahawk deployment will be decided “in the interests of the United States of America”, he meant to say that the Russian military and Putin have lost their power of deterrence. A Moscow source in a position to know says the General Staff will convince the President on the measures required to prove the Americans wrong. “I believe the Russians will secure victory using the Oreshniki rather than a massive ground offensive. But there is also a build-up many of us can tell. That is why Americans and Europeans are getting very nervous, threatening Russians with a direct confrontation unless they back off.”

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“..which means good-bye to several European capitals, if not all of them..”

We Are Approaching The Oreshnik Moment (Paul Craig Roberts)

John Helmer thinks that the Russian response to the ever-widening war that Putin has conducted will be the Oreshnik missile, which means good-bye to several European capitals, if not all of them. https://johnhelmer.net/when-tomahawk-meets-bear-the-hazel-tree-oreshnik-wins/

Washington giving missiles to Ukraine that can reach Moscow and St. Petersburg does not “normalize relations.” This is the path to war, not to peace. Such a gift of missiles would clearly indicate that the US military/security complex has taken policy away from President Trump and is continuing the war instead of peace negotiations, From John Helmer’s report, I conclude that Putin, Lavrov, and the Russian media are too naive, too unaware, too gullible, too unrealistic and too idealistic in the way they think about the West to comprehend the danger. I find it extraordinarily that Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is so lost to reality that he actually said: “We operate on the premise that everything we have heard from our US colleagues at the top and other levels tells us that they want to help us end this conflict by addressing and eliminating its root causes.”

If the Russian government operates on this basis, Russia is definitely doomed. The “root causes” are NATO on Russia’s borders which causes Russian insecurity. To remove the root cause means to remove the source of Russian insecurity. For many years the combined West has refused Russia’s request to join NATO and Russia’s pleadings for a mutual defense agreement. Yet the Kremlin is still hopeful??!! Russia has experienced this feeling of insecurity since American President Clinton violated the word of the US government, thus making the US government untrustworthy to the world since the last years of the 20th century. Clinton violated the word of the George H.W. Bush administration that in exchange for the Soviet Union’s agreement to permit the reunification of Germany, NATO would not move one inch toward the Soviet borders. Clinton, little doubt well paid, moved NATO to Russia’s borders, and by doing so made the word of the US Government completely worthless. Yet Putin and Lavrov rely on Washington’s word !

For Putin and the Russian military command to permit a limited territorial conflict with Ukraine to continue for so long that it now approaches four years was a fantastic strategic blunder that is widening into World War 3. Putin is not responsible for the conflict. It was forced on him, but his response to the conflict–permitting it to endure and widen–was a massive mistake in judgment. I don’t know if anything can bring the Kremlin out of its stupor. Perhaps it might help if the Russians read this article: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2025/09/28/presidents-have-little-control-over-their-governments/

We are approaching the point where to avoid a world destroying nuclear war, Putin will have to surrender Russia. Putin, unlike the ruthless American Zionist neoconservatives, is capable of surrendering his country to save the world from nuclear war. But would the Russian nationalists permit him to do so? Are the Russian people willing to be the sacrificial lamb that saves the world from nuclear war by going into subservience to the Satanic West?

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For now, a Mexican stand off

Bessent Outlines Ramifications of Dem Shutdown Day #2 (CTH)


Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appears on CNBC to discuss the second full day of the government shutdown and the potential ramifications therein.Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought is meeting with President Trump today to discuss the facets of the government that will be closed and for the duration therein. Secretary Bessent is asked if the furloughs will be a long-term feature of the backfire created by the Democrat strategy.Bessent reemphasizes he personally joined the Trump administration to shrink the scale of government spending, and the administration is not going to flinch on any CR agreement that backtracks on existing spending reductions.

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https://twitter.com/WallStreetApes/status/1973387980388884779

 

 

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