Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf declared on 28 August that either all Persian Gulf countries will be allowed to export oil freely or none will, adding that the security of West Asia depends on the withdrawal of US forces. “The equation of this war is clear: either all or none!” Ghalibaf said, adding, “In a region where we don’t sell oil, no one else will sell oil either.” “If our security is not ensured, no infrastructure will be safe,” the speaker emphasized.
“Security of the strait depends on the absence of US forces. We have said many times that the situation in the strait will not return to what it was before the war.” The comments came in response to claims by US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Admiral Brad Cooper that US forces had seized full control of the Strait of Hormuz and halted Iranian oil exports. Iran’s Foreign Ministry, in a statement issued the same day, urged all states to refuse to enforce a new US sanctions package the same day, warning that compliance makes a government complicit in violating international law and the sovereign equality of states.
Washington unveiled the measures under the name “Operation Economic Outcast” after failing to reach its war aims against Iran with military force. The ministry condemned the package as economic terrorism, stating that it revealed “the criminal intent of those who designed and implemented it to inflict suffering on the Iranian people and deprive Iranian citizens of their fundamental human rights; therefore, it is tantamount to an international crime and a crime against humanity.”
It said the US was weaponizing the dollar to pressure other governments into backing its policies on Iran, in breach of the UN Charter and the principle of non-intervention. Tehran also said the sanctions defy the International Court of Justice (ICJ) order of 3 October 2018 requiring Washington to lift barriers to the flow of food, medicine, and medical equipment. The ministry tied the economic war to the broader US-Israeli offensive against Iran over the past year and a half, and said the failure of the UN and its members to confront those violations has produced “a highly dangerous pattern of lawlessness.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi previously said that Trump’s “Economic D-Day” campaign would deliver Washington nothing but further defeat, calling it a distraction from a US debt crisis that hit a record $40 trillion this month. Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said the turn to economic war followed Washington’s failure to achieve its military objectives, and that the US was now begging its allies for help while claiming Iran was on the brink of collapse.
I listened to every word Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoke in announcing Operation Economic Outcast this week, and it scared the hell out of me. It was a promised economic D-Day. Friday was D-Day. First up: The Trump administration attacked the Ayatollah’s bank.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), which was said to have begun to distance itself from Iran even before the announcement on Friday, was ordered to shutter the Emirates’ branches of Egypt’s Banque Misr. The U.S. cut off the UAE’s branches of Egypt’s second-largest bank from its entire banking system. A website called “Money Control” reported that this UAE branch was the chief money launderer for the Ayatollah.
According to Treasury estimates, Banque Misr UAE processed approximately $1.8 billion between January 2024 and June 2026 in transactions involving 103 companies that the department said were potentially part of Iranian shadow-banking networks. Treasury also alleged that some of the bank’s customers included apparent front companies used by Iran’s Ministry of Defense and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to evade US sanctions. The department further alleged that some of the entities were used to launder money on behalf of Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
Indeed, this request — demand — wasn’t a surprise to Abu Dhabi or Egypt. They’d been told in advance. And why no one took the threat seriously was a chance they shouldn’t have taken. One of the more chilling parts of Bessent’s announcement was when he demanded other countries shut down all branches of the Iran-based Bank Melli. “Every branch of [Iran-based] Bank Melli must be shuttered and dark,” as the first step, he intoned.
“For decades, this regime has drawn strength from a calculus that regards Iranian retaliation as certain and American enforcement as negotiable,” Bessent said. But not anymore. Every single country giving Iran aid and comfort was given a timeline to cut off its lifelines to the revolutionary death cult regime. “If they do not take action, we will do so unilaterally through treasury authorities… And let me be clear: any entity that facilitates money laundering on behalf of Iran will be removed from the U.S. dollar system,” he threatened.
And then he did it. This move on Friday cut off $1.8 billion in “transactions involving companies potentially linked to Iranian shadow banking networks” using the UAE branch of the Egyptian bank. Bessent promised this week that he would “sever every economic life line…until Tehran stands alone.” And to those who enable Tehran, do not discount the cost of testing Washington’s resolve, no nation should expect to enjoy the rewards of our system while helping those who seek to destroy it. It is now a time for world leaders to make a decision between prosperity and isolation, peace and terror. America and Iran.
I asked the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Edmund Fitton Brown about the impact of Economic Outcast, and he said it was a welcome move that may finally bring down the regime.
The former diplomat for the UK, who has also worked on the United Nations Security Council sanctions measures, said on the Adult in the Room Podcast that this may take a year to do, but it’s a long time coming: “Finally after so many years when people have imposed sanctions but turned a blind eye at violations and not imposed secondary sanctions on people who are helping basically to provide lifeline to the sanctioned entity or or country.”
Between that and the Naval blockade, Iran may be on the ropes. Watch our chat below.
As my PJ Media colleague Sarah Anderson reported Friday night, President Donald Trump dropped one of the biggest energy announcements of his second term on Friday evening, revealing that the United States and Venezuela had signed what he called “the biggest oil deal in world history.” The agreement hands America majority control over more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves, and Trump wasted no time celebrating.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the agreement gives the United States majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves, at no cost to American taxpayers. He said the deal more than doubles America’s oil reserves, will substantially lower gas prices for Americans over time, and strengthens the relationship between Washington and Caracas. Trump credited Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth with negotiating the agreement directly with Venezuelan Interim President Delcy Rodriguez, working alongside private business.
Rubio noted that the deal should be a huge boon to our economy.”This deal is a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people,” Rubio wrote. “It demonstrates how President Trump’s bold foreign policy is driving America First wins: securing stable reserves and low-cost oil in our Hemisphere and lowering gas prices here at home. For the Venezuelan people, this deal will bring nearly $100 billion in private investment, support thousands of high-paying jobs, and drive the reconstruction of Venezuela’s economy.”
This deal comes as the war in Iran has squeezed global oil supply, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the country’s emergency stockpile, fell below the 300 million-barrel mark earlier this month, its lowest level in four decades. Joe Biden drained that reserve during his presidency to artificially lower gas prices ahead of the 2022 midterms and help the Democrats.
This deal is a game changer on several levels. Venezuela holds the largest proven crude oil reserves on the planet, somewhere between 303 and 304 billion barrels, or roughly 19% of the entire global total. Locking down majority control of even a slice of that changes the math on America’s energy security in a way few deals could. It also reduces U.S. dependence on Canadian heavy crude, giving Washington another lever to pull the next time prices spike.
So does this actually move the needle for voters? That’s the only question that matters nine weeks out from the midterms. Trump and Rubio are promising gas prices will drop substantially over time, and there’s a real case for it: more supply, less reliance on hostile foreign partners, and a deal that reportedly costs American taxpayers nothing. Make no mistake about it, this is the kind of deal Trump was elected to make. But oil deals don’t lower prices at the pump overnight.
Refining, distribution, and global markets all take time to catch up to a new supply agreement, and nine weeks is not a lot of runway. Whether voters feel real relief at the gas station before November, or whether they simply hear about a deal they haven’t yet benefited from, will determine how much credit Republicans actually get before the midterms. If prices do fall in time, Democrats lose one of their most reliable midterm talking points.
Donald Trump has declared himself the “greatest” president in US history while branding Joe Biden and Barack Obama “failures” in a ranking posted on Truth Social. Abraham Lincoln, who led the US through the Civil War and abolished slavery, and George Washington, the first US president and a founding father, were placed one tier below Trump. The US president shared the ranking on Thursday alongside a CNN clip highlighting polling showing his dominance among Republican voters.
The graphic divides US presidents into six tiers – ‘The Greatest’, ‘Great’, ‘Near Great’, ‘Average’, ‘Below Average’, and ‘Failures’ – with Trump alone at the top. Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson were placed in the ‘Great’ category. Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, John Adams, and James K. Polk were rated ‘Near Great’, while Bill Clinton was among those deemed ‘Average’.
Biden and Obama were placed at the opposite end of Trump’s chart alongside fellow Democrat Jimmy Carter and former presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding. The list contains 34 presidents and leaves out 11 others, including Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and both George Bushes. The graphic appears to be an altered version of a ranking published by LIFE magazine in 1948, when Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. asked 55 experts in American history to classify presidents as ‘great’, ‘near great’, ‘average’, ‘below average’, or ‘failure’.
Trump’s version largely retains the original categories but adds himself at the top and several more recent Democratic presidents. Trump posted the image after CNN highlighted an Elon University poll showing 53% of Republicans named him the Republican president they admired most, far ahead of Reagan at 18% and Lincoln at 8%. CNN analyst Harry Enten called it a “historic comparison,” saying Trump “nearly triples up” on Reagan.
Expert surveys, however, have placed Trump at the opposite end of the scale. The Presidential Greatness Project ranked him last in 2018 with 12.34 points out of 100, versus 95.03 for Lincoln, and put him last again in its 2024 survey of 154 presidential scholars and experts. Lincoln topped both rankings.
Trump’s broader approval has also slumped during his second term. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted August 21-24 put his approval at a record-low 33%, with 65% disapproving. A Marquette survey showed even weaker numbers on the economy, with 30% approving of his handling of it and just 22% backing his record on inflation and the cost of living.
The Seneca Nation is demanding that President Donald Trump reverse his decision to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America,” arguing that the move disregards Indigenous history and violates a longstanding treaty.Seneca Nation President J. Conrad Seneca said on Friday that Trump’s executive order shows “blatant disrespect” for the Indigenous people and their history tied to the lake.“The President cannot assert ownership over our culture or erase it through irresponsible political action,” Seneca said.
Trump signed the order this week directing the Interior Department to update the lake’s name in the U.S. government’s geographic naming system within 30 days. The change applies to U.S. federal usage and does not alter Canada’s designation of the lake.The Seneca Nation argues that the order conflicts with the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, signed by President George Washington and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The treaty established a lasting relationship between the United States and the Haudenosaunee nations.
We are living through such an arrogant era in which too many people “know” preposterous things: Biological sex isn’t real. Muslims built America. Math is racist. Iran is defeating the United States. Joe Biden is “sharp as a tack.” President Trump is a Russian spy. People are certain that “their” side is right and the “other” side is wrong. There is not a lot of humility in the world today. But, as we see during the LGBTQIA+ community’s various bacchanalia each year, there is a glut of personal pride.
When I encounter people who “know everything,” I like to remind them how wrong some of the smartest people over the last century have proved to be. During a guest lecture at the University of Munich in 1924, theoretical physicist Max Planck recounted a conversation he had with his mentor, Philipp von Jolly, fifty years earlier. After Planck inquired about pursuing a career in physics, Jolly discouraged his young student from doing so, telling him that nearly everything in the field of physics had already been discovered, with little left to do aside from a few final measurements.
Planck went on to win a Nobel Prize for discovering energy quanta — revolutionizing theoretical physics and our understanding of atomic particles, while setting the stage for Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity regarding space and time. At the turn of the twentieth century, plenty of physicists believed they knew almost everything; quantum mechanics and general relativity proved they knew almost nothing. In 1919, most astronomers believed that our Milky Way Galaxy comprised the whole universe, that the size of the universe was roughly 300,000 light years across, and that the universe was infinitely old and unchanging.
A hundred years later, astronomers estimate the observable universe to be ninety-four billion light years across and 13.7 billion years old. Ten years ago, astronomers adjusted the estimated number of galaxies in the universe from a hundred billion to at least two trillion. And the James Webb Space Telescope has pushed this number to as high as twenty trillion. Even that number is likely to rise. When our understanding of the size of the universe has gone from one galaxy to tens of trillions in a single century, should we not approach competing points of view with a little more open-mindedness?
Does it not seem foolishly arrogant of people such as Barack Obama, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Mark Carney to claim that the “science” of “global warming” is “settled”? It is important to acknowledge just how little we know about our world. It is important to remember that we have redefined fundamental parts of our physical reality within our own lifetimes. It is important to recognize that even the most universally accepted paradigms have been toppled and replaced.
If our understanding of physics and cosmology can be upended in a few decades, why would we expect the social sciences of politics, economics, and sociology to be more constant? Why would we expect political pundits to have an accurate grasp of the future? Why would we assume that population growth is an existential threat, that sentient robots will replace humans, that debt bombs will impoverish us, or that nuclear bombs will end us? In other words, why do we always assume the end is near?
Our generation is not the first to fear the future nor will it be the last. A thousand years ago, at the turn of the first millennium, there were plenty of people who expected the apocalypse. Instead, their descendants experienced the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. The second millennium started with the fake threat of Y2K and the real threat of 9/11 and has continued lurching toward economic, military, technological, and political powder kegs ever since. Twenty-six years of impending doom have had an effect on the world’s collective psyche. Right now there is a dearth of optimism. Although standards of living, lifespans, and the proliferation of luxury comforts have never been higher, people talk about today as if it were the Great Depression.
Almost all of America’s leaders have failed to live up to this century’s challenges. George Bush encouraged us to fight Islamic terrorists “over there” so that we wouldn’t have to fight them “over here”; now we’ve got super-mosques, loudspeakers in major towns calling Muslims to prayer, and apologists for Islamic rapists and murderers running for high office or already serving in Congress. Barack Obama may have sold “hope and change” to the public in his run for the presidency, but then he went on a worldwide America-bashing apology tour, dismissed the idea that there was anything “exceptional” about our country, pitted black and white Americans against each other, destroyed healthcare with government mandates, and used the USA PATRIOT Act to spy on his political enemies.
Most other prominent political leaders have used the first quarter of the new century to break bad news to the American people. “The borders can’t be properly secured,” they say. “Blue-collar jobs are never coming back home,” they insist. “Global warming is killing the planet,” they claim. “Racist cops are killing black people,” they argue. Bad news rains down on us every day (especially if you watch CNN or read The New York Times). On the Democrat side of the aisle, patriotism has been wholly rejected and replaced with a litany of anti-American refrains: America is imperialist, colonialist, racist, white supremacist, Islamophobic, transphobic, patriarchal, and whatever new insults Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer’s America-hating, communist party devises next.
When was the last time you heard any global prognosticator speak of America’s future as anything other than one of certain decline? Perhaps that’s why President Trump appeals to so many Americans. He has been the only consistently positive leader declaring this “America’s century.” While other political leaders — Democrats and Republicans — have spent the first twenty-six years of the new millennium making excuses for why our borders can’t be secured, why our industrial towns can’t be rebuilt, and why violent crime is the “new normal,” President Trump has secured the border, brought American manufacturing back to life, and cut murder and other violent crime rates across the country more sharply than any time since 1900.
Those are astounding accomplishments in a short amount of time, but you won’t hear them being discussed on CNN or NPR. Nor will you hear about all the different ways President Trump has strengthened the security and economic future of the Western Hemisphere by waging war against international drug cartels, promoting hemispheric self-sufficiency, and methodically eliminating the influences of China, Russia, and Iran. Nor will you hear about the ways President Trump is deconstructing Islamic terrorism’s chokehold over energy resources in the Middle East.
You certainly won’t hear how tariffs are forcing once-offshored companies to reinvest in the United States. Nor will you hear that inflation continues to sink, while wages continue to rise — exactly the opposite of Wall Street pundits’ predictions. You won’t hear any of this positive news because the whole globalist Establishment — the bought-and-paid-for politicians, the multinational investment firm behemoths, the Wall Street and City of London make-nothing vultures, and the corporate news propaganda syndicate — are invested in a future of World Economic Forum oligarchy, Chinese communism, “climate change” totalitarianism, and steady American decline.
These parasites intend to discourage you. They intend to exacerbate social conflicts, undermine American influence, disparage American history, mock American greatness, and make you feel weak.President Trump is leading America back to the moon. We’re going to Mars. Whatever else AI turns out to be, it will have an American accent. The White House has spent all year celebrating Freedom 250 because it wishes for Americans to remember and embrace their history. The loudest pundits know nothing. The revolution is here. This is the American century.
We often associate leftist movements, anarchists of the 19th century, Jacobins of the 18th century, Marxists, Bolsheviks, Symbionese Liberation [Army], the Weather Underground with violence. And the argument that they use is, we are for mandated equality and fairness and helping the underprivileged, and therefore to achieve those noble ends, which were morally and intellectually superior to those on the conservative side, we’re allowed to use any means necessary. And any means necessary is what’s happening right now.
Hasan Piker is always in the news. He’s the multimillionaire podcaster, second-generation Turkish immigrant, who just recently led a cheering crowd in a song, whipped up the crowd, mocking the assassination of Charlie Kirk. He even said, Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk. He was whipping them up in a classical demagogic fashion, cheering and celebrating the horrific televised murder of an American activist. Remember, he’s also told us that 9/11, we essentially deserved it. It was our fault, 9/11 was.
He’s not unusual right now on the Left. Angie Nixon is a radical socialist, and she won the Democratic primary Senate campaign, and she will be in the runoff for Florida’s junior senator. She said recently that ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were slave catchers and that they were targeting black people, no different than people in the Confederacy, and that the U.S. government was trying to kill blacks. She doesn’t understand that under the auspices of DEI, which continues affirmative action, that blacks have given preferential treatment based on past transgressions that the majority of the country felt needed to be addressed.
No one is trying to kill young black people, much less the government. If you look at the murder rates, the statistics make her completely unbelievable. Almost 9 out of 10 murders by African Americans are committed by other African Americans. And when there are interracial violence, it’s six to 10 times more likely that an African American will harm, assault or kill a white person than vice versa. White people are underrepresented as assailants in hate crimes. black people are overrepresented.
I only bring it up just to refute the slur that she’s made against the immigration system and enforcement service. ICE deported people from over 180 countries of all colors, all religions. Then we have another luminary in this new radical extremist movement, Abdul El-Sayed. He’s running now. He won the nomination in the Michigan senatorial race. He will be running against Mike Rogers for the Senate. He said—remember, he just—he said that before that he follows Sharia law. He was caught in a hot mic saying that we should not celebrate the death of the supreme leader, [Ali] Khamenei, in Iran.
Remember, he had just ordered 40,000 of his own people to be slaughtered, that were protesting. And he said, “My constituents wouldn’t like that.” In other words, his constituents, which he’s proud of, were on the side of the Iranian theocracy that for 50 years has been the chief sponsor of terror in the world. When he tried to attack a fellow Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman, he said, ideally, you put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message. That’s almost a blatant call to kill him and then to use that violence to intimidate other people.
When there was an attack on a Jewish synagogue by a brother of a Hezbollah member, and he was in the United States, and he was asked to comment, what did he say? Hurt people. Deep breath. Hurt people. Justifying that. We’ve had four occasions now when the Secret Service shot at potential and actual Trump assassins. We’ve had Hollywood stars. We’ve had people like Robert De Niro, Kathy Griffin, Shakespeare in the Park in New York, celebrity cooks, and Snoop Dogg.
They’ve said they’ve all tried to compete in imagining to us an audience through public media and social media whether they should kill Donald Trump, whether they should burn Donald Trump, whether they should stab Donald Trump, whether they could shoot Donald Trump, whether they could decapitate him, whether they could throw him over a cliff, whether they could blow him up. This comes on the heels that for the last essentially nine years there’s been no contrition, no apologies for a series of events that almost wrecked the sense of law and order in this country and severely damaged the integrity of the government and was a challenge to the Constitution.
For three years, the FBI, a rogue agency under James Comey and then later Andrew McCabe, cooked up the Steele dossier, which was a complete fabrication, and tried to take out a Republican candidate for the presidency. Operation Crossfire Hurricane was all based on a lie.
We were told in 2020 that a laptop with incriminating evidence, which the FBI had in its possession and had verified it was Hunter [Biden] laptop’s possession, it was his property with all the incriminating information on it, was cooked up by the Russians. Fifty former CIA and intelligence authorities swore on the eve of the election that the Russians and Donald Trump were colluding. It was a complete lie. No one has ever apologized.
We had four prosecutors, Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis, Jack Smith. They all made up charges, and we know now that Alvin Bragg had to take a federal charge when he was a municipal prosecutor that the federal prosecutors thought was bogus.
Ms. James went after an old loan and said that he didn’t—he exaggerated his collateral when the bank that issued the loan said he didn’t.
Fani Willis, no need—she’s been so disgraced now. She’s been fined by the court. She made up most of the charges. She was essentially hiring her own paramour and then charging the state for their junkets.
Jack Smith, he tried to rush a federal indictment of Donald Trump on the Mar-a-Lago raid, and he was trying to get insurrection. That case was thrown out.
Not enough. They raided Mar-a-Lago, the private home of an ex-president. They said he had dozens of classified material. He had 11,000 documents, and all they could find under contention were 102 documents they claimed were classified. Then they scattered the documents on the ground and made it look as if Donald Trump was some type of criminal.
Pennsylvania state representative and Democratic Socialist Chris Rabb is the latest Democrat to reaffirm his alliance with virulent antisemite Hasan Piker. What is most notable, however, is his attack on establishment Democrats as “institutionalists,” a new label reflecting the radical agenda for changing our constitutional system. It is a term that is now in vogue on the far left by those who want to tear down our institutions and scrap our Constitution.
Across the country, attacks are growing on Democrats who are viewed as insufficiently radical. Those of us who continue to celebrate the Madisonian democracy as creating the most successful and stable republic in history are now “cultists” and “institutionalists” who are trapped in “nostalgia.” The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have drawn support from many who want a literal revolution. DSA Steering Committee member Cliff Connolly declared on one podcast that they are “famous for” “Our hatred of the United States Constitution.” Even those who are not joining the DSA are denouncing the system and those who want to preserve it.
At The Atlantic, Sarada Peri, the former senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, referred to institutionalists as “peculiar creatures” inhabiting Washington. On the web, radicals denounce institutionalists who “want us to defend and support the institutions we already have.” She added that: “Many institutionalists simply have a reflexive distaste for change, preferring the enduring, if ossified, conventions that offer them inherited credibility. But perhaps in part because they are mostly old, white men, institutionalists are afforded significant deference by the media and the general public.”
Rabb joined his chorus of radicals opposing institutionalists in their party. He is the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District and is now virtually assured of being a member of Congress. He is also emerging as a dominant voice on the far left. He has established his bona fides with a growing radical movement within the Democratic Party, denouncing the Declaration of Independence, calling our constitutional system “the beast” to be slayed, and bizarrely claiming that the Framers had no notion of what “policing” means.
On Friday, Rabb tweeted “This is what the institutionalists are focusing their efforts on now: Disavowing Hasan Piker.” He added “Not White Christian nationalists? Not the broligarchs? Not the AI overlords? Nope, the guy encouraging young people to use their collective political power for good. F— that noise.” Of course, Piker rose to national prominence with other Democratic Socialists and radicals brought him to their states to campaign against establishment figures. Much like the left’s focus on figures who associate with Nicholas Fuentes, Piker has outraged many with claims that America deserved 9/11, American Jews are asking to be attacked by supporting Israel, and mocking the murder of figures like Charlie Kirk.
Putting aside the fact that Rabb still supports this notorious hatemonger as someone organizing “young people to use their collective political power for good,” Rabb notably denounces those opposing Piker as “institutionalists.” It is an important reveal, highlighting the radical agenda to trash the Constitution and tear down our core institutions, including the Supreme Court. Rabb has been one of those voices in calling the system “the beast” and denouncing our own revolution.
In my book Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I discuss the French Revolution and its decline into what the Framers called a mobocracy. In France, “The Terror” began not with the working class, but with educated lawyers, journalists, and even aristocrats as part of the Jacobin movement. Eventually, after the mob had finished off the aristocrats, clergy, and merchants, they turned on their fellow Jacobins in a bloodletting that claimed the lives of thousands.
Even law professors and deans joined this movement in calling for the rejection of our Constitution on the 25oth anniversary of our Revolution. Mainstream figures such as Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law School, have published books such as “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said that his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) will stick to its policy of isolating the AfD despite the right-wing party polling at over 40% ahead of regional elections in Saxony-Anhalt. The chancellor claimed that the Alternative for Germany maintains close ties with Russia and thus poses a threat to the “internal and external security of our country.” The AfD is the largest opposition faction in the Bundestag and the country’s most popular party, with recent surveys indicating that it enjoys the support of 28% of respondents.
The right-wing party campaigns on an anti-immigration platform and is also highly critical of the German government’s support for Ukraine, as well as sanctions against Russia.= Appearing on broadcaster RTL on Thursday, Merz was asked by a businessman from Saxony-Anhalt about the feasibility of the so-called ‘firewall’ policy in a democracy, under which all major parties refuse to cooperate with the AfD. The question came ahead of the regional elections in the eastern region slated for September 6.
The chancellor defended the controversial policy, categorically ruling out a coalition between the CDU and the AfD due to “fundamental” differences. He claimed that AfD members frequently visit the Russian Embassy in Berlin and maintain the “closest relationship with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.” Merz also accused the right-wing party of calling into question “our value system” by advocating Germany’s withdrawal from the Eurozone, the EU single market, and the Schengen Area.
The chancellor suggested the possibility of forming a minority government in Saxony-Anhalt, pointing to the situation in both Thuringia and Saxony, where the AfD has also been sidelined, despite coming out on top in the regional elections. Meanwhile, an INSA poll published by Bild earlier this month indicated that support for Germany’s governing CDU/CSU bloc had dipped to the lowest level in almost five years, at 20%. The survey also showed that 78% of respondents were dissatisfied with Merz’s government.
Comprised of the Christian Democratic CDU/CSU bloc and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the ruling coalition has faced criticism over continued economic stagnation and its failure to deliver on pre-election promises. The AfD has for years faced significant pressure from regional and federal authorities in Germany. The country’s domestic security agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has designated the party as a suspected far-right extremist entity – a label that permits government surveillance of the AfD. In several regions, local chapters have been subjected to even wider monitoring by the authorities.
Sami Winc: We know that in California, Xavier, I think his name is Becerra, is going to win, but he is the most unimpressive of governors I’ve ever seen. Even Kamala Harris said he was not up to snuff, and she is, of course, one of the most unimpressive of mediocrities.
Victor Davis Hanson: He doesn’t come out and talk about the Biden immigration policies, which he was involved in when there were all of these unattended youth, 350,000 they can’t account for. If that had been [President Donald] Trump, he’d be in jail. So, he’s not very … I followed his career in California. He’s not very adept. He’s not a good speaker.
But again, Steve Hilton has all the answers. He really does, and he would be wonderful for the state. He’s running about 18% [behind]. Let’s just say that the polls, being all slanted and designed to raise Democratic money and create Democratic momentum, are exaggerated, as we know they have been in these other races. So, let’s say they’re eight points off. So, he’s ahead of Steve Hilton by eight to nine points.
Now, my question is this: Why would anybody vote for a person tied in with Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi and that whole tradition of Bay Area politicians who’ve taken control of the state from the LA center of power of the 1970s and ’80s, when they gave us a huge government fraud program? Devastating wildfires due to their policies about not cleaning up the forest.
The highest electricity rates in the continental United States. The highest gasoline rates in the continental United States. The highest income tax, state income tax, 13.3. The highest gas taxes. The highest number of homeless people. Almost the same as Appalachia, 21% below the poverty line.
One out of every three welfare recipients, 50% of the births on Medi-Cal, welfare type of thing, 40% of everybody uses that health care system. And we’ve got a high-speed rail not far from where I’m speaking that we’ve spent $20 billion on, and it hasn’t laid, in 10 years—12 years—one foot of track. And this group of people has overseen that. And I have an answer for you. The answer is this, and I’ve said it before: 28% of the state was not born in the United States.
Another 7 to 8 million of our 40 million Californians are the children of people, and that can mean they were just born here one day when their parents arrived, right? But anyway, they have not been fully integrated, acculturated, and assimilated. You add those two groups of first- and second-generation immigrants, and you get about 45% to 46% of the population. And when you look at where those immigrants came from, three large groups: south of the border, Mexico and Central America; India; and China. Those are all impoverished groups.
So, in their way of thinking—and I talk to a lot of them—when they come to California and they see how far it has declined and what it was like in the 1960s as a can-do state that was at the cutting edge of aqueducts and water projects and the tripartite UC, CSU, JC system, and I think it was number nine in test scores, and it was well-governed, it was not corrupt, and they had one of the most sophisticated highway systems.
When they see all that, they don’t know. They just say I don’t know. Listen, I grew up in Venezuela. I grew up in Oaxaca. I grew up… I’ve never seen a place like this. It’s wealthy. And you know what? The moment I set across—I put a toe across the U.S. border—these crazy people think I’ve been oppressed. And not only have I been oppressed, I’ve been oppressed by them. So, I come over from India or China or Mexico, and all of a sudden, my kids get preference getting into school. I get preference in civil service hiring.
And if somebody said, “Well, Victor, you’ve said yourself that DEI was on the way.” I said, “It is the way out.” But there was just a statistic that Mission High School in San Francisco, 94% are not proficient in math and like 70% are not proficient in English, and it’s sending a huge amount of its graduates to UC Berkeley. And then there was an example of another school district where 95% are proficient. Instead of getting 45% of the applicants accepted like Mission, they got eight.
In other words, they were penalized for turning out students that were superbly trained in math and English, and only 8% got in. That’s California, and it hasn’t changed. So, they look at that. So, I think those voters, I mean, they’re the majority. They’re 45%. I’m not talking about other ethnic … I’m not talking about third-generation people from those same areas. I’m talking about just first or second. So, it takes three generations to become conservative when you’re an immigrant from a poor country. It does.
If you didn’t already have enough reasons to distrust Dr. Anthony Fauci, here’s a new one, and it’s a doozy. Newly disclosed documents reveal that Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) had a formal institutional partnership with the CIA, one that provided cover for the agency’s biological-threat research. This goes well beyond the previously known off-the-books meetings tied to the Wuhan lab origins controversy. Fauci’s ties to American intelligence run far deeper than anyone outside a handful of investigators realized.
Documents that the Daily Caller obtained show an interagency agreement in which the CIA’s Biological Technology Center launched a collaboration with NIAID focused on “forensic microbiology” involving potential bioterrorism agents. The CIA used its own funding to leverage NIAID’s existing civilian research programs, tapping unclassified virus research to “augment and complement” its own research and development.
Make no mistake about it, this was not some casual arrangement between two federal agencies. It was a working partnership between America’s top infectious disease bureaucrat and the nation’s premier spy agency, built around some of the most dangerous pathogens on Earth.
Congressional investigators have spent years probing Fauci’s ties to the intelligence community. Their findings include reports that Fauci visited CIA headquarters without anyone formally recording his entry, and that he took part in discussions on the agency’s review of COVID-19’s origins. Former Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), who chaired the House coronavirus subcommittee, wrote that “the information provided suggests that Dr. Fauci was escorted into Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Headquarters — without a record of entry — and participated in the analysis to ‘influence’ the Agency’s review.”
Rutgers University chemistry professor Richard Ebright said the newly disclosed documents show Fauci’s NIAID may have crossed red lines on biological weapons research. “Vice President Cheney assigned Fauci to head US biodefense research programs in 2002, including bioweapons-agents-development and bioweapons-agents-characterization research programs that approached, and arguably crossed, red lines set by the Biological Weapons Convention,” Ebright explained. “The documents show early steps in the process of transferring funding for, and direction of, CIA and DoD biodefense projects to Fauci’s agency, NIAID.”
The CIA-NIAID partnership grew out of a broader post-9/11 overhaul of federal biodefense. After the 2001 anthrax attacks, the Bush administration poured new funding into biodefense, and NIAID under Fauci became a central civilian agency for research on dangerous pathogens, while the CIA grappled with the growing difficulty of detecting biological weapons. A 2003 CIA memo titled “The Darker Bioweapons Future” warned that advances in biotechnology could make biological weapons far harder to identify than nuclear weapons, and called for “a much closer — and perhaps qualitatively different — working relationship between the intelligence and biological sciences communities,” including scientists serving as a “living sensor web” gathering information from foreign researchers, universities, and conferences.
Former CIA Senior Operations Officer James Erdman III testified before Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that the line between public health and national security work became increasingly blurred after the early 2000s. “The lines between public health and biodefense have been blurred beyond recognition ever since,” Erdman said.
Erdman testified that NIAID, the intelligence community, the Pentagon, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and foreign researchers operated together for over 20 years without real oversight. “They received funding from NIAID and other agencies for vaccine research, USAID’s PREDICT project, the [Pentagon’s] cooperative threat reduction program, and even worked with Chinese scientists on coronavirus and other pathogen studies pursuing vaccines,” he said. “There was no oversight monitoring how this web of relationships influenced research, policy, and public health in any holistic way for over 20 years,” Erdman added.
If you thought our health institutions were really prioritizing public health, think again. These new documents establish that Fauci’s CIA relationship was part of an institutional partnership stretching back years, spanning multiple presidential administrations and untold sums of taxpayer money. Fauci was a central node in a web connecting American intelligence, the Pentagon, and foreign researchers, far more than the mild-mannered public-health bureaucrat Americans were led to believe he was..
An important new book by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Going Further, calls attention anew to the life and career of the single greatest living American, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. For many years after Thomas arrived on the court in the early 1990s, his conservative, originalist views were relegated to dissenting opinions. Three and a half decades later, Thomas, now the second-longest-serving justice in the court’s history, regularly finds himself in the majority. Thomas, in short, has won the long game. But how?
Thirty-five years ago, mainstream legal training and judicial practice suggested the proper way to interpret a legal document is to probe for nebulous concepts such as legislative history and legislative intent. It’s now hard to believe, but the commonsense notion that one should begin the interpretive exercise with a document’s text and plain meaning was pretty much unheard of.
Thomas, along with his then-colleagues Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist, galvanized an intellectual revolution in American legal and judicial practice. Today, law schools instruct students to begin the interpretive exercise with the text. In fact, this is hardly controversial. As the liberal Justice Elena Kagan put it in a 2015 Harvard Law School lecture, “We’re all textualists now.”
A big part of the reason for this success is simple: sheer persuasiveness. The straightforward nature of the originalist and textualist position quickly found mass appeal, putting defenders of legislative history or “living constitutionalism” on their back feet. They haven’t been able to keep up. In the area of legal interpretation, liberals have lost the public argument — badly. In recent years, we’ve seen this manifest in conservative victories at the high court on religious liberty, abortion, gun rights, affirmative action and the administrative state.
There is an underappreciated additional ingredient in Thomas’ winning formula: his kindness, affability and genuine human decency. Thomas’ life story is the stuff of legend. He grew up in the most abject poverty imaginable in Jim Crow-era rural Georgia. English was not even his first language. He overcame all that, in addition to his one-time wavering faith and even an infatuation with Malcolm X and the Black Power movement, to become one of the greatest conservatives in American history.
But here’s the thing: Thomas never forgot where he came from. It is well known that, inside the Supreme Court building, Thomas is the personal favorite justice. That’s true for the justices themselves, it’s true for the law clerks, and it’s even true for the janitors. Thomas is the justice who will talk NASCAR with the court security guard (he’s a big fan of the sport), and he is the justice who will regale law clerks with funny stories from years gone by — with his signature, boisterous laugh. The one topic Thomas will not talk about, because it would offend his old-school Southern manners, is himself.
The Supreme Court, unlike Congress or the executive branch, is a small, intimate institution. Passions can run high, but a justice can best achieve success over the long haul if he can persuade his colleagues in conferences, memoranda, and other communications. As the saying goes, you usually catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. That was not always Scalia’s way, but it is definitely Thomas’ way. The next Supreme Court term begins in just over a month, and the court’s senior-most member will once again anchor the court’s originalist bloc.
There will be Viramontes v. Cook County, a prime opportunity to extend a Second Amendment guarantee to modern sporting rifles (“AR-15s”). There will be St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, another case out of stubborn Colorado that could, and should, extend otherwise-universal preschool voucher access to religious schools. Other big cases on the docket touch on voting rights, climate change, and more. Thomas’ influence will be palpable. He will once again serve the role he always has: that of dependable workhorse and beacon of intellectual clarity.
He will once again be the court’s most principled originalist, establishing a barometer off of which other originalists can assess their own instincts and rulings. In a nation short on exemplary role models, Thomas fills the void. He would never dream of saying so himself, but Thomas is an American hero and the nation’s most inspiring man. The only question is whether he will stay on the court until May 20, 2028, at which point he will become the nation’s longest-serving justice ever.
If there’s one thing we know from Clarence Thomas’ life: Don’t bet against him.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith: The new American tariffs will affect $1.5B of Alberta goods. The new Canadian counter-tariffs will affect $4.8B of our economy.
Our businesses will be more harmed by Canadian counter-tariffs than are going to be by the American tariffs. pic.twitter.com/p1OcTW9Pdr
"Pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States."
President Trump floats a dramatic move involving the strategically critical waterway as he says Iran is being "very badly defeated." pic.twitter.com/zXJhCfOIqH
Bessent said Friday that Washington would announce unprecedented economic-isolation measures next week, warning that the coming pressure campaign would be unlike anything “seen in the history of economic isolation on a country.”For clarity on Bessent’s upcoming economic-isolation operation against Iran, Derek Holt, head of Capital Markets Economics at Scotiabank in Toronto, provided clients with an assessment in which Bessent’s warning could signal a move well beyond sanctioning shadow tankers and refiners, toward dismantling the entire financial network supporting Iranian oil exports.
Holt explained: WHAT COULD BESSENT MEAN? What could Bessent do to economically isolate Iran further that has “never been seen”?
• Target China and India: China is the main buyer of Iranian oil and is involved in undermining US sanctions. The US sanctions some individual Chinese entities and, in April, announced sanctions against Chinese “Teapot” refineries (here). The US could step up its actions by sanctioning all Chinese banks, this time including large institutions, and blocking their access to the US and global financial systems. That would push China further away from the SWIFT system and block access to correspondent and other forms of banking. It could block access to US dollar funding markets. This would very likely enrage China and risk multiple forms of retaliation and escalation.
• Broaden the scope of sanctions on Iran: This would extend the scope to any global group, company or entity involved in buying, financing, insuring or shipping Iranian oil. Looking at you, global banks, currency exchanges, commodity traders, shippers, etc. Actions under this category would aim to entirely thwart the sale of oil from Iran to China in yuan and its conversion into dollars and other currencies via exchange houses in Iran and elsewhere. You target other Middle Eastern nations facilitating this trade by blocking their access to dollar funding and global banking markets, such as Dubai’s one-foot-in-and-one-foot-out stance on the war, which continues to facilitate Iranian transactions. Dubai fancies itself a financial center; you destroy such ambitions.
• Target Iranian crypto assets: This Treasury announcement last month targeted individuals and entities under a specific Iranian person’s name. The US could broaden this action to include freezing access to all Iranian global holdings of crypto, gold, real estate, foreign accounts, etc.
• Target global ports: Any foreign port that facilitates trade and transactions with shipping companies that transited Iranian ports could be targeted.
He continued: “And there may well be other creative options in scale and scope. The broad point is to escalate the economic and financial blockade of the Iranian economy and financial system by enveloping all parts of the global economy, namely China, and the global financial system that allow Iran to continue to sell oil and access funding markets.” Would it work? I’m not sure. Iran knows suffering. Iran is used to being a pariah. Iran still has friends in low places. Iran has its own means of escalating, including unleashing unspeakable terror.
The consequences to the global economy and financial system could also limit or entirely thwart the chances of success. I’m sure they know the risks, but Treasury would sharply amplify tensions with China and India and could potentially cripple individual banks while not ruling out increased systemic risk within the broader financial system. Cutting off access to dollar funding markets could destabilize major players in the financial system. The spillover effects through a complicated web of connections shouldn’t be treated lightly.
The US is finally getting that it can’t just bash and bomb its way to victory against Iran. I’m not sure it gets the limitations and risks that could be associated with escalating broader measures at an all-encompassing global level. It could well take a bungled war that the US and Israel entered without much thought, without a strategy and without an exit plan, while not consulting Congress or allies, and compound the missteps even further and potentially more seriously.”
For context, China buys more than 90% of Iran’s oil exports, making it the most likely target in any effort by Bessent to cut Tehran’s energy revenues. But the escalating economic war would carry significant risks. Sanctions on large Chinese companies or financial institutions could escalate tensions with Beijing ahead of a planned meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping. Also removing discounted Iranian crude from the global market could also tighten supplies and push already elevated Brent and WTI prices higher.
Approximately six days from now I will share a great deal of information on World War Reddit. I took the insert picture about a week ago as a Ukraine drone struck a venue 500 meters from my location. Suffice to say, I’m not reporting information to you based on propaganda media, seriously skewed alt-media or misinterpreted/intercepted Telegram channel discussion; there’s an information war on that platform also.
Almost everything being told, shared and sold about the Russia vs Ukraine conflict is entirely made-up nonsense that has zero basis in reality. My goal has been to find out why there is this much effort toward twilight-zone level propaganda being pushed by unified interests in western media. Honestly, it’s beyond crazy. According to Ukraine/NATO media, and probably soon to be shared by President Trump, “Russia suffered 42,860 battlefield casualties in July, its highest monthly losses since January 2025.” This type of stuff is so far beyond silly no one can figure out where they come up with the ideas for the rates.
In media headlines you might have read that Ukraine is celebrating the biggest launch of drones against Russia in a single day, Sunday. The Russian media counter by saying they have shot down 822 drones, with 600 of them targeting the Russian capital of Moscow. Inside Russia, none of this stuff is happening; however, the govt of Putin finds some sort of purpose/value (personally I think it is just Russian humor) in countering the Ukraine nonsense by accepting the claim and then reiterating it in their claims of interception.
It’s all an illusion. First, the illusion makes it look like Russia is under bombardment (western happy), and then the Federation flips the script (it is indeed a script) and uses the claim as evidence of their exceptional capabilities at interception of the non-existent. If you are suddenly cross-eyed, yes, that’s the level of crazy I’m talking about.
(VIA CBS) – Ukraine launched hundreds of drones across Russia Sunday, killing at least six people in one of Kyiv’s largest aerial attacks of the war.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that it had destroyed 822 Ukrainian drones overnight. Some 600 drones were detected headed toward the Russian capital, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, with a third of those destroyed over the Moscow region itself. An 83-year-old man was killed after a Ukrainian drone hit a private home in the Moscow region, local Gov. Andrey Vorobyov said. He also confirmed that a Ukrainian attack had sparked a blaze at a Wildberries warehouse in the town of Podolsk.
A drone attack targeted three towns in Russia’s southwestern Rostov region, killing five people, local Gov. Yury Slyusar said. The attack, with more than 150 drones, damaged several homes and a railway station and sparked a forest fire. Kyiv has stepped up its attacks on Russia this year, with long-range missiles and swarms of drones increasingly targeting military industries and energy facilities. It has also increasingly pummeled giant Wildberries depots, burning billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise belonging to the Russian online retail giant and bringing the war home to the Russian public nearly four and half years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. (read more)
It is accurate that Ukraine drones have hit about a half dozen Wildberries distribution centers. Think about Wildberries as if you combined Amazon with E-Bay. What would life be like in America if a dozen (out of 1,300) Amazon distribution centers caught fire? Well, that’s the sum of the disruption. All those stories of gasoline refineries taken offline(?). More nonsense. Gasoline shortages(?), total gibberish – beyond silly. Beyond the overstated drone attacks all this stuff about military industrial centers, energy facilities and infrastructure being damaged is non-existent. So, why is this such a common thing to read about? Factually, I have no idea. It’s like me telling you that right now there’s a gorilla in your bathtub playing chess, and all your neighbors believe it.
Somewhere there is also a story about a new FP-9 Ukraine ballistic missile about to go into operation (next 60 days). They are supposedly working out an issue with the rocket engines. However, where they are being built is not easy to determine. All indications are in Europe somewhere. The FP-9 is part of a rushed missile and defense system from a company called Fire Point {citation} that is hoped to replace the missing U.S. Patriot Missile (defense) and Tomahawk missile (offense) that Ukraine and Germany have desperately been seeking. As the story is told, the funding comes from Ukraine, the targeting system from Germany and the build operations are taking place somewhere unknown.
This is not just a missile. It is Ukraine's entry into the strategic league
Look at that beauty — FP‑9, Ukraine’s home‑grown ballistic missile. Suspended like a predator ready to strike. Not a prototype anymore
I don’t have it all figured out yet, but from what is visible on the surface is there appears to be a plan to drag out the conflict as long as possible, often with as outlandish claims as needed, in order to structure some kind of narrative that will eventually bring Europe -maybe NATO- into a direct combat operation against the Russian Federation.
“.. the radicalism of the Democrats in the age of Trump Derangement Syndrome—lawfare, de-balloting, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and calls to destroy the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, and the filibuster—helped give birth to the socialists.”
Kamala Harris speaks to AOC one day before the 2024 election
What binds the new Democratic Party to the new democratic socialists is a set of shared issues and values. That is, the radicalism of the Democrats in the age of Trump Derangement Syndrome—lawfare, de-balloting, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and calls to destroy the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, and the filibuster—helped give birth to the socialists. But the overriding commonality among those on the new Left is that if they do not get their way, they blame the “system.” Then they seek to change the rules, no matter how hallowed those laws and conventions may have been or how much they themselves benefited from them in the past.
When the Left lost the White House, Congress, and, for the most part, the Supreme Court, it began clamoring to change the system. For left-wing Democrats, that angst also translated into calls to bring in two new blue states, weaponize the FBI and the Justice Department, ally with social media to suppress the news, and spy on congressional representatives. All the socialists and communists did was up the ante in destroying norms by calling for the end of the presidency, the Senate, the border, the police, and the Pentagon.
By 2021, it was time to destroy the southern border and welcome in some 10 million illegal immigrants—without audits, English proficiency, health checks, or the ability to support themselves. Had Kamala Harris been elected in 2024, we would have had another four years and another 5 million illegal aliens. And perhaps America would have gone from 50 million foreign-born residents to 60 million, or about 18% of the population. In this regard, the Left sees California as our most liberal—and most ideal—state and perhaps concludes that the reason is that 28% of its resident population is now foreign-born, with the majority arriving with vast needs for health, education, housing, and food subsidies.
Today, 50% of all births in California are paid for by Medi-Cal, which serves 40% of the population. When second-generation immigrants are added to the foreign-born population, the two groups together comprise roughly 45% of California’s current population. This demographic transformation is one of the most profound in American history and came at a time when traditional civic education stressing assimilation, acculturation, integration, and knowledge of American traditions, history, and values was nearly nonexistent in California public schools.
So one way of achieving radical change was to alter the demography and welcome as many immigrants as possible who, in the first or second generation, might follow the examples of Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
They represent an entirely new sort of immigrant who arrives—or is born to immigrant parents—with both complaints against and dependence on their host country. They can see only the sins of America, never the catastrophes of their homeland that drove them or their parents here. This strange demand to change the rules whenever they do not bode well for angry and aggrieved parties permeates every possible manifestation of the Left but is especially egregious when demanded by immigrants who came originally as uninvited guests but almost immediately damned their magnanimous host.
It is strange for so many new immigrants to act on an elemental desire to reach America—only on arrival to profess that it is full of toxic, sinful people, living and dead. Yet the damned hosts have inexplicably welcomed total strangers like themselves, and have allowed them to share in the freedom, security, and prosperity created by the dead whom the newcomers nonetheless endlessly slander and smear.
If particular minorities statistically did not do as well on the SAT as Asians and whites did on average, the solution was certainly not SAT tutorials in the inner city or K-12 SAT outreach, demands for tougher classes in grammar, math, and analytics, or a return to the melting pot rather than the current salad-bowl tribalist model.
Instead, after the George Floyd riots, the call went out to abolish the SAT entirely—as if there had never been a purpose behind its creation. In fact, merit-based SAT exams were designed in the 1920s and 1930s to allow anyone, regardless of race, gender, region, or class, to enter college through meritorious performance on the tests—and, in particular, to overcome old-boy insider preferences and regional and ethnic prejudices.
Yet when the SAT was mostly abolished for four or five years, higher education thought it had solved the problem of minority underrepresentation. In fact, its racialist war on standards only magnified its dilemmas. The SAT had once informed admissions officers not only about applicants’ qualifications but also whether admitted students could do the work once enrolled. But soon liberal professors learned that many of the newly admitted cohorts lacked the K-12 training necessary to do customary university coursework. Yet if professors maintained their regular courses, requirements, and grading, they might soon be labeled racists once particular minorities were shown to do less well than Asians and whites.
So universities inflated grades. They introduced new remedial and gut courses. And they reduced the required coursework. But again, racialism is never a solution to problems. Instead, it is a catalyst that fuels them—as we have seen with the new notion that plagiarism is not an actionable offense when the culprit can plead victim status, whether a former president of Harvard or a current professor at Cambridge. But there are ancient laws and norms that insist intellectual theft is a crime and should be punished, not rewarded or ignored.
Soon employers noticed that the reading, writing, and analytical skills of graduates from prestigious schools were proving dismal. Alumni complained both that the reputations of their almae matres were in decline and resting on the fumes of the past and that their own children, who had prepared diligently to ensure suitably competitive grades and SAT scores for admission, were being rejected solely on the basis of their race.
“AOC has spent a decade cultivating an image as the insurgent outsider fighting the establishment. Conway just pointed out what should have been obvious all along: the insurgent outsider has become the establishment, and yet she has nothing to show for it.”
Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox News’s The Five this week and gave a blunt yet extremely fair assessment of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.): she’s not actually doing her job. v”AOC stands for Always On Camera,” Conway said. “She is a performer, not a reformer. She went to Washington to legislate; that’s her job. She’s a pontificator, not a legislator.”Conway piled on by pointing out that, in four years under President Joe Biden, AOC passed one bill. One.
Conway’s point was simple: if you’re not good at legislating, you find something else to be good at, like living online, playing with your hair, and giggling every time someone asks whether you’d be fit to serve as commander-in-chief. Conway didn’t think that was funny. With the whole world watching, she said, that kind of response would be “embarrassing and a disaster.” Just watch The Brink of War and imagine AOC in a similar situation. You can’t, because she’s an absolute joke. But I digress.
AOC has tried to distance herself from her old positions by claiming her rhetoric from years ago doesn’t reflect where she is today. Conway found that laughable. Five years isn’t ancient history, and she made the point with a sharp comparison: does AOC’s position change with the seasons, too? If it’s raining, does she flip? If it’s October instead of April? Conway called the whole excuse disgraceful, and said both failed Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong and AOC had proven themselves untrustworthy to voters.
Conway also gave AOC credit for one thing. She started as a bartender who knocked off longtime incumbent Joe Crowley in a primary nobody saw coming. That, Conway said, was the best thing AOC ever did. Everything since has traded on being the fresh face, the disruptor. But by 2028, AOC will have spent ten years in Washington voting the party line, while also proving herself to be extremely radical. For example, she was also one of only ten Democrats to vote against a resolution condemning the October 7, 2023 attack, just eleven days after it happened.
And Conway wasn’t finished with the receipts. She explained how 2024 was a disaster for AOC’s political brand. Kamala Harris spent over a billion dollars and lost anyway. AOC endorsed Jamaal Bowman in his primary, and he lost. She endorsed Cori Bush, and she lost, too.
“AOC stands for Always On Camera!" @KellyannePolls calls AOC a “performer, not a reformer,” arguing the congresswoman is more focused on viral moments than delivering results for voters. pic.twitter.com/3KaYx0nkm1
Make no mistake about it, Conway’s larger argument wasn’t really about policy. It was about authenticity, or the lack of it. She called AOC a “performative progressive,” someone running “stunts and grunts” to sway voters, rather than legislating on their behalf. Conway doesn’t think Americans are buying it anymore. Voters who tweet first and think third and fourth, she said, will pay a price for it.
She’s right. AOC has spent a decade cultivating an image as the insurgent outsider fighting the establishment. Conway just pointed out what should have been obvious all along: the insurgent outsider has become the establishment, and yet she has nothing to show for it.
Well, this is rich. Upon hearing the news that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt would be stepping away from her role at the end of the month to focus on her young family, former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki used the occasion to trash Leavitt and call her a liar. Yes, really, the woman whose inane and repeated “circle back” responses during her own tenure behind the White House briefing podium – she was Biden’s first press secretary – made her a laughingstock both in and outside of Washington, D.C., now wants to lecture Karoline Leavitt about how a press secretary should behave.
Psaki apparently has a show on MS NOW and let loose on the Thursday night episode, saying Leavitt didn’t engage the media “in good faith” and “reshaped” the White House Briefing Room “into her own personal safe space.” “The relationship between the press and the White House is supposed to be adversarial by design,” Psaki said on MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, where she was hired after her performance on then-President Biden’s behalf from 2021 to 2022.
“I mean, the press in the room are supposed to push for more access, for more information. And there are times when it’s absolutely appropriate for the press secretary to push back. But Karoline Leavitt didn’t want to engage in good faith with those reporters and their tough questions. “And so, instead, she did everything she could to reshape that briefing room into her own personal safe space where she rarely had to answer a tough question, hardly ever. I mean, she only briefed once or twice a week, max.”
Psaki wasn’t done there and “accused Leavitt of lying repeatedly in her role and said she only served one man: Trump.”“It’s been about telling the version of the truth according to the serial liar who sits in the Oval Office. Reporters in the room don’t matter. The American people who rely on the reporting from the reporters in the room [don’t] matter, she’s never seen her job as working for the American people as a public servant,” Psaki said, adding she had damaged the job.
As a reminder, Jen Psaki spent years helping sell the fiction that Joe Biden was mentally sharp and physically vigorous, once claiming that the then-78-year-old president was so energetic she sometimes had trouble keeping up with him; even after leaving the White House, she insisted she had never witnessed any diminished capacity. She’s hardly in a position to cast judgment on anyone with that resume. Wid Lyman, an independent journalist who often attended Leavitt’s briefings, served up a brutal fact check on Psaki, revealing that, behind the scenes, the media has appreciated the increased access to the president, describing Leavitt’s entire team as “first class.”
Jen Psaki recently said the White House press briefing room “has massively changed” under the Trump administration and @karolineleavitt.
If you talk to anyone who has worked in media at the White House this is undoubtedly true.
“Jen Psaki recently said the White House press briefing room “has massively changed” under the Trump administration and @karolineleavitt. If you talk to anyone who has worked in media at the White House this is undoubtedly true. Two comments I have heard recently: “There is way, way more going on during this administration compared to the last.” “The entire press team is first-class.” Karoline Leavitt not only fostered a more open atmosphere for multiple types of media in the briefing room, but she also created an environment where her staff was professional and courteous.
The 49 permanent seats in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room are allocated to legacy and major news organizations, but standing room only crowds of unseated journalists regularly attend the briefings. I routinely hear how much more crowded the room is compared to other times. Thank you for the opportunity to give our readers and followers a voice. God bless in all things.”
White House spokesman Davis Ingle had a very simple response to Psaki’s attack on Leavitt: “Jen ‘Circle Back’ Psaki couldn’t hold a candle to Karoline Leavitt.” Leavitt leaves the White House having expanded press access and earned praise even from journalists outside the conservative media bubble. Psaki left after helping hide Joe Biden’s obvious decline from the American people. If she really wants to have a conversation about who disgraced the podium, by all means, let’s have it.
From predicting Donald Trump’s victory in 2024 to nailing the Democrats’ Graham Platner bait-and-switch a month before everyone else, my predictive hit rate is among the best in the punditry biz. (And just this week, 48 hours after I hailed AOC’s “woke” pivot as a PR masterstroke, she shot to the top of the prediction markets. Booyah!) No, I haven’t gotten everything right, but to be fair, I’ve taken some very yuuuge swings. (Go big or go home, amiright?)
I’d guesstimate my accuracy is about 75%. But one of my proudest prognostications was less a prediction than an observation: Almost immediately, I hailed Karoline Leavitt — the youngest White House press secretary in history — as a frickin’ rockstar, and the greatest to ever serve President Trump.From March 18, 2025:
“We’re now eight weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, and two things are perfectly clear:
1) His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, is an absolute rockstar.
2) The mainstream media hates her.
The difference between Karoline and, say, Sean Spicer — Trump’s original press secretary — is night and day. Look, I don’t want to be unkind to Spicer, but her charisma, charm, and intellectual dexterity leave him in the dust. It’s the difference between chicken salad and chicken [EXPLETIVE].
Personally, I think she’s the best press secretary President Trump’s ever had”It took the rest of the media a little bit longer to catch up. People forget, but Leavitt was initially dismissed as a dumb blonde bimbo who only got the job ‘cause she’s young and hot.
Ain’t that a kick in the head: Within 20 months, Karoline Leavitt went from an “airhead” to irreplaceable! Yet her biggest legacy will be how she transformed the position of White House press secretary. Pre-K.L. and post-K.L. are gonna be night and day. What once was an afterthought is now a PR priority. She turned White House press secretary into a prestige position.In the past, it was hit and miss. Sometimes, the White House press secretary was competent; sometimes, he/she wasn’t. Either way, nobody gave it much thought. (And at least one president clearly prioritized DEI box-checking over PR talent.)
But the era of appointing uncharismatic lumps such as Robert Gibbs, Jay Carney, Karine Jean-Pierre, and Dee Dee Myers to the position is over. It’ll NEVER happen again. That’s because Leavitt redefined the political — and personal — utility of being White House press secretary. It’s a byproduct of our media age: Voters consume content in quick bites, conflict sells, and viral moments are manna from heaven. Some of the top conservative podcasters and media personalities (including Charlie Kirk) had to manufacture conflict by traveling to college campuses, debating left-wingers, and uploading the most viral encounters to YouTube.
Kirk and others invested in this strategy because it moved the needle — repeatedly.But the White House press secretary doesn’t have to travel anywhere. Whenever she wants, she can go to the podium, whack reporters around like a piñata, and become an instant social media sensation.It’s an ambitious politician’s passport to fame and stardom!
Pre-K.L., someone such as Scott Jennings would have had no interest in being the White House press secretary. Why would he? He’s already kicking [tush] on CNN as the network’s top conservative counterweight; why deal with the headache of pushy left-wing reporters? Why hitch your wagon to the lame-duck Trump administration when you’re doing just fine on your own? (CNN pays him with real money, y’know.) Now, it’s a very real possibility — because Karoline Leavitt went from MEETING the press to BEATING the press.
CNN pundit Scott Jennings is reportedly in the running to become White House press secretary when Caroline Leavitt steps down from the podium at the end of the month. https://t.co/2tgrIcpzRV
With the D.C. press corps’ blistering hatred of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, the purpose of the White House press secretary changed out of necessity. The goal, after all, of the mainstream media wasn’t to report “without fear or favor,” but to cheerlead for the Democrats and undermine the Republicans. In such a climate, a by-the-books, dispassionate PR presentation would be a disaster.You can’t treat a bad-faith question like a good-faith question. It just doesn’t work. Which is why Karoline Leavitt didn’t try:
The purpose of the position has changed. Instead of serving as the media’s punching bag, Leavitt reversed the equation, flipped the narrative, and leveraged the media’s idiocy to punctuate her own political points — manufacturing viral moments by the barrelful. Best of all, she instinctively mirrored her boss’s ethos: Trump is a fighter; so is Leavitt. If you come after Trump with a hammer, he’ll fire back with a torpedo. His tolerance for stupidity is famously thin.Same goes for Leavitt.
Plus, she had fun with the gig. Her joy was genuine; it leaped through the screen. Whether the next press secretary is Scott Jennings, Kari Lake, Spencer Pratt, or someone else, Leavitt created the blueprint that her successor will surely follow.Post-K.L., the primary job of a Republican White House press secretary is to produce viral moments by out-sparring D.C. reporters. Each day you’re behind the podium, your goal is the same: Defend the president by excoriating his detractors — and exposing their left-wing bull[feces]. It’s now a debating position, not an information desk.
Which, in all honesty, is way more fun: Not too many elite political talents would sign up to be the media’s punching bag ‘til the end of 2028… but getting two solid years of primo media facetime? Going one-on-one against America’s most famous journalists? Your top moments uploaded to X? Smashing reporters on a daily basis? Hooboy! The media is our perfect foil. Just 28% of Americans trust it — and for Republicans, it’s just 8%. We couldn’t ask for a better enemy. Post-K.L., the position of White House press secretary could elevate a current media star such as Scott Jennings to the next level for superstardom.
After leaving D.C., Karoline Leavitt will have plenty of options. If Fox News is wise, it’d load a Brink’s truck and make her an offer — as should CNN, Newsmax, and the major networks. She’d also be a helluva pick-up for The Daily Wire (assuming they could afford her). Or she could launch a digital network of her own, a la Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Megyn Kelly. She has the name I.D. and political credibility to draw millions of eyeballs right out of the gate. Everyone knows her; everyone respects her. She’s about to be the hottest free agent in all of political media!
Or maybe she’ll take some time off and be a full-time momma for the next few years. Lord knows she’s earned the right to rest — and focus on her babies. She’s still only 28. Because, unlike most members of the media, she doesn’t have to strike when the metal is hottest. We won’t forget her — and her career won’t suffer. She can afford to take her time. Because she’s simply too talented. Congratulations, Karoline. You’re the GOAT of White House press secretaries. You were so damn good, you changed how the entire game is played. We salute you.
Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday declined a request to voluntarily appear before a second Senate panel, opening another front in Republicans’ investigations into the former public health official’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. An attorney for Fauci rejected the request from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, arguing that compelling Fauci to testify again after his contentious July 29 Senate hearing would “impermissibly harass or degrade Dr. Fauci for political purposes.”
Johnson has been conducting a parallel investigation into Fauci and the federal government’s response to COVID-19, including the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. The refusal comes after Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted along party lines last week to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times during the July hearing. Committee chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., has sought to send the contempt referral directly to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia, bypassing a full Senate vote.
“It’s a good legal discussion, and we will make those legal points to DOJ in sending the referral over,” Paul told Fox News Digital ahead of last week’s contempt vote. At issue is whether Fauci can invoke the Fifth Amendment after former President Joe Biden issued him a preemptive pardon before leaving office. Paul has argued that Biden’s pardon removed Fauci’s risk of federal prosecution and therefore undermined his basis for refusing to answer lawmakers’ questions. Fauci and his attorneys have disputed that position.
Paul has spent years investigating Fauci’s role in the government’s response to COVID-19 and has accused the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director of funding “risky” research that led to an alleged lab leak of the COVID-19 virus in China. Paul has repeatedly called for Fauci to be prosecuted.
Johnson’s subcommittee has separately obtained records related to Fauci and the government’s pandemic response. Fox News Digital previously confirmed that the Department of Health and Human Services sent the subcommittee a copy of Fauci’s pandemic-era cellphone. The broader Homeland Security panel also received more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary before his July hearing.Fox News Digital reached out to Johnson’s office to ask whether he intends to subpoena Fauci following the refusal. Fox News Digital also sought reaction from Paul’s office and asked Fauci attorney David Schertler whether Fauci would comply with a subpoena compelling his testimony.
Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is out with a new report (more than 100 pages) that takes a deep dive on the “2026 Midterm Elections” in November. Armstrong says, “The computer is showing this is going to be a very, very tight election. It’s a 50/50 deal where we didn’t see either party coming in with a landslide. The bottom line looks like the Democrats can take the House, but not the Senate. So, you will have a 50/50 divided government. You are going to get a lot of the crazies on the Democrat side. Even the conservative Democrats are getting very nervous. You recently had (Democrat) James Carville talking about how the party is going to split, which was our forecast in 2024.
So, this is where we are heading. By the Dems taking the House, you will see all kinds of investigations, there will be another impeachment of Trump, etc. They will be real obstructionists. They don’t give a crap about the country. If Trump says the sky is blue, they have to say it’s red. This is the way politics degenerated.”The implications for the Democrats will be long lasting and not in a good way. Armstrong says, “If the Democrats take the House, they will basically make this a real shit fight. Our computers show for 2028 something very, very interesting. I have never seen it do this, and it’s showing the Democrats will lose dramatically. On the Republican side, it shows they win even slightly above 70%.
You take the two favorites from both sides, which would be Vice President Vance against AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), Vance would blow her out, yes. I think the Democrats need to take the House to show the world how screwed up they really are. There will be a check against them from Trump and the Senate. They can do an impeachment, but the trial has to be in the Senate, and it’s not going to go anywhere. . .. It’s going to get much worse before the Midterms. As I said, these people don’t care about the country. This has turned into a bloodsport. This is part of what the computer has been projecting. By 2032, we are looking at the collapse of Republican forms of government.”
On the war in Ukraine, Armstrong says, “I am not optimistic. It looks like it goes off the boards by 2030 or so. Even the EU looks like it’s going to collapse after 2029 and break up again.” With the Iran war, Armstrong says, “China is using Iran to drain our resources, which has happened. It takes two to three years to replace the missiles. Taiwan is up in arms saying to the US, you don’t have the fire power to protect us. . .. You see the same thing with Russia and Ukraine. They say Russia is weak. They can’t take Ukraine, and Ukraine has seriously weakened Russia. That is what Ukraine is doing. That’s the whole purpose of this, and that was to drain Russia. Iran is doing the same thing to America.”
Armstrong says don’t expect the stock market to crash anytime soon as money is flowing into and not out of America. Armstrong also is forecasting a new gold bull market in 2027.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been frantically trying to restart a presidential campaign that appears moribund, with polls showing him losing in some states to figures such as Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In his absence, his multibillion-dollar high-speed train also seems to be going nowhere fast. A new report from the state inspector general revealed that the train will be delayed again and that the public is being kept in the dark about ongoing problems with Newsom’s signature project. Oh, and one more thing: the project will run out of money by December 2027.
Benjamin Belnap’s report revealed the project is again running out of money. It found missing details in the project’s 2026 business plan, and concluded that the project will again be out of money by next year. The state has already spent $18 billion, but it will need at least another $18 billion to finish the first segment. It could take roughly $200 billion more actually to complete the original San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line. Even with billions more, the current segment will not be completed until 2034.
Voters approved a $9.95 billion bond issue in 2008 under Newsom’s predecessor after absurdly low cost estimates. Newsom has been a champion of the project. Influential figures and companies stood to make a fortune, and the key was to secure a “buy-in” worth billions, so that it would become increasingly difficult to abandon the project as overruns and delays sent costs soaring. Now the official estimate of future ridership has dropped by 25%, and it demands billions more to complete a project delayed by decades. Remember that this entire project was meant to create a rail line of only 171 miles.
One would think that the California voters would be marching to the capital with pitchforks and torches over such breathtaking incompetence and waste. However, they appear to have been conditioned to accept the lowest level of performance from their public officials.
The response of Democratic leaders is crushingly predictable: they are pledging to seek a federal bailout to cover their own incompetence. The Democratic nominee for governor, Xavier Becerra, is promising to fight to get back federal funds that were cut off by the Trump Administration. While promising to seriously review any problems in the project (as if they are not obvious), no one has been held accountable for this financial train wreck. Instead, all Democrats can do is demand that citizens around the country help bail out their boondoogle.
Yet, the Inspector General is describing a failure of leadership where no one is making any real decisions: “Exploration of specific financing mechanisms is a positive step, but because the Authority might run out of funding as soon as December 2027, and the financing strategy the Authority uses has the potential to significantly affect the amount of interest it will need to repay, the Authority and state lawmakers have little time for delay in deciding upon a strategy and implementing it.”
Belknap indicated that those in control are simply shrugging off the problem, noting that “[b]ecause the Authority has thus far not demonstrated a willingness to establish and reinforce a process that ensures accuracy and transparency in project reporting, we have directed our report recommendations to the Board.”
In the meantime, the state will continue to creep along with a project that is sucking billions into a project that has become a national disgrace. Beccera’s pledge to seek bailouts shows that the problem remains the political culture in California. There is little accountability left in a one-party state where companies and individuals have made fortunes off this debacle. The only people being taken for a ride are Californian citizens and it is not the ride that they bargained for.
Journalists love to ask two questions spun from the same unhinged premise. Do you support trans women in women’s sports, and do you agree with author J.K. Rowling’s “anti-trans” views?The former bullies athletes for passing Biology 101. The latter targets the Harry Potter author at every possible turn. We’re seeing both in action of late. Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham is under media assault for sharing a simple truth about men in women’s sports, a fact supported by science at every turn. “She’s MAGA Barbie,” select outlets cry!
Rowling is under a fresh attack from an actor lucky enough to snag a role in HBO Max’s hotly anticipated Harry Potter TV series. Bel Powley, who plays Petunia Dursley in the upcoming series, told The Telegraph that she “strongly disagrees” with Rowling’s position on trans issues.”I strongly disagree with J.K. Rowling’s views on gender. I think that the trans community deserves safety and dignity and respect and total acceptance … but I love Harry Potter. I grew up with the books. I am from that first generation of readers and, again, I love magic and spookiness.”
That’s why Powley took the gig. That, and the paycheck, of course. It’s likely that The Telegraph asked Powley about the Rowling issue and that the actress didn’t bring it up on her own. Either way, it’s part of a larger, disturbing media trend. Reporters describe anyone who doesn’t embrace the whole activist trans agenda as “anti-trans.” And they never ask the person in question to share specifics on what they’re criticizing or recite the actual comments by the “villain” du jour. For Cunningham, that means her critics won’t admit the obvious. Men have clear, distinct biological advantages that don’t vanish if they embrace “womanhood” or take hormones. Cunningham spoke very clearly on the issue. She did so without malice or political rhetoric.
The media and the Left, but we repeat ourselves, targeted her anyway. Rowling also has been very careful in her language on trans issues. She doesn’t wish the trans community harm. Her initial statements on the subject were kind and hardly alienating. She simply understands the need for separate spaces for biological women while acknowledging the physiological differences between male and female athletes. Oh, and she’s faced frequent death threats for sharing her commonsense opinions. Here’s what Rowling wrote in 2020, responding to the very early stages of the Left’s war on the beloved author.
“Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk…I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.” Does that sound cruel or hateful? Hardly. Did Powley read Rowling’s long, personal essay on the subject back in 2020? Has she read it lately? Unlikely.
The same is likely true for John Lithgow. The veteran actor plays Professor Dumbledore in the series, and he, too, has been coaxed into savaging Rowling for her trans views. They’re “inexplicable,” Lithgow said. Has he tried speaking with her directly? She’s a key player behind the scenes of the new HBO Max show.
Why not start there? Has he read everything she’s said on the matter? Where does he agree or disagree? It’s fine to disagree, of course, but he must know the intense cancellation movement she’s faced in recent years. Or does he realize that the “safe” position in Hollywood for anyone, let alone an 80-year-old actor, is to slam Rowling and leave any critical facts out of the conversation? To be fair, the legacy media does just that, too.
I noticed that when media outlets write about the country Turkey, they’re now spelling it “Türkiye.” Have you noticed it, too? Did you get the memo on this? Because I sure didn’t.
But apparently the United Nations did. At the request of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the United Nations in June 2022 agreed to use the spelling “Türkiye” to refer to the country. The State Depa rtment also must have gotten the memo, because in January 2023, it followed suit. Naturally, the Western media was only too happy to play its polished role as court eunuch to Biden’s autopen, and it slipped into the usage of “Türkiye” with nary a peep.
So why did Erdogan make the request? Because “Turkiye” is how the country is spelled in its native Modern Turkish alphabet, and Erdogan’s rebranding of its spelling is part of his larger nationalistic, anti-Western agenda. Erdogan is also well aware of the West’s Achilles’ heel, which is the insatiable addiction of white liberals to pander to anything they feel counters Western influence. Erdogan is a president in name only. In reality, he lords over an increasingly repressive Islamist dictatorship that has been busying itself for over a decade with decoupling from the West and aligning with Russia and Iran. One would think that Western liberals would recoil from taking direct orders from a man who cozies up to the oppressors of women, the murderers of gays, and the architect of the Ukraine invasion.
Ah, but that would require them to stand on their stated principles. And it turns out their stated principles are not really their principles at all. It’s more important for them to denigrate their own culture and language — hence their eager and willing use of the word “Türkiye” – than to make common cause with “workers of the world” or “indigenous communities” or whatever their catchphrase of the week is. White liberals do this effortlessly with other linguistic overlaps as well. This is why they pronounce Spanish-originating words with faux-accents. They’ll pronounce the word Latino as (Lah-TEE-no), and they’ll over-accentuate the double E. Or they’ll pronounce the word Mexico as (Meh-hee-co), and pronounce the X as an H.
Liberals do this partly to brag about how cultured they think they are. They do this partly because they think it makes them sound exotic and diverse. But they do it more so as a direct criticism of the English language and American culture, as if by pronouncing these words with Spanish accents and pronunciations, they are disavowing their own native language as inferior. This is pandering, and it’s embarrassing to watch. It reeks of desperation. And the attempt doesn’t flatter the minority whose rear end the groveling white liberal is desperately trying to kiss. He’s rather insulted. You don’t get into people’s good graces by poorly mimicking their accent. You don’t impress them by flaunting the half a dozen or so words you know of their native language.
One particularly asinine example is that of the Micmac Indians, a Native American tribe in the American northeast, formally changing their name to the Mi’kmaq to appear less “colonial.” The left, of course, duly did what they were told and began using the word Mi’kmaq. It solved none of these Indians’ problems and changed nothing of history, but it made everyone feel woke and special.I find this particular example silly for two reasons. First, let’s be honest. None of us even knew the Micmacs were an Indian tribe until the movie Pet Sematary hit the theaters in 1989. And second, there is nothing colonizing about the spelling of the word Micmac.
Do you know why? Because there was never a written native version of the word which could be “colonized.” Do you know why? Because the Micmac Indians had no written language. That’s why. They were that primitive. And it amuses me that a culture which appropriated the concept of written language from us now tries to dictate to us how to use that language. Sorry, not sorry. I’m spelling it as Micmac. And if you continue to insist on taking the word and making it Mi’kmaq? Fine. You can take that word back. And I will take back electricity and indoor plumbing and modern medicine and literacy and the wheel.
The worst, though, is when white liberals do this with Islam. It starts, again, with their pronunciation of the word itself. In English, we pronounce it as (IZ-lam). But the pandering white liberal will try to adapt an Arabic accent and pronounce it as (Is-LAHM). It’s subtle, but it’s unmistakable when you hear them do it. And it sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Because it’s such shameless pandering. But they have to outdo each other to show whose most woke. And so they refer to the religion’s founder Mohammed as the Prophet Mohammed. As if he were an actual prophet, and not a schizophrenic, incestuous warlord. And you’ll notice they never extend this respect to any other religion. They never refer to Moses as the Prophet Moses. They never refer to Jesus as Jesus the Messiah.
But with Islam? They trip over one another rushing to fasten the shackles to their own wrists. So let’s get a few things straight. Without apology, I will continue to pronounce every word I speak, regardless of that word’s origin, with an American accent, just as people of other languages will continue to speak their words using their own accents, without anyone trying to guilt trip them for it. Without apology, I will continue to spell every word I write using phonetic English, just as people of other languages will continue to write their words using their own phonetics without anyone trying to guilt trip them for it.
And without apology, I will never refer to Mohammed as a prophet. Because he wasn’t one. He initiated a death cult which rivals only leftist ideology in the amount of sheer human suffering it inflicts wherever it goes. I’m American, and I speak and write based on the culture in which I was raised. I’m proud of that. And because of my cultural self-confidence, I feel no need to insist that strangers halfway across the globe pronounce and write the word “America” the same exact way I do. And if some dime store Islamic thug like Erdogan thinks he has a say in how I speak my language in my country, I’d like to see him try to enforce it.
Hey Erdogan, you know that city you call Istanbul? The proper pronunciation is actually “Constantinople.” And you want us to spell your country as Türkiye? The proper spelling is actually “Byzantium.” You might not be aware of that now.
If Tesla and SpaceX merge, you’ll have AI (Grok), Physical AI (FSD), Robots (Optimus/Cybercab), Energy, Chip Manufacturing, and Rockets all under one umbrella.
RUSSIA HOAX: Obama knew. Clinton knew. Biden knew. Comey knew. Brennan knew. FBI knew.DOJ knew. They all knew Trump was innocent but they smeared and spied on him. Worse than Watergate. Trump is a crime victim pic.twitter.com/0e9DgC86EZ
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Newsmax Thursday night that the Trump administration will announce unprecedented economic measures against Iran next week, signaling that a sharp escalation in economic warfare is just ahead as negotiations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz remain stalled. The warning comes as Tehran-linked Houthi rebel forces resume attacks on Saudi Aramco energy infrastructure, raising concerns that the conflict is spreading geographically and pushing Brent crude futures higher.
Bessent told Rob Schmitt of Newsmax: “And, you know, at the president’s orders, we have raised the level even again, and watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country. And I think the reason we are succeeding is because it is a one-two punch. People say, well, you know, Cuba lasted a long time. Venezuela lasted a long time. Venezuela immediately crumbled when we put the blockade on. So, it will be a combination of economic isolation like the world has never seen before and the continued blockade in the Strait of Hormuz that will keep anything from going in or out of the Iranian ports.”
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced upcoming unprecedented economic measures against Iran amid ongoing blockades of its ports pic.twitter.com/OV3etgd2k0
By the midpoint of this week, we explained that, with US-Iran talks stalled, President Trump was more than likely to “opt for economic siege warfare, as the US military campaign is on hold.” Trump recently told Axios that he is “low-keying it” with Iran. “We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” he said.
Washington has imposed roughly 2,200 sanctions-related designations on Tehran since 2018, according to Jeremy Paner, a partner at Hughes Hubbard & Reed who tracks Iran’s energy industry. The scale of the existing sanctions architecture underscores the challenge facing the Trump administration as it seeks to exert additional leverage on Tehran. “If 47 years of sanctions haven’t broken Tehran’s will, more of the same is unlikely to produce any changes,” according to a Bloomberg Economics report led by Jennifer Welch. She noted that the most likely scenario is that Trump stays on the same path as before, maintaining sanctions and the blockade.
The Trump administration’s accelerated pivot toward economic warfare, rather than renewed strikes on Iran’s missile and drone capabilities along the Hormuz chokepoint or an operation against Kharg Island, likely reflects growing concern over the “perfect storm” developing in refined-products markets. With the global diesel crisis intensifying and crack spreads approaching $100 level, further strikes risk triggering a severe supply shock to the fuel that powers global industries. It would also be a political disaster if gasoline and diesel prices at US pumps soared even higher with just 81 days left until the midterm elections.
“When they are weak, communists and Muslims create seemingly durable pluralist partnerships that they then ruthlessly destroy once they achieve power.”
In revealing the commonalities of the Reds and the Greens in the Red-Green Axis, we have elucidated their shared goals of violence, wealth redistribution, inequality before the law, a binary world, monopoly rule by the elites, controlling the totality of society, and transitional-phase slaughter. Here we explore the game plan to infiltrate society and co-opt its machinery.
Islamic political systems and Marxist-Leninist communism both construct power through organizational methods designed for times when they are still too weak to take over a society. These organizations and alliances present the illusion of pluralism and non-partisanship, building parallel institutions, cadre formation, ideological training, cells, and tactical alliances while the movement lacks the strength to dispense with partners or legal cover.
These methods are not secondary to the ideologies’ goals of acquiring total power. Instead, they are the practical means by which a totalizing doctrine accumulates force independent of the surrounding order’s permission structure.
The founding Islamic case is Medina. Before Muhammad held territory, he built the community through da’wa—invitation and conversion—and by pairing each Meccan emigrant with a Medinan host in bonds of brotherhood that cut across existing tribal lines. The mosque was the organizing center: worship, political assembly, arbitration, and coordination binding recruits to the community before it controlled anyone. In 622, he arrived as an invited arbiter with a small band of refugees, no army, and no economic base.
The Constitution of Medina, preserved in Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah as transmitted by Ibn Hisham, organized the believers as a single community (umma wahida) apart from other people and included Medina’s three Jewish tribes—Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nadir, and Banu Qurayza—under collective obligations for blood-money, ransom, mutual defense, and referral of disputes to God and Muhammad, while stating that the Jews have their religion and the Muslims have theirs. The document created a bounded political body whose internal norms took priority.
Once strength arrived, the provisional Jewish partners were discarded, though not uniformly. In 624, the poet Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf of Banu Nadir, who had incited against Muhammad in verse, was assassinated on his order. The Banu Qaynuqa were expelled that same year, and the Banu Nadir followed in 625. Then, after the Battle of the Trench in 627, the Banu Qurayza were executed according to the traditional account.
Abdullah ibn Ubayy, the Khazraj chief who led Medina’s hypocrites and whose defection of three hundred men cost Muslim lives at Uhud, posed a far graver threat, yet Muhammad declined to kill him, citing the risk of alienating the whole Khazraj tribe. Ibn Ubayy died naturally in 631.
The sources report these outcomes without stating a general rule behind them, but the pattern across the four cases is nonetheless consistent with an instrumental calculation rather than a doctrinal one. That is, eliminate an isolated target and use restraint when the political cost is too high. Within five years, every organized power center in Medina that had not converted was gone.
Several PJ Media writers have commented on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s attempt to put a new suit of clothes on “woke” in order to hide the stench of hate, intolerance, hysteria, and lunacy associated with it. “I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy,'” said Ocasio-Cortez with a laugh during an interview with ABC News host Jonathan Karl recently.
All the lives ruined by idiotic and even false charges of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other avenues used by the left to attack people they disagreed with can never be forgotten. People lost their jobs, their families, and their future employment prospects for being a little too familiar with a female co-worker. (I’m not dismissing rape, assault, or sexual harassment in any way, shape, or form, so don’t even go there.) The fact that almost all of these “targets” were on the right only proves this was a politically motivated movement meant to shut people up and close off debate on critical national issues.David Harsanyi remembers.
“The revolution will be sanitized,” he writes in an op-ed published in the New York Sun. “Yet as I remember it, ‘Woke One’ was a high-tech progressive jihad that relied on intimidation, public shaming, and economic ruin to dictate what words and ideas were permissible in the public square.” Harsanyi recognizes that most thinking adults change “their views as they learn and grow.” I am a different person at age 72 than I was at 25 in 1979. What has changed in me is my storehouse of knowledge, which has expanded exponentially. I am far more informed and cognizant of the issues today than I was back then.Some of my positions have been altered; most have not. Harsanyi believes that if a politician changes their mind about an issue, we are owed an explanation.
Harsanyi: “Only days after Democrats took a beating in the 2024 election, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez removed “she/her” pronouns from her social media accounts, which doesn’t exactly scream of authenticity. So, is using your “preferred pronouns” crazy? Is adopting pronouns that don’t match your “gender assigned at birth” crazy? Is using nonbinary pronouns crazy? Is performing “gender-affirming care,” needless life-altering surgery on confused children that destroys their development, crazy? Is it crazy to let biological males play in girls’ sports? What part was crazy?”:
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was a gung-ho supporter of virtually every ideological element of the past 10 years. “Woke,” she once argued, was nothing more than a term pundits used as a “derogatory euphemism” for “civil rights” and progressive notions of “justice.” Does Ms. Ocasio-Cortez now oppose DEI initiatives and racial quotas? Does she support Black Lives Matter, a movement that sparked the most expensive and prolonged domestic destruction in American history, including looting, rioting, arson, and homicide? BLM is an objectively racist movement that judges people on color rather than achievement. Is that crazy?
They're really gonna just shrug, giggle, and say, "Gosh, wasn't ruining your life quirky of us? Teehee!" https://t.co/Mnf0SihdPQ
So many questions, so few answers forthcoming. I feel fairly confident that major media won’t be asking any of those questions, accepting her “woke was crazy” explanation and taking it at face value, and will do everything in their power to elect this radical nitwit the next president of the United States. Does she denounce the “Green New Deal” that she toured the country trying to sell? Following the introduction of the Green New Deal resolution in February 2019, AOC headlined and participated in multi-city tours to build public and political support for the proposal.
Organized by the youth-led climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement, this nationwide campaign featured over 250 town halls and events across the country. AOC served as one of the primary headline speakers at major stops alongside allies like Sen. Ed Markey and Sen. Bernie Sanders. In the years following, she continued to headline national tours, town halls, and advocacy pushes organized by progressive and environmental networks (such as the Green New Deal Network) to promote federal climate investment, job creation, and environmental justice policies. What was the “Green New Deal?” ”
Let’s not forget, Ocasio-Cortez hatched a “social justice” environmental policy that not only called for the elimination of all fossil fuel energy production by 2029 but also for replacing every “combustion-engine vehicle” — trucks, airplanes, boats and 99 percent of cars — in America. Her Green New Deal would have compelled us to “retrofit every building in America” and build “high-speed rail at a scale” that would eliminate all air travel. The plan offered government-guaranteed “family-sustaining wage, family and medical leave, vacations, and a pension,” “safe, affordable, adequate housing,” and “economic security” for all who are “unable or unwilling” to work.
I’m not sure if that’s Woke One — but it’s definitely crazy. If Ms. Ocasio-Cortez abandons the ideas she championed to deal with an alleged crisis that could destroy the Earth in 10 years, now three years and counting, what does that say about her ability to evaluate crises and offer practical solutions moving forward?”
That was like, far-out hippie crazy, amiright? For me, the bat-guano crazy policy ideas are just noise. It’s the ruined lives, the people whom woke broke and discarded for the most minor of indiscretions or transgressions, that stand out. In retrospect, it was eerily reminiscent of the Soviet Union show trials of dissidents, where the unlucky soul had to stand in the dock and endure wildly exaggerated lies, insults, and “testimony” that had little to do with the truth. If they were lucky, they were sent to the gulags in Siberia for 10 years. If not, they ended up an uncounted statistic of Communism’s inhumanity in the name of “social justice.”
As most commenters have suggested, “Woke 2.0” won’t be much different from “Woke 1.0,” except that, given where the Democratic Party is today compared to a decade ago, Woke 2.0 will be far more radical. Josh Kraushaar of Jewish Insider believes that Woke 2.0 will be far more openly antisemitic. “By focusing on a foreign policy issue that is less impactful to many Americans than the economy or crime, they’re hoping they won’t suffer as much backlash as they did when they alienated a broad swath of the electorate with outside-the-mainstream proposals that affected people’s day-to-day lives,” he writes.
“When AOC is talking about the latest iteration of woke, this is what she’s referring to,” Kraushaar adds. “Bashing Israel and a tolerance for antisemitism wasn’t really part of the woke equation in the first iteration of the left’s social justice activism. It’s now a litmus test in this new era, with major implications for American Jews.” And major implications for the rest of us.
“The left are incompetent biotrash who purge everyone too attractive, too capable or too intelligent to uncritically accept their retarded worldview.” —Aimee Terese on “X”
The Jihad for Lunch Bunch Sends Greetings to Infidel America
And so, all of a sudden, having failed to subvert or assassinate the president they abhor, and foil his attempt to repair our country, the combined forces of the Democratic Party, the seditious news media, and a traitorous government bureaucracy resort to communist jihad in their crusade to wreck the USA. That’s a great combo, all right: history’s worst system for managing human affairs paired with a cult of bloodthirsty conquest. They’d decapitate the Beach Boys singing Fun, Fun, Fun if they could time-travel back to 1964, and stuff anyone who objected into a gulag.
There’s a sort of last-gasp feeling about all this. Michigan Senate candidate Abdulrahman el Sayed put it nicely the other day when he said of his opponents, “When they go low, we go lower.” True dat. And you can see where things go from here: election clean-up comes on no matter what, SAVE Act or not, probably via a comprehensive PDJT National Security Executive Order yet to be declared. There’s already a fair chance that SCOTUS will clear the way for the US Postal Service to regulate “uniform standards” for the distribution of mail-in ballots (from a March, 2026 previous exec order #15399 — “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.”
Cue the communist jihadis to stage street-actions (a.k.a. “riots”) this fall in their captive cities and states. Since they can’t win elections without massive fraud, they will opt to do whatever is necessary to make the election impossible, and chaos is their go-to tactic in this contest of wills. The catch is, the communist jihadis are still a very small demographic. The president is not going to allow a replay of the savage and ridiculous 2020 BLM riots. This time around, they get briskly squashed.
If the big red states like California, New York, and Illinois try something funny, like refusing to open polling places and allow the election to happen, then you will see Gavin Newsom, Kathy Hochul, and JB Pritzker marched straight into jail. The USA will temporarily become FAFO-land. The Communist Control Act of 1954 (50 U.S.C. §§ 841–844) is still on-the-books. It defines the Communist Party (or a party that quacks like one) to be “an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States.”
The scene begins to look like a civil war or a state of siege, constraining the president to use the military to enforce civil order where the civil authorities have failed, demurred, or revolted. It would be extraordinary and nauseating, but arguably necessary to purge the extreme political illness that holds the nation in thrall. This disease has been allowed to worsen and rage for ten years. We are good and goddam sick of it.
As for Jihad, the first amendment prohibits religious persecution, of course, but under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, (8 U.S.C. § 1189) the State Department can designate political groups as “foreign terrorist organizations.” Nominees for that might be: the Muslim Brotherhood and any of its offshoots, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Muslim Students Association (MSA / MSA National), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), and others, if their spokespeople have called for the establishment of Sharia law, or advocated jihad for the purpose of capturing territory here in the USA.
While the aforesaid so-far-hypothetical events spool out around the election, something else pretty big will probably get underway this fall: the long-awaited commencement of prosecutions against former government officials (and perhaps some current ones) for their parts in the ten-year-long coup against the two-term president Donald Trump, as well as the criminal operations conducted under the sham president “Joe Biden” between those two terms.
That would have to include Dr. Anthony Fauci — with his active criminal referral already in-process at DOJ — and many of his colleagues at the public health agencies who perpetrated the Covid op. New scandalous details about it emerge from Dr. Fauci’s captured communications from the period 2020 to 2025. This week you learned that he hid crucial facts from the public about the Covid vaccine causing an alarming rate of miscarriage among pregnant women who received the shots. It’s right there, in black and white, in his texts and emails between himself and former CDC director Rochelle Walensky.
It’s also interesting to see that former FBI director Christopher Wray is coming back on the radar screen after lying low for eighteen months. You know he was involved in almost every aspect of the ten-year-long coup. He took a hand-off of the RussiaGate baton from James Comey in May of 2017 and ran with it through a dozen related ops including the FISA abuses, the Steele Dossier, Lawfare against Trump appointees (the abuse of Rudy Giuliani and others), fake impeachment # 1, the Jan. 6 capitol riot, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and much more. He probably lied to Congress a dozen times. You have to wonder how many trips he has been summoned to make to the grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida. No leaks from down there. . . everything is sealed.
So, while the summer breeze still wafts over the barbeque in the briny air, and an unnerving stillness persists, forces are moving and roiling under the surface. Enjoy at least the appearance of calm seas while you can because it’s going to roughen up in the weeks ahead.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has struggled to pander to the mob to secure power in the midterm elections, including brandishing a baseball bat on social media to show his radical bona fides. With Democratic Socialists chanting “you’re next” when seeing Jeffries, he continues to struggle to stay in front of the mob. This week, he doubled down on his pledge to throw the Supreme Court to the mob if they make him the next Speaker of the House of Representatives.
After the recent gains by far-left candidates in states like Minnesota and the near victory of Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong in Wisconsin, Jeffries came out to reaffirm his intent to radically change the highest court. According to the Washington Times, Jeffries declared, “There’s a variety of different options that are on the table, and I think that we can’t foreclose any single one of them.” He added that the “conservative, right-wing majority on the Supreme Court has become basically a subsidiary of the MAGA Republican Party.”
He promised to make far-left Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) the driving force behind changing the Court, including possible 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and expanding the Court to create an instant liberal majority. Notably, none of these figures were claiming that the Court was fundamentally flawed until it ruled against them, particularly in cases that impacted their political power such as declaring racial gerrymandering to be unconstitutional.
What is interesting is that the liberal justices reject this narrative, reminding citizens that the Court has delivered major losses to the Trump Administration. Indeed, President Trump has routinely attacked conservative justices for ruling against him and his Administration. In addition, polls show that the majority of the public supports virtually all of the recent major rulings, including the ban on racial gerrymandering. It is only the Democrats who oppose those rulings and are now demanding a hostile takeover of the Court.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has called for packing the Court because it does not follow her views and those of “widely held public opinion.” I have pushed back on that rationale, given the Court’s function as a countermajoritarian institution. However, this poll even challenges the flawed rationale for court packing. So Jeffries is promising that the work of James Madison will be undone by the likes of Jamie Raskin and Elizabeth Warren. To have these calls on our 250th anniversary is crushingly ironic. Other leading Democrats have lined up to pledge to fundamentally change the Court, which has played a key role in making this the oldest and most stable republic in history.
It is simply about power. Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder has put packing the Supreme Court front and center, explaining, “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”
I have called it the Nike School of Constitutional Law. Democratic leaders are pledging to “just do it” to appease the mob. Of course, some of these measures would be challenged if done without constitutional amendment. The Supreme Court would then have to rule on the effort to pack or limit its members. The expansion can be done by legislative vote. Although most Americans oppose court packing, Democrats view control of the Court as essential to pushing through a radical agenda to change the political system to their advantage.
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. In Federalist 10, Madison discussed the destructive impact of factions in forcing through opportunistic changes to advance their interests:
“By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” We are witnessing the same factional politics being pushed by leaders who believe that they can ride a rage wave into power. They have a greater likelihood of causing lasting damage to our system than guaranteeing their own lasting power. History is not on their side. Today’s revolutionaries are often tomorrow’s reactionaries in an age of rage.
Britain’s streets are rotting in plain sight. Road signs coated in years of grime, pavements choked with weeds, blocked drains, overflowing bins and potholes have become everyday features of life in what was once a first-world country. Local authorities, funded by rising council tax, routinely fail to deliver the most basic maintenance. Ordinary people – including schoolchildren – are now having to do the job themselves. All across the length and breadth of the country, from London squares to provincial roads, citizens are cleaning signs, restoring bins and clearing litter because the people paid to do it will not.
The pattern is unmistakable: a country in visible decline, where the basics are abandoned while public money flows to ideologically driven schemes. James Melville has documented the decay repeatedly. Rubbish everywhere, weeds forcing their way through pavements, endless potholes, blocked road drains and filthy signposts appear in image after image. He notes that people are paying higher taxes yet receiving less, with local councils failing on core infrastructure.
Another recent video shows conditions that simply do not belong in a first-world nation, asking whether the decline is reversible. Another focuses on a council that has left basic service standards unmet. Volunteers have stepped into the gap, proving that all it takes is a step ladder, cleaning spray and sponge to make filthy almost illegible road signs clear again.
Today with heavy rain all day I decided to go clean this road sign. Being wet with rain made cleaning much easier up a step ladder. Looks much better now pic.twitter.com/ihJisJJSpT
This would seem like a no-brainer, but multiple nations are so dependent on abusing the de minimis process the multinationals actually sued the United States for eliminating the $800 de minimis tariff exception. On August 29, 2025, the U.S. government eliminated the de minimis threshold for all countries via Executive Order 14324, making the rule apply regardless of origin. Chinese companies like Shein and Temu are subject to paying import taxes to ship cheap products into the USA.
Truth Social – BIG WIN today at the U.S. Court of International Trade on one of the most DESPICABLE loopholes in American Trade Policy — The so-called “de minimis” exemption.
For years, Foreign Shippers could send packages worth up to $800 into our Country, DUTY FREE, NO TARIFF, far less scrutiny. It became a giant loophole for TARIFF Cheats — and a Pipeline exploited by Fentanyl Traffickers, Counterfeiters, and other Criminals shipping dangerous and illegal products into America. The numbers were staggering. In 2024 alone, de minimis cost America an estimated 10.8 BILLION DOLLRS in foregone TARIFF Revenue, and an astonishing share of narcotics and counterfeit seizures came through the de minimis channel. So, we CLOSED IT. With the stroke of my mighty pen — NO AUTOPEN!!! — we ended this ridiculous giveaway, and made Foreign Goods play by the rules. The Importers sued. Today, THEY LOST. The Court ruled that the President had the Legal Authority to rescind this so-called “privilege.”
America is now SAFER, our Workers are better protected, and BILLIONS in TARIFF Revenue that used to slip through this loophole can instead help pay for our Great Military, Tax Relief, NO TAX ON TIPS, and NO TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY. AMERICA FIRST TRADE — AND AMERICA FIRST LAW ENFORCEMENT!
“Sergey Lavrov stressed that Moscow will not stoop to Kiev’s methods but will take much tougher measures to destroy everything that fuels the Ukrainian military machine from the West”
Russia has said they will use nukes if that is needed to defend themselves. Nobody has more or better nukes than they do.
The Ukraine conflict cannot stop along the line of contact as this would erase the feat of the fathers and grandfathers who defeated Nazism, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Vesti. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to again meet with US President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and businessman Jared Kushner. The question is what proposals they would bring to the Kremlin. Lavrov also said Moscow had asked the US State Department to comment on reports of Washington’s involvement in strikes by the Kiev regime on civilian targets deep within Russian territory. TASS has compiled the foreign minister’s key remarks.
Witkoff and Kushner’s visit
Putin is ready to meet Witkoff and Kushner again. The question is what proposals they would bring to the Kremlin: “If they have been given such trust then they have influence on Trump and he trusts them. We are not refusing to talk to them. If they come they know that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to meet them again. The question is what they will come with.”
Kiev’s terrorist attacks
The Kiev regime “boasts proudly” about terrorist attacks against Russian civilians: “After each such terrorist attack, regime representatives proudly boast on social media and other platforms about how ‘great’ the strikes were, hitting a beach, a dormitory for future teachers and other purely civilian facilities.”
Ways to settle the Ukraine conflict
The conflict in Ukraine cannot be halted along the line of contact as this would “erase the feat of our fathers and grandfathers” who defeated Nazism: “This cannot be considered. It is not about anyone’s comfort today. Our people are suffering and dying in these terrorist attacks. It is about our responsibility for Russia’s thousand-year history.”
Moscow will not stoop to Kiev’s methods but will take much tougher measures to destroy everything that fuels the Ukrainian military machine from the West: “We will not stoop to Kiev’s methods, but we will toughen our own measures to dismantle everything the West uses to sustain its military machine. We are already doing so, and they are beginning to feel the pressure.” More and more voices from across the region are “calling for an immediate halt”: “That will not be an option. We need to stop only once there is a long-term, reliable and sustainable settlement.”
Resurgence of Nazism in Europe
“Metastases of Nazism” are appearing in German society under Chancellor Friedrich Merz who openly speaks of the need to make Germany Europe’s leading military power again: “Does he understand what the word ‘again’ means in this case? I am not sure.” The European Union has portrayed itself as the “Fourth Reich” and is blackmailing Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic by exploiting his commitment to European integration: “The pressure is brazen and outrageous. They act as if they are already the ‘Fourth Reich.'”
US role in the Ukrainian conflict
Moscow has asked the US State Department to comment on reports of Washington’s involvement in Kiev regime strikes on civilian targets deep inside Russian territory: “We sent a number of questions to the State Department asking it to comment including on intelligence data and on the fact that the US is much more strongly involved in organizing and carrying out strikes deep inside the Russian Federation against civilian targets. We will await a response.”
Moscow “is not giving ultimatums” to Washington.
The West’s silence
The public silence of countries whose interests were affected by Kiev regime attacks on the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) is telling: “When we asked if they would tolerate this, they (the countries whose interests were affected – TASS) said no and said they were sending signals to Kiev. Apparently, US Vice President JD Vance sent a signal to Vladimir Zelensky over the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. The Turkish officials also told us they had urged the Ukrainians not to target the consortium. But everyone is silent publicly. That is telling.”
In response to these appeals the Zelensky regime did not promise to stop the attacks: “He promised to stop attacks on vessels that have nothing to do with the Russian Federation. Apparently, that explanation was considered acceptable.”
Turkey’s interest in Black Sea stability
Turkey is genuinely interested in ensuring stability in the Black Sea: “Turkey wants to be a NATO member with the bloc’s largest army and maintain ties with the European Union. At the same time, deep down Ankara understands that it will never be admitted to the EU. It wants good relations with Russia because we have many economic projects and much in common in our history: the Caucasus and the Black Sea. Turkey is genuinely interested in keeping the Black Sea stable.”
Relations with Serbia
EU representatives promise Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic that they will reduce his country’s long wait to join the European Union and speed up accession talks in return for recognizing Kosovo’s independence and joining sanctions against Russia: “Vucic has bravely withstood this pressure for years.”
Russia would like to hear Serbia’s reaction to comments by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung correspondent Michael Martens about the killing of Russians: “I saw that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic was simply stunned. Of course, we would like to hear some reaction from our Serbian friends given their enormous contribution to the victory over Nazism.”
Anthony Fauci is now facing intense scrutiny. His diaries, emails, and testimony have raised fundamental questions about what he knew, what he then told the public, and how he exercised authority during the pandemic. Many outside of academia read these documents and view this moment as his fall from grace, while universities and medical institutions seem willing to ignore this new evidence and continue to celebrate Fauci as a heroic public servant with unmatched scientific authority.
Academics’ unconventional viewpoint cannot be ignored. Fauci matters not only because of his individual conduct, but because he exposes the institutions that produced, empowered, and continue to protect him—Georgetown rewarded him with a prestigious position after he retired from the government in his 80s.
The pandemic did not create the dysfunction inside biomedical science. It placed a magnifying glass over science institutions that had been decaying for decades. Grant politics, unfounded hype, administrative expansion, scientific gerontocracy, institutional self-protection, and the punishment of dissent were already pervasive. Fauci enabled the public to watch those forces operate through one person on television every day. Biomedical institutions did not create a single Fauci. They created thousands. The pandemic spotlight simply made one of them famous.
What the diaries reveal
Fauci’s diaries offer an unusually revealing account of how he understood his role during the pandemic. Written as notes toward a future autobiography, they show what he considered important enough to preserve about those years.The diaries undermine the mythology of a reluctant scientist who was unexpectedly thrust into politics and celebrity. They reveal a bureaucrat celebrity preoccupied with attention, status, prominent relationships, TV appearances, reputation, his own place in history, and cash money.
His interest in how he was portrayed, whom he met, who praised him, and how his public image was developing consumes far more attention than any serious engagement with the complex science of COVID-19 and the pandemic. The office shrine, the concern with his portrait, the meticulous record of his fame, and the diary itself as material for an autobiography all expose the same fixation.
Those self-curated notes reveal his priorities. Science is less as an intellectual pursuit than as the credential supporting the public performance. The related emails and documents complete the picture. Fauci sought nominations for cash prizes from influential friends and used federal employees to help him win those awards. These awards were then presented publicly as independent acknowledgments of merit.
One of the most important revelations in the new documents was the distance between private uncertainty and public certainty. Fauci and those around him privately discussed scientific possibilities that they publicly dismissed and even attacked as conspiracies. The authors of the Proximal Origin paper privately assigned a laboratory origin for the COVID pandemic as a substantial probability, then helped present that possibility to the public as impossible.
The same pattern appeared in pronouncements about masking, vaccine transmission, and other major pandemic questions. The issue is not hindsight. The issue is presenting uncertain claims as settled truth while privately recognizing that the evidence was unresolved.
Authority substituted for scientific judgement
Fauci projected an image of authority, and for too many, image alone was sufficient. His title, confidence, and media presence substituted for careful engagement with data.. Masking, for example, involved questions of aerosol physics, fluid mechanics, particle size, droplet formation, airflow, filtration, leakage, and fit. These are concrete scientific and engineering questions. But Fauci’s own diary finds that he showed no interest in working through the scientific complexity before making definitive public pronouncements.
We can read in his own words that Fauci approached scientific disagreement more like a party in an adversarial legal proceeding than a scientist. Once an institutional position had been adopted, contrary evidence became an obstacle and dissenting scientists became opponents to defeat. The objective shifted from determining what was true to defending political ground and preserving authority.
This is the opposite of a scientific temperament. A good scientist is skeptical, including of his own conclusions. He is comfortable acknowledging uncertainty and may spend days thinking privately through a problem. He does not need a camera, a slogan, or the appearance of omniscience. Fauci illustrates the difference between projecting authority and possessing a curious, scientific mind.
Scientific credentialism
Fauci majored in classics before earning an MD when medical education was driven by rote memorization and provided little formal preparation for scientific research. His degree was a clinical credential to treat sick people, not a degree for lab research. When he entered laboratory research, molecular immunology was not yet a developed science and when academic physicians could obtain laboratory directorships early in their careers. He then became an NIH administrator at a relatively young age.
The issue is not that he began his career before modern technologies existed. Every older scientist did. The relevant question is whether an aging scientist continues learning, adapting, and making discoveries as the field develops. The best scientists remain intellectually active later in life because they master new technologies and continue challenging themselves and their own field. Unfortunately, too many establish their careers by being in the right place at the right time, then coast for another twenty or thirty years through networks that make adaptation unnecessary.
By the time the pandemic arrived, Fauci had spent decades as a bureaucrat, dealing with budgets and manuevering through arcane government policies—far removed from frontline science. Nothing in that history made him a universal authority on masking, vaccine transmission, population epidemiology, viral evolution, or every other field on which he pronounced. His real expertise was navigating institutions, consolidating authority, cultivating relationships, and projecting the image of a scientist to the public.
Jack Fowler: I think we should leave [Dr. Anthony] Fauci. The news stories that have come out the last few days of some of his text messages and phone records. And only 11, I think only 11 messages have been released by Rand Paul and Ron Johnson. They’re very troubling about the Moderna vaccine for pregnant women. This seems like a big stinking lie there. But I’m sure more information will come out in the next day or two, and I would hope that you, Victor, and the great Sami Winc would take that on as more information comes out.
Jay Bhattacharya is just one of the greatest guys, as you know, and he is running the National Institutes of Health. And he went on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, and Margaret Brennan, who is the host of the show, tried to essentially make him a stand-in for the right wing responsible for a murder that happened a year ago. And he’s such a good man. His studies early on about what COVID was really happening, of course, were rejected. And he was vilified by Fauci, as you know, and many people at Stanford, actually. But anyway, what’s your thought, Victor, of that performance, more so on Margaret Brennan and the media and—
Victor Davis Hanson: She’s not very bright. I think JD Vance, that was another one of her victims that he eviscerated. You know what I mean, when she was a moderator. It was either him or [President Donald] Trump. She’s pathetic. And the idea that, of all the people who work in the Trump administration, there’s not a more magnanimous, kinder person than Jay. He’s soft-spoken. He’s polite. He’s very principled. And his crime was, very early on, along with [Martin] Kulldorff and Dr. [Sunetra] Gupta from Oxford, they just said, as Scott Atlas was doing from the inside, they were doing from the outside, the Great Barrington Declaration.
And all he was trying to say, and Margaret Brennan did not want to bring that up or defend the opposite Fauci view, is three or four things. The vaccinations may have initial value for people who are immunocompromised or are elderly, but they do not stop being infectious or being infected, and we should keep that in mind in a cost-benefit analysis. And keeping all of these children out of school for two years will ruin the education system and have lasting damage to it and to the students.
Three, we’re gonna destroy a lot of small businesses, entrepreneurial families. We’re gonna increase child abuse cooped up in apartments, spousal abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse. There’s going to be … We have told the American people they need to get a breast exam every four years, a PSA every year, a colonoscopy. These are not gonna take place, and people are gonna die at a higher rate from cancer and heart problems because of this, and they laid it all out.
And Fauci called them The Three Stooges. That was what he said. These are The Three Stooges. And then he tried to vilify them because he knew in his dark heart that he had transferred money to break U.S. law that said no gain-of-function research was allowed in the United States. I should say to skirt it by surreptitiously funding it in China on the stupid idea that they would share the results with Fauci. And then a whole league of co-conspirator scientists were either going and visiting there or giving them instrumentation or expertise remotely.
And so, he had helped birth this monster, and yet a lot of his efforts were to suppress it. You know, [Robert] Redfield, the head of the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], is on TV now almost every day, and he’s basically … And he’s no left-winger. I mean, he’s basically saying no one was closer to Anthony Fauci. And they say, “Well, what happened?” He said, “Well, he had some involvement with gain-of-function research, and he was wedded to the idea that he would say and do anything to get people vaccinated, and that caused calamity and death.”
He said that, essentially. You know, Jay was treated terribly by Stanford University, and it was kind of strange that at the time this thing broke out, you could argue that the three most prominent scientists, doctors, medical public health experts in the entire United States were right at Stanford University. There was Jay Bhattacharya, whose publication record was sterling. I’ll enlarge that. I’ll say four. And he was issuing warnings not to shut down the economy. Then there was Scott Atlas, who was writing the same thing, but in greater scientific depth in some cases, and talking about it from a public policy point of view.
And they were both talking about natural immunity. And they never said, “Don’t take the vaccinations.” They said, “You make that choice, not a mandated government choice, based on the information that you must have, that we have, in a cost-benefit analysis.” And then there was John Ioannidis, and he was the one that broke wide open the Theranos scam that you could get a drop of blood and suddenly test for, like, 17, 20, 50 maladies. That whole $8 billion fiasco, which a lot of my colleagues were on the board of, unfortunately. And he did that. And he wrote from the very beginning that this is more like the flu than Ebola, basically.
And then there was Michael Levitt, I think that’s his first name, and he was a Nobel Prize-winning biologist. And he looked at the data, and he said very early on, “This has to be lab-orientated.” And then there was the former Stanford professor. Now, I think he’ll probably, I think, I don’t know if it’s announced, but Redfield said it the other day, so I don’t feel reluctant to say it, that he’s gonna be Fauci’s replacement. We’ve had him on the show. And he said from the very beginning, based on the scientific examination of the genomes and everything, that this could not be naturally created in the wilderness, so to speak. It had to be concocted.
Those four people, especially the first three— Fowler: Steven Quay, by the way. You didn’t mention his name. So, Steven Quay. Hanson: Yeah, Steven Quay, a former Stanford professor, and he had created gadolinium, the dye in the MRI, while he was a professor and researcher. But the thing I’m getting at is, you had right on the campus Bhattacharya, Atlas, Ioannidis, right there, three of them. And they were at the forefront of the opposition to Fauci. And they were very different. Sometimes Scott was a lot more outspoken. Jay was more soft-spoken. They were very complementary. They got along wonderfully.
But what was the reaction of the university to all of them? They went after Scott because he was courageous and actually joined the Trump administration as their COVID czar and fought relentlessly with [Deborah] Birx and Fauci. And they censored him. And then, when they found the evidence, they were so embarrassed that when there was a motion to rescind the censure, they wouldn’t do it, the faculty. They hated him so much. And Jay, they ostracized, ostracized. I was at a meeting once when he was discussed, and I won’t discuss what happened, but it was the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen.
And Ioannidis, he had been Stanford’s prize catch, came from Greece. He was one of the best immunologists, public policy people, and epidemiologists there was, and all of a sudden they were saying that he was second-rate. And they’ve never apologized to them.
"Starlink will actually move the GDP of countries. Internet connectivity might be certainly a candidate for one of the things that would do more to lift people out of poverty than anything else."
Dr. Luc Montagnier, Nobel Laureate, final interview before being FOUND DEAD 6 days later.
"I am here to expose Fauci's gain-of-function – COVID was the job of a professional…it's NOT natural. Sequences like HIV have been added…in order to make a vaccine." pic.twitter.com/zwV1xHoFbg
— Teddy – PolyBackTest.com (@Bitcoin_Teddy) August 9, 2026
I start to wonder what at least some folk at Zero Hedge are thinking.
Trump Finally Responds? Belatedly? What, Iran now should decide when Trump speaks?
This has been going since March! For all I know, “finally” is still too soon.
The US has wrapped itself around Iran like a boa constrictor. And now it slowly squeezes.
President Trump on Monday has very belatedly responded to the Iranians after they issued new demands over the weekend, or conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, after declaring a ban on all US and Israeli-linked vessels. Noting that the Iranians are now asking for war compensation, Trump is seeking to turn it around and now demands compensation from Iran “for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts, for which they are famous…”. He also asserted that American families of fallen soldiers should be paid.
Interestingly and tellingly, unlike many prior Truth Social posts related to Iran, Trump did not issue any new threats or ultimatums saying what he will ‘do’ to the country if it doesn’t comply. This perhaps reveals he’s out of answers or new strategy, and doesn’t wish to escalate militarily. The statement comes on the heels of the president telling Axios on Sunday that the US is now “low-keying” it and primarily turning back to prolonged economic warfare to strangle the Iranian economy.
Trump “Low-Keying It” As Iran Doubles Down on Demands
After President Trump said Sunday that the US is now “low-keying it” with Iran and only “semi-negotiating” following a top Iranian security official having laid out multiple stringent conditions for the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, oil is edging higher on Monday.
“We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” Trump told Axios reporter Barak Ravid in comments we analyzed earlier, signaling his return to an economic warfare focus. President Trump has fewer and fewer options and is being squeezed, with any opportunity to declare ‘victory’ and make swift exit more elusive than ever, given Washington would have to make huge compromises, including lifting sanctions and paying war compensation to Tehran.
“The Supreme National Security Council will not retreat from these demands, whether in war or in negotiations,” the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr has said, in effect doubling down, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.
One day, the United States seems ready to unleash a Curtis LeMay-style devastating bombing campaign of Iran. The next, it appears trapped in endless haggling with Iranian dissimulators. Of the roughly 150 days since the first strike, about 90 have passed without major military operations. Iran believes time is on its side. The Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted, gas prices are too high, and antiwar House Democrats seem poised to win the midterms and bring Trump’s war to a halt.] Trump, by contrast, believes Iran can talk all it wants while sanctions, embargoes, and military pressure steadily weaken the regime.
The war has become so politicized in an election year that several basic realities have gone largely unnoticed by the media. First, the cycle of bombing, pausing, negotiating, and bombing again may seem endless. But the confusion obscures the continuing effects of the embargoes, sanctions, blockade, and financial isolation imposed on Iran. Together, they are costing the theocracy more than $400 million a day in lost revenue, money that it can ill afford to lose. By haggling, Iran believes it can run out the clock until the midterms, but it may be only prolonging its own miserable situation.
Second, so far the bombing has not descended into a ground war. There are no embedded reporters and few Western journalists in Iran. So the world knows little about the true extent of the damage to the Iranian regime and its military-industrial-nuclear complex.Nor do we know the mood of the once-restive Iranian street. But whether or not there are future allied military attacks, tensions will only increase as Iran runs out of money and basic goods. Whatever the outcome of negotiations or further combat operations, the Iranian military and economy have already been wrecked and will take years to rebuild.
Third, however the war ends, Iran will remain at a terrible disadvantage for years in dealing with the neighbors it has so gratuitously attacked. The regime currently has no effective combat aircraft or air defenses—and no allies. In contrast, the Gulf states can field more than 700 combat aircraft, including F-15s, F-16s, F/A-18s, Rafales, Mirages, and Tornados. Israel has another 300, including late-model F-35s, F-16s, and F-15s. U.S. bases in the Middle East are home to some 300 more, including F-22s, F-35s, F-18s, F-16s, and F-15s—not counting carrier-based aircraft. In sum, the United States and its allies have some 1,300 late-model combat aircraft in the region. They should therefore be able to hit Iran hard for years to come if it resumes drone and missile attacks against its rivals.
Fourth, Iran’s problems will not end when the United States declares victory and sends most of its forces home. The regime has lost a half-century and half a trillion dollars in military and nuclear investment. Until the United States lifts its sanctions and embargoes, Iran cannot rearm. And if it eventually does rearm and again tries to supply its Arab terrorist clients in its “ring of fire” around Israel, its destitute people will grow furious at a disgraced and humiliated regime for diverting the nation’s wealth abroad.
Fifth, several unforeseen developments ahead of the impending midterms—more favorable gerrymandering in red states than in blue ones, the Supreme Court’s ruling against racial redistricting, a substantial Republican fundraising advantage, and the capture of the Democratic Party by near-lunatic radical socialists—may offer Republicans a narrow path to retaining control of Congress. That possibility has added urgency to the administration’s choice: negotiate one final time or use overwhelming force to inflict still greater damage on the Iranian economy.
Sixth, air supremacy and the normal rotation of U.S. naval forces through the Middle East, together with help from the Gulf states and naval contingents from European and Asian oil-importing nations, could keep the strait open if they decide to do so. And they may need to do so for only another year or two, by which time the strait may become far less important to oil exports.
Iran’s efforts to close the strait have already accelerated the expansion of existing pipelines and the construction of new ones that will bypass the strait and connect the oil fields directly to the Gulf of Oman, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean.
Bottom line?
Iran is losing whether it is being bombed, sanctioned, or embargoed—or all three. Its ultimate fate now rests with the Trump administration, which apparently has not yet decided what, exactly, that fate is.
“.. It relies on identifying exactly where a massive structure is already under unbearable strain, then applying one small, precisely placed charge to a load-bearing point..”
Hanson correctly points out that Hormuz may only need about a year, maybe two, of continued naval support before other avenues of oil delivery come fully online and existing pipelines finish their expansion, bypassing whatever leverage Iran imagines it still holds over the strait. In Hanson’s own words: Iran’s blockade attempts have “already accelerated the expansion of existing pipelines and the construction of new ones that will bypass the strait and connect the oil fields directly to the Gulf of Oman, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean.”
Read that twice. Iran tried to weaponize a chokepoint, and the practical result is the rest of the region building its way around that chokepoint, permanently. That’s not a threat Iran is managing. That’s a threat Iran is actively engineering itself out of, even if it steadfastly refuses to see it. “Iran is losing whether it is being bombed, sanctioned, or embargoed—or all three.” Its ultimate fate, he adds, now rests entirely with an administration that hasn’t yet decided exactly how far to push the advantage it’s already sitting on.
I said the same thing a few days ago with prose that I unashamedly admit had less horsepower behind it. Glad to see a man who’s spent a career studying how wars actually end backing the math up. In short, “See, I told ya so.” One more thing worth adding, since it came up in the comments on my original piece, and I think it’s worth pulling into this column instead of leaving it buried down there. A reader’s exchange got me thinking about the 1978 war film Force 10 From Navarone, and I’d suggest it’s a better model for what Trump’s actually doing than anyone’s given him credit for.
Without spoiling the whole plot for anyone who hasn’t seen it: The mission at the center of that film doesn’t rely on brute-force demolition. It relies on identifying exactly where a massive structure is already under unbearable strain, then applying one small, precisely placed charge to a load-bearing point — letting the structure’s own weight finish the job the explosives merely started. That’s the strategy playing out against Iran right now, whether the administration ever says so out loud or not. Much as it would make some folks feel good to crush the mullahs instantly. Much as a formal surrender with all the trimmings would be desirable, the fact is, it’s simply superfluous.
In the simplest of terms, you don’t need to flatten a regime that’s already buckling under half a trillion dollars in squandered investment, a devastated air force, a strait it can’t actually hold closed, and $400 million a day bleeding out of its own treasury. You just need to find the load-bearing point and apply pressure precisely there. The conditions for collapse are already built into the structure. The small explosion — a strike here, a sanction there, an embargo tightened at exactly the right moment — is just the trigger. Everything after that is physics, and time, not politics. You just need to sit back and await developments.
So, as I said a couple days ago, Trump has already won.
Talks between Iran and Oman on the reopening of Hormuz are reportedly inching ahead, as Iran continues to give the US the silent treatment. Negotiators said that a deal to establish a safe shipping route was close, but Iran may now be exploring just how much it can extract from the US in return. Last week, Iran had already said that any deal with Oman would be contingent on the US lifting its blockade of Iranian ports. On Friday, a US official told Reuters that the administration agreed to this. The US blockade would end once a deal is announced that “restores commercial shipping without impediments.”
But give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. Tehran added new demands over the weekend, saying that the Strait of Hormuz will not reopen unless the US meets “a number of requirements.” These demands largely seem to refer to the original memorandum of understanding. Iran’s additional demands include the US ending all hostilities and withdrawing its troops from the area. Iran also wants Washington to pay billions in war damages and lift sanctions on the country.
Or do the additional demands reflect division between Iranian camps, and varying levels of distrust of the US? The strait remains a key point of geopolitical leverage – at least until planned alternatives for oil exports are all fully operational. Meanwhile, the US president appears to be divided on the war as well. The Wall Street Journal reported this weekend that Trump had been willing to walk away without any agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme, claiming victory if the strait reopens. However, Iran’s additional demands may have torpedoed that plan.
Netanyahu rejecting the Board of Peace plan for Gaza is a further complicating factor. The Israeli prime minister indicated that he will not withdraw troops until Hamas fully disarms.So, yesterday, Trump told Axios that he was “low-keying it,” waiting for the economic damage to build: “We are only semi-negotiating. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.” Yet, the longer this persists, the more economic damage could build in the US and other parts of the world as well.
Energy markets started the week off cautiously after all this. Brent futures are marginally higher, but traders seem reluctant to take big positions given all this on-again, off-again news. Equity markets seem to have shrugged off the weekend news flow entirely, perhaps partly aided by US economic data. Following Friday’s employment report, the case for a Fed hike is weakening, but it is certainly not yet done for. The headline payrolls number disappointed, with a -23,000 jobs print and a 37,000 downward revision to the June estimate. In contrast, unemployment declined from 4.2% to 4.1%, but the underlying data indicate that this was due to a big fall in labour supply that outpaced the decline in household employment.
Our US strategist noted earlier that employment growth has been slowing for several months, and Friday’s report confirmed that downside risks to the labor market have not disappeared entirely since the three insurance cuts last year. This could strengthen the argument of the Fed’s doves. Yet, the employment report also allows the hawks to argue that the labor market is mostly suffering from supply constraints, even if they are a little less confident in their case than before.
In short, the labor market data may have removed some urgency, reducing the odds of a September hike. However, incoming inflation data remain key.
Keep in mind the Washington Post receives all of their exclusives from the CIA leak network. For some insufferable reason, the Washington Post (CIA) is publishing a story about President Trump’s security protocols following the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey last month. As the story is told, President Trump went into the legacy Airforce One, however, he quietly exited the plane via a catering truck set up on the opposite side of the plane and then he boarded an Air Force C-32 support plane for the flight out of Turkey destined to Britain’s Mildenhall air base.
At the time of the travel there was a credible threat from Iran toward the President. Apparently, extra precautions were taken, and the Washington Post (CIA) needs to tell people about them.
[…] In Ankara, Trump boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras. He was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane — an Air Force C-32A — via an airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight, according to the U.S. official and corroborating material reviewed by The Post. That made Air Force One a “decoy” with media and some White House staff aboard, the official said.
[…] A credible threat to Trump involving Iran set the “deception operation” in motion, the U.S. official said. The New York Times and CBS News reported last month that intelligence officials flagged a specific threat of an attack on the president or his jet, triggering additional precautions.
There are decades-old concerns in the U.S. government of Iranian terrorism plots against American officials, including Trump. Those fears have escalated recently as a result of Washington’s role in the killing of Iranian military and political leaders.
The media who are attempting to undermine the security of President Trump are not quite sure how he reentered the legacy Airforce One in order to be photographed departing it in Great Britain. However, as soon as they discover that trick, they will be sure to write about it so that our enemies are aware should the opportunity surface again.
”:Last week, Enriquez pleaded guilty to three counts of transmitting threats through interstate communications and awaits sentencing. He faces up to five years in prison for each count.”:
Jon Christopher Enriquez of Miami is 47 years old — old enough to know better. But on May 27, he still decided that it was a good idea to go onto social media and share just how unhappy he is with Marco Rubio and the Donald Trump administration’s Cuba policy… by offering up some death threats aimed at the secretary of state and Kristi Noem, who is currently serving as a special envoy to the Shield of the Americas. Here are some of the lovely things he posted on X:
“@SecRubio @StateDept Silence Yourself. Before you start thinking that America owns Cuba and start talking trash and calling Cuba a failure, the Criminal Court of the Armed Forces is going to begin the investigation of you as a failure to your nation. The 2 Falcon jets were replaced by Gulfstreams. Rubio, Noem … You have been found guilty of 18 USC Section 2384: Seditious Conspiracy. Both of you will be executed at 16:30. Best wishes to your future endeavors. @realDonaldTrump”
“@SecRubio I guess the only way that you are going to shut your mouth is through DEATH”
“Rubio AND Noem are to be executed at 16:00. Rubio Y Noem seran ejecutados a las 16:00. Adios, muchacho/a. @Telemundo atencion Chola Grande! Senora Presidente Mexico!”
I mean, he did it in English and Spanish and had a timeline and everything, and based on the fact that he’s defending the Cuban regime and trying to get Mexico’s socialist narco-president Claudia Sheinbaum’s attention, it sounds like he’s either mentally ill or your typical leftist. (Am I being redundant?)
According to court documents, the guy had a history of making threats to others online. This time, he just happened to choose public officials, which just happens to be a federal crime.
“Threatening to execute public officials is not political speech, it is a federal crime,” said U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida. “Enriquez used a public platform to issue repeated, specific threats against Secretary Rubio and Special Envoy Noem. Today’s guilty plea makes clear that those who attempt to terrorize public servants or intimidate them through threats of violence will be swiftly identified, prosecuted, and held accountable.”
The State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security led the investigation, “identified the threats, observed the escalation, and worked to bring the individual responsible into custody, drawing on support from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the City of Miami Police Department, and the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office. Diplomatic Security coordinated closely with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida throughout the investigation and prosecution.”
Last week, Enriquez pleaded guilty to three counts of transmitting threats through interstate communications and awaits sentencing. He faces up to five years in prison for each count. Let’s hope he gets all of it.
In May, a Miami man posted threats on X threatening harm to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Kristi Noem. DSS special agents identified him, and this week he pleaded guilty in federal court. https://t.co/48m724EK1h
— Diplomatic Security Service (@StateDeptDSS) August 6, 2026
You can’t overstate the power of ideas, especially bad ideas, and super-especially bad ideas that are really just manifestations of emotional states such as envy, vengefulness, enmity, sloth, and greed. Did somebody say communism? A lot of people are saying it lately. This garbage barge of management nostrums for the ills of advanced industrial society has steamed back into New York Harbor and is busy now dispatching its agents across the land.
It’s yet another youth movement in an America which cultivates them at regular intervals associated with Fourth Turnings. I happened to be in college during the last one, the hippie rebellion of the late 1960s. It was mostly adolescent sexual energy tinged with resentment over the military draft and the war that went with it, plus a lot of marketing opportunities for music and clothing.
The US economy back then was still a roaring industrial engine. The comforts of that bygone time are legendary. You could easily support a family on an assembly-line job. College was cheap as hell — my State U charged about $500-a-year for tuition and room-and-board. (Imagine that!) You could hide-out from the draft there, too. The new birth-control pill turned campus life into a non-stop orgy with classes for R & R. Is it any wonder that the hippies morphed so easily into hedge funders?
This time around it’s pretty ugly for the youth demographic. College for them turned out to be a life-altering swindle, burdening the young with unpayable loans that can’t even be escaped via bankruptcy. Even the sex angle was ruined by vindictive feminism and the trans fad. Work is scarce and it’s nearly impossible to make a living at it, that is, pay for food and a roof over your head (and, ugh, those loan repayments!). Plus, work is mostly found only in meaningless service to despotic corporations. The most enterprising might land a job in an NGO, but the work there is “activism,” which is pretend work, productive of nothing but the acting-out of grievances.
These grievances, it has been noted by many high-toned observers like VDH, are real enough to provoke a desperate reach for remedies, and communism is a ready-made portfolio for all that. In the 1960s, we still had the reverberations of the civil rights crusade setting a basic moral tone for hippiedom. But fifty years later, that has all mutated into a race-and-gender hustle that adds so much piquancy to the recycled communist agenda. (Note that a hustle is a low-grade racket, and a racket is an effort to get something for nothing.) So, today’s communist program is not just a war against the injustices of capital, but a jihad against the Western Civ horse that capital rode in on, and most particularly the white horseman up in the saddle.
Hasan Piker, the present guru and demigod of the movement, put it pretty plainly in a Twitch-stream a few years back when he was rising to stardom on Uncle Cenk Uygur’s Young Turk Network. “We want more immigrants to come into your countries and then they’re gonna fuck your sisters and then your daughters — we’re here to destroy the White race, bitch.” Piker is also a leading amplifier of Jew-hatred and other calumnies such as the USA “deserved” the 9/11 attacks. Apropos of our action in Iran, Piker quipped, American soldiers should be shot at like cattle (link).
Piker is rumored to have earned over $6-million on Twitch. He’s quite tall (6’4”) ripped, and a snappy dresser, often sporting old-fashioned sport-jackets with a necktie (dress for success?) and is probably catnip to the cat ladies of Gen Z, who comprise the bulk of the activist corps of the rising Gen Z Democratic Socialists — as the communists have styled themselves to avoid stimulating any action around the Communist Control Act of 1954 (50 U.S.C. §§ 841–844), which categorizes the Communist Party per se as “an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States.”
Altogether, Hasan Piker and the Democratic Socialists pose quite a vexing problem for the pathetic, old, square, bloviating chuds in the Democratic Party of the Chuck Schumer / Cory Booker ilk. Other bloggers (e.g., Jeff Childers at Coffee & Covid) have observed that Democratic Socialism is the monster that the Dems have been working on sedulously for more than a decade in their Frankenstein lab of Gramscian cultural overthrow. The monster has escaped and is now out on the highways and in the hedges terrorizing the public.
You are surely aware that the entire regular agenda of the Democratic Party has for some time been patently insane. They are still wasting the nation’s patience with debates over the self-evident idiocy of men in women’s sports, resistance to the deportation of illegal immigrants, and their obviously evil opposition to voter ID. Communism is just the icing on that fruitcake. The recent primary election victories of such prodigies as Abdul El-Sayed, Melat Kiros, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, along with the ongoing capers of Mayor Zohran Mamdani pretending to govern New York City, must be giving the old guard the vapors.
And yet, the most pathetic actual commie among them, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the Jewish, Israel-hating alte kocker, abides and even thrives in his new role as Godfather to this hatch of larval communist youth. This is Bernie’s revenge on the party that robbed him of two presidential nominations. He’s doing what all good Jacobins do — what they live for! He has sentenced his old comrades of the DNC to death. He’s stuffing his old enemies into the tumbrel and carting them off to the public square for execution. They can see it coming and it’s giving them the heebie-jeebies. And finally, of course, the Mamdanis and El-Sayeds and their spawn will come for Bernie, too, leaving only AOC in the ensanguinated ruins to become America’s Eva Perón. Wait for that!
“..what we are doing is the US is using dollars from the Fed to prop up the yen. So, the Japanese do not have to raise interest rates. So, the carry trade does not unwind. So, the markets don’t collapse ..”
Eight-time, best-selling financial author Jim Rickards is warning of a financial calamity already underway that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is trying to contain. It is the Japanese yen carry trade where the US Treasury is propping up the yen’s value. Is the yen carry trade coming to a halt and can it blow up things? Rickards says, “The answer is yes and yes. . .. Somebody wrote me and asked if the yen carry trade is a big deal? I wrote them back and said there is nothing bigger. This is actually the biggest story in the world.”
In simple terms, the problem is people have been borrowing at 0% in yen to do deals around the world. Everything was fine until interest rates in Japan started going up after more than two decades. Rickards says, “This is the engine of global economic growth. It has been powering the US economy and the global economy for over 30 years. What could go wrong? The thing that could go wrong the fastest is if Japanese interest rates went up. . .. The bank of Japan says it is going to keep raising interest rates. It’s not going to the moon, but 3% for yen (and Japanese) interest rates is like going to the moon when it’s been 0% for 20 years. So, now, the yen carry trade is unwinding. . .. The original borrower borrows dollars to pay back the yen loan, swaps the yen and pays back the yen loan. What if you can’t borrow?
What if the bank says sorry, no soup for you. . .. Now, what do you do if you want to get out of the yen carry trade? You have to sell assets. So, you are going to sit there and make a lot less money or even lose money, or you are going to dump assets to get dollars to pay back the yen loan. They are both bad for the markets. It you have to sell assets, guess what? The price goes down, and other people have to sell assets. The next thing you know it’s a stampede, and everyone is running for the exit. This is not a few investment banks on Wall Street or a few hedge funds. This is the whole world getting out of the leveraged exchange rate engine that has been running the world for 30 years. That is the financial equivalent of all out nuclear war.”
Rickards goes on to explain, “Japan is the number one holder of US Treasuries. They have been selling Treasuries to get dollars to buy yen to prop up the yen. What happens when you sell Treasuries? US interest rates go up. Do you think the Trump Administration or Secretary of the Treasury want US interest rates to go up? . . .. Treasury Secretary Bessent called Japan and said hold on to your Treasuries. We will give you all the dollars you need with a swap line with the Federal Reserve. So, what we are doing is the US is using dollars from the Fed to prop up the yen. So, the Japanese do not have to raise interest rates. So, the carry trade does not unwind. So, the markets don’t collapse. . .. It is extremely dangerous . . .. You are trying to defend an exchange rate that probably can’t be defended, and it is just a matter of time before it breaks.”
Back in 2016, long before the central banks were buying gold hand over fist, Rickards told people to buy gold in his best-selling book “The New Case for Gold.” Back then, gold was a little more than $1,300 per ounce. With the price down to around $4,300 per ounce today, that looks like it was very good investment advice. We are nowhere near the high for gold, and Rickards predicts, “I think it’s going to the moon. When I say the moon, I mean $10,000 per ounce. We have had our correction. . .. We are now heading back up again, and it’s going to happen very quickly.”
On the midterms in November and Trump stopping the voter fraud by Democrats, Rickards says, “Things are going to get rough. It’s already in the works. You can see it coming. Look at “Act Blue.” Turns out it was a total fraud. They were taking foreign money, which is illegal. They were raising billions of dollars, but they were doing it completely illegally. They are under investigation, and their board has resigned and ran for the hills. . .. You take Act Blue and Southern Poverty Law Center off line and that is what the Trump Administration has done, that is billions of dollars the Democrats cannot get their hands on. . .. In the midterms, the Republicans will spend $500 million and have an army of 500 lawyers fanning out all over the country. They are not going to wait until after the election to stop fraud.”
The Trump Administration will also stop the mail-in ballot fraud through the US Postal Service. . .. The US Postal service is going to save the day by tracking every single piece of mail (and mail- in ballot.)
The Federal Reserve’s legal mandate is clear. It must focus on stable prices and maximum employment. In the past five years, the Fed has failed on both. Inflation remains materially above the 2 percent target, reaching a decade-high 25% cumulative inflation in the 2021-2025 period, while restrictive monetary conditions have been limited to rate hikes, which weigh most heavily on the small and medium-sized firms that generate most of net employment growth.
This failure was not merely a matter of missing a forecast but a policy framework that became narrative-driven rather than data-dependent. The Fed spent much of 2025 moving between concerns about inflation from tariffs based on ideology and a growing admission of weakness in the labor market. However, it continued to treat interest rates as its overwhelmingly dominant instrument. That is a poor policy mix when the problem of persistent inflation was caused by excessive government spending. Kritzman, at MIT Sloan, concluded that “mathematically, the overwhelming driver of that burst of inflation in 2022 was federal spending, not the supply chain.” However, the Fed’s policy was directed at penalizing the private sector while incentivizing large government deficit spending.
The Fed defines price stability as inflation running at 2 percent, measured by the PCE price index. That goal was still unmet at the end of 2025. Headline PCE inflation rose 2.9 percent year over year in December, while core PCE inflation was 3.0 percent. Both headline and core inflation increased 0.4 percent in that month alone. This is not price stability. It is persistent erosion of household purchasing power. A family does not suffer the inflation target in a Federal Open Market Committee statement but significantly higher price increases than those reflected in CPI at the supermarket, the gas station, rent payment, and utility bills.
The fact that inflation has slowed from its 2022 peak does not mean the inflation problem has gone away. Prices remain permanently higher after years of monetary and fiscal excess, and the cumulative loss of purchasing power remains embedded in household budgets. The Fed’s narrative during 2025 frequently focused on temporary factors, inexistent tariff effects, labor-market rebalancing, and the expected path of core inflation. Some of those factors mattered. But the larger error was to ignore the monetary and fiscal origins of the inflation shock.
Inflation did not appear suddenly. It was the consequence of an extraordinary expansion of money, liquidity, and deficit-financed spending in 2021 through 2024. The United States ran enormous fiscal deficits even after the pandemic emergency had passed. Government spending grew aggressively, while the central bank’s earlier asset-purchase programs absorbed a large volume of government and mortgage debt. The result was a policy mix in which fiscal expansion was incentivized and monetary discipline was inexistent. The Fed was not a brake on fiscal excess. It was an enabler.
Quantitative easing and the expansion of the central-bank balance sheet created the perception that all public deficits could be financed at artificially low cost without consequences. That illusion encouraged Yellen and Biden to treat debt issuance as painless and made it easier to sustain spending levels that exceeded the productive capacity of the economy. Yellen’s reckless decision to refinance most maturities with short-term bonds proves this. She was clearly expecting more easing in 2025 after the unnecessary rate cuts announced in the middle of the election campaign.
Money supply growth, deficit spending, and ultra-low policy rates were not small mistakes or isolated events created by an emergency. Together they created too much unproductive demand relative to available supply. When supply chains normalized and energy prices fell, some disinflation followed, but the excess monetary and fiscal impulse had already lifted the general price level and distorted the allocation of capital. Furthermore, the overall inflation continued to rise even when energy prices fell below 2022 levels and supply chain costs dropped to pre-COVID-era prices, proving that monetary and fiscal excess, not a supply shock, was the main cause.
The government’s and Fed’s responses made the error worse. Instead of controlling spending and understanding the fiscal source of persistent inflation, using the balance sheet more forcefully, the government increased public spending by 2 trillion above the emergency levels of the COVID-era, and the Fed placed the burden of restrictive policy on private sector borrowers. Families with credit cards, first-time homebuyers, small businesses, and entrepreneurs became the transmission mechanism of monetary policy.
Small firms are the backbone of the U.S. labor market. Businesses with fewer than 250 employees account for more than 51 percent of net job creation and generate 58 percent of net private-sector employment growth from the first quarter of 2023 through the end of 2025. Small businesses do not finance investments like large listed corporations, issuing bonds, syndicated loans, or share issuances. Small businesses need bank credit, using variable-rate loans, personal guarantees, commercial-property lending, and retained earnings.
The Fed’s restrictive policy hits the productive economy hardest. A large company with a strong balance sheet can delay expansion. A small business with a refinancing need will stop hiring, cut inventories, postpone equipment purchases, or close altogether. NFIB data shows that the average short-term loan rate paid by small-business borrowers was 8.4 percent in December 2025. Only 25 percent of owners reported borrowing regularly, a historically low share.
By keeping liquidity elevated, enabling government excess, and hiking rates, the Fed has made borrowing costs prohibitive and often nonexistent for small businesses (SMEs). For many banks it became safer and more profitable to hoard government debt than to lend to families and businesses.
Anthony Fauci’s COVID-era iPhone is now in the hands of Senate investigators, and the very first detail to emerge from it is stranger than anything Democrats spent years trying to explain away. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, revealed that despite using the device for roughly eight years, Fauci had only three contacts saved on it. Three.
Johnson shared that detail Friday night on NewsNation’s Katie Pavlich Tonight, which journalist Catherine Herridge guest-hosted that evening. She had also watched Fauci invoke the Fifth Amendment 111 times during a combative July congressional hearing. “I can’t and my staff can’t guarantee that everything was preserved. What is odd is most of those text messages are associated with a phone number. He only had three contacts, which is pretty odd,” Johnson said.
"There's a lot of information on there. Over 34,000 texts, I think 522 voicemail messages… there's a lot to go through."
— Katie Pavlich Tonight (@KatiePavlichNN) August 8, 2026
As we already know, the Fifth Amendment right can’t protect Fauci because his pardon from Joe Biden’s autopen negated that right. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. The decision on whether to pursue criminal charges now sits with the Justice Department. A copy of Fauci’s phone landed with Johnson’s subcommittee last week as well, and investigators have already extracted its contents. They’re now working through more than 34,000 text messages and 533 voicemails, with Johnson saying the material spans roughly from 2014 through Fauci’s departure from the National Institutes of Health in December 2022.
Johnson also discussed the discovery Thursday with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, and his answers made clear the investigation is still in its early stages. “We’re downloading the phone right now,” Johnson told Ingraham when she asked what investigators had learned so far. He noted that what his team has reviewed predates the pandemic, calling that a good sign for how the download is being handled.
Johnson said investigators plan to cross-reference the phone’s contents against material Fauci previously turned over in response to FOIA requests, checking whether he handed over everything he was supposed to. That comparison carries extra weight given what’s already known about Fauci’s inner circle. “We know, obviously, his henchman, David Morens, showed him how to delete emails, or remove them, and so, it might be a treasure trove,” Johnson said. He added that Fauci’s own diaries had already proven revealing. “I think the diaries certainly were,” Johnson said. “They showed Fauci for the complete phony that he was.”
Will we get to see the contents like we saw the diary? Not so fast. Don’t expect Johnson to release everything at once. “This is not going to be a document dump. I also need to preserve documents for our investigation. We are interviewing other people that he may be texting. And if you’re going to get truthful answers out of people, you can’t necessarily show them all your investigatory material, as well,” Johnson said.He did promise the public won’t be kept in the dark forever. “So, again, I’m not going to hold this close to the vest when there are things that the public needs to see. I’m hoping to work very closely with Senator Rand Paul and his staff and release these things jointly,” Johnson said.
LAURA INGRAHAM: “Senator, you have the phone with you.”
“Can we look through it on live TV?”
SENATOR JOHNSON: “No, we’re downloading the phone right now.”
LAURA INGRAHAM: “What can you tell us about what you have learned thus far?”
One thing is for sure. It’s strange that the architect of our nation’s COVID response, and who communicated constantly enough to rack up tens of thousands of texts and hundreds of voicemails, somehow only bothered to save three phone numbers. Who were these three? If there were more, can the rest be recovered? If others were deleted, why were they deleted?
The walls are closing in on Dr. Fauci, that’s for sure.
Justice Samuel Alito is not done yet. A month after National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg announced that Sam Alito was retiring (a story NPR later had to retract), the 76-year-old jurist told the Wall Street Journal in an interview, “Obviously, I’m here for another term. ”Looking at the docket for the coming term, it is easy to see why. Even after overturning Roe v. Wade and other historic opinions, Alito still has unfinished business. An example can be found in two cases involving bans on semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 that are now awaiting argument in the October term.
Many of us have been frustrated by the Court’s failure to address these laws barring AR-15s and other weapons. Just last year, the Supreme Court declined review of such a Maryland law. Alito and Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch indicated that they wanted to hear the case, falling just one vote short of granting certiorari. Notably, the required fourth vote could have come from Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who called the Fourth Circuit’s ruling in Snopes v. Brown “questionable” and added that the Court “should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next Term or two.” Now, it will.
Democrats are moving in various states to ban the nation’s most popular rifle (the AR-15) and its most popular handgun (the semiautomatic 9mm). Some of us view these laws as presumptively unconstitutional. In 2008, the court declared in its opinion in Heller that gun ownership is an individual right. The court emphasized how these weapons were in common use and not the type of dangerous or unusual weapon that would fall outside of the Second Amendment. Handguns, the opinion reads, “are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.”
In 2022, the Court held in the Bruen case that the government bears the burden of demonstrating that any restriction upon the right to keep and bear arms “is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” The bans on Glock handguns and semiautomatic rifles are efforts to achieve indirectly what the Supreme Court barred directly. In Virginia, Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) immediately moved against gun rights after her election. Ironically, her election not only spurred a massive surge in gun purchases, but she then supplied the lead line of briefs challenging the law. Spanberger admitted that the state law she signed would ban commonly used hunting guns.
In what is known as the court’s “clean-up conference,” the justices granted review in Illinois and Connecticut cases challenging bans on semiautomatic rifles. In Viramontes v. Cook County, the Seventh Circuit relied on an earlier ruling that gun owners had failed to show “that the covered firearms materially differed from machine guns and military-grade weaponry, which the Supreme Court instructed can be banned under the Second Amendment.” In Grant v. Higgins, the Second Circuit upheld a similar ban after agreeing with the state that the law imposes “a burden comparable to historical antecedents that regulated other unusually dangerous weapons unsuitable for and disproportionate to the objective of individual self-defense.”
Notably, in the Illinois case, Cook County argued that these are not just unusually dangerous weapons, but that the challengers cannot offer “even a single instance in which assault weapons were ever used in lawful self-defense.” That is a highly dubious claim. Since 1990, there have been an estimated 32,091,000 Modern Sporting Rifles in circulation. These are semiautomatic models, which means they fire a single bullet and then automatically load another cartridge into the chamber. The AR-15 is the most popular model, and there are estimates that it has as many as 25 million owners.
The popularity of the AR-15 is due to the fact that it is modular, with some models allowing one to swap out barrels, bolts and high-capacity magazines, or add a variety of accessories. It is also not the most powerful gun; many guns have equal or greater calibers. There is roughly the same number of Glock pistols in circulation. That means perhaps 40 million Americans currently possess weapons that Democrats are trying to ban as unusually dangerous and completely unprotected.
With the granting of these cases, Virginia’s ban on new sales of the AR-15 rifle and other guns will have to await the final decisions. These gun bans are not the only cases involving politically popular, legally dubious legislation. The first case to be argued will be Suncor Energy v. Commissioners of Boulder County, a challenge to state laws imposing damages on fossil fuel companies for climate change. With a docket like that, one can see why Alito is not going anywhere.
FAZ correspondent Michael Martens, whose grandfather was a Wehrmacht officer, posed the question at a press conference held by Zelensky and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic at a joint press conference with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, Belgrade, Serbia, August 8, 2026.
A German journalist asked Vladimir Zelensky at a press conference in Belgrade how Europeans could help Kiev “kill more Russians,” prompting Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to raise his eyebrows in apparent disbelief.The provocative question came from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung correspondent Michael Martens during a joint press conference following Zelensky’s talks with Vucic on Saturday.“Can you tell us Europeans what can we concretely do to help you to kill more Russians?” Martens asked. He hastily added he meant “more Russian soldiers, of course,” before asking whether the two leaders had discussed military cooperation. Footage shows Vucic raising his eyebrows in apparent disbelief as he hears the question.
Clips of the exchange quickly went viral on social media, triggering a wave of angry reactions. Some users denounced the wording as offensive and accused Martens of “incitement to hatred.” Others branded him a “Nazi,” noting that his grandfather served as an officer on a Wehrmacht command staff during World War II – a fact that Martens himself has acknowledged. Martens later doubled down on X, insisting there was nothing “scandalous” or “shocking” about his wording and expressing surprise at the backlash. “It is not scandalous to ask the Ukrainian President how Europe can help Ukraine to kill more Russians. That is what is needed,” he wrote. “Outside Barbieworld, this is how wars are fought.”
Although Martens’ question was directed at Zelensky, Vucic answered first. “We did not discuss military cooperation today,” the Serbian president said. “What happens when the war ends is another matter. And speaking about killing, I hope all killing will end.” Zelensky, meanwhile, used the question to reiterate his demands that Kiev’s Western backers send more money and slap more sanctions on Moscow. Serbia remains one of the few European countries to maintain close ties with Moscow since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022. As an EU candidate state, however, it has faced pressure from Brussels to distance itself from Russia.
Last month, Vucic accused the EU of trying to “govern Serbia by email” and dictate its foreign relations. Ahead of his meeting with Zelensky, he reiterated that Belgrade will follow its own course and not join sanctions against Russia. Martens’ question comes amid growing Russophobia in the West, ranging from anti-Russian rhetoric by politicians, journalists and other public figures to restrictions on Russian media, culture, and language and the destruction of Soviet memorials.
Just this week, Polish President Karol Nawrocki made his own remarks about killing Russians, telling a rally in Warsaw that helping Ukraine do so was in Poland’s strategic interest. “Wherever the Moskal is being fought, Poland helps,” he said, using a historic derogatory term for Russians. Commenting on the remark, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called such outbursts “clinical Russophobia,” while lamenting that this had become “the norm” for many in the West.
Liberalism has completely failed, bringing down society along with itself. The country I live in today bears no resemblance to the one I grew up in. A homogeneous population with a common set of beliefs has been turned into a tower of babel in which there are no common interests. Christianity, the basis for moral behavior, has been marginalized. Crime has exploded. Truth has been supplanted by narratives that serve special interests and the further breakup of society. Feminism has destroyed the relationship between men and women, further weakening family and society. Business serves profit at all costs.
Constitutional rights are set aside for the purpose of creating race-based privileges for favored groups. The purpose of education has changed from enculturation to destruction of the belief system. Perversity has been normalized while normality is ostracized. This is the complete destruction of a civilization. White ethnic countries are being overrun without resistance by peoples of color. White females are unprotected by their governments from rape by immigrant-invaders throughout Europe, especially in the UK and Sweden. Dark skin color suffices without achievement for appointment as professor at Cambridge University and most other universities. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, public loudspeakers call for Muslim prayer six times a day, including at 3:30 a.m.
Muslim communities are appearing all over the US with demands for Sharia law. This is not assimilation. It is the fall of a civilization from the destruction of its belief system. Today’s youth having never experienced America do not know what has been lost. The MAGA hope of renewal has been defeated. Trump and the Republicans fight for Israel, not for America. Democrats fight for immigrant-invaders. No party fights for America. Why? Is the answer that no one any longer believes in America?
My opposition to immigrant-invaders is not racist. Like Mohammad Ali I have no opposition to Hispanics, Muslims, Asians. I stand in defense of Western Civilization. The calls for Sharia Law from Muslim communities springing up in the US, the calls over public loudspeakers in Minneapolis for Muslim prayer six times a day are the opposite of assimilation into American beliefs and mores. They are an attack on a civilization, a civilization that is rapidly collapsing from the white liberal destruction of its belief system. Immigrant-invaders are turning our country into theirs. Hispanics have even established Spanish as a second official language.
Americans have two kinds of “people of color” problems. One is the inflow of displaced persons from Washington’s wars for Greater Israel in the Middle East and North Africa and from Hispanics who have made Spanish a second language for America. The other is America’s own blacks, many half white, descendants of slaves provided as a labor force by the black King of Dahomey so that the fertile land in the New World would have labor to work it. The slaves were no worse treated and owed no more of their labor time to their owners than “free” American owe their multiple tax authorities today.
In my youth black American families were as respectable as white families. It was Democrat US Senator and Harvard University Professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan who provided the evidence that it was the white liberals’ welfare policies for blacks that destroyed the black family and produced single mothers and fatherless children.
Blacks were a part of the society I grew up in. The middle class and upper class relied on them. I did not go to school with them because in the South where I lived schools were neighborhood based. If you lived in a middle class neighborhood, you went to school with your own kind, not with rich kids or poor kids, of which there were plenty of white ones.
As I have reported many times, separate water fountains, separate toilet facilities, had a history in the fear of infectious diseases dating from pre-antibiotic times which, rightly or wrongly, were associated with lower income people. People actually believed that you could catch syphilis from toilet seats. Busses were segregated because blacks did heavy work and had soiled clothes, but white women would not go to town unless well dressed. Soiled bus or streetcar seats ruined their dresses.
The actual facts were ignored by the northern liberals who delighted in their feelings of moral superiority over alleged Southern suppression of former slaves. White northerners blamed Southern opposition to coerced integration on racism, but coerced integration was resisted because it was seen as a second Reconstruction. Out of this moral self-righteousness arose white liberals teaching black Americans to hate white people on whom all black underperformance and failure was blamed. Today we have the situation where a white person of any gender or age risks being sucker-punched by a hate-filled black and left unconscious on the sidewalk.
White liberals explain away the hate-driven violence that they created as “retribution for white racism.” Hasan Piker, an unofficial spokesman for the Democrat Party’s rapidly expanding left-wing component, said: “We want more immigrants to come into our counties and then they’re going to fuck your sisters and then your daughters. We’re here to destroy the White Race.” The response of the white liberals is: “Oh you poor dears, so abused by white racism, anything you need from us, we will make amends.”
If race hatred existed prior to the white liberals teaching it, how was it possible that white households employed black Americans to cook their food, help raise their children, and in some cases have responsibility for the weekly household budget. I have memories of my mother and her black helpmate chatting amicably washing clothes in the bathtub and then hanging them up to dry on clothes lines. If the races hated one another, blacks would not have been involved in intimate family matters such as food preparation and child raising.
I think that school integration helped to create racial animosity on the part of blacks. For whatever the reason, blacks were not competitive with whites in the schoolroom. This became obvious to the black children, to the teachers, and to the black parents, and out of a sense of inferiority arose animosity that was fertile ground for the white liberals’ sermons on white racism. Standards were lowered and grades inflated until we had high school graduates who could not spell or read.
Next amelioration was used to compensate for disparate performance. Affirmative action introduced race-based preferences which developed into DEI and the replacement of a merit system by race-based privileges. Even black Americans who made it could not be sure they had, and this added to resentment.
School integration also destroyed the Parent-Teachers Associations (PTA) that maintained close cooperation between parents and teachers. It was no big thing to attend an evening meeting at the local school But integration required busing across town, and meetings in distant and strange neighborhoods were not attractive. Disputes and antagonisms took the place of cooperation with parents lining up with kids against teachers, especially if the teacher was white and the parents back. If the black kid didn’t make all A’s, it was the fault of white racism.
Elon Musk acquired the Tesla” name by purchasing the rights for $75,000 from a man in Sacramento who already owned them.
According to the account, Musk sent one of the most persistent and courteous members of his team to negotiate the deal, waiting at the owner’s door until he… pic.twitter.com/prYacBSgA2
Tesla and SpaceX are about to need chips faster than the world can produce.
The answer? Terafab.
A chip factory in Texas so huge it will dwarf landmarks like the Pentagon and Apple Park, with a goal of producing more than 1 terawatt of compute every year.
Iran’s IRGC is holding the line, reiterating that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen to international shipping only after the United States accepts all of its conditions, which we outlined previously. Also, on Saturday Iran’s army spokesman Amir Akraminia stated that Iran’s new protocols in the Strait of Hormuz are “irreversible” and shall not be thwarted by the US. “The United States has no choice but to accept the existing situation; otherwise, it will incur costs far greater than those it has faced in the past,” Akraminia said.
On Sunday, a fresh report in The Wall Street Journal states the obvious – that President Trump has fewer and fewer options and is being squeezed, with any opportunity to declare ‘victory’ and make swift exit more elusive than ever, given Washington would have to make huge compromises, including lifting sanctions and paying war compensation to Tehran. Nearly six months ago when the war started, many non-interventionist critics accurately predicted the quagmire and catch-22 the US now finds itself in.
“For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said,” WSJ writes.
“But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things,” the report adds.
In a parallel vein to this scaled-back, lower grade conflict, President Trump has freshly told Axios in a brief interview that “We are low keying it” in the Persian Gulf. This comes after a week ago he called off ‘planned’ ‘harder’ attacks on Iran, which may have been just a bluff all along. Tehran didn’t blink, and it continues to press for maximal demands – as if to put ‘maximum pressure’ right back on Washington.
“We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” Trump claimed. According to more from Axios:
He stressed that Iran “is in very bad shape” economically and has no money to pay its troops. The U.S. naval blockade has exacerbated the Iranian regime’s economic crisis, Trump said. At the same time, Trump said that with oil down to slightly over $75 a barrel, U.S. consumers are feeling less pain from the war. Ironically, this is simply a return to administration talking points which defended the early days and weeks of a war that officials constantly touted would be ‘swift’ and limited.
The US hope was that Iran and its economy would just collapse from within, the masses would take to the streets, and the government of the Ayatollah would be overthrown. This has proven delusional time and again.
Instead, what we see happening is Washington being forced to move its bases back from front line areas in the Gulf, and officials including Trump himself constantly retreating from stated goals, objectives, and red lines. This is on display once again in the Sunday Axios interview:
Axios acknowledges that the new list of Iranian demands have gone from being the prerequisite for a nuclear deal to a prerequisite to opening the Strait. Trump now says the US is “low keying it” and focusing on economic pressure. In other words: the Strait will not be opening. https://t.co/AweQabOB8Wpic.twitter.com/3TMsxXcfh7
A video of Mojtaba Khamenei that was earlier released by the mass media had been shot before he became Iran’s Supreme leader, but he is now in good health and avoids appearing in public due to security considerations, an Iranian source told TASS. “This is an old video. It was made before he became [Supreme] leader,” he said, adding that his health condition is now quite good. “He is in good health and the only reason why he is not seen in public is security reasons,” he stressed.
Earlier, the Iranian Mehr agency released a video featuring Mojtaba Khamenei talking to a group of people who are listening to him attentively. Neither the date nor the venue of the event were indicated. Mojtaba Khamenei became Iran’s Supreme leader after his father, Ali Khamenei, was killed in a missile attack after the United States and Israel’s aggression against Iran.
Extreme leftists and white, female, overeducated, urban communists have one primary prism: how Obama-ish is their candidate? Both El-Sayed and Barack Obama are supported by the Muslim Brotherhood directly. Both El-Sayed and Barack Obama campaigned for Senate in the mid-term election (BO ’06, ES ’26), and both Barack Obama and El-Sayed planned to run for higher office in 2nd year of their freshman term as senator.
The media now begin their fawning endeavor as the Muslim Brotherhood backed Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed tries to moderate himself in the image of Barack Hussein Obama. I find it a little revealing that El-Sayed’s wife is a doctor who refuses to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients (cash only), as El-Sayed campaigns on Medicare for all. Of course, don’t look for the media to point this out during questioning. Notice also the Middle East nations that El-Sayed criticizes (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan) are the Mid-East nations who have pushed back or banned the Muslim Brotherhood. This is very revealing for those who walk the political deep weeds. By the way, he’s a paper doctor; a Phd, not an MD. WATCH:
[Transcript] – KRISTEN WELKER: And joining me now is Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. Dr. El-Sayed, welcome to Meet the Press.
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Thanks for having me.
KRISTEN WELKER: Thank you so much for being here and congratulations. Let’s talk about your victory this week. You narrowly defeated Congresswoman Haley Stevens. And when you actually add up all of the votes, the vote totals that went to Stevens and Mallory McMorrow, a majority of voters actually ended up voting for candidates who are more moderate than you. So how do you win over those voters who voted for someone else?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, thank you, Kristen. Really, we’re just grateful for everybody who participated. And the overwhelming recognition of the vote tallies is that 500,000 more Democrats voted than did Republicans in that election. And if that happens, we are going to win in a landslide. Now I know that we had it out with a very tough primary. There were a lot of issues that were discussed and differences that were identified and fixated on. But I will tell you this, that all of us agree that our differences are far smaller than what we agree on.
And what we agree on is that Donald Trump has been an existential threat to our democracy. He is costing us jobs. He is costing us more at almost every aspect of our lives, whether it’s our gas, our groceries, or our health care, and that Mike Rogers is going to be nothing more than a rubber stamp on Donald Trump’s disastrous economic and foreign policies. And so this is an opportunity for us to come together to mend fences, to build together the coalition that is going to defeat Mike Rogers in November and defeat Trumpism over the next two years.
KRISTEN WELKER: Well, let me ask you about some news that we’re learning this morning. Local outlets reporting that you spoke to former President Barack Obama on the phone. I know you’re not going to give me every detail of the call. But what was the crux of his message to you, Dr. El-Sayed?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, Kristen, you’re right. I like to keep private conversations private. But it was a really warm and inspiring conversation. I’ve got to be honest with you. I never saw myself ever able to run for public office. I literally told former President Bill Clinton that at my college graduation, in which I was the senior speaker and he was the main speaker. And I then watched the next year Barack Hussein Obama run for and win the presidency. I watched him serve with a level of class, a level of elegance that we could only pine for now. So I really enjoyed the conversation. I was grateful for his advice. It was very warm and very inviting. And I know that he knows the critical role that Michigan is going to play in holding Trump accountable, in winning back the Senate, and in building forward the future that we need.
KRISTEN WELKER: Is he going to campaign with you, Dr. El-Sayed?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Look, I really hope so. And it was a really good conversation about what we need to do to be able to win. And obviously, this is somebody who knows a lot about winning Michigan.
KRISTEN WELKER: And just to be clear, do you anticipate he’ll show up on the campaign trail with you? Is that one of the broad topics you all discussed?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Look, we talked a lot about what it’ll take to win. Obviously, his presence here in Michigan would mean so much to the coalition that helped elect him. So I hope that we get to campaign together.
Clean up in aisle 4! Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed just made a mess in an interview with Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press, and let’s just say his handlers have some fixing to do. One of El-Sayed’s signature issues is “Medicare for All.” It’s an issue that El-Sayed loves to mention but doesn’t like to talk about in detail. One reason is that it’s not good for sound bites. Once you get into the details of Medicare, it gets complex, bureaucratic, and boring. None of those things work well in media interviews. But there are other reasons he’d rather not talk at length about his health coverage ideas, and it became clearer when Welker pressed him on it.
Calling him “Doctor,” Welker told El-Sayed that everyday Americans worry that to make Medicare universal would mean tax hikes for everyone, not just the rich. El-Sayed dismissively tried to give Welker a quick sound bite in the hope she’d move on when he said, “As I’ve said across this campaign, I am for taxing billionaires their wealth.” But Welker wasn’t done. She said, “What about people who make less than a billion and less than a million dollars?” El-Sayed responded:
“So, for the average person, when you look at your W2, if you’re an employee who gets paid every two weeks or four weeks, after you pay your taxes, the next biggest check that comes off the top of your pay stub is to your health insurance company. So, imagine instead of paying that to your health insurance company, whose CEO makes $20 million a year, instead you paid a little bit more in taxes for healthcare that you wouldn’t lose if you lost your job or turned 26 or got married or got divorced.
I think all of us would be a lot more interested in that kind of a system if we knew that our healthcare would be free at the point of care and would be free without having to worry about losing it, in general.So, there’s an opportunity here, I think, to trade what we give to a big corporation, who gets to decide who we get to see and who we don’t, for a little bit more paid into FICA. And I think that’s a trade that’s worth making. I think the broader public understands that that’s a trade worth making considering how many people are holding medical debt, a third of all Michigan households right now.”
Welker reinforced her earlier point, saying, “Just to be very clear, you’re describing this trade-off. You are effectively acknowledging that people making less than a million dollars could see their taxes go up. I just want to be very clear.” His non-answers to her questions were a de facto confirmation of Welker’s suspicions. What El-Sayed said pretty clearly was to trust the government more than your insurance company, and that yes, your taxes will go up under his plan.
Something that rarely comes up when “Medicare for All” is discussed is what Medicare does not cover. Anyone who’s turned 65 and applied for Medicare knows that Medicare is hardly an apples-to-apples replacement for the kind of health insurance you may have gotten through your employer.
Medicare does not automatically include eye care, dental care, and certain prescription coverage. If retirees pay more, and most do, they can enroll in a Part C or Medicare Advantage plan that covers more. But even there, Medicare Advantage is only one option and may not be as good as your existing health insurance. Some opt not to go with Medicare Advantage, instead going with a more expensive Medigap or another alternative plan that they feel is closer to what they’re used to.
As for El-Sayed’s comments that by paying the government more for your Medicare, you’re not paying some private health insurance company, that’s often not true at all. Medicare Advantage plans and other supplemental plans are usually administered by private health insurance companies, and so you likely still would be lining the coffers of some private insurance company. What all of this means is that while El-Sayed wants Americans to think they’re getting health insurance comparable to what they’ve had, and all they need to do is pay the government more in the form of higher taxes, that’s likely not what it would look like in practice.
Welker also asked him about his BFF, Hasan Piker, who’s been right at his side throughout this campaign. Walking a political tightrope, El-Sayed sought to distance himself from Piker’s words but not from the pathetic Piker himself.
BREAKING: An Abdul El-Sayed supporter said voters are “stupid” and the best way to win is to hide the truth.
Abdul El-Sayed and Hasan Piker nodded in agreement.
During that same interview with Welker, El-Sayed distanced himself from Piker’s comments when he said that “America deserved 9/11.” When Welker asked the senatorial candidate for comment, he told her that Piker’s comments were “dumb.”
Of course, it was a dumb statement and of course I think Hasan himself would say that was a dumb statement. He disavowed it. So yes, America didn’t deserve 9/11, but you know, to sit here and play gotcha politics with a dumb thing somebody said out of context that they disavowed themselves — to say, ‘Oh well, what does that mean about what you think?’ I want to be held accountable for what I say and what I do, rather than this idea that we’re so stuck in cancel culture that all of us agreed was a bad idea back in 2020, but we seem to want to bring back, El-Sayed said. The leftist news site Politico had a slightly different take on El-Sayed’s comments:
El-Sayed’s comments are a stark difference from his interview with POLITICO earlier this year in which he declined to denounce Piker’s views in what he called a “gotcha game.””I’m not here to disavow people’s views,” El-Sayed said at the time. “This whole gotcha game, platform policing, cancel culture — I thought we were over it.”The Napoleonesque Senate candidate would not say one way or the other whether he’d continue to campaign with Piker, trying like the devil to get Welker to change the subject, saying that it doesn’t matter who he campaigns with. He said he’s “a lot more concerned about who I’m campaigning to.”
NBC: Hasan Piker has said "America deserved 9/11," do you plan to continue to campaign with him?
EL-SAYED: "I'm less concerned now with who I'm campaigning with…"
Politico wasn’t buying it, reporting that “El-Sayed’s embrace of Piker, who he said he believes is ‘critical’ for Democrats to embrace, has drawn criticism — from Republicans and Democrats alike.” On yet another front, former first lady “Dr. Jill Biden” once had a press secretary named Michael LaRosa. On Aug. 8, LaRosa bucked his party and publicly endorsed Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) in his bid to become Michigan’s next senator.
While it’s rare for an embedded Democrat operative to so publicly break ranks like this, LaRosa made it crystal clear on the X platform why he was backing Rogers: “I won’t defend or support anyone who is too cowardly to stand up to extremists who think the mother of my best friend, who jumped from 95 stories because the alternative was worse, deserved what happened to her…. Her only crime was showing up to work that morning.”
I refused to defend or support anyone with an SS Totenkampf tattoo, simply because they had a "D" next to their name.
I won't defend or support anyone who is too cowardly to stand up to extremists who think the mother of my best friend, who jumped from 95 stories because the… https://t.co/hC6s7W7PfK
All this adds up to a bad day on at least one Sunday show for the upstart candidate who is starting to look like the Michigan version of Graham Platner without the Nazi tattoo, the sexting, and all the other sex stuff. Judging him by the company he keeps, his refusal to distance himself from some seriously anti-American actors, and his clunky responses to straightforward questions, it’s clear that he’s got tougher days ahead. The truth is that the Sunday shows are very kind to Democrats. If he couldn’t hit a figurative home run in his first interview with Welker since winning his primary race, he’s got some weaknesses and vulnerabilities that the Rogers campaign and Republicans can exploit more fully in the coming months.
Hasan Piker, a close ally of Abdul El-Sayed, is calling for “Marxist-Leninist” punishment for those who criticize Michigan’s Democratic senatorial candidate. As radicals and anti-Semites like Piker flood the Democratic Party, establishment figures are struggling to justify their alliance with extremist candidates. Ironically, Democrats are now fulfilling the false narrative that they used against President Donald Trump after the Charlottesville protests. They are maintaining that there are “many fine people” in the DSA despite their seeking to destroy our constitutional system, open our borders, defund the police, and embrace virtual anarchy.
Now, some of these fine people are calling for moderates to be purged as radicals take over the Democratic Party. In 2017, the media manufactured a controversy by suggesting that Trump had praised neo-Nazis and Klansmen in 2017 as “fine people” in Charlottesville. It was demonstrably false, but became the accepted truth in the media. In reality, Trump condemned the neo-Nazis, and the statement about “fine people on both sides” was in reference to the people on both sides of the debate over the removal of historic statues.
That narrative took on an added hypocrisy when some of the loudest voices later endorsed a candidate with an actual Nazi tattoo who allegedly assaulted women, mocked wounded veterans, and praised terrorists. However, he promised to deliver Maine and bring figures like Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren back to power.
Anti-Semites and communists are not “fine” additions to any party. Hasan Piker is not a “fine person” in any universe. He has said that the United States deserved the terrorist attacks on 9-11 and prominently displays a picture of the collapsing Twin Towers. He has downplayed the murders and rapes of innocent Israelis on Oct. 7th and called one Jewish man who challenged him a “bloodthirsty, violent pig dog.” Figures like Harris and Buttigieg brush off El-Sayed’s allies, including Mohammad Baqer Qazwini, a prominent Muslim cleric who gave a sermon that called for followers to vote for El-Sayed while also calling upon them to pray for the death of President Donald Trump and to celebrate the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Then there is the Democratic House candidate in New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a prison abolitionist who boasted how she wiped her hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin. Chevalier and other DSA candidates are being welcomed in the Democratic Party despite anti-American views and a DSA platform calling for the destruction of our constitutional system, including scrapping the Supreme Court, the presidency, and the Senate. Many are also overwhelmingly anti-Israel, with many, like Piker, displaying virulent anti-Semitism.
When asked about the extreme agenda of these candidates, Schumer and others repeat the mantra that they need to win in the upcoming elections. In other words, the DSA is opposed to the core institutions and values of this country, but it could be useful in returning them to power. What is interesting is that the establishment does not appear to care what these radicals represent for their party, but the radicals care deeply about what the establishment represents. This week, former DNC Vice-chair David Hogg told establishment figures that the “Big Tent” of his party is not big enough for them. He and other moderates have to go.
When asked about Democratic moderates, Hogg replied, “They don’t have the right values.” Piker has even grander plans for our post-constitutional republic, calling for mass arrests, demanding pledges from establishment figures to “arrest and prosecute every prominent member of the Trump administration” who engaged in what he views as corruption as well as “every ICE agent who committed crimes on the job.” Piker also wants to purge any Democrats who do not support El-Sayed, calling them “haters” who deserved to be punished:
“There are haters in our ranks. Notice how whenever someone comes out and says, ‘Yeah that’s actually a bad association,’ immediately it’s weaponized by the Republicans. You can’t be out here saying like, ‘Oh, I’m a centrist Democrat. And I think Abdul is a bridge too far.’ That must be punished.” Piker, who likes to parade around in a Mao jacket, seems to be longing for the good old days of party purges under Stalin and his contemporaries in the Comintern.
He notably accused critics of the sin of “factionalism.” Since the Jacobins of the French Revolution, factionalism has been the scourge of revolutionaries. In my book, Rage and the Republic, I discuss the difference between the American and French Revolutions. Where James Madison saw factions as a natural part of a democratic system, the Jacobins sought them as a traitorous and reactionary element. Madison saw compromise as the best solution to factions, while the Jacobins saw the guillotine as the final solution.
Piker is right out of that Jacobin tradition, calling moderate Democrats “Koch payroll ‘liberals’” and “irredeemable.” (Notably, the Jacobins also pushed for some of the same DSA demands such as a unicameral legislature). Of course, conservatives can show the same intolerance for RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), but there is an added menacing element to communists calling for mass expulsion or punishment of moderates from their party. It is chillingly familiar.
Mao regularly purged the Communist Party of those not following the party lines, declaring, “Serious offenders should be punished by law, and when they are Party members they should also be dealt with according to Party discipline.” Establishment figures continue to use the “Big Tent” narratives to brush off questions about the radical agenda and associations of these candidates. The only thing that they have in common is the desire for power. Once these candidates win, figures like Schumer will discover that this tent is not nearly as big as they think.
Almost since US President Donald Trump started his second and final term, the movement that brought him to power twice has been fracturing. Now there is a full break among Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters. Its essence is simple: There are those who continue to identify MAGA with Trump, and on the other side of a widening chasm, those who remain loyal to MAGA but believe that Trump has not. The rebels say Trump has betrayed the cause and want to save MAGA – and thus the US – from Trump.
There are no official structures yet to what the MAGA dissidents call their movement, but it does have a de facto leader – popular journalist and podcast host Tucker Carlson. It was at Tucker’s all-American place in Maine that the MAGA schism was made official. There, several key figures of the evolving MAGA-against-Trump group met, and in effect, raised the standard of rebellion. Not literally, but in the shape of an X post by former US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (with 5.4 million followers). It featured a carefully composed picture of a merry rebel crew, including, apart from herself, Joe Kent, former counterterrorism tsar under Trump, Representative Thomas Massie, a long-term conservative Trump opponent, and Carlson, sitting at the head of the table.
Within days after the post, Carlson released a video manifesto with the title “It’s Time to Save America” on his own Tucker Carlson Network social media channel (with 5.2 million subscribers on YouTube). Within one day, it had over a million views on YouTube alone. In a rhetorical master class for the podcast age, Carlson sketched the American present as a dead-end of extraordinary decadence and degradation, a loss of reality among the establishment, and “paralysis and looting.”
He also predicted that change is inevitable if Americans want to avoid the “end-of-everything,” either by nuclear war or uncontrolled AI. He warned that even preventing this apocalypse by timely political action could produce great violence, that is, a revolution. And finally, he presented his alternative to both the end of the world and wild upheaval in ten concise points. Ranging from “fairness” to “unity,” his ten points were more a clarion call for national renewal than a concrete policy outline, with aims general enough to form a broad consensus, as he acknowledged.
Much of his ten points read like MAGA 2.0, that is, without Trump, as observers noted. On issues such as physical and mental health, the need for the economy to make actually useful things instead of just surveillance tech, weapons of war, and financial gimmicks, the beauty of the American landscape and architecture in need of restoration, Carlson’s impassioned pleas echoed the conservatism that is one root of the MAGA phenomenon.
Ultimately, what will be more important is where things differ: One of Carlson’s points was about sovereignty, or as he defined it, being “free from outside influence.” It is this point that provides the key to all the others. The ten points are, in essence, a declaration of independence, not just from any outside influence, but from Israel and its powerful US lobby. Carlson directly named them as forming one of America’s worst problems. For starters, he did not simply attack a selfish upper class whose members behave as if they were kings, above the rules of law and ethics. He called it the “Epstein class,” with reference to the late convicted pedophile, alleged suicide victim, self-declared Rothschild representative, and close associate of alleged Israeli rapists and intelligence.
Carlson also correctly linked the Iran War – a “strategic disaster” worse than Vietnam, as another realistic American recently stated – to “bribery or threat or both by Israel.” Equally plausibly, he accused Israel of committing genocide – like Nazi Germany, he said – and protested against continuing US support. Finally, the activities of lobbies, with that of Israel not alone, but in the lead, “gives the lie to the idea of representative democracy,” according to Carlson, because where lobbyists make the decisions, the voters do not.
In short, Carlson made the point that America’s worst military defeat in living memory, its support for – and really, participation in – an ongoing genocide, and its loss of sovereignty and democracy are all due, either entirely or to a large extent, to the US establishment’s perverse and deeply unpatriotic relationship to Israel. Politically, this amounts to an arguably long overdue declaration of war against the Zionist state’s aggressive influence operations.
And the message has gotten through. Haaretz, Israel’s ‘liberal’ paper of record, rapidly dedicated a long opinion piece to Carlson, accusing him of – surprise, surprise – “anti-Semitism.” This is an absurd smear, but expected. Systematically misrepresenting criticism of Israel, a genocidal apartheid state, as hatred of Jews is an old, stale Zionist tactic. Carlson certainly isn’t naïve. Even in his ten points, he anticipated being called a “Nazi” and shrugged it off.
But Haaretz does get one thing right. For Carlson and his growing movement, “Israel and its American supporters also represent a central source of the [MAGA] movement’s betrayal [by Trump].” Or, put differently, Carlson represents an American conservatism that has the courage to identify, name, and attack America’s insane dependence on a tiny yet immensely subversive and violent rogue state.
There is, no doubt, much idealizing and even nostalgia in Carlson’s image of American history and the West. And those wishing to be woke about an arch-conservative will find rich pickings. But that is futile and dull, because it is not the point that matters. What matters is that US polls have consistently shown a great, unprecedented groundswell against Israel. A new book on Israel’s US lobby is about to come out and is making a massive splash. The tide is turning.
Fellow MAGA rebel Joe Kent let it slip that Tucker-for-president is an option. Third parties are a difficult proposition. Yet Haaretz for one is worried, and from a Zionist point of view, it should be. And that is very good news.
I have a dream that American farmers, drillers, miners, industrialists, and manufacturers produce everything that American consumers need. I have a dream that anything worth building is built in America, that any job worth doing is done in America, and that anything worth buying can be found and shipped within the United States.
Why did we allow ourselves to be convinced that Americans should make only a few select things and buy everything else from foreign markets? Why did we allow politicians and Wall Street investors to convince us that “free trade” requires slave labor from faraway lands? Why did we spend a century ensuring safer work environments and more dependable wages for our skilled tradesmen only to export those jobs to adversarial nations that care nothing about worker safety or providing above-subsistence standards of living? Why did we fight a Cold War in defense of freedom only to subsidize Chinese communism? Why do we regulate ourselves to death in the name of “fighting global warming,” while China and India inflict the worst environmental damage on the planet?
Prove these statements wrong: There is no worker on the planet more capable than an American. There is no nation of people more innovative than the United States. There is nothing that Americans import from other nations that Americans can’t discover, create, grow, or produce on their own. There is no country on the planet with more educational infrastructure than the United States. There is no country on the planet with a greater incentive to defend its way of life.
I believe that Establishment politicians and multinational investment firms sold us a bill of goods when they told us that “free trade” deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, would provide American households greater prosperity. I believe that those politicians and Wall Street investors lied when they told us that the United States would become a “service economy” and that blue-collar workers would find personal fulfillment as customer service representatives, real estate agents, telephone operators, data technicians, and software coders.
I believe that politicians and Big Ag corporations lie when they insist that only illegal aliens are willing to sweat in farm fields. I believe that politicians who ignore federal law by establishing “sanctuary cities” and NGOs that aid and abet human smuggling into the United States lie when they say that some jobs are “too dirty” for Americans to take. I believe Establishment politicians and Wall Street titans have spent fifty years lying to the American people about the kinds of jobs that Americans should do.
The economy of the United States did not surpass that of the United Kingdom until the third year of WWI in 1916. While the U.K. had been the engine for the global economy for two centuries, America held an inimitable distinction: No other country in the world had maintained higher rates of both intra- and inter-generational mobility. The American Experiment created an ideal environment for innovation, hard work, investment, and private ownership. Individual workers advanced up the economic ladder during their own lifetimes, and their children and grandchildren ascended even farther. In a few generations, farmers became tradesmen who became merchants who became bankers, lawyers, ministers, and politicians. Respect for private property and a rejection of European social castes made America a land of opportunity.
Since the creation of the Federal Reserve in a rigged Christmas vote in 1913, the American system has been upended. Bankers created a monopoly for themselves to manipulate the value of the American dollar. They, in turn, set the monetary system down a path toward inevitable decoupling from the gold standard. Dollar-printing (and government spending) decreased the value of personal savings and artificially juiced the currency-denominated value of homes, stocks, and other assets — effectively transferring wealth from the poorest Americans to the wealthiest.
As inflation steadily kicked in, central bankers and corporation-controlled politicians looked for ways to limit the rising costs of American goods. They artificially increased demand for the dollar by linking it to oil revenues, offshored American manufacturing to low-wage or slave-wage foreign nations, decreased the quality of finished products, and replaced small businesses with a handful of multinational corporate monopolies. Each of these “band-aids” has preserved Wall Street’s internal mechanisms for generating profits, while destroying the engine of American ingenuity and the physical infrastructure of American industry, manufacturing, and real economic growth.
The end result has been that — in charts and graphs — America has appeared to maintain an advanced economy that has consistently grown through the decades, even though its industrial towns have collapsed into rusty graveyards. If you separate the economy of the United States into two separate lines on a graph — one for Main Street businesses across the country and one for multinational businesses running Wall Street — it becomes obvious that small American businesses have had no growth (or negative growth) for decades. While the costs of their raw materials, employees, government regulations, and taxes have continued to rise, their profits have dwindled.
The engine of American growth in the real economy has been sputtering and dying, while artificially inflated valuations of Wall Street assets have been disguising America’s economic infirmity. Wall Street has become the Potemkin economy hiding America’s loss of industrial strength. This is no way for a superpower to endure. The United States cannot survive if it is dependent on communist China for chemicals, medicines, circuit boards, electrical components, clothing, machinery, and furniture.
The United States and the European Union are the two largest Western economies of the 21st century. Over the past two decades, however, their economic trajectories have diverged significantly.This line chart below, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, tracks the gross domestic product (GDP) of the EU and U.S. economies from 2006 to 2026 using the latest figures available from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s World Economic Outlook. Figures for 2026 are forecasts.
The Early Rise and Fall of the EU
The 15-member European Union was established in 1993 from precursor organizations such as the European Communities. In 2004, 10 new member states joined, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. Aided by the addition of these new member states, along with strong British and German economies, the EU s total GDP reached $19.3 trillion in 2008. This represented 131% of the U.S. economy that year, which stood at $14.8 trillion. The euro also reached an all-time high in June 2008 at roughly $1.55. The table below shows the size of the EU economy relative to the U.S. economy from 2006 to 2026.
The global financial crisis and Great Recession changed the European Union’s fortunes.
The newly expanded bloc faced severe challenges as several member-state governments struggled to service their debts or rein in large structural deficits. These countries included eurozone members Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. Through a combination of multilateral bailouts and austerity measures, the EU weathered the crisis. However, in the years that followed, the 28-member bloc s aggregate GDP contracted, and the $18.3 trillion U.S. economy surpassed it in 2015. Part of the decline in dollar-denominated GDP also reflected changes in exchange rates as the euro weakened against the U.S. dollar.
Brexit and the Years of Decline
Further challenges followed. In a June 2016 referendum, British voters narrowly chose to make the United Kingdom the first country to withdraw from the European Union. The Brexit process culminated in the UK s formal withdrawal in January 2020. Losing the UK dealt another blow to the EU’s aggregate economy. Although the country had never joined the eurozone, it was the EU ]’s second-largest member economy. Combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit helped push the bloc’s GDP down to $15.5 trillion in 2020, roughly where it had stood a decade earlier.
A
s the UK economy has struggled through much of the 2020s, some in London have begun to float the possibility of rejoining the EU. Other European countries, including Albania and Montenegro, remain potential future entrants to the bloc.
The Post-Pandemic Divergence
Since the pandemic, the U.S. and European Union have followed very different trajectories. Despite inflation and high interest rates, the U.S. economy rebounded strongly from COVID and is forecast to reach $32.4 trillion in 2026. Meanwhile, the EU has faced a combination of rising Chinese industrial competition and an energy crisis stemming from Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. With economic heavyweight Germany facing protracted stagnation, the EU s GDP is forecast to reach $23 trillion in 2026.
That leaves the EU economy at just 71% the size of the U.S. economy, a sharp reversal from its position in 2008. Exchange rates account for part of the shift, but weaker growth and a series of economic shocks have also contributed to the widening gap.
Reading excerpts from Anthony Fauci’s ill-advised diary, saved on government servers, it’s clear to me above all that he’s a money-grubbing, narcissistic liar.Fauci helped fund the Wuhan Level 4 Virology Lab, knowing full well that the lab was tinkering with bat viruses. And when the Chinese Communist lab loosed COVID-19 upon the world, wee Tony felt two overwhelming urges: the immediate urge to cover his butt, and a burning and probably lifelong desire for the little rat to finally become a big cheese.
So Fauci lied about the virus’s origins, and pressured other spineless scientists to agree that the “novel,” i.e., never before seen, virus came from some Wuhan local enjoying bat soup or a pangolin hero, and not the obvious source, a nearby Fauci-funded virology lab. To believe that, you’d have to be a Democrat, one of their media handmaidens, or a complete moron, but I repeat myself.After all, those folks are all fond of fairy tales, telling us it’s fine for men to beat up female athletes, Muslims were instrumental in founding America, ObamaCare lets you keep your doctor and your plan, and Joe Biden’s Stage 4 prostate cancer was only recently discovered.
Having dodged all accountability for helping create COVID-19, Fauci then set about becoming, in his own words, “one of the most recognizable persons in the world.” Napoleon much, Tony?In this he was successful, making stuff up left and right, changing the common meaning of words, and becoming fabulously wealthy in the process. Estimates are that while millions were dying from COVID, 7-8 million dollars somehow found their way into Tony’s pocket. Who says crime doesn’t pay?
Fauci first stated – correctly — that masks wouldn’t prevent the spread of an airborne virus. Then he backtracked, saying that it was a necessary white lie, so the rubes wouldn’t cause a mask shortage for health professionals. Now, masks became absolutely necessary for everyone. In fact, two masks were better than one. As a dentist for forty-three years, I was outraged by Fauci’s mask theater, knowing that the paper masks I wore daily had pores big enough for any virus to get through, N-95 masks (which allow 5% of small particles like viruses to go through) made it hard for me to breathe, and only a moron would walk around wearing two masks.
Fauci then made up the six-foot “social distancing” and “no handshake” rules and again, a sneeze can send saliva twenty-eight feet or so, and the Wuhan Flu was acquired by breathing viral aerosols, not skin-to-skin contact. Feeling his power and fame growing, Fauci then got serious about running things. He and his “public health” pals shut down the country and then, with the avid support of Democrats frothing at the mouth to take down President Trump, crashed the economy and arbitrarily determined winners and losers.
Winners were government workers who got paid whether they worked or not; big box stores (I painted and landscaped my entire new home during the pandemic); rubber glove and medical mask producers; teachers unions whose members were paid for (not) remotely learning, liquor stores; the mostly peaceful and mask-exempt rioters of BLM, and the despicable fake-news media, loudly trumpeting body counts and blaming it all on Trump. And all the while, rivers of sweet, sweet moolah flowed into Dr. and Mrs. Fauci’s bank accounts.
Losers were the poor nursing home patients in states where the likes of “Handy Andy” Cuomo forced such facilities to accept patients regardless of COVID status, small business owners, movie theaters, museums, music venues, churches, synagogues, and mosques, folks who were denied routine medical and dental care and later paid the price, people suffering from anxiety who became full-fledged hypochondriacs and, after manually disinfecting their groceries, lit St. Fauci votive candles; and most of all, kids.
During the pandemic, the smallest and most vulnerable among us were denied proper education, normal social development, and even being out in the great outdoors. All this unnecessary and inestimable damage to our children — for a disease which killed Americans who were, on average, seventy-eight years old and had multiple comorbidities! St. Fauci wasn’t done, though. He forced a vaccine on Americans that failed to prevent either catching COVID or transmitting it — by definition, a failed vaccine — but did cause countless deaths and severe illnesses, countless because no one in the public-health hierarchy was much interested in counting them or informing the public. As a health professional, I was one of the first people (double) vaccinated, before coming down with COVID. Twice.
Did my vaccinations lessen the severity of my disease? Totally conjectural, something impossible to prove since the virus was constantly mutating and is currently just another flu bug. And despite mounting perhaps the worst pandemic response in recorded history, Little Lord Fauci somehow found time to chat up known intellectuals Barbara Streisand and Julia Roberts, have “friendship-building” dinners with so-called journalists Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, and attend a pro baseball game with two pals when no one else was allowed admittance, a game where he both took his mask off to talk to his friends and threw possibly the lamest first pitch in major league baseball history, almost as short and crooked as Fauci himself.
It must have been wonderful for Tony, watching his stature, er… social stature, and net worth grow even as millions of lives were lost, ruined, or damaged. But, sadly, the party’s now over. Anyone with eyes to see now realizes what an evil, selfish, and undoubtedly criminal man Anthony Fauci is. Whoever ran old, senile Joe Biden — Jill? The Chicoms? — certainly agreed with my assessment. They gave Fauci a blanket pardon for any and all crimes he committed during his reign of error. So, who will judge Anthony Fauci for his crimes against humanity?Democrats? Republican politicians? The courts? No, nothing’s going to happen to the incredibly wealthy and still quite popular Anthony Fauci, once the most recognizable name in the world. The Swamp protects its own.
Now, I’m seventy-three, and with multiple comorbidities, I can see the finish line. A deeply flawed man, I just hope that when it comes to my final judgment, the good I did in life outweighs the bad.By this coming Christmas, Anthony Fauci will be eighty-six. And if, like me, you’re outraged at all the damage done by a pencil-pushing bureaucrat who never even treated patients and became fabulously wealthy and popular doing it, relax. Because poor little Tony Fauci surely has tremors, night sweats, and insomnia, pondering his final judgment.
Caroline Sunshine went on CNN’s Newsnight this week and said the quiet part out loud about Dr. Fauci, and as you can imagine, the panel was none too pleased about it. The former Trump 2024 campaign press aide told her fellow panelists that Fauci is a textbook sociopath. “Forget about prosecuting him,” Sunshine said on CNN’s Newsnight. “The guy should be in a mental institution. He’s a textbook sociopath.” Naturally, the room fell apart.
Podcast host Leigh McGowan could only manage a stunned “What?” Sunshine pressed forward anyway, and laid out her diagnosis in clinical terms. “DSM-5 level sociopath who was running our pandemic response, low empathy, ability to inflict pain on innocents, narcissism,” she said. “Are you suggesting that he should be in a mental institution for having an ego?” host Abby Phillip asked, downplaying the charge as something that would describe just about everyone in Washington. The whole misery loves company thing.
But Sunshine’s point had nothing to do with ego. Fauci kept a diary through the darkest stretch of the pandemic, and he filled it with something other than grief for the country he was supposedly serving. “He writes in his diary at the height of the pandemic, when Americans aren’t allowed to see grandma dying of COVID, what is Anthony Fauci writing about? ‘The media is so hot for me.’ ‘I’ve had so many articles written about me.’”
Sarah Matthews, Trump’s former deputy press secretary, jumped to Fauci’s defense and reminded the table that she actually worked with him at the White House. “There is one person at this table who worked with Dr. Fauci,” Matthews said. “I was Trump’s deputy press secretary during COVID.” She admitted it was “very frustrating” watching Fauci land magazine covers and TV hits criticizing the administration’s COVID response, but she chalked it up to a novel virus and a government improvising in real time.
Sunshine was not buying the excuse. “You couldn’t keep him off TV,” she said. “You were in the press office. You would know.” Even Phillip could not resist a jab of her own, suggesting Fauci might have been drinking his own Kool-Aid. Sunshine turned that line right back on the panel. “You all in the media, you were in love with him,” she said. “You were in love with a narcissist. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you guys.”
Here’s the thing: None of what Sunshine said is wrong. We know what Fauci’s diary entries say. They aren’t the private notes of a public health official managing a national crisis with the good of the nation in mind. They’re more like the confessions of a man drunk on his own celebrity. This guy tracked his magazine covers. He counted his headlines. He measured his own importance in press clips while hospitals kept grieving families away from relatives dying of COVID-19. He even detailed his efforts to profit from the pandemic with cash awards.
Those entries also undercut the image Fauci spent years building. He cared more about protecting his own reputation than telling Americans the truth, including about where the virus came from in the first place. Fauci spent years treating the lab leak theory as a fringe conspiracy, only to watch his credibility collapse once his own communications and diary entries surfaced. Sunshine said an uncomfortable truth, and the CNN panel could not handle hearing it out loud. That reaction tells you everything about how deep the media’s investment in protecting him still runs.
President Donald Trump’s political stature is so poor right now that he has squandered the Republican Party’s advantage on two major issues that almost always favor the GOP: the economy and national security. A Reuters-Ipsos poll this week showed Democrats and Republicans virtually tied on “war, foreign conflicts and terrorism.” The GOP led on that issue by 11 points after the 2024 election. Today, 37% of US adults say Democrats have a better approach, compared to 36% who say the GOP does.
Fox News polling a couple weeks back showed something very similar: On national security, 50% of registered voters preferred the GOP, to 48% who preferred the Democratic Party. That’s compared to a 12-point edge for Republicans in January, before the Iran war. Both recent findings are within the margin of error. But the numbers even being that close is basically unheard of. Fox polling has regularly tested how registered voters compare the two parties on terrorism and national security. Until the Iran war, Democrats had never even been within double-digits of the Republican Party on either issue.
Republicans have also led consistently on national security in Gallup polling. Democrats only nosed ahead on that issue once in the 21st century: in 2007. Gallup’s data on which party is better on “international terrorism and military threats” has been even more lopsided in the GOP’s favor. Across 22 polls conducted since a year after 9/11, Democrats have led on that issue only once — again, in 2007 — and most of the time Republicans led by double-digits. And then there’s the economy.
The most recent Fox survey showed Democrats leading on that issue by nine points, 54%-45%. That was the biggest Democratic advantage since 2006, when they led by 20 points. And when they took a lead on the economy back in April, it marked the first time they were ahead since 2010, shortly after the 2008 financial crisis that began during the George W. Bush administration. CNN polling back in May showed a closer split between the two parties on the economy, with 35% of adults preferring Democrats, compared to 33% who preferred the GOP. The poll previously asked people to choose between congressional Republicans and congressional Democrats. The last time Republicans didn’t lead on that question was 2009.
The numbers on both fronts seem to illustrate that Trump greatly miscalculated the fallout from launching the Iran war — as well as other controversial policies like his global tariffs. By launching the tariffs, he effectively took ownership of whatever became of the economic picture. Then he compounded negative public sentiment by basically shrugging off any responsibility to address Americans’ inflation concerns. Now he’s contending with a still-stagnant economic picture, with the economy shedding 23,000 jobs in July. Americans don’t love Democrats; in fact, the blue side remains pretty unpopular in polls. So the fact that they’ve apparently taken a lead on the economy really says something.
And the national security numbers might be even more striking — because Democrats hardly ever even compete with Republicans on the topic. Just as education and health care almost always favor Democrats, national security and defending the homeland are almost always signature GOP issues, and lopsidedly so. That remained true even when Bush launched wars in the Middle East that gradually became pretty unpopular. Trump, though, seems to have botched the Iran war so badly that Americans suddenly see Democrats on equal footing with the GOP — in terms of issues on the GOP’s own turf.
“We have already had cases where AI, assigned a task, decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was to erase the corporations’ customer records ..”
I have always assured readers that in the anti-human digital age, whoever controls the data base controls the “truth,” which will be, and already is, an orchestration serving elite agendas.
Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, an online open encyclopedia that serves to demonize those who speak outside of the official narratives, agrees with me. Sanger in an interview last Friday with the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung said that Wikipedia’s lack of an adequate governance structure allowed “specific ideological viewpoints” to shape its content, turning the online encyclopedia into a “globalist, academic, secular and progressive” consensus.
“Wikipedia was recognized early on as an important propaganda organ.” Jews use it to demonize Israel’s critics, and Sanger reports “what we know as fact, based on all sorts of evidence, is that the CIA has already edited Wikipedia.” “Wikipedia is already compromised. That’s clear,” Sanger admitted. He went on to say the ideological bias embedded in Wikipedia is now being amplified because large language models increasingly rely on its content as a reference source when answering factual queries.
The digital revolution and its offshoot artificial intelligence have created the perfect Orwellian memory hole. I and numerous others have documented books and articles with URLs to online sources only to experience that within a few days of publication the sources no longer exist. This could not happen in print and analogue days. There were huge numbers of sources for every source reference in libraries, newspaper morgues, and private collections. It was impossible to erase reference sources.
The digital revolution rests on the Internet which developed as an open system. This means it can never be secure. Already security concerns are everywhere. The day has already passed that a username and a password sufficed. Now you have to have a code sent by text or email. Then a passkey, and sometimes also voice and face recognition, both of which AI can produce to impersonate you. Scammers progress faster than security, and once quantum computers appear encryption is useless.
The reality with with which we are faced is that information no longer exists in multiple print form. Information no longer exists in material form. It exists somewhere electronically in the cloud. One electromagnetic force can wipe it out, and malefactors and mistakes can erase it.
We have already had cases where AI, assigned a task, decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was to erase the corporations’ customer records. Imagine if that is your bank. What happens to your access to your accounts? Can you pay your bills? Is your automobile insurance cancelled? Do you face foreclosure on your mortgage? Possibly businesses are creating backup systems of some kind, but as they also are digital they too will fail.
The digital revolution was the creation of people devoid of capability to imagine unintended consequences. They are building for us a house of cards. When it collapses, so will organized society. It is merely a matter of time.
Slowly she builds her performance outrage, methodically working through the talking points afore her. Full dramatic acting on display. Lips pursed, bladed eyebrows angled, contempt tone triggered and the intent obvious.
NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya appears on CBS Face the Nation to discuss Mexican poop lettuce, Mexico poop peppers, Illegal Alien measles spread and the weaponized information from health ‘administrators’ around the COVID-19 vaccine. Obviously, with Media Patron Saint Anthony Fauci facing scrutiny, Margaret Brennan defends Fauci as she would if the Lightbringer, Chicago Jesus was disrespected. Combative video and Transcript below:
[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by the Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Good morning to you, doctor.
NIH DIRECTOR DR. JAY BHATTACHARYA: Good morning.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we should mention you are also helping to run the CDC until the new director is sworn in as well.
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Until next Wednesday, yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Until next Wednesday. So let me ask you about a number of things that I think people at home are worried about, particularly around the food supply. The cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce from Mexico is now in 15 states. There were two deaths this week due to it. Yesterday, USDA issued an alert for a range of products that may have salmonella, including meat and poultry. 27 states are affected by salmonella, possibly linked to jalapeños, but cilantro, red onion, avocado, also listed in the CDC notice. Albertsons, a grocery store, just recalled some items. There’s risk of salmonella in eggs in Texas, according to the CDC, and then you have the screwworm outbreak affecting beef. This is overwhelming for someone going into a grocery store right now. Why do they seem out of control?
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Well, the- the cyclospora outbreak is larger than in normal years. I mean, in normal years there actually is a- cyclospora cases. The- the two deaths that you mentioned, they happened in late July- late- late June, early July, before we identified this source. And so, folks that are listening, can rest assured, the CDC and the FDA are working hard to trace back exactly where these outbreaks are occurring from, intervening with the- the sort of suppliers to make sure that they don’t- and doing recalls to make sure that the disease doesn’t- the, you know, condition doesn’t spread. I mean, it’s tough. You go to grocery store, you buy lettuce, and you say, “Okay, can I buy the lettuce?”
Article III of the Constitution allows Congress to establish courts below the Supreme Court, which includes federal District and Circuit Courts. If Congress can establish them, it can abolish them. In 1801, in the waning days of John Adams’ presidency, Congress did just that and abolished the district and circuit courts of the District of Columbia.
These two courts display widespread intransigent partisanship and demonstrably poor scholarship, exemplified by this week’s ruling on the new White House construction. Given the difficulty of removing so many bad judges in these two courts by impeaching them, it’s time to repeat John Adams’ move: Abolish these courts. Cases that normally would be heard in them should be assigned to courts elsewhere. The case which most showcases the lunacy of the D.C. courts is National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States v. National Park Service, et al. As is often the case in poorly reasoned opinions, the author substitutes words for reason.
As you may know, the old East Wing of the White House which, among other things, contained underground security facilities (bunkers, bomb-shelters, and military and medical infrastructure), presidential offices and some minimal public meeting spaces, was torn down and construction begun on a replacement with a larger number of more modern offices and a ballroom to provide a larger, much-needed entertainment and meeting space, better security facilities, and protection against drone attacks. Up to now, rented tents and outdoor porta potty facilities have had to be utilized for state events, and the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Ball surely underscores the need for a safe venue for such things.
Except for the congressional appropriation for the upgraded secure facilities in this new wing, the remainder of the cost is being borne by private contributions to the National Park Service, which is administering these funds. But this is hate Trump city, and Alison Hoagland, a board member of the National Trust, said that she takes monthly walks past the White House and that the aesthetics of the new construction would cause her harm.
In the real world, monthly aesthetic harm to one person’s delicate sensibilities would not upend a needed improvement to the White House grounds, which are exempt by its terms from the National Historic Preservation Act (which establishes the Trust). The litigation has been long and involved back-and-forth court rulings between the district and circuit courts. The courts have now finally agreed the below-ground construction would not be halted, but this week ruled the above-ground work must be, even though that is a structural impossibility and a security (and aesthetic) nightmare.
The first question that every court must decide before proceeding further in any case is whether or not it even has jurisdiction to hear and decide the matter. The majority opinion doesn’t get to this until page 30 of its opinion, and then, for all its flowery verbosity, it got it wrong, just as the dissenting judge notes:
“…the district court had no jurisdiction because the Trust has no standing to stop construction at the White House. The ballroom is also likely within the President’s authority to make improvements to the Executive Residence at the White House. Finally, the balance of equities overwhelmingly favors the government. The district court elevated the aesthetic displeasure of a single passerby over the government’s security interests in the ballroom and the security risks of leaving an open construction site at the President’s home and office.”
In assessing the balance of equities between Ms. Hoagland’s claimed aesthetic harms and the needs of the White House, Judge Rao shows the Court “improperly glossed over, ignored or discounted the government’s evidence demonstrating the security harms from construction of the ballroom.” Nor could it, as Rao noted, “compensate for the slight aesthetic harm by resorting to hyperbole and its view of the legal merits. Every day the project is delayed increases the security risk according to declarations from senior military and Secret Service officials. Moreover, the creation of the above-ground ballroom “will alleviate security vulnerabilities that currently impact large events involving the President.”
As a practical matter, the underground and above-ground facilities cannot be separated out at this point. “The Secretary of the Army has further explained why the underground national security facilities cannot be adequately protected by the concrete slab and modest topping structure allowed by the district court’s injunction… The ballroom’s dimensions and structure are essential for security. According to the Secretary, “[t]o provide adequate subterranean protection without” the “height and mass” of the ballroom, “engineers would need to dig impractically deep.”
…The ballroom provides a critical “dual-layered system” of protection for the national security facilities, “comprising a sacrificial outer cover coupled with a hardened inner structural element.” …Corroborating the Secretary’s account, the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has similarly described how the “height and mass” of the ballroom “provide crucial, physical layers to shield” the national security facilities.
The height of the ballroom will also provide an “essential elevated platform to engage and neutralize aerial systems,” such as drones, that pose an increasingly serious threat to White House security. …There is no dispute that the Secretary’s declaration and the Army Corps memorandum are authentic, credible, and “go[] to the heart of the contested issue,” so it would be “inconsistent with this court’s own equitable obligations to pretend that [they] do[] not exist.”
David Friedberg: Starlink alone could be a trillion-dollar company
"Starlink alone could be generating on the order of $40 billion of revenue top line, with a huge amount of that flowing to free cash. That could be $30 billion in free cash flow within the year."
Elon Musk: “My mind often feels like a very wild storm. I have a fountain of ideas. I have more ideas than I can possibly execute, so I have no shortage of ideas.
Innovation is not the problem, execution is the problem. I’ve got an entire design for an electric supersonic… pic.twitter.com/769gcCsphh
Iran’s IRGC is holding the line, reiterating that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen to international shipping only after the United States accepts all of its conditions, which we outlined previously. Also, on Saturday Iran’s army spokesman Amir Akraminia stated that Iran’s new protocols in the Strait of Hormuz are “irreversible” and shall not be thwarted by the US. “The United States has no choice but to accept the existing situation; otherwise, it will incur costs far greater than those it has faced in the past,” Akraminia said.
On Sunday, a fresh report in The Wall Street Journal states the obvious – that President Trump has fewer and fewer options and is being squeezed, with any opportunity to declare ‘victory’ and make swift exit more elusive than ever, given Washington would have to make huge compromises, including lifting sanctions and paying war compensation to Tehran. Nearly six months ago when the war started, many non-interventionist critics accurately predicted the quagmire and catch-22 the US now finds itself in.
“For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said,” WSJ writes.
“But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things,” the report adds.
In a parallel vein to this scaled-back, lower grade conflict, President Trump has freshly told Axios in a brief interview that “We are low keying it” in the Persian Gulf. This comes after a week ago he called off ‘planned’ ‘harder’ attacks on Iran, which may have been just a bluff all along. Tehran didn’t blink, and it continues to press for maximal demands – as if to put ‘maximum pressure’ right back on Washington.
“We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” Trump claimed. According to more from Axios:
He stressed that Iran “is in very bad shape” economically and has no money to pay its troops. The U.S. naval blockade has exacerbated the Iranian regime’s economic crisis, Trump said. At the same time, Trump said that with oil down to slightly over $75 a barrel, U.S. consumers are feeling less pain from the war. Ironically, this is simply a return to administration talking points which defended the early days and weeks of a war that officials constantly touted would be ‘swift’ and limited.
The US hope was that Iran and its economy would just collapse from within, the masses would take to the streets, and the government of the Ayatollah would be overthrown. This has proven delusional time and again.
Instead, what we see happening is Washington being forced to move its bases back from front line areas in the Gulf, and officials including Trump himself constantly retreating from stated goals, objectives, and red lines. This is on display once again in the Sunday Axios interview:
Axios acknowledges that the new list of Iranian demands have gone from being the prerequisite for a nuclear deal to a prerequisite to opening the Strait. Trump now says the US is “low keying it” and focusing on economic pressure. In other words: the Strait will not be opening. https://t.co/AweQabOB8Wpic.twitter.com/3TMsxXcfh7
A video of Mojtaba Khamenei that was earlier released by the mass media had been shot before he became Iran’s Supreme leader, but he is now in good health and avoids appearing in public due to security considerations, an Iranian source told TASS. “This is an old video. It was made before he became [Supreme] leader,” he said, adding that his health condition is now quite good. “He is in good health and the only reason why he is not seen in public is security reasons,” he stressed.
Earlier, the Iranian Mehr agency released a video featuring Mojtaba Khamenei talking to a group of people who are listening to him attentively. Neither the date nor the venue of the event were indicated. Mojtaba Khamenei became Iran’s Supreme leader after his father, Ali Khamenei, was killed in a missile attack after the United States and Israel’s aggression against Iran.
Extreme leftists and white, female, overeducated, urban communists have one primary prism: how Obama-ish is their candidate? Both El-Sayed and Barack Obama are supported by the Muslim Brotherhood directly. Both El-Sayed and Barack Obama campaigned for Senate in the mid-term election (BO ’06, ES ’26), and both Barack Obama and El-Sayed planned to run for higher office in 2nd year of their freshman term as senator.
The media now begin their fawning endeavor as the Muslim Brotherhood backed Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed tries to moderate himself in the image of Barack Hussein Obama. I find it a little revealing that El-Sayed’s wife is a doctor who refuses to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients (cash only), as El-Sayed campaigns on Medicare for all. Of course, don’t look for the media to point this out during questioning. Notice also the Middle East nations that El-Sayed criticizes (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan) are the Mid-East nations who have pushed back or banned the Muslim Brotherhood. This is very revealing for those who walk the political deep weeds. By the way, he’s a paper doctor; a Phd, not an MD. WATCH:
[Transcript] – KRISTEN WELKER: And joining me now is Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. Dr. El-Sayed, welcome to Meet the Press.
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Thanks for having me.
KRISTEN WELKER: Thank you so much for being here and congratulations. Let’s talk about your victory this week. You narrowly defeated Congresswoman Haley Stevens. And when you actually add up all of the votes, the vote totals that went to Stevens and Mallory McMorrow, a majority of voters actually ended up voting for candidates who are more moderate than you. So how do you win over those voters who voted for someone else?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, thank you, Kristen. Really, we’re just grateful for everybody who participated. And the overwhelming recognition of the vote tallies is that 500,000 more Democrats voted than did Republicans in that election. And if that happens, we are going to win in a landslide. Now I know that we had it out with a very tough primary. There were a lot of issues that were discussed and differences that were identified and fixated on. But I will tell you this, that all of us agree that our differences are far smaller than what we agree on.
And what we agree on is that Donald Trump has been an existential threat to our democracy. He is costing us jobs. He is costing us more at almost every aspect of our lives, whether it’s our gas, our groceries, or our health care, and that Mike Rogers is going to be nothing more than a rubber stamp on Donald Trump’s disastrous economic and foreign policies. And so this is an opportunity for us to come together to mend fences, to build together the coalition that is going to defeat Mike Rogers in November and defeat Trumpism over the next two years.
KRISTEN WELKER: Well, let me ask you about some news that we’re learning this morning. Local outlets reporting that you spoke to former President Barack Obama on the phone. I know you’re not going to give me every detail of the call. But what was the crux of his message to you, Dr. El-Sayed?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, Kristen, you’re right. I like to keep private conversations private. But it was a really warm and inspiring conversation. I’ve got to be honest with you. I never saw myself ever able to run for public office. I literally told former President Bill Clinton that at my college graduation, in which I was the senior speaker and he was the main speaker. And I then watched the next year Barack Hussein Obama run for and win the presidency. I watched him serve with a level of class, a level of elegance that we could only pine for now. So I really enjoyed the conversation. I was grateful for his advice. It was very warm and very inviting. And I know that he knows the critical role that Michigan is going to play in holding Trump accountable, in winning back the Senate, and in building forward the future that we need.
KRISTEN WELKER: Is he going to campaign with you, Dr. El-Sayed?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Look, I really hope so. And it was a really good conversation about what we need to do to be able to win. And obviously, this is somebody who knows a lot about winning Michigan.
KRISTEN WELKER: And just to be clear, do you anticipate he’ll show up on the campaign trail with you? Is that one of the broad topics you all discussed?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Look, we talked a lot about what it’ll take to win. Obviously, his presence here in Michigan would mean so much to the coalition that helped elect him. So I hope that we get to campaign together.
Clean up in aisle 4! Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed just made a mess in an interview with Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press, and let’s just say his handlers have some fixing to do. One of El-Sayed’s signature issues is “Medicare for All.” It’s an issue that El-Sayed loves to mention but doesn’t like to talk about in detail. One reason is that it’s not good for sound bites. Once you get into the details of Medicare, it gets complex, bureaucratic, and boring. None of those things work well in media interviews. But there are other reasons he’d rather not talk at length about his health coverage ideas, and it became clearer when Welker pressed him on it.
Calling him “Doctor,” Welker told El-Sayed that everyday Americans worry that to make Medicare universal would mean tax hikes for everyone, not just the rich. El-Sayed dismissively tried to give Welker a quick sound bite in the hope she’d move on when he said, “As I’ve said across this campaign, I am for taxing billionaires their wealth.” But Welker wasn’t done. She said, “What about people who make less than a billion and less than a million dollars?” El-Sayed responded:
“So, for the average person, when you look at your W2, if you’re an employee who gets paid every two weeks or four weeks, after you pay your taxes, the next biggest check that comes off the top of your pay stub is to your health insurance company. So, imagine instead of paying that to your health insurance company, whose CEO makes $20 million a year, instead you paid a little bit more in taxes for healthcare that you wouldn’t lose if you lost your job or turned 26 or got married or got divorced.
I think all of us would be a lot more interested in that kind of a system if we knew that our healthcare would be free at the point of care and would be free without having to worry about losing it, in general.So, there’s an opportunity here, I think, to trade what we give to a big corporation, who gets to decide who we get to see and who we don’t, for a little bit more paid into FICA. And I think that’s a trade that’s worth making. I think the broader public understands that that’s a trade worth making considering how many people are holding medical debt, a third of all Michigan households right now.”
Welker reinforced her earlier point, saying, “Just to be very clear, you’re describing this trade-off. You are effectively acknowledging that people making less than a million dollars could see their taxes go up. I just want to be very clear.” His non-answers to her questions were a de facto confirmation of Welker’s suspicions. What El-Sayed said pretty clearly was to trust the government more than your insurance company, and that yes, your taxes will go up under his plan.
Something that rarely comes up when “Medicare for All” is discussed is what Medicare does not cover. Anyone who’s turned 65 and applied for Medicare knows that Medicare is hardly an apples-to-apples replacement for the kind of health insurance you may have gotten through your employer.
Medicare does not automatically include eye care, dental care, and certain prescription coverage. If retirees pay more, and most do, they can enroll in a Part C or Medicare Advantage plan that covers more. But even there, Medicare Advantage is only one option and may not be as good as your existing health insurance. Some opt not to go with Medicare Advantage, instead going with a more expensive Medigap or another alternative plan that they feel is closer to what they’re used to.
As for El-Sayed’s comments that by paying the government more for your Medicare, you’re not paying some private health insurance company, that’s often not true at all. Medicare Advantage plans and other supplemental plans are usually administered by private health insurance companies, and so you likely still would be lining the coffers of some private insurance company. What all of this means is that while El-Sayed wants Americans to think they’re getting health insurance comparable to what they’ve had, and all they need to do is pay the government more in the form of higher taxes, that’s likely not what it would look like in practice.
Welker also asked him about his BFF, Hasan Piker, who’s been right at his side throughout this campaign. Walking a political tightrope, El-Sayed sought to distance himself from Piker’s words but not from the pathetic Piker himself.
BREAKING: An Abdul El-Sayed supporter said voters are “stupid” and the best way to win is to hide the truth.
Abdul El-Sayed and Hasan Piker nodded in agreement.
During that same interview with Welker, El-Sayed distanced himself from Piker’s comments when he said that “America deserved 9/11.” When Welker asked the senatorial candidate for comment, he told her that Piker’s comments were “dumb.”
Of course, it was a dumb statement and of course I think Hasan himself would say that was a dumb statement. He disavowed it. So yes, America didn’t deserve 9/11, but you know, to sit here and play gotcha politics with a dumb thing somebody said out of context that they disavowed themselves — to say, ‘Oh well, what does that mean about what you think?’ I want to be held accountable for what I say and what I do, rather than this idea that we’re so stuck in cancel culture that all of us agreed was a bad idea back in 2020, but we seem to want to bring back, El-Sayed said. The leftist news site Politico had a slightly different take on El-Sayed’s comments:
El-Sayed’s comments are a stark difference from his interview with POLITICO earlier this year in which he declined to denounce Piker’s views in what he called a “gotcha game.””I’m not here to disavow people’s views,” El-Sayed said at the time. “This whole gotcha game, platform policing, cancel culture — I thought we were over it.”The Napoleonesque Senate candidate would not say one way or the other whether he’d continue to campaign with Piker, trying like the devil to get Welker to change the subject, saying that it doesn’t matter who he campaigns with. He said he’s “a lot more concerned about who I’m campaigning to.”
NBC: Hasan Piker has said "America deserved 9/11," do you plan to continue to campaign with him?
EL-SAYED: "I'm less concerned now with who I'm campaigning with…"
Politico wasn’t buying it, reporting that “El-Sayed’s embrace of Piker, who he said he believes is ‘critical’ for Democrats to embrace, has drawn criticism — from Republicans and Democrats alike.” On yet another front, former first lady “Dr. Jill Biden” once had a press secretary named Michael LaRosa. On Aug. 8, LaRosa bucked his party and publicly endorsed Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) in his bid to become Michigan’s next senator.
While it’s rare for an embedded Democrat operative to so publicly break ranks like this, LaRosa made it crystal clear on the X platform why he was backing Rogers: “I won’t defend or support anyone who is too cowardly to stand up to extremists who think the mother of my best friend, who jumped from 95 stories because the alternative was worse, deserved what happened to her…. Her only crime was showing up to work that morning.”
I refused to defend or support anyone with an SS Totenkampf tattoo, simply because they had a "D" next to their name.
I won't defend or support anyone who is too cowardly to stand up to extremists who think the mother of my best friend, who jumped from 95 stories because the… https://t.co/hC6s7W7PfK
All this adds up to a bad day on at least one Sunday show for the upstart candidate who is starting to look like the Michigan version of Graham Platner without the Nazi tattoo, the sexting, and all the other sex stuff. Judging him by the company he keeps, his refusal to distance himself from some seriously anti-American actors, and his clunky responses to straightforward questions, it’s clear that he’s got tougher days ahead. The truth is that the Sunday shows are very kind to Democrats. If he couldn’t hit a figurative home run in his first interview with Welker since winning his primary race, he’s got some weaknesses and vulnerabilities that the Rogers campaign and Republicans can exploit more fully in the coming months.
Hasan Piker, a close ally of Abdul El-Sayed, is calling for “Marxist-Leninist” punishment for those who criticize Michigan’s Democratic senatorial candidate. As radicals and anti-Semites like Piker flood the Democratic Party, establishment figures are struggling to justify their alliance with extremist candidates. Ironically, Democrats are now fulfilling the false narrative that they used against President Donald Trump after the Charlottesville protests. They are maintaining that there are “many fine people” in the DSA despite their seeking to destroy our constitutional system, open our borders, defund the police, and embrace virtual anarchy.
Now, some of these fine people are calling for moderates to be purged as radicals take over the Democratic Party. In 2017, the media manufactured a controversy by suggesting that Trump had praised neo-Nazis and Klansmen in 2017 as “fine people” in Charlottesville. It was demonstrably false, but became the accepted truth in the media. In reality, Trump condemned the neo-Nazis, and the statement about “fine people on both sides” was in reference to the people on both sides of the debate over the removal of historic statues.
That narrative took on an added hypocrisy when some of the loudest voices later endorsed a candidate with an actual Nazi tattoo who allegedly assaulted women, mocked wounded veterans, and praised terrorists. However, he promised to deliver Maine and bring figures like Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren back to power.
Anti-Semites and communists are not “fine” additions to any party. Hasan Piker is not a “fine person” in any universe. He has said that the United States deserved the terrorist attacks on 9-11 and prominently displays a picture of the collapsing Twin Towers. He has downplayed the murders and rapes of innocent Israelis on Oct. 7th and called one Jewish man who challenged him a “bloodthirsty, violent pig dog.” Figures like Harris and Buttigieg brush off El-Sayed’s allies, including Mohammad Baqer Qazwini, a prominent Muslim cleric who gave a sermon that called for followers to vote for El-Sayed while also calling upon them to pray for the death of President Donald Trump and to celebrate the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Then there is the Democratic House candidate in New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a prison abolitionist who boasted how she wiped her hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin. Chevalier and other DSA candidates are being welcomed in the Democratic Party despite anti-American views and a DSA platform calling for the destruction of our constitutional system, including scrapping the Supreme Court, the presidency, and the Senate. Many are also overwhelmingly anti-Israel, with many, like Piker, displaying virulent anti-Semitism.
When asked about the extreme agenda of these candidates, Schumer and others repeat the mantra that they need to win in the upcoming elections. In other words, the DSA is opposed to the core institutions and values of this country, but it could be useful in returning them to power. What is interesting is that the establishment does not appear to care what these radicals represent for their party, but the radicals care deeply about what the establishment represents. This week, former DNC Vice-chair David Hogg told establishment figures that the “Big Tent” of his party is not big enough for them. He and other moderates have to go.
When asked about Democratic moderates, Hogg replied, “They don’t have the right values.” Piker has even grander plans for our post-constitutional republic, calling for mass arrests, demanding pledges from establishment figures to “arrest and prosecute every prominent member of the Trump administration” who engaged in what he views as corruption as well as “every ICE agent who committed crimes on the job.” Piker also wants to purge any Democrats who do not support El-Sayed, calling them “haters” who deserved to be punished:
“There are haters in our ranks. Notice how whenever someone comes out and says, ‘Yeah that’s actually a bad association,’ immediately it’s weaponized by the Republicans. You can’t be out here saying like, ‘Oh, I’m a centrist Democrat. And I think Abdul is a bridge too far.’ That must be punished.” Piker, who likes to parade around in a Mao jacket, seems to be longing for the good old days of party purges under Stalin and his contemporaries in the Comintern.
He notably accused critics of the sin of “factionalism.” Since the Jacobins of the French Revolution, factionalism has been the scourge of revolutionaries. In my book, Rage and the Republic, I discuss the difference between the American and French Revolutions. Where James Madison saw factions as a natural part of a democratic system, the Jacobins sought them as a traitorous and reactionary element. Madison saw compromise as the best solution to factions, while the Jacobins saw the guillotine as the final solution.
Piker is right out of that Jacobin tradition, calling moderate Democrats “Koch payroll ‘liberals’” and “irredeemable.” (Notably, the Jacobins also pushed for some of the same DSA demands such as a unicameral legislature). Of course, conservatives can show the same intolerance for RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), but there is an added menacing element to communists calling for mass expulsion or punishment of moderates from their party. It is chillingly familiar.
Mao regularly purged the Communist Party of those not following the party lines, declaring, “Serious offenders should be punished by law, and when they are Party members they should also be dealt with according to Party discipline.” Establishment figures continue to use the “Big Tent” narratives to brush off questions about the radical agenda and associations of these candidates. The only thing that they have in common is the desire for power. Once these candidates win, figures like Schumer will discover that this tent is not nearly as big as they think.
Almost since US President Donald Trump started his second and final term, the movement that brought him to power twice has been fracturing. Now there is a full break among Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters. Its essence is simple: There are those who continue to identify MAGA with Trump, and on the other side of a widening chasm, those who remain loyal to MAGA but believe that Trump has not. The rebels say Trump has betrayed the cause and want to save MAGA – and thus the US – from Trump.
There are no official structures yet to what the MAGA dissidents call their movement, but it does have a de facto leader – popular journalist and podcast host Tucker Carlson. It was at Tucker’s all-American place in Maine that the MAGA schism was made official. There, several key figures of the evolving MAGA-against-Trump group met, and in effect, raised the standard of rebellion. Not literally, but in the shape of an X post by former US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (with 5.4 million followers). It featured a carefully composed picture of a merry rebel crew, including, apart from herself, Joe Kent, former counterterrorism tsar under Trump, Representative Thomas Massie, a long-term conservative Trump opponent, and Carlson, sitting at the head of the table.
Within days after the post, Carlson released a video manifesto with the title “It’s Time to Save America” on his own Tucker Carlson Network social media channel (with 5.2 million subscribers on YouTube). Within one day, it had over a million views on YouTube alone. In a rhetorical master class for the podcast age, Carlson sketched the American present as a dead-end of extraordinary decadence and degradation, a loss of reality among the establishment, and “paralysis and looting.”
He also predicted that change is inevitable if Americans want to avoid the “end-of-everything,” either by nuclear war or uncontrolled AI. He warned that even preventing this apocalypse by timely political action could produce great violence, that is, a revolution. And finally, he presented his alternative to both the end of the world and wild upheaval in ten concise points. Ranging from “fairness” to “unity,” his ten points were more a clarion call for national renewal than a concrete policy outline, with aims general enough to form a broad consensus, as he acknowledged.
Much of his ten points read like MAGA 2.0, that is, without Trump, as observers noted. On issues such as physical and mental health, the need for the economy to make actually useful things instead of just surveillance tech, weapons of war, and financial gimmicks, the beauty of the American landscape and architecture in need of restoration, Carlson’s impassioned pleas echoed the conservatism that is one root of the MAGA phenomenon.
Ultimately, what will be more important is where things differ: One of Carlson’s points was about sovereignty, or as he defined it, being “free from outside influence.” It is this point that provides the key to all the others. The ten points are, in essence, a declaration of independence, not just from any outside influence, but from Israel and its powerful US lobby. Carlson directly named them as forming one of America’s worst problems. For starters, he did not simply attack a selfish upper class whose members behave as if they were kings, above the rules of law and ethics. He called it the “Epstein class,” with reference to the late convicted pedophile, alleged suicide victim, self-declared Rothschild representative, and close associate of alleged Israeli rapists and intelligence.
Carlson also correctly linked the Iran War – a “strategic disaster” worse than Vietnam, as another realistic American recently stated – to “bribery or threat or both by Israel.” Equally plausibly, he accused Israel of committing genocide – like Nazi Germany, he said – and protested against continuing US support. Finally, the activities of lobbies, with that of Israel not alone, but in the lead, “gives the lie to the idea of representative democracy,” according to Carlson, because where lobbyists make the decisions, the voters do not.
In short, Carlson made the point that America’s worst military defeat in living memory, its support for – and really, participation in – an ongoing genocide, and its loss of sovereignty and democracy are all due, either entirely or to a large extent, to the US establishment’s perverse and deeply unpatriotic relationship to Israel. Politically, this amounts to an arguably long overdue declaration of war against the Zionist state’s aggressive influence operations.
And the message has gotten through. Haaretz, Israel’s ‘liberal’ paper of record, rapidly dedicated a long opinion piece to Carlson, accusing him of – surprise, surprise – “anti-Semitism.” This is an absurd smear, but expected. Systematically misrepresenting criticism of Israel, a genocidal apartheid state, as hatred of Jews is an old, stale Zionist tactic. Carlson certainly isn’t naïve. Even in his ten points, he anticipated being called a “Nazi” and shrugged it off.
But Haaretz does get one thing right. For Carlson and his growing movement, “Israel and its American supporters also represent a central source of the [MAGA] movement’s betrayal [by Trump].” Or, put differently, Carlson represents an American conservatism that has the courage to identify, name, and attack America’s insane dependence on a tiny yet immensely subversive and violent rogue state.
There is, no doubt, much idealizing and even nostalgia in Carlson’s image of American history and the West. And those wishing to be woke about an arch-conservative will find rich pickings. But that is futile and dull, because it is not the point that matters. What matters is that US polls have consistently shown a great, unprecedented groundswell against Israel. A new book on Israel’s US lobby is about to come out and is making a massive splash. The tide is turning.
Fellow MAGA rebel Joe Kent let it slip that Tucker-for-president is an option. Third parties are a difficult proposition. Yet Haaretz for one is worried, and from a Zionist point of view, it should be. And that is very good news.
I have a dream that American farmers, drillers, miners, industrialists, and manufacturers produce everything that American consumers need. I have a dream that anything worth building is built in America, that any job worth doing is done in America, and that anything worth buying can be found and shipped within the United States.
Why did we allow ourselves to be convinced that Americans should make only a few select things and buy everything else from foreign markets? Why did we allow politicians and Wall Street investors to convince us that “free trade” requires slave labor from faraway lands? Why did we spend a century ensuring safer work environments and more dependable wages for our skilled tradesmen only to export those jobs to adversarial nations that care nothing about worker safety or providing above-subsistence standards of living? Why did we fight a Cold War in defense of freedom only to subsidize Chinese communism? Why do we regulate ourselves to death in the name of “fighting global warming,” while China and India inflict the worst environmental damage on the planet?
Prove these statements wrong: There is no worker on the planet more capable than an American. There is no nation of people more innovative than the United States. There is nothing that Americans import from other nations that Americans can’t discover, create, grow, or produce on their own. There is no country on the planet with more educational infrastructure than the United States. There is no country on the planet with a greater incentive to defend its way of life.
I believe that Establishment politicians and multinational investment firms sold us a bill of goods when they told us that “free trade” deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, would provide American households greater prosperity. I believe that those politicians and Wall Street investors lied when they told us that the United States would become a “service economy” and that blue-collar workers would find personal fulfillment as customer service representatives, real estate agents, telephone operators, data technicians, and software coders.
I believe that politicians and Big Ag corporations lie when they insist that only illegal aliens are willing to sweat in farm fields. I believe that politicians who ignore federal law by establishing “sanctuary cities” and NGOs that aid and abet human smuggling into the United States lie when they say that some jobs are “too dirty” for Americans to take. I believe Establishment politicians and Wall Street titans have spent fifty years lying to the American people about the kinds of jobs that Americans should do.
The economy of the United States did not surpass that of the United Kingdom until the third year of WWI in 1916. While the U.K. had been the engine for the global economy for two centuries, America held an inimitable distinction: No other country in the world had maintained higher rates of both intra- and inter-generational mobility. The American Experiment created an ideal environment for innovation, hard work, investment, and private ownership. Individual workers advanced up the economic ladder during their own lifetimes, and their children and grandchildren ascended even farther. In a few generations, farmers became tradesmen who became merchants who became bankers, lawyers, ministers, and politicians. Respect for private property and a rejection of European social castes made America a land of opportunity.
Since the creation of the Federal Reserve in a rigged Christmas vote in 1913, the American system has been upended. Bankers created a monopoly for themselves to manipulate the value of the American dollar. They, in turn, set the monetary system down a path toward inevitable decoupling from the gold standard. Dollar-printing (and government spending) decreased the value of personal savings and artificially juiced the currency-denominated value of homes, stocks, and other assets — effectively transferring wealth from the poorest Americans to the wealthiest.
As inflation steadily kicked in, central bankers and corporation-controlled politicians looked for ways to limit the rising costs of American goods. They artificially increased demand for the dollar by linking it to oil revenues, offshored American manufacturing to low-wage or slave-wage foreign nations, decreased the quality of finished products, and replaced small businesses with a handful of multinational corporate monopolies. Each of these “band-aids” has preserved Wall Street’s internal mechanisms for generating profits, while destroying the engine of American ingenuity and the physical infrastructure of American industry, manufacturing, and real economic growth.
The end result has been that — in charts and graphs — America has appeared to maintain an advanced economy that has consistently grown through the decades, even though its industrial towns have collapsed into rusty graveyards. If you separate the economy of the United States into two separate lines on a graph — one for Main Street businesses across the country and one for multinational businesses running Wall Street — it becomes obvious that small American businesses have had no growth (or negative growth) for decades. While the costs of their raw materials, employees, government regulations, and taxes have continued to rise, their profits have dwindled.
The engine of American growth in the real economy has been sputtering and dying, while artificially inflated valuations of Wall Street assets have been disguising America’s economic infirmity. Wall Street has become the Potemkin economy hiding America’s loss of industrial strength. This is no way for a superpower to endure. The United States cannot survive if it is dependent on communist China for chemicals, medicines, circuit boards, electrical components, clothing, machinery, and furniture.
The United States and the European Union are the two largest Western economies of the 21st century. Over the past two decades, however, their economic trajectories have diverged significantly.This line chart below, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, tracks the gross domestic product (GDP) of the EU and U.S. economies from 2006 to 2026 using the latest figures available from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s World Economic Outlook. Figures for 2026 are forecasts.
The Early Rise and Fall of the EU
The 15-member European Union was established in 1993 from precursor organizations such as the European Communities. In 2004, 10 new member states joined, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. Aided by the addition of these new member states, along with strong British and German economies, the EU s total GDP reached $19.3 trillion in 2008. This represented 131% of the U.S. economy that year, which stood at $14.8 trillion. The euro also reached an all-time high in June 2008 at roughly $1.55. The table below shows the size of the EU economy relative to the U.S. economy from 2006 to 2026.
The global financial crisis and Great Recession changed the European Union’s fortunes.
The newly expanded bloc faced severe challenges as several member-state governments struggled to service their debts or rein in large structural deficits. These countries included eurozone members Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. Through a combination of multilateral bailouts and austerity measures, the EU weathered the crisis. However, in the years that followed, the 28-member bloc s aggregate GDP contracted, and the $18.3 trillion U.S. economy surpassed it in 2015. Part of the decline in dollar-denominated GDP also reflected changes in exchange rates as the euro weakened against the U.S. dollar.
Brexit and the Years of Decline
Further challenges followed. In a June 2016 referendum, British voters narrowly chose to make the United Kingdom the first country to withdraw from the European Union. The Brexit process culminated in the UK s formal withdrawal in January 2020. Losing the UK dealt another blow to the EU’s aggregate economy. Although the country had never joined the eurozone, it was the EU ]’s second-largest member economy. Combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit helped push the bloc’s GDP down to $15.5 trillion in 2020, roughly where it had stood a decade earlier.
A
s the UK economy has struggled through much of the 2020s, some in London have begun to float the possibility of rejoining the EU. Other European countries, including Albania and Montenegro, remain potential future entrants to the bloc.
The Post-Pandemic Divergence
Since the pandemic, the U.S. and European Union have followed very different trajectories. Despite inflation and high interest rates, the U.S. economy rebounded strongly from COVID and is forecast to reach $32.4 trillion in 2026. Meanwhile, the EU has faced a combination of rising Chinese industrial competition and an energy crisis stemming from Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. With economic heavyweight Germany facing protracted stagnation, the EU s GDP is forecast to reach $23 trillion in 2026.
That leaves the EU economy at just 71% the size of the U.S. economy, a sharp reversal from its position in 2008. Exchange rates account for part of the shift, but weaker growth and a series of economic shocks have also contributed to the widening gap.
Reading excerpts from Anthony Fauci’s ill-advised diary, saved on government servers, it’s clear to me above all that he’s a money-grubbing, narcissistic liar.Fauci helped fund the Wuhan Level 4 Virology Lab, knowing full well that the lab was tinkering with bat viruses. And when the Chinese Communist lab loosed COVID-19 upon the world, wee Tony felt two overwhelming urges: the immediate urge to cover his butt, and a burning and probably lifelong desire for the little rat to finally become a big cheese.
So Fauci lied about the virus’s origins, and pressured other spineless scientists to agree that the “novel,” i.e., never before seen, virus came from some Wuhan local enjoying bat soup or a pangolin hero, and not the obvious source, a nearby Fauci-funded virology lab. To believe that, you’d have to be a Democrat, one of their media handmaidens, or a complete moron, but I repeat myself.After all, those folks are all fond of fairy tales, telling us it’s fine for men to beat up female athletes, Muslims were instrumental in founding America, ObamaCare lets you keep your doctor and your plan, and Joe Biden’s Stage 4 prostate cancer was only recently discovered.
Having dodged all accountability for helping create COVID-19, Fauci then set about becoming, in his own words, “one of the most recognizable persons in the world.” Napoleon much, Tony?In this he was successful, making stuff up left and right, changing the common meaning of words, and becoming fabulously wealthy in the process. Estimates are that while millions were dying from COVID, 7-8 million dollars somehow found their way into Tony’s pocket. Who says crime doesn’t pay?
Fauci first stated – correctly — that masks wouldn’t prevent the spread of an airborne virus. Then he backtracked, saying that it was a necessary white lie, so the rubes wouldn’t cause a mask shortage for health professionals. Now, masks became absolutely necessary for everyone. In fact, two masks were better than one. As a dentist for forty-three years, I was outraged by Fauci’s mask theater, knowing that the paper masks I wore daily had pores big enough for any virus to get through, N-95 masks (which allow 5% of small particles like viruses to go through) made it hard for me to breathe, and only a moron would walk around wearing two masks.
Fauci then made up the six-foot “social distancing” and “no handshake” rules and again, a sneeze can send saliva twenty-eight feet or so, and the Wuhan Flu was acquired by breathing viral aerosols, not skin-to-skin contact. Feeling his power and fame growing, Fauci then got serious about running things. He and his “public health” pals shut down the country and then, with the avid support of Democrats frothing at the mouth to take down President Trump, crashed the economy and arbitrarily determined winners and losers.
Winners were government workers who got paid whether they worked or not; big box stores (I painted and landscaped my entire new home during the pandemic); rubber glove and medical mask producers; teachers unions whose members were paid for (not) remotely learning, liquor stores; the mostly peaceful and mask-exempt rioters of BLM, and the despicable fake-news media, loudly trumpeting body counts and blaming it all on Trump. And all the while, rivers of sweet, sweet moolah flowed into Dr. and Mrs. Fauci’s bank accounts.
Losers were the poor nursing home patients in states where the likes of “Handy Andy” Cuomo forced such facilities to accept patients regardless of COVID status, small business owners, movie theaters, museums, music venues, churches, synagogues, and mosques, folks who were denied routine medical and dental care and later paid the price, people suffering from anxiety who became full-fledged hypochondriacs and, after manually disinfecting their groceries, lit St. Fauci votive candles; and most of all, kids.
During the pandemic, the smallest and most vulnerable among us were denied proper education, normal social development, and even being out in the great outdoors. All this unnecessary and inestimable damage to our children — for a disease which killed Americans who were, on average, seventy-eight years old and had multiple comorbidities! St. Fauci wasn’t done, though. He forced a vaccine on Americans that failed to prevent either catching COVID or transmitting it — by definition, a failed vaccine — but did cause countless deaths and severe illnesses, countless because no one in the public-health hierarchy was much interested in counting them or informing the public. As a health professional, I was one of the first people (double) vaccinated, before coming down with COVID. Twice.
Did my vaccinations lessen the severity of my disease? Totally conjectural, something impossible to prove since the virus was constantly mutating and is currently just another flu bug. And despite mounting perhaps the worst pandemic response in recorded history, Little Lord Fauci somehow found time to chat up known intellectuals Barbara Streisand and Julia Roberts, have “friendship-building” dinners with so-called journalists Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, and attend a pro baseball game with two pals when no one else was allowed admittance, a game where he both took his mask off to talk to his friends and threw possibly the lamest first pitch in major league baseball history, almost as short and crooked as Fauci himself.
It must have been wonderful for Tony, watching his stature, er… social stature, and net worth grow even as millions of lives were lost, ruined, or damaged. But, sadly, the party’s now over. Anyone with eyes to see now realizes what an evil, selfish, and undoubtedly criminal man Anthony Fauci is. Whoever ran old, senile Joe Biden — Jill? The Chicoms? — certainly agreed with my assessment. They gave Fauci a blanket pardon for any and all crimes he committed during his reign of error. So, who will judge Anthony Fauci for his crimes against humanity?Democrats? Republican politicians? The courts? No, nothing’s going to happen to the incredibly wealthy and still quite popular Anthony Fauci, once the most recognizable name in the world. The Swamp protects its own.
Now, I’m seventy-three, and with multiple comorbidities, I can see the finish line. A deeply flawed man, I just hope that when it comes to my final judgment, the good I did in life outweighs the bad.By this coming Christmas, Anthony Fauci will be eighty-six. And if, like me, you’re outraged at all the damage done by a pencil-pushing bureaucrat who never even treated patients and became fabulously wealthy and popular doing it, relax. Because poor little Tony Fauci surely has tremors, night sweats, and insomnia, pondering his final judgment.
Caroline Sunshine went on CNN’s Newsnight this week and said the quiet part out loud about Dr. Fauci, and as you can imagine, the panel was none too pleased about it. The former Trump 2024 campaign press aide told her fellow panelists that Fauci is a textbook sociopath. “Forget about prosecuting him,” Sunshine said on CNN’s Newsnight. “The guy should be in a mental institution. He’s a textbook sociopath.” Naturally, the room fell apart.
Podcast host Leigh McGowan could only manage a stunned “What?” Sunshine pressed forward anyway, and laid out her diagnosis in clinical terms. “DSM-5 level sociopath who was running our pandemic response, low empathy, ability to inflict pain on innocents, narcissism,” she said. “Are you suggesting that he should be in a mental institution for having an ego?” host Abby Phillip asked, downplaying the charge as something that would describe just about everyone in Washington. The whole misery loves company thing.
But Sunshine’s point had nothing to do with ego. Fauci kept a diary through the darkest stretch of the pandemic, and he filled it with something other than grief for the country he was supposedly serving. “He writes in his diary at the height of the pandemic, when Americans aren’t allowed to see grandma dying of COVID, what is Anthony Fauci writing about? ‘The media is so hot for me.’ ‘I’ve had so many articles written about me.’”
Sarah Matthews, Trump’s former deputy press secretary, jumped to Fauci’s defense and reminded the table that she actually worked with him at the White House. “There is one person at this table who worked with Dr. Fauci,” Matthews said. “I was Trump’s deputy press secretary during COVID.” She admitted it was “very frustrating” watching Fauci land magazine covers and TV hits criticizing the administration’s COVID response, but she chalked it up to a novel virus and a government improvising in real time.
Sunshine was not buying the excuse. “You couldn’t keep him off TV,” she said. “You were in the press office. You would know.” Even Phillip could not resist a jab of her own, suggesting Fauci might have been drinking his own Kool-Aid. Sunshine turned that line right back on the panel. “You all in the media, you were in love with him,” she said. “You were in love with a narcissist. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you guys.”
Here’s the thing: None of what Sunshine said is wrong. We know what Fauci’s diary entries say. They aren’t the private notes of a public health official managing a national crisis with the good of the nation in mind. They’re more like the confessions of a man drunk on his own celebrity. This guy tracked his magazine covers. He counted his headlines. He measured his own importance in press clips while hospitals kept grieving families away from relatives dying of COVID-19. He even detailed his efforts to profit from the pandemic with cash awards.
Those entries also undercut the image Fauci spent years building. He cared more about protecting his own reputation than telling Americans the truth, including about where the virus came from in the first place. Fauci spent years treating the lab leak theory as a fringe conspiracy, only to watch his credibility collapse once his own communications and diary entries surfaced. Sunshine said an uncomfortable truth, and the CNN panel could not handle hearing it out loud. That reaction tells you everything about how deep the media’s investment in protecting him still runs.
President Donald Trump’s political stature is so poor right now that he has squandered the Republican Party’s advantage on two major issues that almost always favor the GOP: the economy and national security. A Reuters-Ipsos poll this week showed Democrats and Republicans virtually tied on “war, foreign conflicts and terrorism.” The GOP led on that issue by 11 points after the 2024 election. Today, 37% of US adults say Democrats have a better approach, compared to 36% who say the GOP does.
Fox News polling a couple weeks back showed something very similar: On national security, 50% of registered voters preferred the GOP, to 48% who preferred the Democratic Party. That’s compared to a 12-point edge for Republicans in January, before the Iran war. Both recent findings are within the margin of error. But the numbers even being that close is basically unheard of. Fox polling has regularly tested how registered voters compare the two parties on terrorism and national security. Until the Iran war, Democrats had never even been within double-digits of the Republican Party on either issue.
Republicans have also led consistently on national security in Gallup polling. Democrats only nosed ahead on that issue once in the 21st century: in 2007. Gallup’s data on which party is better on “international terrorism and military threats” has been even more lopsided in the GOP’s favor. Across 22 polls conducted since a year after 9/11, Democrats have led on that issue only once — again, in 2007 — and most of the time Republicans led by double-digits. And then there’s the economy.
The most recent Fox survey showed Democrats leading on that issue by nine points, 54%-45%. That was the biggest Democratic advantage since 2006, when they led by 20 points. And when they took a lead on the economy back in April, it marked the first time they were ahead since 2010, shortly after the 2008 financial crisis that began during the George W. Bush administration. CNN polling back in May showed a closer split between the two parties on the economy, with 35% of adults preferring Democrats, compared to 33% who preferred the GOP. The poll previously asked people to choose between congressional Republicans and congressional Democrats. The last time Republicans didn’t lead on that question was 2009.
The numbers on both fronts seem to illustrate that Trump greatly miscalculated the fallout from launching the Iran war — as well as other controversial policies like his global tariffs. By launching the tariffs, he effectively took ownership of whatever became of the economic picture. Then he compounded negative public sentiment by basically shrugging off any responsibility to address Americans’ inflation concerns. Now he’s contending with a still-stagnant economic picture, with the economy shedding 23,000 jobs in July. Americans don’t love Democrats; in fact, the blue side remains pretty unpopular in polls. So the fact that they’ve apparently taken a lead on the economy really says something.
And the national security numbers might be even more striking — because Democrats hardly ever even compete with Republicans on the topic. Just as education and health care almost always favor Democrats, national security and defending the homeland are almost always signature GOP issues, and lopsidedly so. That remained true even when Bush launched wars in the Middle East that gradually became pretty unpopular. Trump, though, seems to have botched the Iran war so badly that Americans suddenly see Democrats on equal footing with the GOP — in terms of issues on the GOP’s own turf.
“We have already had cases where AI, assigned a task, decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was to erase the corporations’ customer records ..”
I have always assured readers that in the anti-human digital age, whoever controls the data base controls the “truth,” which will be, and already is, an orchestration serving elite agendas.
Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, an online open encyclopedia that serves to demonize those who speak outside of the official narratives, agrees with me. Sanger in an interview last Friday with the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung said that Wikipedia’s lack of an adequate governance structure allowed “specific ideological viewpoints” to shape its content, turning the online encyclopedia into a “globalist, academic, secular and progressive” consensus.
“Wikipedia was recognized early on as an important propaganda organ.” Jews use it to demonize Israel’s critics, and Sanger reports “what we know as fact, based on all sorts of evidence, is that the CIA has already edited Wikipedia.” “Wikipedia is already compromised. That’s clear,” Sanger admitted. He went on to say the ideological bias embedded in Wikipedia is now being amplified because large language models increasingly rely on its content as a reference source when answering factual queries.
The digital revolution and its offshoot artificial intelligence have created the perfect Orwellian memory hole. I and numerous others have documented books and articles with URLs to online sources only to experience that within a few days of publication the sources no longer exist. This could not happen in print and analogue days. There were huge numbers of sources for every source reference in libraries, newspaper morgues, and private collections. It was impossible to erase reference sources.
The digital revolution rests on the Internet which developed as an open system. This means it can never be secure. Already security concerns are everywhere. The day has already passed that a username and a password sufficed. Now you have to have a code sent by text or email. Then a passkey, and sometimes also voice and face recognition, both of which AI can produce to impersonate you. Scammers progress faster than security, and once quantum computers appear encryption is useless.
The reality with with which we are faced is that information no longer exists in multiple print form. Information no longer exists in material form. It exists somewhere electronically in the cloud. One electromagnetic force can wipe it out, and malefactors and mistakes can erase it.
We have already had cases where AI, assigned a task, decided that the easiest way to solve the problem was to erase the corporations’ customer records. Imagine if that is your bank. What happens to your access to your accounts? Can you pay your bills? Is your automobile insurance cancelled? Do you face foreclosure on your mortgage? Possibly businesses are creating backup systems of some kind, but as they also are digital they too will fail.
The digital revolution was the creation of people devoid of capability to imagine unintended consequences. They are building for us a house of cards. When it collapses, so will organized society. It is merely a matter of time.
Slowly she builds her performance outrage, methodically working through the talking points afore her. Full dramatic acting on display. Lips pursed, bladed eyebrows angled, contempt tone triggered and the intent obvious.
NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya appears on CBS Face the Nation to discuss Mexican poop lettuce, Mexico poop peppers, Illegal Alien measles spread and the weaponized information from health ‘administrators’ around the COVID-19 vaccine. Obviously, with Media Patron Saint Anthony Fauci facing scrutiny, Margaret Brennan defends Fauci as she would if the Lightbringer, Chicago Jesus was disrespected. Combative video and Transcript below:
[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by the Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Good morning to you, doctor.
NIH DIRECTOR DR. JAY BHATTACHARYA: Good morning.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we should mention you are also helping to run the CDC until the new director is sworn in as well.
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Until next Wednesday, yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Until next Wednesday. So let me ask you about a number of things that I think people at home are worried about, particularly around the food supply. The cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce from Mexico is now in 15 states. There were two deaths this week due to it. Yesterday, USDA issued an alert for a range of products that may have salmonella, including meat and poultry. 27 states are affected by salmonella, possibly linked to jalapeños, but cilantro, red onion, avocado, also listed in the CDC notice. Albertsons, a grocery store, just recalled some items. There’s risk of salmonella in eggs in Texas, according to the CDC, and then you have the screwworm outbreak affecting beef. This is overwhelming for someone going into a grocery store right now. Why do they seem out of control?
DR. BHATTACHARYA: Well, the- the cyclospora outbreak is larger than in normal years. I mean, in normal years there actually is a- cyclospora cases. The- the two deaths that you mentioned, they happened in late July- late- late June, early July, before we identified this source. And so, folks that are listening, can rest assured, the CDC and the FDA are working hard to trace back exactly where these outbreaks are occurring from, intervening with the- the sort of suppliers to make sure that they don’t- and doing recalls to make sure that the disease doesn’t- the, you know, condition doesn’t spread. I mean, it’s tough. You go to grocery store, you buy lettuce, and you say, “Okay, can I buy the lettuce?”
Article III of the Constitution allows Congress to establish courts below the Supreme Court, which includes federal District and Circuit Courts. If Congress can establish them, it can abolish them. In 1801, in the waning days of John Adams’ presidency, Congress did just that and abolished the district and circuit courts of the District of Columbia.
These two courts display widespread intransigent partisanship and demonstrably poor scholarship, exemplified by this week’s ruling on the new White House construction. Given the difficulty of removing so many bad judges in these two courts by impeaching them, it’s time to repeat John Adams’ move: Abolish these courts. Cases that normally would be heard in them should be assigned to courts elsewhere. The case which most showcases the lunacy of the D.C. courts is National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States v. National Park Service, et al. As is often the case in poorly reasoned opinions, the author substitutes words for reason.
As you may know, the old East Wing of the White House which, among other things, contained underground security facilities (bunkers, bomb-shelters, and military and medical infrastructure), presidential offices and some minimal public meeting spaces, was torn down and construction begun on a replacement with a larger number of more modern offices and a ballroom to provide a larger, much-needed entertainment and meeting space, better security facilities, and protection against drone attacks. Up to now, rented tents and outdoor porta potty facilities have had to be utilized for state events, and the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Ball surely underscores the need for a safe venue for such things.
Except for the congressional appropriation for the upgraded secure facilities in this new wing, the remainder of the cost is being borne by private contributions to the National Park Service, which is administering these funds. But this is hate Trump city, and Alison Hoagland, a board member of the National Trust, said that she takes monthly walks past the White House and that the aesthetics of the new construction would cause her harm.
In the real world, monthly aesthetic harm to one person’s delicate sensibilities would not upend a needed improvement to the White House grounds, which are exempt by its terms from the National Historic Preservation Act (which establishes the Trust). The litigation has been long and involved back-and-forth court rulings between the district and circuit courts. The courts have now finally agreed the below-ground construction would not be halted, but this week ruled the above-ground work must be, even though that is a structural impossibility and a security (and aesthetic) nightmare.
The first question that every court must decide before proceeding further in any case is whether or not it even has jurisdiction to hear and decide the matter. The majority opinion doesn’t get to this until page 30 of its opinion, and then, for all its flowery verbosity, it got it wrong, just as the dissenting judge notes:
“…the district court had no jurisdiction because the Trust has no standing to stop construction at the White House. The ballroom is also likely within the President’s authority to make improvements to the Executive Residence at the White House. Finally, the balance of equities overwhelmingly favors the government. The district court elevated the aesthetic displeasure of a single passerby over the government’s security interests in the ballroom and the security risks of leaving an open construction site at the President’s home and office.”
In assessing the balance of equities between Ms. Hoagland’s claimed aesthetic harms and the needs of the White House, Judge Rao shows the Court “improperly glossed over, ignored or discounted the government’s evidence demonstrating the security harms from construction of the ballroom.” Nor could it, as Rao noted, “compensate for the slight aesthetic harm by resorting to hyperbole and its view of the legal merits. Every day the project is delayed increases the security risk according to declarations from senior military and Secret Service officials. Moreover, the creation of the above-ground ballroom “will alleviate security vulnerabilities that currently impact large events involving the President.”
As a practical matter, the underground and above-ground facilities cannot be separated out at this point. “The Secretary of the Army has further explained why the underground national security facilities cannot be adequately protected by the concrete slab and modest topping structure allowed by the district court’s injunction… The ballroom’s dimensions and structure are essential for security. According to the Secretary, “[t]o provide adequate subterranean protection without” the “height and mass” of the ballroom, “engineers would need to dig impractically deep.”
…The ballroom provides a critical “dual-layered system” of protection for the national security facilities, “comprising a sacrificial outer cover coupled with a hardened inner structural element.” …Corroborating the Secretary’s account, the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has similarly described how the “height and mass” of the ballroom “provide crucial, physical layers to shield” the national security facilities.
The height of the ballroom will also provide an “essential elevated platform to engage and neutralize aerial systems,” such as drones, that pose an increasingly serious threat to White House security. …There is no dispute that the Secretary’s declaration and the Army Corps memorandum are authentic, credible, and “go[] to the heart of the contested issue,” so it would be “inconsistent with this court’s own equitable obligations to pretend that [they] do[] not exist.”
David Friedberg: Starlink alone could be a trillion-dollar company
"Starlink alone could be generating on the order of $40 billion of revenue top line, with a huge amount of that flowing to free cash. That could be $30 billion in free cash flow within the year."
Elon Musk: “My mind often feels like a very wild storm. I have a fountain of ideas. I have more ideas than I can possibly execute, so I have no shortage of ideas.
Innovation is not the problem, execution is the problem. I’ve got an entire design for an electric supersonic… pic.twitter.com/769gcCsphh
After explosions were heard on Qeshm island, near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian state media is saying that Iranian forces attacked and struck ‘hostile targets’ – though the event still remains shrouded in mystery and few details were offered. The US side has also not confirmed anything, and this could also be the result of drone activity. Iran remains defiant, with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian having newly asserted in an interview, “Our enemies expected the country to collapse due to the pressures they have exerted.” He added that these pressures have “reached their maximum”. Oil jumped again on the reports of attacks in the Hormuz Strait area.
MS Now continues to report on the ‘agreed upon’ Iran-Oman deal for Hormuz transit: Oman on Thursday agreed to the framework of a deal with Iran to temporarily reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the global crude oil export route that Washington and Tehran have been wrestling to control since the war began, two Middle East diplomats with knowledge of the negotiations told MS NOW.
The diplomats declined to describe the details of the temporary agreement or what issues remain unresolved. But an Iranian government official linked to the deal told MS NOW on Thursday morning that it will establish new shipping routes by allowing commercial vessels to enter the Persian Gulf through an Iranian-controlled route and exit through a route controlled by Oman. This also as Iranian leaders continue to taunt Washington, with fresh messages such as the following from the country’s influential parliament speaker: “Massive attack coming… wait, never mind, they want to negotiate.” That’s theater diplomacy on loop.
“Massive attack coming… wait, never mind, they want to negotiate.” That’s theater diplomacy on loop.
Using bullying + broken promises + fake news as leverage is a failed strategy.
Acknowledge the facts and fulfill your commitments. We don’t need more theater.
— محمدباقر قالیباف | MB Ghalibaf (@mb_ghalibaf) August 6, 2026
[..] Deal Details: US-Israeli vessels Banned from Hormuz (Fars)
Iranian state media (Fars) has issued details of the Iran-Omani draft plan for transit rules through the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. The country’s parliament is said to currently be reviewing it, while Tehran still insists that the US has been sidelined, saying that the Oman-Iran contacts are bilateral.
As cited in Bloomberg from state media, key proposals include:
• Ban vessels linked to the U.S., Israel, and other hostile states
• Block military and civilian cargo tied to Israel
• Restrict ships linked to actions against the “Axis of Resistance”
• Deny passage to parties owing compensation to Iran
• Impose fines of up to 20% of cargo value for violations
The first note about banning US-linked vessels could alone serve to restart the war. The White House has appeared to genuinely be searching for an exit strategy, but this may be too hard a pill to swallow, if accurate. Fars has spelled out that “The passage of vessels belonging to the US, the Israelis, and other hostile countries through the Strait of Hormuz will be prohibited.” Below are is the fuller outline of the proposed plan as featured by Fars [machine translation]:
• The passage of vessels belonging to the United States, Israelis and other hostile countries through the Strait of Hormuz will be prohibited.
• Ships related to Israel, whether military or civilian, will not have the right to transit through this area.
• Vessels or cargoes that play a role in actions against the Resistance Front will also be subject to the ban.
• Countries and individuals that have caused damage to Iran will not receive permission to pass through the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf until compensation is paid.
• Heavy fines, including up to 20% of the value of the goods, will be imposed on violators. The cargo is anticipated.
• The government will be required, in cooperation with the armed forces, to assume responsibilities such as guiding navigation, monitoring vessel traffic, and protecting the security and environment of the Persian Gulf.
ª This plan is still in the expert review stage, and the parliament has asked experts to submit their suggestions for completing it.
Yesterday witnessed at least the eighth Saudi oil tanker attacked by the Houthis since the maritime blockade began on July 22, which is being followed by reports the Yemeni rebel group backed by Iran could be preparing for all-out war with Saudi Arabia.
The group struck two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea on Wednesday and coupled the action with a threat to intensify attacks in order to close “all access routes” to Saudi oil shipments. Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree confirmed that ballistic missiles were launched at a Saudi tanker called Wafa near the Saudi port city of Yanbu A second oil tanker identified as Daisy was subsequently hit in the Gulf of Aden with a ballistic missile and “forced to turn back” – the spokesman said in a social media post. The Houthis are dubbing it a “blockade for blockade” strategy.
Large New Saudi-Backed Operation?
But it seems the Saudis aren’t ready to take this laying down, even if the ratcheting Red Sea region conflict threatens fragile Oman-sponsored talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, as on Thursday its proxy the Yemeni Armed Forces – representing the official government whose seat is in Aden in the south – announced preparations for a large new military operation. This as Al Arabiya reports a fresh outbreak of ground fighting, in a renewal and intensification of the civil war that goes back to at least 2015 (and has an international proxy war aspect to it). The Arab publication says that a Houthi attack killed 45 government forces in Hadramawt and Marib in Yemen, areas which also happen to be home to the vast majority of the country’s oil and gas fields.
Separately Al Jazeera describes of the same event: “The Yemeni Emergency Forces of the internationally-recognised government, have said that there have been material and human losses following attacks on its camps. Several causalities have been reported after a suspected Houthi rocket and drone attack targeted bases hosting the forces in Marib and Hadramaut.”
So now it seems that even if a grand Hormuz deal to reopen energy transit can be pulled off with some level of sticking power, there will have to be a separate ceasefire to contain the Yemen and Bab al-Mandab Strait crisis. To some degree, the Houthi closure of the Red Sea to Saudi shipping represents a good cop, bad cop approach to the United States and its Gulf allies. It is a way for Tehran to still maintain some serious tangential leverage over global energy, even as ships in Hormuz could finally get moving again.
The Houthis launched ballistic missile and drone strikes on Saudi-backed Yemeni forces in Marib Governorate, targeting several military sites.
According to preliminary reports, at least 45 personnel were killed and dozens wounded, with Saudi-aligned media confirming the attacks… pic.twitter.com/uThIgebcfe
Houthis Pivotal in Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’
As a reminder, the Houthis have been part of what Iran sees as the “axis of resistance” going back to when the Shia rebel group first seized power in September 2014: Saudi Arabia is now being squeezed from three directions in the widening U.S.-Iran war — Iraq to its northeast, Yemen to its southwest, and Iran to its east. (On July 18, Tehran struck Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, its first direct hit on Saudi soil in nearly four months.) To understand why this matters beyond the price of oil, it helps to picture the crises as a set of nesting dolls.
The innermost doll is Yemen’s own civil war: a decade-old fight between the Houthis (officially known as Ansar Allah), who rule the populous north from Sana’a, and Yemen’s internationally recognized government, formally led by a body called the Presidential Leadership Council. The roots of this war trace to the 2011 Arab Spring revolution, which toppled Yemen’s long-serving president and left a power vacuum the Houthis moved to fill, seizing Sana’a in 2014. Saudi Arabia and a coalition of partners intervened in 2015 with the explicit aim of reversing that takeover and restoring the internationally recognized government, and the war has continued in one form or another ever since.
The middle doll is Saudi Arabia’s broader rivalry with Iran, a contest for regional leadership that has run since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Tehran’s new theocratic government began exporting a revolutionary, Shia-inflected challenge to the Gulf’s Sunni monarchies.
[..] As for President Trump, he has freshly stated, “I’d rather make a deal because I don’t want to kill people. But Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
I called it at the time the most mask-drop moment by a leftist ever. That the radical admission came from the mouth of a petite Spanish woman only added to its shock value. The tirade of Irene Montero, the political secretary of Spain’s far-left Podemos party (unlike normal conservatives who are smeared with the “far-right” label, these people really are far-left), was so rage-filled that it prompted Elon Musk to say she was advocating genocide. Here’s what Montero said earlier this year:
“I want to ask migrant and racialized people that they please don’t leave us alone with so many retrograde right-wingers, and of course we do want them to vote, of course we do, we’ve achieved regularized-status legal papers, status regularization now already, and now we’re going either after full citizenship or after changing the law so that they can vote, of course. I hope for Great Replacement theory, I hope we manage to sweep this country of retrograde right-wingers and racists with migrant people, with working people, of course I want replacement to take place. Replacement of retrograde right-wingers. Replacement of racists.
Replacement of scroungers, and that we manage to do it with the working people of this country, whatever skin color they may present, whether Chinese, black, brown, with all comrades the working people of this country. “
It was a political confession at its most revealing. There’s the reference to Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s plan to regularize more than 500,000 illegal migrants, with the admission that they’re seen as future leftist voters. There’s the shameless call for replacing naturalized citizens with illegal migrants. There’s the proud declaration that she views her political opponents as not merely wrong, but evil. And then there’s the standing ovation at the end to remind you how effective the left can be at rallying the mob.
It hits even harder in the aftermath of last month’s invasion of the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta by an estimated 70,000 illegal migrants from Morocco. Want to take a guess how Montero responded to the crisis? Hint: It wasn’t with compassion for the Spaniards in Ceuta.
No, as the world watched in awe as tens of thousands of military-age men poured into Spanish territory, Montero criticized Spain’s immigration policy for being too strict. The Objective reports (AI assistance with translation): Podemos MEP Irene Montero has defended the more than 50,000 migrants who arrived in Ceuta, causing the city to become overwhelmed, and has criticized the migration policies of the Spanish government and the European Union.
In a message posted on social media, she called for those crossing the border to be treated “as people and not as cockroaches or as Amazon packages” and said that “no one risks their life and the life of their family unless they are in desperate need.” Montero argues that the current crisis is the result of a lack of legal and safe routes for migration. “This would not happen if there were legal and safe routes of entry for migrants,” the Podemos leader said. She believes European governments have responded by strengthening border controls rather than facilitating legal mechanisms for people to seek protection or migrate.
Some will argue Podemos is so far left (Wikipedia says it was “inspired by the populist leaders of Latin America’s pink tide, which included Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales”) that you can’t compare its leaders’ rhetoric to Sánchez’s comparatively more center-left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). And didn’t Sánchez travel to Ceuta to decisively deal with the crisis and make all the expected declarations, calling it a “violation of Spain’s territorial integrity”? A closer look at Sánchez’s actions reveals that while supposedly more “moderate” left-wing parties may speak less radically than those further to the left, their goals are often the same.
The Spanish newspaper ABC reported that the first riot police officers sent to Ceuta went to escort and protect Sánchez, not to assist with the border crisis. The National Police’s union, JUPOL, told ABC (again, AI assistance with translation) that the “deeply misguided” decision “shows the priorities of the Interior Ministry and the president of the government at the most critical moments. … While the officers deployed in Ceuta were facing a situation of maximum tension, with unprecedented migratory pressure and an obvious risk to the security of the border and the police themselves, the reinforcements should have been devoted exclusively to ensuring the operation’s effectiveness and protecting citizens.”
Santiago Abascal, the leader of the conservative Vox party, was harsher, posting on X that Sánchez “uses the state exclusively to protect himself. We have not had a more miserable ruler in history.” The dire border crisis did not prevent Sánchez from starting his vacation at the royal palace on Lanzarote the day after he left Ceuta even though jihadists were reportedly among the migrants who stormed the enclave. Although one might be inclined to forgive him for jetting off after seeing how angry Spaniards heckled him during his visit to the autonomous region, the international press was not forgiving.
Here is Sánchez enjoying a shirtless walk on the beach:
If a beach getaway while workers were cleaning the debris from a Ceuta beach wasn’t a bad enough look, the prime minister also decided to unveil his summer Spotify playlist on social media the same day he started his vacation.Perhaps Sánchez judged that the situation in Ceuta was under control after many of the migrants had been sent back to Morocco? The residents of Ceuta are the ones to ask about that. Their consensus in an OK Diario report and many others that I’ve seen is that the crisis is far from contained and that the prime minister’s trip is “shameless.”
It’s hard to watch these actions from the very prime minister who enacted a mass amnesty for half a million illegal immigrants and conclude that he’d disagree with a single word Irene Montero said in her infamous tirade.
Footage circulating purporting to be from the North African desert shows what looks like an enormous column of sub-Saharan African men moving under escort. Some estimates put the number at a hundred thousand. Commentators claim Algerian military vehicles and personnel are shepherding them toward the coast. If the scale and direction prove accurate, Europe faces another deliberate pressure wave on top of the chaos already unfolding in Ceuta. Naomi Wolf amplified the footage, noting that these movements required state-level logistics.
I told you told you told you. Damn legacy media is incurious or blind. I said, these are sub-Saharan African militias and they can only be transported across 3-5 countries by nationstates or armies. This is an invasion of Europe via Iran and Russia, through Algeria and other… https://t.co/u0jztThav0
— Dr. Naomi Wolf. 8 NYT Bestsellers. DPhil, Poetry. (@naomirwolf) August 5, 2026
Additional clips from the same period show large groups being moved near the Moroccan frontier. One account framed the Algerian regime as collecting Africans from across the continent and directing them toward the border with Morocco, linking the timing to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s recent visit to Algiers. The caption reads “The Algerian system is gathering Africans from all African countries and deporting them to the border with Morocco. The visit of Pedro Sánchez to Algeria ain’t no coincidence, they wanna plot how to stir up crises between Morocco and Spain. The big shots are workin’ to wreck the relations between Morocco and Spain.”
I. TOLD. YOU. A transnational entity gathering militias from all over sub-Saharan Africa. Legacy media looked at these images and asked zero questions about how 1000s of sub-Saharan Africans traversed a continent to reach Morocco. https://t.co/p2zzVwhMXt
— Dr. Naomi Wolf. 8 NYT Bestsellers. DPhil, Poetry. (@naomirwolf) August 5, 2026
These desert images land against the still-fresh reality of Ceuta. Late last week an estimated 72,000 people, predominantly young men, stormed the Spanish enclave from Morocco by swimming around the Tarajal breakwater and scaling fences. Despite the claims of Spanish officials that most have been returned, thousands of sub-Saharan Africans remain on the beaches and around reception centres.
The media has gone quiet about Ceuta but there are still thousands of sub Saharan Africans there.
Morocco won’t take them back.
Spain has said that they will take any who are “children” to Spain and has allocated €25 million to them.
Anthony Fauci has been held in contempt of Congress by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, after he repeatedly refused to answer lawmakers’ questions about funding risky research to genetically manipulate bat coronavirus in Wuhan China, and his role in the ensuing lockdown quagmire that cratered the economy after he was put in charge of leading the COVID-19 response. Oh, and they obtained a copy of his cell phone.
In an 8-5 vote brought by Committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), the contempt vote seeks to refer the case directly to the DOJ for prosecution – bypassing a full vote from the Senate. “Seeking the truth is not a witch hunt,” Paul said be fore the vote, per the WSJ. “Accountability is not vengeance. Accountability is what stands between the American people and a repeat of the mistakes and the very real consequences of the past.” The Committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters, called the investigation “one-sided from the beginning,” claiming that “Information has been selectively released to support conclusions that the chairman reached years ago.”
The minority keeps trying to hijack the Fauci hearings with the lie that we haven’t shared the records from this investigation with them. This is a cop-out lie. This has been an intentionally open and transparent investigation. Not one Democrat on the committee cared enough to… pic.twitter.com/hHGtQDV5Ez
Which of course is complete bullshit. Fauci funded the research, botched the response after COVID-19 broke out, lied about it under oath, and then pleaded the 5th when receipts came out.
Or, as Paul wrote prior to the vote: “Dr. Fauci appeared under subpoena and invoked the Fifth Amendment to refuse answering questions. During the hearing, I ruled that the Fifth Amendment did not apply because of the pardon, and that Fauci had waived any remaining privilege by giving opening testimony. I ordered him to answer and warned him about contempt, yet he still refused. That is obstruction of a congressional investigation. The Committee will act accordingly.”
PASSED BY REPUBLICANS ON BEHALF OF THE MILLIONS OF AMERICANS AND THEIR FAMILIES STILL AFFECTED YEARS AFTER THE COVID PANDEMIC, THE RESOLUTION TO HOLD ANTHONY FAUCI IN CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS HAS PASSED OUT OF THE SENATE HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE BY A VOTE… https://t.co/9wgO1KeMd2
Meanwhile, the WSJ reported last night that the panel obtained a copy of Fauci’s cell phone. A Senate panel investigating Dr. Anthony Fauci has obtained a copy of the doctor’s iPhone, potentially securing even more records related to the doctor’s actions during the Covid-19 pandemic. The copy of the phone was transferred by the Department of Health and Human Services to the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which is chaired by Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.). This revelation comes just days after copies of Fauci’s journals were publicly released following their transfer from HHS to Congress.
Two Republican senators, Johnson and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have increased pressure on Fauci in recent days to answer questions related to pandemic health measures and the origins of Covid-19.The subpoena, issued in July, directed Fauci to testify on the committee’s investigation into “risky life sciences research and the origins of the COVID-19 virus,” according to the Epoch Times. The July 29 hearing itself was a prolonged exercise in refusal. Fauci opened by accusing Paul of an “unhinged obsession” with him and claiming the sole purpose of the session was to trap him into saying something that would land him “behind bars.”
From that point forward he answered nothing of consequence. Senators pressed him on gain-of-function research funding, the lab-leak evidence he had privately acknowledged while publicly promoting a natural-origin narrative, lockdown policies, school closures, personal financial awards solicited with federal employees on taxpayer time, and contradictions between his public statements and private diary entries. He declined them all.
Two Republican governors with a long history of clashing with Donald Trump are working with Democrats on a plan to hand migrant workers state-issued work permits instead of deportation notices, a direct challenge to the president’s immigration crackdown that the four laid out on camera. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt joined Democratic Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland and Matt Meyer of Delaware for a joint interview with Bloomberg, describing a shared position that has far more in common with the Democratic Party and the labor lobby than with the Trump administration’s approach to the border.
The vehicle for that position is the National Governors Association’s Task Force on Immigration Policy, which Stitt built after noticing a pattern among his colleagues. “The reason I set this task force up is because I realized by talking to my colleagues that they’re having the same issues,” Stitt told Bloomberg reporter Christina Ruffini. “Let’s actually have the governors issue workforce permits.”
That last line is the whole ballgame. The task force wants Congress to hand governors the discretion to issue migrant work permits at the state level, a proposal that treats illegal immigration less as a legal violation and more as a labor supply problem for agriculture, construction and hospitality. It resembles former President George W. Bush’s immigration reform approach, which sent the message to illegal immigrants, “If you’re doing a job an American won’t do, you’re welcome here, for a period of time, to do that job.”
Cox framed the alliance as a breakthrough four decades in the making. “For 40 years, we’ve been trying to do immigration reform and nobody’s ever been able to get it done,” he said. “But what’s different this time is that we have a secure border.” He credited that border security to the current administration while working, in the same breath, to carve states out from under its enforcement arm. “We all care – Republicans and Democrats – about a secure border,” Cox said, a sentiment that gets considerably murkier once the conversation turns to what happens to people already inside it.
Cox described a February meeting among the governors as almost startling in its unity. “We were together in February and having a conversation about immigration, and we were all shocked at the level of bipartisanship, cooperation, and agreement,” he said. “We were really stunned that everybody had kind of the same opinions on what needed to be done.” Bipartisan agreement among governors on loosening enforcement is not the reassurance Cox seems to think it is.
Ruffini asked the group for a show of hands on whether ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have been effective. Neither Cox nor Stitt raised one. Cox pointed to enforcement actions in Minnesota as a specific concern, citing “the violence and the deaths that we’ve seen” and calling the incidents “deeply problematic.” Stitt was even more blunt about his overall assessment. “We’re not using common sense right now,” he said.
Stitt’s example centered on a green card holder from Vietnam who has lived in Oklahoma City for 25 years. “We had a person from Vietnam that’s been in Oklahoma City for 25 years, legally in the United States, with a green card, working at Hobby Lobby,” he said. The man had self-deported after a marijuana arrest then returned to the country legally. “They’ve been a great citizen chasing the American dream, but they’ve been picked up for deportation now,” Stitt said. Gov. Moore added an economic gloss to the argument, saying a deportation agenda focused on criminals ought to travel alongside pro-growth policy rather than replace it.
Neither Republican governor has a great relationship with Trump, and both have clashed with him politically in recent years, which explains their break with him on immigration enforcement. The Trump administration clearly isn’t on board. Trump won a second term in 2024 in part by promising to close a border that sat wide open for four years under Biden. Immigration has generally been the strongest issue for him, outperforming his approval numbers on the economy and foreign policy.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin set the tone from inside the administration at the same NGA gathering, sitting beside Stitt and offering his own verdict on the odds of any of this actually happening. “Is immigration reform possible? No,” Mullin told the assembled governors. “Do you really need immigration reform? Yes, you do, but can we work with the system we have? Yes.”
“Today I am the most famous and talked-about person in the country.” Those words from the diary of Dr. Anthony Fauci will certainly be true today as the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs moves forward with holding him in contempt for refusing to answer over a hundred questions about his past conduct and statements as the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The contempt vote will start a process that is fraught with political and legal challenges. Even putting aside the objections to the direct referral from the Committee to the Justice Department (rather than submit the matter to a full Senate vote), there remain serious questions about whether Fauci can be held in contempt after invoking his right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment. As I have previously stated, this area is rather murky and Fauci likely has the advantage in any litigation.
At the outset, it is important to note that Fauci always faced a risk of perjury in his prior appearances. Even if immunized, a witness can always be prosecuted for false statements. Fauci is in a much stronger position today than he was in prior hearings due to the sweeping pardon he received from former President Joe Biden. Yet, he suddenly decided to remain silent when his own words came back to contradict him.
Now for the legal questions.
If a witness is immunized, they can be compelled to testify. If, for example, the Senate granted Fauci immunity, there would be little question about his answering these questions as well as the ability to charge him for any false statements.
The Senate Committee is arguing that the Biden pardon had the same impact. Since Fauci cannot be prosecuted for any acts during the extended period of the pardon (going back to 2014 when the government allegedly funded “gain-of-function research). Chairman Rand Paul did an excellent job in putting this issue into sharp relief in his final set of questions by framing his inquiry as confined to the period of his pardon.
The argument is credible and, for many, compelling: since Fauci cannot be prosecuted for any conduct during the pardon period, he has no legal exposure so long as he speaks truthfully. For Fauci, that is a question that could be highly subjective. He referred to the risk of a “perjury trap” in his opening statement. He declared, “The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something — anything — that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, ‘behind bars.’”
Even that statement could present a matter for litigation. Congress previously found in 2013 when high-ranking IRS leader Lois Lerner also pleaded the Fifth after giving an opening statement before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The Justice Department under the Obama Administration refused to prosecute. Fauci will argue that such a general statement does not waive the privilege and that, when asked a question, he promptly and consistently invoked it.
Of course, this is the Trump Administration, not the Obama Administration. Ironically, if the matter is litigated, the Administration will be in the position of defending the pardon, which it has long questioned, as the result of Joe Biden’s infamous autopen. The ability to hold Fauci in contempt becomes dependent on that pardon being valid. The Justice Department can argue that the Supreme Court has consistently held that the mere fear of a perjury charge is insufficient to compel witnesses who are immunized, dating back to 1896 in Brown v. Walker.
Moreover, the Supreme Court has held that “anticipatory perjury” is not a basis for such a refusal to testify in cases such as United States v. Apfelbaum. However, Fauci can cite new state investigations as unaffected by the federal pardon, as well as new questions arising outside the pardon that could theoretically pose ongoing risks of criminal prosecution. Courts have generally adopted broad interpretations to protect the right to remain silent, a touchstone of our legal system. That is why I believe Fauci likely has the edge in any challenge.
The fact is that it is uncertain. The cases in this area remain relatively sparse, and any pardon case is highly case-specific to the confines and scope of the specific pardon. If so, Fauci can remain silent, but that silence will remain deafening for many in this country. The right to do something does not make it the right thing to do. Fauci, in my view, was wrong to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination even if it was his right to do so. Millions of Americans lost loved ones during the pandemic, and the United States had one of the worst records in dealing with COVID-19 in terms of costs and deaths.
Fauci’s diaries exposed disturbing contradictions between what he previously stated publicly and what he actually believed. Americans have a right to know the truth, and Fauci was not saying a thing, invoking the privilege 111 times. He will say nothing to the families who lost loved ones or the business owners ruined by now-debunked pandemic measures. He will say nothing to the scientists who were canceled, blacklisted, and fired for opposing these policies. Those scientists did not get the bobbleheads and celebrity photos that Fauci celebrated in his diaries. As the mob hounded them, Fauci said nothing as he gushed about his own fame in his diary.
He will say nothing despite the protection of a presidential pardon. For that, he should be rightfully condemned. Fauci’s contempt of Congress is challengeable, but his contempt for the public is undeniable.
Only from RT. Playing CNN here.
“The US president reportedly accused the secretary of war of providing misleading information about the state of the country’s munitions stockpiles “
US President Donald Trump has demanded answers from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth over depleted American weapons stockpiles, including air defense missiles, multiple media outlets reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the exchange. Hegseth did not reportedly dispute the shortages but denied misleading Trump. The reported rebuke came at last week’s Camp David meeting amid mounting concern over the state of US munition stocks after years of arms deliveries to Ukraine under former President Joe Biden and more than five months of heavy missile use in the ongoing US-led war against Iran.
Trump reportedly believed he had been misled about the state of US munitions stockpiles and complained that he had been under the impression the shortages had already been addressed. Hegseth is said to have blamed Deputy Secretary of War Stephen Feinberg for failing to keep Trump fully informed. The incident reportedly underscored Trump’s growing frustration with Hegseth, an early proponent of military action against Iran. The news outlets, including the Washington Post and NBC News, said shortages of long-range missiles and air defense interceptors were among the reasons Trump backed away from additional large-scale strikes.
US forces reportedly used more than 1,300 tactical ballistic missiles in the opening weeks of the campaign, nearly depleting US stockpiles of Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), also sought by Ukraine for its conflict with Russia. Citing a US official, the media outlets said interceptor shortages have forced the military to prioritize which incoming threats to engage. Earlier this week, the Financial Times, citing people familiar with the discussions, reported that Trump had rejected a request by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky for hundreds of additional Patriot interceptor missiles, citing depleted US stockpiles and the Pentagon’s own requirements amid the war with Iran. Trump has nevertheless publicly dismissed reports of munition shortfalls.
On Wednesday, CNN reported that the US had depleted nearly 80% of its THAAD interceptor missile inventory and about half of its Patriot missile stockpiles compared to prewar levels. The New York Times also reported that Trump’s advisers had warned him about dwindling stocks of Patriot interceptors and other air defense systems in the Middle East. The newspaper said the shortages were among the factors behind the president’s decision not to sharply escalate the military campaign against Iran.
Washington denied any confrontation between Trump and Hegseth. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “100% fake news,” while Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell denied that Hegseth had misled the president or blamed his deputy for depleted US munitions stockpiles.
The State Department is expanding its social media vetting requirement to include applicants for more types of visas, according to an internal memo obtained by the Daily Signal.
Last June, the State Department said student visa applicants with private social media accounts will be required to make their accounts public for screening. Social media vetting is already required for diplomatic and official visas; temporary workers and trainees; exchange visitors; international cultural exchange participants; religious workers; and witnesses, informants, and victims. The new requirements will apply to foreign media representatives and qualified nationals from Mexico and Canada entering the United States for business as part of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, as well as their dependents.
“The Department relies on every available source of information during visa screening and vetting to identify applicants who may be inadmissible to the United States, including those who pose a threat to national security or public safety,” the memo says. “We apply this rigorous vetting standard consistently across all visa applicants.” All applicants are instructed to change the settings of their social media to be “public” or “open.”
“Every visa adjudication is fundamentally a national security decision,” the memo says. “The United States remains vigilant throughout the visa issuance process to confirm that applicants do not intend to cause harm to Americans or threaten U.S. interests, and that each applicant can credibly demonstrate eligibility for the visa requested—including a genuine intent to abide by the terms of admission.” “Receiving a U.S. visa remains a privilege granted at the government’s discretion, not an entitlement,” the memo adds.
Another top level Ukrainian official has been booted from office over significant corruption allegations, which comes at a moment of a broad shake-up of military and cabinet leadership initiated by President Zelensky. Olha Stefanishyna was dismissed as Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States earlier this week, both local media as as Reuters have confirmed. Reuters writes that she is “suspected of illegal enrichment and failing to declare assets, authorities said on Thursday, the latest high-ranking official targeted in an anti-graft probe” – after she reportedly hid two apartments along with other assets worth about $310,000.
She had been a deputy prime minister prior to being appointed top diplomatic representative to Washington, and it’s believed that her concealed assets could not have been obtained with her official salary alone. She had also briefly served as Minister of Justice during the war with Russia. Much of her additional properties and other assets were registered under the names of Stefanishyna’s friends and family members. Kyiv Post reports Thursday: The High Anti-Corruption Court on Aug. 6 set Hr 6 million ($130,000) bail for Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s former ambassador to the U.S., in a corruption case.
She has been charged with illicit enrichment amounting to Hr 13.9 million ($310,000) and lying in her asset declarations. An anti-corruption prosecutor earlier proposed setting bail for Stefanishyna at Hr 13 million ($290,000). Stefanishyna failed to declare two apartments, worth nearly Hr 11 million ($250,000), that were registered in the name of a friend, according to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU).She has in the meantime taken to social media to declare there’s been no wrongdoing that she doesn’t have anything to hide. But she voluntarily submitted her resignation earlier this week, upon which Zelensky dismissed her.
According to a newly published list of the undeclared assets, she tried to ‘hide’ the following:
• Two apartments in a residential complex in western Kiev, registered to a friend
• A luxury apartment in central Kiev, registered to her mother
• A parking space and several auxiliary premises at the same high-end property, registered to her father
• A Mercedes-Benz GLC 220 d, registered to a subordinate
“Any procedural actions are part of the lawful work of the law enforcement system and do not amount to a finding of guilt,” she wrote on Facebook. “I take these developments calmly and without unnecessary emotion.”
‼️BREAKING Ukrainian court sets ₴6 million (~$130,000) bail for Olha Stefanishyna, former Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States. She is suspected of illicit enrichment and false asset declarations. Prosecutors had requested more than twice that amount. pic.twitter.com/5cnwBsruUG
Stefanishyna had served as ambassador to the US for the past year, going back to August of 2025. Local media says the alleged concealing of assets took place during that stint, and reports additionally say she was in the process of buying another property – an apartment valued at the equivalent of $550,000 – but backed out of the deal.
Broadly, the Ukrainian population has suffered immensely amid the conflict with Russia, with frequent blackouts and amid a battered wartime economy – and so ordinary citizens get increasingly frustrated and outraged when they see government officials living lavish lifestyles which include luxury cars and multiple homes and properties.
Twenty-six years ago in 2000 Prima Publishing published a book I wrote with my colleague, Lawrence M. Stratton. We had wanted to title the book, “How the Law Was Lost,” but we only managed to get our title on one chapter. The publisher thought that sales required a less intellectual sounding title and came up with The Tyranny of Good Intentions. I didn’t like the title, because it blamed on good intentions all the wrongs that were due to self-serving prosecutors, judges, police, and defense attorneys. Larry and I wanted to get our book published, and we decided against fighting with the publisher, who of course has to be concerned about sales and money.
The book received good reviews: Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz, Nobel prize-winner Milton Friedman, Massachusetts ACLU chairman Harvey Silverglate. But it failed to reform the totally corrupt American “justice system.” A Federal Appeals Court Judge in the 9th Circuit cited the book in a ruling, as did a federal district court judge, but that was about it.
Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, acquired Prima Publishing, and in 2008 brought out a paperback edition. I think the book is still in print and sells a few copies each year. The last I heard, if memory serves, is that the book sold some 22,000 copies.
Years ago, again if memory serves, Lewis Lapham the brilliant former editor of Harper’s, a substantial person of letters, told me that if the book had sold 20,000 copies in the first year, it would be regarded as a best-seller in the serious works class, which speaks a lot to the insouciance of the American population.
I always wondered about the “serious class” as the book is written in everyday language that anyone can understand. No need for a law degree to read our book, and the stories of injustice are gripping. But, obviously, Americans did not read the book. Consequently, they remain in total ignorance of the many dangers they, their innocence be damned, face of incarceration every day. “This would never happen to me,” but it does to many every week.
Recently, having reread the British murder mysteries from the first half of the 20th century to the point of memorization, and also all of Louis L’Amour’s novels of the Western frontier, I visited the public library and checked out half a dozen of John Grisham’s novels about the criminal justice system. I had read several of them years ago, and they had made an impression.
My belief is that a law student can learn more from one of Grisham’s novels about how the “justice system” actually operates, its disappointments, the total unconcern with justice, than the student can learn from his law professors, who are mainly interested in producing an activist committed to use law to overthrow existing society. If you are a reader who gets involved with a novel’s characters, Grisham can be very intense. On occasion I have had to set aside one of Grisham’s novels and read something else for awhile.
Grisham himself was a lawyer before turning novelist. Thus, he knows the system from the inside. It is not a pretty system. Justice is the least of its concerns. Judges permit prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence, to pay jailhouse snitches with early release for false testimony with which to convict an innocent person, with intentionally misleading jurors who are seldom up to the demands of the situation, and to use the corrupt American media to convict the defendant in the eyes of the public, as in the case of Derek Chauvin, so that even a jury that knows the defendant is innocent is afraid to say so.
According to the Department of Justice 97% of felonies never go to trial. The reason is that neither the defendant nor his attorney can possibly trust the system. The first thing a defendant hears from his lawyer is that if he goes to trial the prosecutor will multiply the charges, and no jury will believe that a defendant with dozens or scores of charges isn’t guilty of at least one of them. A conviction at a jury trial always brings a more severe sentence than a negotiated plea.
If the defendant’s lawyer negotiates a plea bargain, often to a charge that is not in the original indictment, the defendant by self-incriminating himself, thereby saving judge and prosecutor from a time-consuming trial, will be thanked with a lesser sentence. Plea bargains keep a judge’s court docket from backing up due to time-consuming trials. Plea bargains permit prosecutors to boost their all-important conviction rate far above what is possible with time-consuming trials. Although the defendant might actually have committed a crime, his plea bargain crime may be a construct that never happened in order to provide the lesser sentence. In other words, the defendant goes to prison for a crime that did not happen instead of for one that did. This is why I say that most people in prison are wrongfully convicted.
The only people who care about the wrongfully convicted are rare and underfunded Innocence Projects, whose attorneys work for peanuts to undo wrongful convictions. The rich white liberal foundations lavish money on men-hating feminists and the likes of Black Lives Matter and Antifa. The law and order conservatives see the problem as liberal judges who refuse to punish criminals. The constituency for justice is tiny.To wind this down, here are a few quotes that actually describe the justice system from Grisham’s novel, The Guardians, which is about an innocence project that works to free wrongly convicted persons.
“His career as a snitch began with the trial of Quincey Miller. He was eighteen when he testified, and a month after the trial his drug charges were reduced and he walked. The deal worked so beautifully that he did it again and again. Every jail has a druggie facing more time and eager to avoid it. With the proper coaching from cops and prosecutors, a snitch can be quite effective with his perjury. Jurors simply cannot believe that a witness, any witness, will take the oath, swear to tell the truth, and tell them an outlandish story of pure fiction.” Jurors are so stupid that they do not realize that a lie that convicts an innocent person is a ticket out of jail for the liar.
As for the racket of “expert witnesses,” Grisham reports that payment for a one-week seminar suffices to produce a certificate declaring a person to be an expert witness who hires out to convict or exonerate a defendant on his “expert” standing. “Most appellate judges, state and federal, despise these [innocent] cases because they drag on for years. And once they decide that a defendant is guilty, they rarely change their minds, regardless of new evidence.”
In the United States of America today, there is not one public or private institution that is trustworthy. The lack of institutions with integrity means that there is no foundation for American society.
Elon Musk timeline Tesla Moon factories – 20 years.
"In 20 years, I’d say Tesla’s got factories on the Moon. Actually, I see a very prosperous future for Tesla. It’s difficult to predict anything in 20 years, but if you say, in five years to ten years, I could say Tesla has an… https://t.co/aKlTLuq7yopic.twitter.com/YgF92MSyB0
SpaceX President & COO Gwynne Shotwell on @Starlink Mobile and its impact on Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile:
"Roughly, between them, $600 billion a year. I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers. Our service will be better. We will eliminate dead zones… pic.twitter.com/UYZUkrGc0L
POTUS reacts to news that oil companies are reporting record profits:
"They're making too much money. Okay? Based on a shortage, they're making too much money. I don't like it. I should be the last one to say 'cause I'm a big free enterprise guy, nobody bigger."
Despite being a private citizen with no public health role, Bill Gates was involved in high-level COVID briefings and played a direct role in shaping America’s pandemic response. pic.twitter.com/IhYTsLS26q
There’s movement with Iran. They were saying there’s no talking, but now there is.
“We are in talks with the Iranians, and I think there is a chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow to open the Strait and move towards a more normalized position in this conflict,” Bessent said in an interview with CNBC.
[..] Washington brought out its heavy hitter to re-anchor the administration’s narrative, seeking to assure markets that a diplomatic deal with Tehran is not only real, but imminent – potentially coming together even as soon as Tuesday through Wednesday. “We may have an Iran deal tomorrow to open Hormuz,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared, signaling that a major diplomatic resolution is within reach. He pointed out that physical maritime traffic is already quietly resuming, regardless of headline volatility.
Bessent gets dragged in to justify "imminent Iran deal" as algos no longer reacting to $100,000 Truth Social API
Bessent claimed the administration is seeing “quite a few ships coming out of Hormuz, even now,” suggesting the chokehold is loosening ahead of an actual deal and formal signature. With physical crude flows expected to resume, Bessent predicted that elevated energy prices will soon settle down, paving the way for a massive “relief trade” across broader markets: “We are in talks with the Iranians, and I think there is a chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow to open the Strait and move towards a more normalized position in this conflict,” Bessent said in an interview with CNBC.
Asked if Tehran would be allowed to charge a toll, Bessent said the deal would allow freedom of movement in the strait.”It would be freedom of movement,” he said. “Even though things are still a little dicey there over the past few days, we saw quite a few ships coming out even now.” Of course, we’ve heard all of this before, and notably Bessent’s commentary came just after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian insisted that while Tehran would defend its borders, it does not seek to expand the war, according to state media. An advisor to the Supreme Leader also reiterated that if the blockade continues, US vessels and forces will face serious risks and casualties. And there’s this not so small hiccup in the strait emerging Tuesday:
A vessel has been struck in the Strait of Hormuz near Oman, the UK maritime security firm Vanguard says. One crew member is missing.
Looming large over all of this is the fact that the Iranians have still denied that they are in formal talks with Washington, which Trump the day prior described as a ruse, venting his frustration while insisting that the Iranians have been engaging. The Hormuz blueprint as it basically stands: Reuters: Iran would gain full control over vessels entering the Strait of Hormuz under a temporary plan being discussed with Oman, an Iranian official says.
Outbound vessels would use the route between Iran and Oman, with Oman approving their exit only after notifying Tehran. The plan would give Iran full visibility over outbound traffic and the ability to intervene if needed and Iran is unlikely to accept any other proposal to open the strait The Bessent clip:
Bessent on Iran:
We've seen Trump, last week, threaten what would have been the largest military campaign since World War II against the Iranians, and now, because of that, we are in talks with the Iranians.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke at the White House Tuesday, just after headlines out of Qatar touting that a new draft deal initiative is gaining momentum. Rubio insisted again that Strait of Hormuz remains open and that vessels are continuing to pass through it, but said the US is working to open it up to bigger vessel transit flows.”I think there is a conversation and a negotiation that we are involved in between Iran and Oman on how more ships can be able to go through there safely in the short term, as we move towards… longer-term talks about denuclearization,” said Rubio. He then emphasized that that the “denuclearization of Iran” is the “ultimate deal”.
But from Tehran’s point of view, this will constitute Washington shifting the goalposts back to square one once again. Iran has insisted it will not negotiate the end of its nuclear program, especially while the conflict is still in an active phrase. It has consistently said that nuclear talks can happen later, only once an agreement to end the war has been accomplished. The two sides continue to be far apart, despite the Tuesday morning onslaught of ‘Hormuz deal imminent’ headlines.
PressTV, however, has said that Iran-Oman talks on opening Hormuz are in a “new phase” – and despite what it calls “US obstruction” – but so far it appears this management scheme will be favorable to Iran’s demands. And yet there’s still some signs of compromise on the horizon:
IRAN WEIGHS ALLOWING EUROPE TO CLEAR MINES IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ
Sundance: “I give it four months, and it’s over..”
“Every Russian move exists silently, almost in isolation from Western media. Every Ukraine move exists loudly, coordinated and promoted for maximum media value.”
Did she piss off the nazis?
Olha Stefanishyna says she resigned. Volodymyr Zelenskyy says she was removed. Regardless of which storyline is accurate, the Ukraine Ambassador to the United States is no longer in position. There is no replacement. Stefanishyna is also under investigation for her connection with financial irregularities involving the Asset Recovery and Management Agency, although she has not been formally charged, yet. The Western narrative, which has continuously looked like an intelligence community shaping, says that U.S. relations with the government of Ukraine have never been stronger. The reality seems to be something else entirely.
Olha Stefanishyna
Aug 3 (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy dismissed Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, Olha Stefanishyna, in a decree published on Monday. Stefanishyna had been in her job for nearly a year. Her departure had been expected for several weeks.Her departure coincides with a shake-up in recent weeks of top officials, including the replacement of the prime minister and defence minister. A reshuffle of Ukraine’s diplomatic and ambassadorial appointments is also expected. Stefanishyna, writing on Facebook, said the decision to leave her post was “my own decision, driven by personal circumstances … ” and said she had accomplished much during her time in the post. (read more)
I am not going to belabor the points, because I’m told by most my review of the data is incorrect. However, once again, I would simply point out the distinct difference between the preferred Western narrative and the reality of events as they unfold. From the June 11th London visit that preceded the G7 assembly in Paris, things have not made sense when you compare Western narrative to the reality of events. The removal of Stefanishyna is simply just another datapoint. Western media say Ukraine has turned the tide on the war against Russia. Reality – Russia has methodically gained ground in Eastern Ukraine.
Western media say Ukraine has exceptional drone building and technological capabilities to share with allies. To highlight this expertise Ukraine held a drone exposition in Kiev; Russia blew it up killing hundreds of contractors. Media went silent. Ukraine drones attack Wildberries warehouses. Russia blows up drone manufacturing factories. Western media say Ukraine drone capabilities are the most remarkable testimonial to their military effectiveness. Zelenskyy fires the Minister of Defense responsible for the drone capabilities.
Western media say Ukraine is effective in stopping the Russian advancements in the Donbas region. Zelenskyy fires the military general in command of the Ukraine military in the Donbas. Western media say Ukraine long-range drones are striking deep into Russian oil refining capacity. Zelenskyy says he needs to build drone and missile factories in Great Britain. If you want to evaluate the war, go back to the timing of events right after Zelenskyy last went to London and met with King Charles. It was a few days before the G7 summit in Paris. Go back to that exact date and then read the headlines on Ukraine/Russia from that date to today.
If you can be emotionally disconnected from the spin, and just focus on what the headlines would mean in every other timeframe, what you will notice is that Ukraine is panicking. Every move is a panic move from that London visit to today. Every Russian move exists silently, almost in isolation from Western media. Every Ukraine move exists loudly, coordinated and promoted for maximum media value. It looks like an intelligence influence operation. Go look.
The recently organized U.S. Senate sanctions against Russia are mostly directed toward China and India, while framing censorship in the form of punishment against any action that might “undermine” the government of Ukraine. It’s the ‘be careful what you say’ sanctions. Russia is methodically destroying Ukraine defenses, and the only response Zelenskyy has put together is flashy political promotion and media headlines to hide a reality that Russia is methodically destroying Ukraine defenses.
Western media says one narrative; the datapoints show something entirely different. I give it four months, and it’s over. Perhaps, that’s why President Trump: (A) pulled back from Patriot and Tomahawk missile sharing; and (B) has told his team to reengage both sides in peace negotiations now.
An armed man spent part of Sunday casing Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, snapping photos and videos of the grounds while federal agents watched from a distance. By the time deputies moved in, investigators say he had already zeroed in on something specific: security planning.The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department confirmed the arrest in a statement Tuesday. President Donald Trump was in the air aboard Air Force One, en route to California, when word of the arrest broke. He is set to attend a Republican National Committee dinner at that very golf course Tuesday evening.
The Secret Service is now investigating whether the man posed a threat to the president, according to a federal law enforcement source who spoke to CNN. A separate source told the network the investigation remains ongoing.Deputies identified the suspect as 38-year-old Jeanine John Taele of Downey. The El Segundo Police Department is separately investigating him in a robbery case. According to the sheriff’s department, Taele photographed and filmed the property while appearing to monitor what officials called “security-planning activities.” Deputies arrested him on charges of carrying a concealed firearm and possession of prohibited ammunition.
The case escalated fast. Detectives assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force executed a search warrant on Taele’s home Monday, citing the “potential security implications surrounding the incident.” What they found inside should worry anyone still inclined to shrug this off: an AR-style rifle that had been illegally modified, a .45 caliber pistol, body armor, high-capacity magazines, ammunition, and equipment for monitoring radio signals, along with notebooks filled with what the sheriff’s department called “concerning statements.” The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Secret Service are both assisting in the investigation, and officials say additional charges could follow.
It’s hard to see how this was anything other than an attempted assassination, which would make it now the fourth time in two years that a man carrying a rifle has turned up uncomfortably close to Donald Trump. In July 2024, Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at Trump in Butler, Pa., grazing his ear before Secret Service snipers took him out. Two months later, Secret Service agents caught Ryan Routh lurking with a rifle near Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla. In April, Cole Tomas Allen attempted to gain entry to the White House Correspondents Association Dinner with a shotgun and other weapons.
Make no mistake about it, a pattern like this does not happen by coincidence. The sheriff’s department is trying to strike a careful balance between reassurance and warning. “Currently, investigators have identified no credible threat to our communities,” the statement said. “However, this case underscores the importance of vigilance, strong partnerships with local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, and the proactive steps taken to identify and investigate suspicious activity before it can escalate.”
Whatever Taele’s intentions turn out to be, the arsenal found in his home and his apparent interest in “security-planning activities” at a property Trump was hours from visiting are facts hard to ignore.
For most of the last forty years, Spain has been a hub of primarily North African and Middle Eastern immigration to Europe. Since the 1980s, Spain has had six major extraordinary regularizations for its migrant populations. Although different in name and details, these “extraordinary regularizations” are essentially broad general amnesties, grants of legal immigration status to those who entered the country illegally. In 2005, under the former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (a socialist), Spain granted amnesty to more than half a million illegal immigrants.
Earlier this year, under current Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (also a socialist . . . or worse), the country began the process of yet another regularization, the total size of which is unknown at present but is estimated to be between 500,000 and over 800,000. Additionally, earlier this summer, the Spanish Supreme Court issued a ruling limiting the ability of the government to return immigrants who arrived in Ceuta and its sister city, Melilla, by sea rather than by land (over a technical “border”).
All things considered, Spain has done everything in its power to encourage as much immigration as possible, and its government has openly conceded this fact, arguing that demographic and workforce realities make mass immigration an absolute necessity. Unsurprisingly, given all of this, the country’s foreign-born population jumped significantly in less than two years, from approximately 18.2% of the total population in 2024 to 20.3% today.
In light of Spain’s immigration policies and in the wake of the Ceuta disaster, over the weekend, several EU nations called for a suspension of Spain’s privileges under the Schengen Agreement, which allows borderless travel within the Schengen region: no passport control, a unified set of regulations, etc. Predictably, Meloni’s Italy was the first to speak up. Deputy PMs Antonio Tajani and Matteo Salvini announced a formal one-month suspension of Italy’s Schengen relations with Spain, closing Italy’s maritime and air entry points to Spain and introducing “targeted and selective” checks on non-EU travelers arriving from that country.
France followed suit, reintroducing checks at its land border crossings with Spain. Finland began preparing to reimpose border controls along its own Schengen borders, and its interior minister, Mari Rantanen, offered the sharpest public statement by a government official to date: “Spain’s outer border is also our outer border, and. . . they have failed in their efforts to prevent this incursion, this invasion.” Denmark and Czechia both demanded Spain’s suspension from Schengen, but neither has taken unilateral action on its own.
In response, Pedro Sánchez complained that everyone, everywhere, was overreacting, stating that the rest of Europe was being “selfish, polarising, and unlawful.” Taken as a whole, this entire episode—starting with Spain’s admitted desire to import as many immigrants as possible and continuing through this weekend’s demands for Spain’s suspension from Schengen—helps clarify some of the broader issues facing the EU.
First, in the age of mass immigration, Schengen shows clearly that the EU itself was a half-baked idea. Interestingly, Schengen did not start as an EU enterprise. It started as a side agreement between a handful of member states: Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. It was only in 1999, via the Amsterdam Treaty’s Schengen Protocol, that the “Schengen acquis” (the whole body of Schengen rules and agreements) was formally absorbed into EU law. In 2004, the EU—as opposed to its member states, a key distinction—tried to push a European constitution on its members, including provisions formally mandating Schengen compliance, making the EU “an area without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured. . . .”
The following year, French and Dutch voters explicitly rejected the constitution via referenda, which should, by all rights, have been the end of it. The EU being the EU, it decided that it wouldn’t take no for an answer and scaled the constitution back marginally and re-presented it as the Lisbon Treaty, which, among many foolish things, formalized and mandated participation in the Schengen migration policies.
Second, the Euro, the immigration mess, and the EU’s unwillingness to accept the will of the people as definitive confirm Robert Michels’ Iron Law of Oligarchy and show that the EU’s pretensions to “democracy” are rather laughable. Michels was a student of Max Weber, the founder of modern sociology, who sought to deepen his appreciation of socialism by studying the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), the most avowedly democratic, mass-participatory political organization in Europe at the time. He presumed that he would find a functional, egalitarian organization that confirmed all his fantastical priors.
Instead, what he discovered was the opposite. He concluded, based on his study, that even organizations explicitly founded on democratic principles—universal participation, elected leadership, accountability to the membership—invariably develop into oligarchies, ruled by a small, self-perpetuating leadership class. It is simply the nature of large organizations. This, then, is Michels’ Iron Law of Oligarchy: “It is organisation that gives birth to the domination of the elected over the electors, of the mandataries over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organisation, says oligarchy.”
The EU is an oligarchy in Michelsian terms. It is governed by a small self-perpetuating ruling class that sees “the people” as impediments to its technocratic program and will do whatever is necessary to advance its agenda, regardless of the will of those people.
Finally, the EU will crumble. All Utopian enterprises eventually do. They must. They can’t help but do so. And while it may not be the monetary union that brings it down, something will. Maybe it will be Schengen and immigration. Maybe it will be something else. Who knows? Whatever the case, it will, eventually, collapse. The real, painful part of Michels’ Iron Law is the inability of oligarchies to reform themselves. They are incapable. What this suggests is that the EU’s response to the Ceuta incident and to Spain’s immigration unilateralism more generally will be to add more layers of centralizing regulation to the already oligarchical system, thereby making a bad problem even worse.
The EU won’t reform because it can’t reform. And so, it will collapse instead.
The scenes from the Ceuta invasion were deeply alarming, as 60,000 predominantly military-aged men, many carrying no supplies, crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave. The invasion set off alarm bells across the West, reinforcing concerns that uncontrolled mass migration poses a major national security risk. According to The Sun, there are new concerns that a second invasion of Ceuta could be “just days” away, as the outlet cites online posts warning it may be their [migrants] “last chance” to enter Europe.
The outlet continued: “Fears are also mounting convicted terrorists were among the tens of thousands of people who stormed the Spanish enclave last week, reports say.” [. . .]But reports say the peninsula could see scenes of mayhem play out on the streets yet again, as plans are being made for another mass border crossing on August 15.On social media, posts appear to be plotting another storming of the shores of Ceuta, with one message reading: “Everything will be seen that day.” Another appears to call for the creation of a WhatsApp group, saying: “Our appointment is on 15/08/2026.”
The invasion prompted Italy to suspend Schengen arrangements with Spain and to secure its borders, while 22 EU leaders demanded “immediate action” to address the national security threat. Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, and other European leaders warned: “We cannot allow uncontrolled mass crossings, the instrumentalization of migration or other hybrid threats to create the perception that illegal entry into the European Union is possible.” Reports that emerged in recent days show that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s (unhinged socialist) claim that the migrants had been expelled from Ceuta may not have reflected the situation on the ground. Read the full report.
Years of open-border policies under Spain’s socialist government may now be approaching a political breaking point. The invasion of military-aged men was so visible to the world in real time on X, making it increasingly difficult for lefty corporate media to reconstruct the narrative and gaslight the public into believing this was merely a humanitarian migration event. The images instead reinforced views of a coordinated border invasion and undercut the left-wing narrative framing such arrivals solely as poor migrants searching for milk and bread.
We noted last week: “Spain’s Border Invasion Is An Optics Disaster For Open-Border Democrats” Hopefully, common sense can return to the West: secure borders. And, really, hold those accountable for nation-killing open border policies.
New York City’s socialist bad boy mayor Zohran Mamdani just made his latest move against the city’s business leaders — and this time, he hit the leadership of Gracie Mansion’s own Mayor’s Fund Board of Advisors. Plus, I have the latest news on Mamdani’s incredibly wrong-headed plan for city-owned grocery stores in today’s double-header of socialist stupidity. The New York Post reported early Tuesday that Mamdani “axed the advisors of a major nonprofit that channels private sector donations to fund city initiatives in his latest hostile act toward New York business leaders.”
Also, according to the Post, the board has “raised hundreds of millions since its 1995 inception – including a staggering $107 million to support family members of rescue workers killed or injured in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.”The mass firing marks “the first time in at least three mayoral administrations that all members were let go.” At least? If I’ve done my counting correctly, you only have to go back four mayors before Mamdani to reach the Board’s founding under Rudy Giuliani.
“The creation of a new advisory board is an important next step in reimagining how philanthropy can augment, but not replace, public dollars and public goods, and we are eager to share more about our new board of advisors later this year,” Mamdani senior advisor Dora Pekec told Bloomberg. Well, that’s exactly what the board did prior to the mayor sacking its entire membership. The mayor’s office told Bloomberg that Mamdani would select new members “later this year,” and it’s a safe bet that his picks will be more in line with his socialist vision for the city.
Which brings us to the latest report on Mamdani’s city-owned, taxpayer-subsidized grocery stores — and no matter how bad you or I thought they would be, now they’re worse. If it seems like at least once each week I write something about some new idiocy coming out of Mamdani’s New York City or Gavin Newsom’s California, well, it’s because there’s always some new idiocy.Finance and winemaking guy Nick Kokonas actually downloaded and read Mamdani’s just-released Request for Proposal (RFP) asking large private grocers for their plans for running city-owned stores. “Forget for a moment whether or not the government should own a grocery store,” Kokonas wrote, and “Let’s review the doc instead.”
It’s… well, let’s just say it’s even more dumberer than you could have imagined. Then there’s the little matter that the city will give preference to companies willing to bid on operating all five stores, but will award operations one store at a time. The city wants “scale pricing while refusing to award scale.” According to Kokonas, Mamdani wants stores to run on a “limited SKU model” that reduces costs by limiting selection. But Mamdani also insists that the stores stock “full grocery departments, household goods, culturally specific products, plus kosher, halal, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free and diabetic options.”
There’s much more, but two stick out as particularly thick-headed.First, the stores’ subsidized goods aren’t means-tested, so “anyone can shop there.” What that means is that as bodegas are forced out of business, or at least to stop carrying non-subsidized staples, “taxpayers will subsidize groceries for affluent shoppers who happen to live nearby, while needy families elsewhere get zero.”
Think of Bane Grocers (as I refer to Mamdani’s government stores) as subsidized Whole Foods for his wealthy white supporters.But here’s where the stupid leaves third-degree burns. “The ‘best’ bid promises 30% discounts, best-in-class wages/benefits, local sourcing, sustainability, community programs and full-time jobs,” Kokonas noted, incentivizing bidders to promise the world. But when choosing the winning bid, “20% of the score goes to whoever claims they need the least subsidy.”
So the incentive is to lowball the city, guaranteeing cost overruns that will be paid for by city taxpayers.Or maybe the new crony members of the Mayor’s Fund Board of Advisors will stop raising money for the families of first responders, and start raising money to pay for the mayor’s stupid city-run grocery stores. I’m just spit-balling here, but it hardly seems impossible.
This is gonna go great, and I have a fresh supply of I Told You Sos all ready to go.
“…they inherited it from their parents or they bought it 50 years ago for $50,000, and in crowded New York it’s worth $1 million. They’re hardly wealthy.”
Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, has just stirred up a lot of controversy. He said that he wanted to go after property owners who had homes worth more than $5 million, and they were likely to be second homes. In other words, they had a primary residence elsewhere, either in the state of New York, outside the state, or in a foreign country. m And he wanted to tax them with a new surcharge in addition to property tax. But then, when the letters went out, they didn’t just go to the upper-middle class or the wealthy who owned $5 million properties. Mamdani went back on his word and sent almost 950,000 letters out to property owners who, on their register, had a home worth more than $1 million.
Now, this is where it gets interesting. He’s under a lot of criticism for this because he was bragging and he kind of, as he always does in his cute socialist smile … Remember, he got in front of Ken Griffin’s second home and looked into the camera and said, “Ha ha, we’re coming for you,” type of thing. This email was supposed to be cute. Something’s coming in the mail. But here’s the problem. A person can have a relatively modest house, and maybe they inherited it from their parents or they bought it 50 years ago for $50,000, and in crowded New York it’s worth $1 million. They’re hardly wealthy.
But more importantly, in the United States, Mamdani isn’t familiar, apparently, with an age-old foundational principle that you’re innocent until proven guilty. In other words, you don’t word a letter to people that says, “I assume you are guilty of having a house which is not your principal residence. You have three weeks to prove to me that you’re not guilty, and then maybe I will adjudicate you’re innocent and not slap a surtax.” Can you imagine hundreds of thousands of people getting a letter in the mail that they owe $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, $50,000, or $80,000 on top of their property taxes and going into panic and then going to the New York City website with hundreds of thousands of other people trying to get in and say, “Look, I’ve been in this house. I’m not a second-property owner”?
It was designed to cause confusion and anger and chaos and make Mamdani an object of fear. Don’t cross the mayor. He has a long memory. But here’s the other thing. Besides inverting the idea to “you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent,” what’s wrong with having a second house? It’s a free country. You have a right to have a house. So what was he doing by sending this letter and threatening you? Well, one of the things is he’s broke. He’s had all of these lavish welfare ideas that are not fundable because he’s driving out the upper-middle class and the wealthy, and they’re leaving in droves.
Some estimates say maybe $11 billion already in real value and revenue. So, he needs money. And more importantly, by sending this surtax out in addition to property taxes, if you have a property that’s worth $1 million or $2 million and you’re paying $20,000, $30,000, or $40,000 in property tax, and this surtax comes in at another $10,000, $20,000, or $30,000, a lot of people are saying, “You know, I’m not getting that much rent,” if it is a second home.
If it’s their primary home, they’re saying, “I already pay this huge property tax and I have maintenance costs.” If you’re renting, you have rental costs. You’re subject to oversight. There are rental subsidies for your renter. There’s rent control. And so what he’s trying to do is force people to sell. Either sell their second home, or he considers them affluent enough that they had their turn, and it’s time to sell because they will not be able to afford, especially retired people, a surcharge property tax on top of a property tax, on top of insurance.
And if you have a lot of sales, the house price drops. If the house price drops, Mamdani can come in and either buy them for the city or subsidize the, quote, “repressed poor” to buy. It’s a huge redistribution plan. There’s a third, more sinister agenda behind Mamdani’s enemies list. If you send out the names of over 900,000 New Yorkers in various boroughs, and you say, “These people, I accuse these people, until they can prove me wrong, of having a second property or a vacant property that is worth over a million dollars.”
And you give the name, as he did, and the address, as he did, then you’re going to have a lot of envious people saying, “Oh, Mr. Smith down the road, he’s on that list. Oh, Mr. Jones, I didn’t know that he wasn’t living in that house. Hmm.” And that’s the best interpretation. There’s two, I think, more accurate and maybe even more disturbing. We have an epidemic in this country of squatting. So if you are a potential squatter where the law protects you, once you get possession of an empty home it’s almost impossible to evict you unless you spend thousands of dollars.
So all these would-be squatters are going to be looking at this list, and they’re going to say, “Well, the mayor of New York accuses this person at this address of having a vacant home. Let’s check it out. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe we’ll go down the list, five, six, seven, 10 of them, but we will find a vacant house, and we’ll know he’s not going to come, and we’ll just crash and move in. And then the whole legal apparatus of the city protects us, and we can get two, three, four years of free rent.”
Anthony Fauci spent nearly four decades running the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In that time, he became the face of public health in America.Yet the record now shows he inflicted lasting harm on the very people he claimed to serve, especially the young. His private writings and public actions reveal a pattern of deception that paved the way for lockdowns, school closures, and social isolation whose scars will stretch across generations.
In late July, Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary. These ranged from December 2019 through December 2022. Those entries strip away an image which had been polished for the public year after year. On Jan. 26, 2020, Fauci noted that the first COVID-19 infection appeared early in December and had no link to the Wuhan market. He called the market an amplifier, not the source.
Days later, on Feb. 1, he recorded a conference call with a dozen scientists. Most of them saw laboratory engineering of COVID as a real possibility. Only two favored a purely natural origin.Fauci never shared that private judgment with the public. Instead, he steered grant money toward the Wuhan Institute of Virology and helped shape a paper that dismissed the lab-leak idea. He then promoted that publication at press conferences without revealing his own involvement. Or the later multimillion-dollar grant he approved for one of its authors.
The gap between what he knew and what he said cleared the path for economy-wrecking shutdowns, hysterical public shaming, and months of shuttered classrooms. All that ripped apart families and mauled the economy.Worse still, the diary shows Fauci actively pushed the very lockdowns he later denied association with. On March 15, 2020 — which he labeled “BIG DAY!” in red ink — he wrote that he convinced Democrat New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to close municipal schools. He noted that de Blasio had already leaned that way from Fauci’s television appearances.
The same entry records him urging de Blasio to shutter bars and restaurants. He influenced California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat surely running for president in 2028, to embrace locking down. Five days later, Fauci pressed for a full shelter-in-place order in New York. This came despite resistance from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, another Democrat.Fauci later claimed credit for extending the original “15 days to slow the spread” into 30 days, warning that stopping early would be a disaster. In November, he backed a three-week shutdown in Los Angeles County.
The damage is already measurable and will compound for decades. A 2023 peer-reviewed study of German secondary students found that those tested after six months of pandemic disruption scored substantially lower on intelligence tests, relative to comparable groups from 2002 and 2012. When the same students were retested a year later, amid continued irregular schooling, they showed no recovery.The researchers tied this shortfall to lost classroom time, not stress alone, and warned of lasting effects on cognitive growth.
In the United States, a 2021 survey of nearly a thousand parents linked COVID-driven school closures, remote learning, and canceled activities to clear drops in children’s social skills. Kids spent most of their days isolated at home watching screens instead of playing outdoors or joining group sports. Reductions in time with friends and extracurricular activities tracked directly with worse social outcomes.
Researchers at the Urban Institute projected long-term consequences from actual COVID-era learning loss and socio-emotional disruptions. Eighth-graders in the 2021-22 school year could earn three percent less at age 30 than they would have without academic centers shutting down. High-school graduation rates and college degrees are expected to fall as well, with steeper hits for students from low-income and minority households.
A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report detailed the pandemic’s physical and mental tolls. These include rising diabetes rates in children, higher maternal deaths (especially among black and Hispanic women), spikes in adolescent overdose deaths (driven by fentanyl), as well as delayed vaccinations and check-ups that hit minority children hardest. Loss of a parent or other caregiver were several times higher for Native American, black, and Hispanic children than for white children.
“..he has repeatedly pressed the question of whether American taxpayer dollars funded research at a Chinese lab suspected of playing a role in unleashing the virus that killed millions.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told Dr. Anthony Fauci last week exactly what would happen if he stonewalled Congress. Fauci ignored him. Now Paul is delivering on that promise, and conservatives who have waited years for this moment have every reason to celebrate. Paul introduced a resolution Tuesday to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. The move comes after the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director sat before a Senate committee and refused, again and again, to answer a single question.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which Paul chairs, subpoenaed Fauci on July 22 to testify as part of its investigation into risky life sciences research and the true origins of the virus that upended the world in 2020. Fauci showed up Wednesday and gave Republicans nothing. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times. It didn’t matter if it was about the origins of COVID-19 or what day of the week it was; Fauci’s answer was the same: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.”
🚨 BREAKING: Rand Paul announces the committee will be voting to hold Dr. Fauci in CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS after Fauci invokes the fifth amendment over 80 times
Sen. Paul was not amused. “I ordered him to answer and warned him about contempt, yet he still refused,” Paul said, calling Fauci’s defiance obstruction of a congressional investigation the committee plans to act on.
The committee will vote on the contempt resolution Thursday, and Paul has already dismantled Fauci’s legal excuse for hiding behind the Fifth. Before leaving office in January 2025, then-President Joe Biden gave Fauci a preemptive pardon, an unusual move clearly aimed at protecting one of Donald Trump’s most prominent critics from prosecution. Paul, in a statement on Tuesday, explained that the pardon wiped out any basis Fauci had for pleading the Fifth in the first place. Fauci also gave up whatever privilege remained the moment he delivered opening testimony at the hearing.
This fight has been years in the making. Paul has accused Fauci of destroying government records, and he has repeatedly pressed the question of whether American taxpayer dollars funded research at a Chinese lab suspected of playing a role in unleashing the virus that killed millions. Fauci has denied it every time.
The HSGAC hearing with Anthony Fauci wasn't about relitigating COVID for its own sake. It was about accountability.
Fauci said one thing publicly and another privately. He coordinated to control the narrative. He shaped guidance around politics instead of truth. If we don't…
Contempt of Congress is a serious charge that could land Fauci in jail. “Contempt of Congress is the legal offense of disobeying or disrespecting the authority of the U.S. legislative branch through actions like refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas, disrupting proceedings, or obstructing investigations,” explains FindLaw. “This federal offense typically arises when individuals fail to respond to legally binding orders from congressional committees during their oversight and lawmaking functions. Penalties include criminal prosecution with up to one year in jail and $100,000 in fines.”
Democrats (for a change) have no appetite for dragging the country through another government shutdown this fall, right before the midterm elections. The Senate moved forward Monday with a plan to keep the government funded past the midterms, and the continuing resolution cleared a procedural hurdle Monday evening in an 89-4 vote. Senators hope to pass the measure before leaving town for the August recess later this week. Naturally, Democrats are treating it like a win.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat appropriator in the Senate, praised the measure as a “much-improved CR to keep the government funded and avert a shutdown that no one wants,” and pointed to provisions her party secured in the Senate version. “This bill includes important extensions and language that House Republicans’ CR did not, and it rejects Trump’s frivolous war spending wish list,” Murray said in a statement. “Importantly, we closed the loophole in House Republicans’ CR that would have allowed the Trump administration to transfer funding provided for other programs to Border Patrol, which desperately needs reform, not more money.”
Sure, Patty. If declaring victory over a bill that 89 senators voted to advance helps you sleep at night, knock yourself out. Still, it looks like we won’t have a distracting shutdown before the midterm elections. Even House and Senate Republicans appear to be on the same page this time around. But that doesn’t mean everyone in the GOP is thrilled with how things are going in the upper chamber.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) took aim at Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Monday over his decision to focus on confirming President Donald Trump’s nominees instead of working on a budget. Kennedy called it a “huge mistake” in an interview with Punchbowl News’ Andrew Desiderio.
Sen. Kennedy says Thune is making a “huge mistake” if he doesn’t turn to the budget resolution soon, and knocked the majority leader for his floor speech today touting Senate Republicans’ historic pace of confirming Trump’s nominees
“You know one of the things I never say? I never look those people in the eyes and say, ‘We set a record for the number of nominees confirmed.’ I’ve never said that. And I don’t think any other senator has ever said that,” Kennedy said, describing what he tells voters and fellow Republican candidates on the campaign trail. “Because I don’t think the American people care.”
Kennedy has a point. Voters back home want to know what the Senate is doing about spending, the border, and the economy. Your average voter isn’t thinking about confirmation statistics. For months, Senate Republicans have essentially scoffed at Trump’s policy demands, particularly his push to pass the SAVE America Act, the most important election integrity legislation in history, as far as I’m concerned. At least one senator is unhappy that the funding deal does nothing to advance it, which means the fight over that bill is coming sooner or later, shutdown or no shutdown.
On the plus side, no shutdown means no weeks of breathless media coverage blaming the GOP for shuttered parks and delayed paychecks. Would it be nice for the SAVE America Act to get its moment? Sure, but heading into the fall, Democrats would certainly have taken us into a shutdown if it had been included.
Former Biden White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha this weekend became the latest denier of the lab theory to do a 180-degree turn. During the interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Jha admitted that he now believes that the most likely explanation is a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. As pundits and politicians quietly admit that the natural mutation theory is not as credible, the courageous scientists who were blacklisted for years remain persona non grata in higher education.
Jha stated: “This is going to surprise some people. You know, when I went into the White House, my view was, ‘This was almost surely a natural outbreak, maybe a lab leak.’ Based on information I learned and based on information I‘ve seen, I have come to conclude that it is more likely to have been a lab leak.” I commend Jha for publicly addressing his change. Indeed, everyone in academia, myself included, has had their views evolve. What should not evolve is the willingness of the scientists and academics to accept dissenting viewpoints. One of my long-standing complaints against figures like Anthony Fauci is that they held prominent positions during the pandemic, but said nothing about the cancel campaigns directed against those experts who disagreed with their views on issues like the origins of COVID-19.
As I discuss in my new book, “The Indispensable Right,” the result is that we never really had a national debate on many of these issues and the massive social and economic costs that resulted. I spoke at the University of Chicago with Bhattacharya and other dissenting scientists in the front row a couple of years ago. After the event, I asked them how many had been welcomed back to their faculties or associations since the recognition of some of their positions. They all said that they were still treated as pariahs for challenging the groupthink culture.
For years, figures like Bhattacharya (who was recently awarded the prestigious Intellectual Freedom Award by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters) were hounded and marginalized. Others opposed Bhattacharya’s right to offer his scientific views, even under oath. For example, in one hearing, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) expressed disgust that Bhattacharya was even allowed to testify as “a purveyor of COVID-19 misinformation.”
Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik decried an event associated with Bhattacharya, writing that “we’re living in an upside-down world” because Stanford University allowed dissenting scientists to speak at a scientific forum. Hiltzik also wrote a column titled “The COVID lab leak claim isn’t just an attack on science, but a threat to public health.” As recently as last year, Hiltzik continued to attack the lab theory. Bhattacharya’s experience is not unique. When scientists argued that the virus’s origin was likely the Chinese research lab in Wuhan, they were mobbed by the media. That position was denounced by the Washington Post as a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.”
The Washington Post denounced Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) when he raised the theory for “repeat[ing] a fringe theory suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.” After Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) mentioned the lab theory, Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler mocked him: “I fear @tedcruz missed the scientific animation in the video that shows how it is virtually impossible for this virus to jump from the lab. Or the many interviews with actual scientists. We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves.”
The New York Times Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli called any mention of the lab theory “racist.” At NPR, an endless stream of segments ran dismissing the lab leak notion, painting it as a debunked conspiracy theory of the far right, including one story titled “Scientists Debunk Lab Accident Theory of Pandemic Emergence.”
I consider it valuable to have voices like Hultzik’s that still challenge the lab theory — just as I thought it was valuable to have lab theorists voice their views. The difference is that critics of the lab theory are not being canceled, but continue to be celebrated for their prior work. To the contrary, figures like Scott Atlas have shown how those educators who helped lead the mob against dissenters still hold positions of power. These figures should not be canceled for holding opposing views, but their conduct in silencing others should be reviewed.
Despite the vindication of scientists on their opposition to policies on the use of surgical masks, the closure of schools, and other issues, there have not been any repercussions for those who enforced the orthodoxy and intolerance during the pandemic in higher education. The fact is that most are now willing to admit that the lab theory is probably correct, but they are unwilling to forgive those who forced them into that admission.
Immigrant-invader elected to US Congress introduces bill to abolish US border protection White ethnicities in Europe, the UK, and the white former British colonies in the “New World” continue to actively participate in their own demise by encouraging massive inflows of hostile and unassimilable immigrant-invaders who are provided not only with material support by the white populations that are being overrun but also with legal privileges that the white citizens do not have. As Lenin once asked, “What is to be done?”
Unfortunately, white ethnicities do not have a leader of Lenin’s capability. Those few whites aware of the problem have come up with “Remigration” and recently held a summit. The conclusion was that time is against white ethnicities because the last white generation that can respond to the threat is the current one. All that “come after us will already be born into this multicultural atmosphere and so it will be normal to them” for white ethnicities to be second-class citizens discriminated against by their governments and facing dispossession of their rights, possessions, and lives.
In the recent overrunning of a Spanish city we see the inability of Western civilization to respond to attack by privileged persons of color. Enoch Powell warned the British in the 1960s, Jean Raspail warned he French and all of Europe, including Russia, in the 1970s, and Wilmot Robertson warned the Americans in the 1970s. But the insouciant, ignorant, and utterly stupid white ethnicities paid no heed, and now they, leaderless, face elimination. There is no more endangered species on earth than white ethnicities.
White ethnicities everywhere have proven themselves to be so throughly brainwashed and indoctrinated against themselves as to be incapable of defending themselves. Their remaining time on earth is limited. Remigration was President Lincoln’s solution for America’s Africans. His plan, terminated by his assassination, was to return Africans to Africa or perhaps send them to Central America. The “Great Emancipator ” freed the slaves so he could return them to Africa.
“Europe is belatedly discovering how unbelievably stupid it was to import millions of people from cultures that despise Western values and which often promote hatred toward the people who have let them in.”
Nick Shirley speaks with Spain citizen who confirms the illegal migrants are being imported for votes
Polls came out showing their liberal Prime Minister was going to lose the upcoming election to a conservative candidate. Right after, migrants flooded in
China arms Iran while hollowing out America's supply chains. This is fifth-generation warfare (5GW) playing out in real time. Read this and understand what's at stake for our national sovereignty. https://t.co/Fi9hoLzFmPpic.twitter.com/8MPAKQPjmf
“The Clintons had the saving grace of utter lack of principle—when they saw which way the political wind was blowing, that’s the way they’d go, regardless of what they’d been saying before.”
“When we talk we say ‘we’re talking’, if we’re not talking, when you ask me, ‘no we’re not talking’, I’ll say it. But we are talking right now, we’re talking, and we’re talking at the request of Iran..”
President Trump has told reporters in the Oval Office that the Iran conflict is “working out very well” and that this is Tehran’s “last chance to sign a good document”. On Hormuz, he said: “It has to be [free], I am not going to let them charge. If anybody is going to charge, we will charge, we are the ones … with a total control,” he said. “We have a thing called a blockade … No, no, there is not going to be charging. We are not talking about charging at all. There won’t be charging.”
*TRUMP: WANT TO GIVE IRAN LAST CHANCE BEFORE 'DECAPITATION'
On engaging Iran in talks even while the Iranians themselves insist they will not participate in any new talks:
“When we talk we say ‘we’re talking’, if we’re not talking, when you ask me, ‘no we’re not talking’, I’ll say it. But we are talking right now, we’re talking, and we’re talking at the request of Iran, backed by Saudi Arabia, backed by UAE, and backed by Qatar in particular, but others also, many countries called, many-the leaders of many, I’m friendly with a lot of them–This is a last chance, this is not something-if it doesn’t happen, this is a last chance for them to sign a… good document.”
Trump: Looking for Solution ‘Caused’ by Iran
President Trump on Monday issued a new Truth Social, perhaps trying to explain his latest weekend TACO move, accusing Iran’s leadership of being “unbelievably duplicitous,” claiming Tehran privately sought and sheduled talks while publicly insisting it is only dealing with Oman. He asserted that the Strait of Hormuz is already “completely controlled by the United States Navy” through what he called the “United States Wall of Steel,” adding that “nothing gets through to Iran” unless Washington allows it. Trump also insisted discussions toward a resolution are underway despite Iranian denials, while reiterating his bottom line: “IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!”
U.S. officials say that no novel negotiations are scheduled with Iran despite Trump’s statements, maintaining that ongoing talks are limited to indirect discussions via mediators involving envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. – CBS. Trump is increasingly letting his frustration and ‘exasperation’ go public. This seems to only confirm that indeed there are no talks taking place at this point. The US president continues to insist that the whole crisis was “caused” by the Iranians “for decades” but that it is the US now looking for a “solution” – but Iran won’t play ball, after apparently ‘begging’ for talks…
US President Donald Trump said that the United States and Iran are holding negotiations, even if Tehran does not publicly acknowledge it.”They ask for a meeting, some would say ‘beg’, talks begin, with more scheduled in the immediate future, and they say, openly and proudly, that they’re not having any discussions, that nothing is being talked about, and they’re only dealing with Oman,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Whether Iran wants to admit it or not, we are, in fact, talking of a solution to a problem that they have caused, for decades. It is very simple, IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!”
Just before the end of July, an official of the terrorist Iranian regime once again insisted that the current conflict cannot end until and unless the U.S. concedes the murderous mullahs full and uncontested control—and likely toll power—over the Strait of Hormuz.
It is very important to understand that no matter how many times the Iranian regime says it is willing to look at a proposal from the United States in order to put off major strikes, that doesn’t mean the regime ever changes its core demands. Nor will it ever do so, because the regime is run by fundamentalist Muslims who believe that by waging endless jihad against the United States, they are triggering the coming of their Islamic messiah, the Mahdi.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi gave an interview July 28 during which he laid out Iran’s demands. “We submitted a proposal to Oman regarding the Strait of Hormuz to establish a new lane that will be under Iranian control,” Gharibabadi said, according to a translation published on the Middle East Media Research Institute. “If this proposal is accepted, the strait will be opened; but if it is rejected, we are ready for a resumption of the fighting.”
U.S., of course, rejected the proposal. Despite what Gharibabadi said, Iranian forces have not succeeded in closing the strait to all commercial traffic, but they have made it impossible to get through the strait without the security that American troops are providing. And the Iranian strikes still occasionally hit or hinder ships.
Gharibabadi insisted, “The Strait of Hormuz will not revert to the pre-war arrangements, and this is the absolute policy of the [Iranian] regime.” He then griped about Americans trying to clear Iranian mines from the strait. “Mine-clearing is Iran’s sole responsibility,” he claimed, meaning the mullahs want the mines to remain where they are and terrorize ships.
Then Gharibabadi declared, “The Americans, in cooperation with Oman, created a southern transit lane within Omani territorial waters for ship traffic. Iran does not recognize this southern lane for even one hour, and the current round of fighting began precisely because of ships illegally passing through this lane.” Notice Gharibabadi fully admits the waters are Omani territory but still claims sovereignty over them. The Iranian regime is imperialist and lawless.
The ayatollahs aren’t interested in compromise. “The Omanis suggested planning a transit lane of which 50% would be under Iranian control and 50% under Omani control,” Gharibabadi noted. “We said that this does not dispel Iran’s apprehensions. Our demand is for complete Iranian control over the inbound lane and also over part of the outbound lane. If this proposal is rejected, no other proposal will be approved and the strait will remain closed.” That is, the terrorism will continue.
Stop debating the Islamist regime’s intentions. They’re clear: they want to kill all of us. Focus on capability. Its nuclear and war-making capabilities have been severely degraded. Now the Trump administration must finish the job and eliminate them.
US President Donald Trump has teased new negotiations with Iran after abruptly calling off a major attack in a Truth Social post published on the same day that his media company began selling Wall Street firms millisecond-fast access to the platform’s market-moving content. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump claimed that talks would begin on Monday and said several Middle Eastern governments had urged him to give diplomacy another chance.
“We’re just going to see whether or not we can make a deal,” Trump said, claiming that the canceled operation would have been the “biggest attack since World War II.”Last Monday, Trump claimed that “very friendly negotiations” with Tehran were already underway. Within days, however, the US had resumed bombing Iran, while Trump adopted increasingly aggressive rhetoric, promising to hit the country “very hard.”His administration declared US forces “locked and loaded” and prepared to unleash levels of military power not seen since World War II.
US media reported on Friday that Washington and Israel were preparing an extensive campaign against Iranian power plants, refineries and other energy infrastructure.The threats, combined with continued disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, helped sustain fears of a wider energy shock and propelled crude prices toward $90 a barrel. On Saturday, Trump abruptly called off the strikes in a Truth Social post, claiming that Iran and several regional governments had agreed to the outlines of a deal that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and address Tehran’s nuclear program.
The sudden reversal triggered another sharp market swing when Asian trading resumed on Monday morning. Brent crude fell by more than 7% at the open, while West Texas Intermediate dropped 6.7% to $78.98 a barrel. US stock-index futures rose as traders priced in a reduced risk of further escalation and disruption to Gulf energy supplies.
August 1 was also the launch date of Truth API, a paid service operated by Trump Media & Technology Group that provides institutional customers with a licensed, machine-readable feed of posts from influential Truth Social accounts. The service is aimed specifically at high-frequency and algorithmic trading firms and reportedly costs as much as $100,000 per month. Trump Media says paying customers receive posts within milliseconds of publication, while market specialists have argued that the direct feed allows well-equipped firms to process announcements and execute trades much faster than retail investors relying on the public website or app.
Trump’s posts are particularly valuable because he routinely uses Truth Social to announce abrupt changes involving wars, tariffs, individual companies and other policies capable of moving stocks, currencies and commodities. The AP noted that policy reversals can be especially lucrative for high-speed traders, who can profit from an initial threat that moves prices in one direction and then rapidly change their positions when Trump announces the opposite.
Iran has previously accused Trump of publicizing purported diplomatic breakthroughs to lower oil prices and buy time for further military action. The latest pause also follows an established pattern: Trump has repeatedly announced that strikes against Iran were being suspended to allow negotiations, only for military operations to resume after talks faltered or new attacks occurred. Tehran had not publicly confirmed that any new negotiations with the US were scheduled, and rejected Washington’s claim to a role in determining the future of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said negotiations with Oman over the waterway’s management were “nearing completion,” while Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei described the discussions as a bilateral matter that “does not concern any other party.” Baqaei said Iran and Oman were negotiating a new shipping route that would replace the existing northern and southern routes. He stressed that any agreement “does not mean that the Strait of Hormuz will be opened or remain closed,” contradicting Trump’s claim that the proposed deal would provide for its “immediate, complete and total” reopening.
This week, the Senate Homeland Security Committee subpoenaed Dr. Anthony Fauci to testify. The committee secured extensive daily logs he had prepared while at NIH heading up the COVID-19 response. (The committee still lacks almost 700 pages of these logs, all of which had been secreted on 11 different government servers until retrieved by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)
The contrast between what he wrote in his hidden logs and his public statements was extreme. To take but one example, he admits in the log that the six-foot distancing rule was just something made up. Here’s a video compilation of him emphatically promoting that very rule as if there were some scientific basis for it. As a reminder of the failures of the Fauci response to the virus, here’s Toby Rogers in 2024 documenting them:
Every step was designed to inflict maximum harm: Splicing HIV into a coronavirus. Blocking access to hcq and ivm. Removing NAC from the shelves. No early treatment. Respirators that kill 90% of patients. Seeding nursing homes with Covid+ patients. Blanket DNR orders for the…
By the end of the hearing, Fauci’s reputation, once burnished to a fine gleam by an adoring press, was vastly diminished:The Picture of Dorian Grey [sic] also comes to mind. Fauci guarded his reputation as a scientist just as Dorian guarded his seeming youth. To do so required a costly exchange. In both stories, the status of the soul (represented by the painting for Dorian) belies appearances. Nowhere could he have anticipated [snip] that he would be trapped in a chair in a Senate chamber, ashen and defeated, surrounded by silent lawyers, his accusers on all sides, pleading the 5th amendment 111 times. The wings completely melted. De profundis clamavi.
Classics professor Victor Davis Hanson sees the fall of Fauci as “a now all too familiar example of narcissistic and bureaucratic insiders who start with a classic rise only to fall into utter destruction.” He adds Fauci’s name to others like John Bolton, James Comey, and Jack Smith:Fueled by media flattery, and their over the top rhetoric, they posture as consummate “professionals.” These egomaniacs convince themselves they are our untouchable defenders of the established Washingtonian order, as supposedly sober and judicious custodians of the government. And when warned where they are ultimately headed, and to tread lightly, they instead interpret such sound advice as the jealousy of the envious.
In the current decade that arrogance is best manifested as crusading against public enemy number one, Donald J. Trump. So insidiously they up their Trump derangement rhetoric. They cite their titles and degrees as they vaingloriously skirt the law.
Finally drunk on leftwing media adulation, they delude themselves into believing that their megalomaniac behavior is exempt from any consequences. And then what? At the apex of their hubris, Nemesis strikes. And they fall hard by their own overweening arrogance. [snip] These unelected legends in their own minds confuse their enormous government granted powers at their disposal as bureaucrats with some sort of regal right that will exempt them from any consequences of their lawless arrogance.
And so soon they lie under oath to Congress, or call up Chinese generals to warn them about their own president, or sign patently false affidavits attesting that the Hunter Biden laptop was the work of the Ruskies, or tap senatorial phones—or almost anything that would ensure their inevitable fall from grace and utter humiliation. So too with the once celestial and now laughingstock Anthony Fauci (who once compared himself to Albert Einstein). The common denominator? The greater their arrogance, the harder they certainly fall.
You probably needn’t go back as far as Greek myth to explain what just happened. It’s as if Toto knocked over the screen and revealed that the Wizard of Oz was just a humbug. Dorothy could get back to Kansas only by tapping into her own potential. As Glinda the good witch said, “You had the power all along, dear.” And that’s the point Jeff Childers argues when he says we’ve been preparing all wrong for pandemics by imagining bureaucratic wizards will manage them best.
WHO, CDC and CMS, he argues, “framed pandemic response as a coordinated system with a ‘common operating picture.’ The whole world was enslaved to it. It all came from one delusional narcissist who was placed in charge.”Ours is a big and varied republic “fifty states, three thousand counties,” Childers reminds us.
Wherever some slight experimentation was allowed, individual states outperformed the baseline. Florida opened beaches and schools. Georgia reopened restaurants. Leftist fury ensued — “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice” — but those states did better. We did not need them to be perfect. We needed them to be different. Difference is how science learns.
We’ve been preparing for pandemics all wrong. By anointing a single man to coordinate the world’s response, we instantly created a single point of failure. If that lone apex expert is conflicted, retarded, or worse, a malignant narcissist, then, well, we can all now see the result: The Fifth Amendment invoked for questions about tie colors.
In other words, what we needed most was room to conduct experiments. The CDC should have supported states and local governments trying different things, like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. There should have been no federal guidelines, no mandates, no vaccine incentives, no censorship, no indefinite shutdowns to flatten the curve.
Just give us the data. And maybe some money. Let us handle it.
It was an interesting display of contempt for Senator Rand Paul exhibited by Anthony Fauci: having initially agreed to testify before the committee chaired by Paul only to change his mind, Fauci was hit with a subpoena. The main focus of the inquiry was Fauci’s public and private contrary views concerning the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin. Fauci refused to testify, claiming the Fifth Amendment—a plea which Paul reported to be invalid.
Paul opened the hearing with a list of reasons why a subpoena mandating Fauci’s testimony on the matter was warranted. He stated millions of American lives were lost due to COVID-19; that the American people had a right to know why dangerous research was funded by NIAID in a foreign country’s lab that lacked acceptable safety standards; and why Fauci steadfastly held to the public position the pandemic was not an accidental release from China’s Wuhan lab but a natural evolution. He did so while privately holding “a mountain of evidence” supporting the former—later even acknowledging it in his diary—over the latter.
(Since Fauci’s pardon is inapplicable to state crimes, some states like Florida are exploring prosecution to get at the truth. While Fauci would obviously still take the Fifth, the pardon would not shield him from prosecution and accountability.)
In making his opening statement detailing his past testimonies, Fauci ended his comments with the following allegation: [G]iven Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words, ‘Behind bars.’
[snip] [A]lthough it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government, and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.
Fauci’s accusation was show rather than substance. He sought to hide the real reason for refusing to testify. But first, it is worth exploring the fate Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, suffered during the hearing.
It had been made clear to Schertler he should not sit at the witness table with Fauci or in any way disrupt the hearing. However, he did sit with Fauci and later sought to speak. Paul’s repeated warnings to Schertler fell on deaf ears, and Paul finally ordered the attorney’s removal by security—an action many of those present applauded.
For years, former President Joe Biden has fought to prevent the release of tapes acquired by former special counsel Robert Hur in his investigation. After those efforts collapsed this month, it became clear why Biden and his aides were so determined to keep the public from seeing the evidence. In addition to showing Biden’s mental diminution even before he was elected president, the tapes show that Biden effectively confessed to the crimes Hur would later excuse on the grounds of his mental infirmity.
Biden’s interviews with his biographer, Mark Zwonitzer, conducted four years before he would be elected president, show that Biden was already having trouble remembering names and dates. Hur was tasked with determining whether Biden had committed the same crimes that led later to charges against President Trump — retaining classified material, mishandling such material, and related crimes. It turns out that Biden had already admitted to these alleged crimes, years before the documents were found in various offices and the garage of his home.
I wrote for years about Biden’s absurd denials after files were found in offices where he was working on his book. There was also evidence that the material had been divided, distributed, and transported between different locations. Despite all the evidence of knowledge and use of the classified materials, Biden and his aides suggested that no one had been aware of its removal and repeated transfer. In the meantime, after the raid on Mar-a-Lago to search for classified material removed by Trump, the Justice Department granted Biden and his team every possible accommodation.
Then came the searches of his home, with the pictures of files in his garage, office, and other locations. These included clearly marked classified material. Hur then issued his report, concluding that there was evidence of the crimes, but that he would still not charge Biden as Special Counsel Jack Smith had done with Trump. The report stated that “President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” It further stated that the clearly marked classified material was “stored in unsecure places” and posed a risk of “serious damage to America’s national security.”
For his part, Biden was defiant and, when confronted about the documents, insisted that “They’re mine,” and that other presidents had done what he did. This was the same president who condemned Trump for retaining classified information. Biden mocked Trump’s defense and asked CBS 60 Minutes how “anyone could be that irresponsible.”
We now know that Biden himself was that irresponsible, if not more so. Biden not only kept classified material longer and in even less secure locations, but he did nothing to protect the material as he attacked Trump over Mar-a-Lago. Nevertheless, Hur declared that he would not bring a single charge because Biden “would likely present himself to a jury, as he did in our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” The tapes show Biden struggling to give answers even before he announced his candidacy for the presidency, despite denials from key aides such as Jen Psaki and Karine Jean-Pierre.
However, Hur had actual tapes showing that Biden had clear memory and knowledge of his retention of classified material. Combined with Biden’s later public statements, the combination would have been deadly at trial. In the interview, Biden read “nearly verbatim” from notebooks containing sensitive national security and foreign policy information, according to Hur. On the tapes, Biden is heard saying, “So this was, I early on, um, in ’09 I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” At another point, he states, “Some of this may be classified, so be careful with it.” He repeatedly mentions that some of the items in his office and home may be classified.
He even brags to his ghostwriter, in a report made on Oct. 10, 2016, that “I have extensive notes over this period of time … They didn’t know I have this.” Once again, the Justice Department had already declared and defended in court the idea that such removal and retention of classified material did constitute a federal crime by a president, let alone a vice president. Where Trump acknowledged his retention of classified material and agreed to security measures that the FBI requested, Biden did not inform anyone of his classified materials and kept them in his garage long after the Mar-a-Lago raids.
Meanwhile, in public, he expressed shock that any president would act as recklessly as Trump. It is hard to see how any of that would present “a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” It sounds more like a cynical, shrewd politician with poor ethics. It also sounds like it would have been a strong foundation for a prosecution. For many, the tapes will reinforce the view of a two-tier legal system, long maintained by the Justice Department, whereby key Democratic figures including Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were given favorable treatment while others were indicted for similar conduct.
What is truly galling for some of us is that Biden knew all of this when he went public to attack Hur for suggesting that he had knowingly retained classified material and showed diminished mental faculties— at one point forgetting when his son Beau died. Biden savaged Hur at the time for raising this issue, famously demanding, “How the hell dare he raise that?” Even that was a lie, because it was Biden who had raised Beau’s death in the interview.
After the report, Biden was still denying that he had retained classified material, even though he had discussed that classified material with his ghostwriter years earlier and had admitted as much to Hur. But before the public, Biden declared, “I’ve seen headlines since the report was released about my willful retention of documents. This assertion is not only misleading, it’s just plain wrong.”The record is now largely complete. So is the inescapable conclusion: Biden lacked clarity on most everything but his alleged crimes. His deception and culpability were established in both the Zwonitzer and Hur interviews. Biden gave Hur a virtual confession, and Hur gave him a pass.
“I underestimated how emotionally committed much of the press is to rallying around Anthony Fauci. His reputation is more important to them than anything. . .” —Matt Taibbi
The baleful afterburn of Dr. Fauci’s one-sentence testimony (“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer. . . .”) seeps over the land like some ghastly pestilence now. You couldn’t have seen a more vivid demonstration of manifest evil than the master bureaucratic grifter formerly self-styled as “The Science” stonewall his way through that fateful reckoning in Sen. Rand Paul’s committee hearing last Wednesday.
The score so far: over a million dead in America from the Covid-19 virus that Dr. Fauci helped develop starting as far back as the 1990s, with Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina. Tens of thousands left with serious, lasting injuries from the vaccines they promoted. The exact number of vaccine-connected deaths unknown because the public health agencies refused to report honestly on an operation that they caused to happen. There are whole legions of high officials and doctors behind Dr. Fauci now desperate to cover their asses.
Along with the mendacious news media. HHS Sec’y Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. happened to be on Dana Bash’s CNN Sunday morning program. By the way, Dana Bash used to be married to one Jeremy Bash, Chief-of-Staff to CIA-Director Leon Panetta under Barack Obama. CNN lied consistently to the American people during the years of the Covid emergency. You have to wonder if CNN takes direction from the CIA, or maybe rogue elements in (or retired from) the agency. Sunday, Dana Bash went on offense against RFK,Jr.
Didn’t work. RFK, Jr. kept his cool. The harshest thing he said to Bash through all her hectoring was “you were part of the problem,” a startling understatement. Ms. Bash otherwise only wrecked herself, over-speaking her guest at every opportunity, pettifogging, and filibustering. Everybody could see what she was up to. Imagine how desperate CNN was to think that Dana Bash could bluster her way over Mr. Kennedy. He helped her expose herself as a tool.
The news media has been a very active co-conspirator in the Covid operation. You’d think Senator Paul might want to subpoena some network executives from CNN, CBS, NBC, MSNOW (especially), plus Executive Editor Joe Kahn of The New York Times (and his predecessor during Covid, Dean Baquet) to find out why they reported so much pure falsehood around the so-called pandemic. How did they happen to become the propaganda department for the Democratic Party, and what was the party’s interest in the Covid operation? D’unh. . . .
Everybody knows. Even the super-hyped-up cat ladies, nose-rings, NPR stars, and moiling transsters of the lefty-left know. They have kin and friends who either died on respirators with IV lines of remdesivir in their arms, or were gifted by the vaxx shots with turbo-cancer or myocarditis or neuromuscular disease or immune system failure or some mystery illness. They have been harmed even more than those of us who declined to get vaxxed. Sooner or later, that’s got to mean something.
As for Dr. Fauci’s motive in this huge fiasco. . . it’s got to be clear both from the record of his career — nicely reported in RFK,Jr’s 2021 book The Real Doctor Fauci — and from the 1000-plus-page personal diary he recorded on the HHS computers, that Fauci was doggedly in pursuit of glory. Glory! And that his personal holy grail was to find a “universal vaccine” that could defeat any virus, so as to be acclaimed by all mankind! Glory! Glory! Glory!
Given what is understood now about viruses and their interaction with vaccines — for instance, the flu vaccine which uniformly fails to adapt to annual virus mutations — that Dr. Fauci’s quest was quixotic, very basically foolish. All he ever produced, from the AZT wonder-drug for AIDS he developed back in 1986 (that probably killed as many people as died from the disease itself) to the Pfizer / Moderna mRNA shots for Covid in 2021 . . . all that frantic, questing “science” just ended up killing and harming the credulous in large numbers. The buttoned-up little fellow appears to be guilty of mass-murder on an epic scale.
Of course, he is presumed to be protected by the autopen-signed peremptory pardon he received from minions of “Joe Biden.” Perhaps Dr. Fauci’s invoking the Fifth Amendment under those circumstances will prompt an overdue look at just how this autopen thing really worked. In any case, Dr. Fauci is liable to be voted in contempt of Congress this week for not answering any questions put to him. The connected legal procedure will keep Dr. Fauci’s misdeeds under public scrutiny for at least months to come.
It’s also a fact that the autopen pardon does not shield him from charges brought in state courts. The AGs of Florida, Louisiana, Alabama have declared investigations. Louisiana and Missouri have already made Dr. Fauci sit for depositions, and now they can compare his answers with the entries from his diary. It is obvious that on countless occasions and on many vital issues, Dr. Fauci told the public one thing while he believed (and recorded) the opposite in his diary.
One question that the public badly wants Secretary RFK,jr. to answer: how come you haven’t pulled the mRNA Covid vaccines altogether? They don’t work and they harm people. Why are they even still available? Would such a move amount to an admission that the whole emergency was a fake and a failure? And that the government’s own public health agencies are culpable? Would the survivors of the 268-million Americans who got the shots be a little pissed-off? What, then?
The consequences of “an ongoing invasion” from military-aged men into Spain played out in real time on Thursday, as Tony Kinnett covered on “The Tony Kinnett Cast.” Men were streaming past gates and into the Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla, which border Morocco. By Friday, blood was in the streets, while invaders were breaking off parts of gravesites to attack citizens and police. Cars were also on fire.
Kinnett spoke to how “thousands of military-aged men, not packs of desperate women and children, not the elderly, military-aged men… are streaming over the border into the country and… invading people’s homes in Spanish territory.” There was even footage of one man confirming he was under investigation for murder in Morocco, which contradicts claims that such individuals are seeking “economic opportunity” and “a better life.”
“It’s not over,” Kinnett shared at the start of Friday’s broadcast, in light of claims many had returned to Morocco. “Now if there is an invasion that is over… usually you do not see people continuing to do the invading,” he added as men climbed over fences. Kinnett likened the invasion to the open borders under President Joe Biden. “Just one administration ago, you saw under Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas… the same kinds of mass migration into the country,” Kinnett reminded, about which Mayorkas couldn’t even be truthful.
President Donald Trump has called out the risks of unfettered immigration, while Democrats have been “insane,” Kinnett said.
The situation was so dire it necessitated leaders from Ceuta, on left and right, calling on Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez for assistance. When Sánchez “finally” addressed the situation on Thursday, he claimed that “the government of Spain is fully committed to providing an immediate response to the situation” and were “mobilizing all necessary resources, working with Moroccan and international authorities, and preparing the necessary measures to restore normalcy as soon as possible.”
Kinnett also noted Sánchez had previously defended open borders as “compassion” and “empathy.”As Kinnett pointed out on Friday, the prime minister “was heckled immediately” in Spain. On Friday, Sánchez “for the first time” acknowledged that “what has happened is an attack on Spain’s territorial integrity” and “deserves our most resounding and energetic condemnation.”
Kinnett noted it was “an interesting line” that Sánchez said “the government of Spain stands with the autonomous city,” with Ceuta being Spanish territory, given federal law still applies there. But he’s saying autonomous as though this is somehow some extra nicety that he’s laying around. Maybe, maybe the socialists have a point that really these territories should be ceded to Morocco.”
The situation in Spain has become so bad that European neighbors could ignore it no longer and have tightened borders. “As a result… it should be very clear here that other nations in Europe have responded by reinforcing their borders,” Kinnett said, despite how there is free travel between the European Union countries. This includes the leaders of Italy, Austria, and even France, “because of this migrant crisis.”
Ukraine’s “terrorist plague” is spreading across Europe, the Russian Embassy in Italy has claimed, accusing Kiev of orchestrating the deadly bombing of the Balzi Rossi restaurant in central Moscow. An improvised explosive device detonated outside the Italian restaurant on Kudrinskaya Square on Saturday evening after an unidentified woman allegedly attempted to carry it inside. The security guard who stopped her at the entrance was killed in the blast, along with the courier and at least three patrons attending a private event. Almost two dozen others were injured.
The National Antiterrorism Committee has not publicly identified any suspects or linked the attack to Ukraine, another state or any particular organization, while no group has claimed responsibility. In a statement on Sunday, the Russian Embassy in Italy claimed that the “bloody tentacles of Zelensky’s terrorist gang” had chosen Balzi Rossi partly to frighten foreigners working in Russia. It described the “Kiev regime” as “another emanation of Al-Qaeda and Islamic State” and accused Western officials who continue to fund and arm Ukraine of enabling terrorism.
“It has now become completely clear that the explosion at the Balzi Rossi restaurant and other terrorist attacks in Russia, Monaco and elsewhere show that the Ukrainian terrorist plague is already spreading across Europe, and particularly Italy,” the embassy said.Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin described the explosion as a “brutal terrorist act” and vowed that those responsible would be found and punished. Russian officials have not announced any arrests or disclosed a suspected motive, but the embassy’s allegations follow several previous bomb attacks for which Moscow explicitly blamed Ukrainian intelligence services.
Russian journalist Darya Dugina was killed in August 2022 after a bomb was planted in her vehicle. Russia’s Federal Security Service accused Ukrainian special services of organizing the assassination and identified Ukrainian national Natalya Vovk as the alleged perpetrator. According to the FSB, she fled to Estonia and has since vanished from public view. A bombing that killed military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in St. Petersburg in April 2023 bore a more direct resemblance to the Balzi Rossi attack. Darya Trepova carried an explosive device disguised as a statuette into a café where Tatarsky was addressing an audience and presented it to him as a gift.
The device exploded shortly afterwards, killing Tatarsky and injuring dozens of people.= Russian investigators concluded that Trepova had acted on instructions from handlers in Ukraine. She maintained that she had been deceived and believed the statuette contained a listening device rather than a bomb, but a court convicted her of terrorism and sentenced her to 27 years in prison. Kiev never formally admitted involvement, but its former military intelligence chief, Kirill Budanov, later hinted that his agency was behind several high-profile killings inside Russia and promised to “keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world.”
Terrorism beyond Russia
The June 29 bombing in Monaco cited by the embassy also involved a woman allegedly recruited by a Ukrainian military intelligence network, according to Russian law enforcement sources. In that attack, a backpack containing an improvised explosive device packed with shrapnel was placed outside a residential building and detonated remotely, injuring Ukrainian businessman Vadim Ermolaev, his partner and her 13-year-old son.
The suspected courier, Anastasia Berezovskaya, fled to Ukraine before Interpol issued a Red Notice for her arrest. She was later found shot dead and buried near Kiev. Ukrainian authorities detained two men in connection with her killing, including Vitaly Zhikovich, whom Russian law enforcement sources described as a serving colonel in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. Recordings obtained by RT captured Zhikovich discussing plans to recruit unsuspecting civilians, including women and minors, to transport explosives, sometimes without knowing that they would be killed when the devices detonated.
What we can take away from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) index on manufacturing: overall, the U.S. manufacturing sector is continuing to expand significantly. The current index of 55.6 percent in July is 2.3 percentage points above the June figure and the highest reading since May 2022 (55.9 percent), when we were trying to recover from the COVID-19 shutdowns and supply chain problems.
PMI – The overall economy continued in expansion for the 21st month in a row. (A Manufacturing PMI® above 47.5 percent, over a period of time, generally indicates an expansion of the overall economy.) The New Orders Index expanded for the seventh consecutive month after four straight readings in contraction, registering 56.7 percent, up 0.7 percentage point compared to June’s figure of 56 percent.
The July reading of the Production Index (58.5 percent) is 6.3 percentage points higher than the 52.2 percent recorded in June and the highest figure since November 2021 (60.5 percent). The Prices Index remained in expansion (or ‘increasing’ territory), registering 71.1 percent, a 1.9-percentage point decrease from June’s reading of 73 percent. The Backlog of Orders Index registered 55 percent, up 4.5 percentage points compared to the 50.5 percent recorded in June.
The Employment Index reading of 52.8 percent is up 3.1 percentage points from June’s figure of 49.7 percent, putting the index in expansion territory for the first time in 33 months.” (source)All that data and a couple of bucks will buy you a cup of coffee, but here’s what it means in common speak. Overall, companies wanting to make products in the United States are expanding the manufacturing sector. However, they are running into a problem when trying to source the component goods and/or raw materials. The resource goods they need are constantly in a status of flux and the prices are unstable.
For large companies their supply chain management can deal with the short inventory issue through various sourcing networks using multiple suppliers. However, for smaller companies this is frustrating. The manufacturing system is a network of complex suppliers who make component materials needed for the core product. In order to get really successful, the smaller manufacturing component goods need to start up inside the USA just like the larger companies who are producing a finished product.
This is why even during a manufacturing surge we end up importing a lot of goods on the front end of the transition. Absent a domestic supplier, industrial component products are heavily imported in order to manufacture the finished durable good.
It takes time, well, technically its never been tried – so, no one is sure, but it takes time for all of the component manufacturing to establish inside the USA in order to feed the component parts to the various manufacturers who depend on the sub-sourcing. This is the period we are in at the moment, and prices are fluctuating as people try to get their arms around costs here and abroad.
The 15 manufacturing industries reporting growth in July — listed in order — are: Printing & Related Support Activities; Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Primary Metals; Nonmetallic Mineral Products; Transportation Equipment; Miscellaneous Manufacturing; Textile Mills; Machinery; Computer & Electronic Products; Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; Wood Products; Plastics & Rubber Products; Furniture & Related Products; and Fabricated Metal Products. The only industry in contraction was Chemical Products.
[…] Commodities Up in Price
Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS); Aluminum* (32); Copper (13); Corn; Corrugated Products (4); Electrical Components (2); Electronic Components (7); Freight (5); Fuel* (5); Integrated Circuits; Memory Components (5); Metal Products (4); Ocean Freight (3); Oil Based Products (4); Paper Products (4); Plastic Based Products (4); Plastics (5); Printed Circuit Boards; Resin Based Products; Resins (6); Semiconductors (2); Soybean Meal; Steel (9); Steel — Cold Rolled; Steel — Hot Rolled (7); Steel — Stainless (6); Steel Products (8); and Sulfur Products (4).
Commodities Down in Price
Aluminum*(2); Fuel* (2); and Polypropylene Resin (2).
Commodities in Short Supply
Aluminum; Copper; Electrical Components (13); Electronic Components (17); Integrated Circuits; Memory (7); Oil Based Products; Printed Circuit Boards; Rare Earth Components; Semiconductors (5); Steel; Steel — Hot Rolled (2); and Tungsten Products.
The blue-collar jobs are expanding significantly. There is massive upward pressure on wages for blue collar workers as the manufacturing sector continues to expand.
Javier Milei has done great things for Argentina — and honestly, the entire region — and will continue to do so, but I have to admit that his latest proposal left me weak in the knees. He’s calling it the grillete fiscal or the “fiscal shackle,” and it’s part of a larger reform of the Central Bank’s charter that he’s sending to the country’s Congress, possibly for a mid-to-late-August vote.
I said we would achieve a fiscal balance in our first year in office, and we achieved it in the first month. Today, we can say that we lifted fourteen million Argentines out of poverty.
— Milei in English – Official Account (@jmilei_english) August 1, 2026
Essentially, if the Argentine national government runs a fiscal deficit for several months in a row, the Congress receives a warning that it has a matter of weeks to fix it. If it doesn’t hit the deadline, the “shackle” activates automatically, and the political class will be the ones impacted. Here’s what happens:
1. Non-essential government functions are suspended (hello, government shutdown).
2. All new spending is frozen and will not be authorized until the problem is resolved.
3. No new contracts can be awarded.
4. No new public-sector employees can be hired.
5. Discretionary transfers to the provinces are halted.
And last but not least, the best part:
6. The salaries of the top politicians stop completely. The vice president, ministers, secretaries, undersecretaries, national senators, national deputies, and even El presidente himself will not receive a dime of taxpayer money until they solve the problem.
Of course, essential services will remain protected. “For the first time in our history, if politics doesn’t do its homework, politics will pay the cost — not the people,” Milei said during a national broadcast last week, during which he introduced the proposal. My question is why the heck isn’t every national government in the world doing this? More specifically, my question is why doesn’t the United States do this? (I know the answer.)
We do have our fair share of government shutdowns when Congress can’t get its act together, but the everyday people who work for the federal government are the ones who suffer and are often furloughed without pay, while those same members of Congress continue to receive their salaries.
Now, I will point out that in May of this year, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) sponsored a resolution that would make it so that our senators are not paid in the case of a government shutdown. It had bipartisan support and was unanimously approved. It states that these senators’ salaries are withheld and released once a shutdown ends. That will take effect the day after the November 2026 elections and only applies to the Senate, not the House.
While that’s progress, it looks weak compared to what Milei has proposed. Now, his biggest hurdle is getting these legislators whom it impacts to actually vote for it. Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party has the largest bloc in the Chamber of Deputies after the 2025 midterms, but it doesn’t have an outright majority. It’s ambitious, but it’s not impossible, and if it does pass, I hope the U.S. will take note, though I’m not holding my breath.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang: Elon Musk is in a phenomenal position to lead the future of AI, autonomous vehicles, and humanoid robotics.
“Collecting world data is very expensive, and Elon has a great advantage because, number one, his AI factory for his cars is fantastic, has a lot… pic.twitter.com/yLOi6319YV
The Real Anthony Fauci became the #1 non-fiction hardcover bestseller despite being the most censored book of the decade. Bookstores, including national chains, refused to carry it. Libraries refused to carry it. Every major newspaper declined to review it. The New York Times… pic.twitter.com/R6YPjfj4Kw
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 29, 2026
There are new reports Friday of more US troop pullback initiatives in the wake of the last couple weeks of US-Iran fighting, and Iranian ballistic missile and drone strikes which have targeted American bases with increased regularity, especially in Jordan and Kuwait. One regional media publication freshly reports, “The United States military has started to draw down its last remaining forces from Iraq stationed in the vicinity of Erbil’s airport in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, well-placed sources with close knowledge of the process confirmed to Al-Monitor.”
Significant US anti-air defenses are also being pulled back, given they and their radar systems have increasingly been targeted. “Patriot mobile air-to-surface air-defense systems that detect and shoot down incoming missiles, drones and other airborne enemy equipment have already been removed from the military compound, the sources said, without providing further details,” Al Monitor continues. mThe pullback from the Iraqi Kurdistan region reportedly began last week and is still in progress, given all the heavy equipment has to be pulled out.
The missile batteries are expected to be ‘redeployed’ – but this could be further away from within the vicinity of Iran and the Persian Gulf, such as in Israel. Al Monitor notes: Regional officials described the pullout as routine and in line with the US commitment to withdraw all its forces from Iraq by a Sept. 30 deadline that was agreed with Baghdad. However, coming amid sustained attacks by Iran and its Shiite proxy militias, and on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in particular, the withdrawal has left the Kurds feeling badly exposed.
It’s not just Iran which has targeted US personnel and assets in Iraq, but Iraqi Shia paramilitary units have at times targeted Erbil facilities going back years: While the Patriot systems were deployed to protect US forces, the Kurds have benefited immensely from the security umbrella as well. Erbil’s airport has come under constant attack from Iran and Iran-backed militias since the start of the Iran conflict in February, including this week. US interceptors successfully deterred at least 95% of those attacks, the sources said.
The bulk of Iranian and militia attacks have targeted armed Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in the Kurdistan Region. However, the Erbil compound has also been targeted multiple times. The Patriots have an operational range of between 60 to 100 miles (100-160 kilometers). Iran’s strategy seems to focused on permanently pushing US forces back in the region, while expanding the scope of the war, in what some analysts have called ‘horizontal escalation’. One writer calls this a process of ‘debasification’:
The US and Iraq agreed in September 2024 on a phased drawdown of the US-led coalition (Operation Inherent Resolve) presence in Iraq, with the final phase covering the remaining forces in the Kurdistan Region (centered on Erbil/Harir…
The US withdrawing from Iraq has been in motion for years now, this is mostly independent of Iran.
I wouldn’t even say it sped it up considering it was originally planned for the US to fully leave the country by late 2025 before it slipped to September 2026.
In contrast to the previous hot phase of the war, in which Iran targeted bases across the entire theater simultaneously, this wave started with the targets close to Iranian shores, and has progressed steadily to the Israeli border. After destroying much of the radar network protecting regional US Axis bases in the previous hot phase of the war, Iranian planners have prioritized targeting fuel storage, drone hangers, refueling tankers, and barracks. The American response has been to pull assets back ever further from Iran, to bases in Israel and Jordan. We’ll call this process debasification. Iran’s debasification strategy takes advantage of the inherent asymmetry between the vastly different force structure and capabilities of Iranian rocket forces and US Axis air forces.
Iraq’s north has long been a place where US forces can feal more at ease with ‘friendly’ Kurdish groups, rather than the dwindling presence in the rest of the country. But the Kurds have also come under immense pressure within the Iraq war, especially given headlines alleging they were ready to support an Iranian Kurdish uprising inside the Islamic Republic.
• Hamas agrees to gradually surrender weapons in exchange for Israeli troop withdrawal, under a phased plan announced by Donald Trump.
• Verification & Oversight: A verification committee will monitor disarmament and troop withdrawal, with weapons stored under a new Palestinian administration.
• International Mediation: Agreement brokered by Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the US-led Board of Peace, aiming to enable Gaza reconstruction and humanitarian access.
PRESIDENT TRUMP – Via Truth Social – “Today, the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY. This agreement is a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people. At the same time, Israel will have the security it deserves, with Gaza no longer used as a base for terror attacks.
This is a major milestone in the implementation of the Trump 20-Point Plan. The agreement will be carried out in carefully structured phases. As disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw, and the International Stabilization Force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe for its residents and its neighbors. One year ago there was a violent raging war, humanitarian crisis and hostages kept in brutal captivity. We have made historic progress and there is still much work to do.
I want to thank the mediators—Egypt, Qatar, and Türkiye—for their important efforts, and especially my outstanding team, whose tireless work made this historic breakthrough possible. The threat that emerged from Gaza on October 7 will NOT be allowed to rebuild! Under this agreement, Gaza will finally be in the hands of a new Palestinian government that serves its PEOPLE.
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL ON THIS AMAZING DEVELOPMENT, THAT EVERYBODY SAID COULD NEVER BE ACHIEVED!
DONALD J. TRUMP
Optimism for the proposal/plan is primarily driven by the fact that Turkey, Egypt and Qatar are coordinating the terms and conditions for the disarming. From the Palestinian perspective, the U.S. and Israeli influence upon the Board of Peace is mitigated and balanced by the presence of Turkey and Egypt as pragmatic insurance. This is a very tenuous agreement with multiple points of potential collapse, not the least of which is the Israeli government refusing to permit a stabilizing police force Netanyahu doesn’t control.
(VIA MSM) – […] Based on the premise of “zero trust”, each stage of the plan is supposed to be verifiable and should be accompanied by Israeli withdrawal. But hours after the deal was agreed, an Israeli air strike wounded several Palestinians in Gaza. Under the ceasefire agreement of last October, the IDF was given control of about 53 per cent of Gaza but has since expanded its territory to include an estimated 60 to 70 per cent of the territory. “An agreement has been reached regarding the issue of weapons. Furthermore, an agreement has been reached on a gradual withdrawal of [Israeli forces] from the strip,” a Hamas official said.
Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas negotiating team, told Al Jazeera. “We will not take any action regarding disarmament prior to Israel’s withdrawal from the Strip.” This appeared to contradict Mr Trump’s statement, which said: “As disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw…” However, an official familiar with the negotiations told The Telegraph that Hamas understood “disarmament” to refer to the end of the process. By contrast, “decommissioning” would involve Palestinian security forces storing the weapons, meaning that if Israel reneged on its commitments under the deal, Hamas could take back the weapons.
“The idea, in theory, is that all this can be reversed. That way you can agree to a process which is staged and verifiable,” the official said. It is understood, however, that precise practical details of how and where the weapons would be stored have yet to be agreed, but under the agreement they could not be transferred to Israel. The UK, principally through Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser, has been a strong behind-the-scenes proponent of the “Northern Ireland-model” of decommissioning. Israel has not yet commented formally on the agreement, but a US official said the Jewish state was “very sceptical” about Hamas complying.
Israeli officials were reported on Friday as saying that the country did not agree with the “shape” of the agreement, and had conveyed its concerns to Sir Tony Blair, who is working for Mr Trump’s board of peace on the issue. The deal also depends on the creation of a Palestinian police force. However, a Western official said that while much of the preparatory work had been done in identifying recruits, Israel was dragging its feet in allowing training to take place. (read more)
Security:
6. Gaza shall be governed according to the principle of One Authority, One Law, One Weapon. NCAG shall operate in accordance with Palestinian laws, relevant international standards and the principles of good governance.
15. Implementation of the reconstruction of Gaza Strip and the provision of necessary resources and financing shall take place according to a plan and timetable prepared and supervised by BoP and NCAG in accordance with relevant laws and international standards.
President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace laid out its comprehensive 15-point plan for the Gaza Strip on Friday, following Trump’s announcement Thursday that Hamas has agreed to disarm. The Board includes representatives from 28 founding nations, including a few questionable picks like Belarus (effectively Russia), Qatar, and Turkey. When I read that Hamas has agreed to lay down arms, I automatically presumed it was only because they’d found better places to stash them. Still, let’s look at the deal and see if there’s anything in there that might work.
The first point lays out that plan’s ambitious goals aimed at “ending the cycle of destruction, securing the complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza Strip, restoring normal life, enabling Palestinian governance, reconstruction, security, recovery and economic development, rehabilitating damaged sectors and facilitate launching a credible political path that achieves self-determination and Statehood.” The devil, as always, is in the details.
Point 2 calls for “the cessation of military operations” by both sides, so that the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) “shall enter the Strip and start to assume its responsibilities” for governing the territory. Then there’s point 3, which says that the International Verification Committee (IVC) must verify each step before both sides move on to the next.Points 4 and 5 call on Hamas to turn over governing authority to NCAG, and for NCAG to “maintain the continuity of civilian institutions and public services” and basically to act as a decent government. There’s also the matter of $400 million in international funds it’s supposed to spend wisely.
Points 6 through 11 all deal with security in the Strip, and that’s where the details get particularly devilish.
The quick and dirty version is that NCAG will run civilian affairs according to Palestinian law and “good governance standards,” and if you have doubts about compatibility, so do I. New police will “undergo a comprehensive vetting,” and “all police weapons shall be transferred to the responsibility and authority of NCAG upon its entry into Gaza and the assumption of its missions.” Heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels will all be decommissioned. The process of transferring authority to NCAG (and security to the International Stabilization Force [ISF]) will be done in stages and linked to a phased Israeli withdrawal.
There’s also a “Social Peace Agreement” that seems to involve deradicalizing Hamas terrorists that the peace plan insists on referring to as “militias.” In fact, neither “terror” nor “terrorist” appear in any of the 15 points. There’s also the little matter of the value of any “social peace” that’s “signed in accordance with Palestinian norms and laws.” But I digress. Points 12-14 involve the ISF and withdrawal of Israeli forces. ISF “shall monitor compliance by all parties with the ceasefire, train the Palestinian police, secure the protection and delivery of humanitarian assistance and essential supplies into Gaza Strip, and support the NCAG, at its request, in any other non-policing mission,” but NCAG handles all internal policing.
The last point is reconstruction, supervised by the Board of Peace and NCAG, assuming things ever get that far. Short-term, you have to doubt whether Hamas will actually disarm or just put on a pretense by giving up some weapons while stashing the rest even deeper underground. Looking further out, you have to wonder whether NCAG or even ISF will become wholly-owned subsidiaries of Hamas, just like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) did.
And I’m having an impossible time getting past the absurdity of the Social Peace Agreement. Probably better just to let Israel do now what they’ll probably have to do later anyway and fully root out Hamas themselves.
CTH is very happy to see President Trump pause his consideration of giving Ukraine Patriot and Tomahawk missile system technology and licenses. As noted by President Trump there is always a possibility of those systems being used against the USA if the conflict shifts and Ukraine becomes our enemy.
Germany and Ukraine have been asking for Tomahawks (offensive missile systems), while mostly Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been requesting the Patriot (defensive) missiles. Both systems are closely guarded, held and maintained by strict security protocols in the U.S. military arsenal. President Trump responded to the question during his Camp David cabinet meeting (prompted):
Zelenskyy likely did himself no favors when he announced his intention to build missile and drone factories in the U.K. No doubt several Trump administration officials noted that statement and contrast it against Zelenskyy’s requests. It would be exceptionally risky for the USA to allow Patriot and Tomahawk systems to be built in the U.K. as the secrecy behind the technology would certainly leak and our strategic advantage lost. It should be remembered that both the U.K and Ukraine were part of the political system attempting to remove President Trump from office.
Ukrainians are out en masse to protest against Zelensky in Kyiv. He has become a deeply unpopular figure. But you wouldn't know that if you only looked at what other influencers are saying. pic.twitter.com/jialMMWLZ8
”Islamic sacred texts endorse pedophilia and rape of non-Muslims. They also promote jihad, domestic abuse, sex slavery, honor killings, and other horrific evils.”
Western civilization’s self-immolation is no joke. Comedian John Cleese of Monty Python fame just made a completely accurate but incredibly daring argument you’ll rarely find a celebrity making: not all cultures are morally equal. Cleese posted July 30 in response to an X poll about his possible motives, “I’m not a racist. I’m a culturalist[.] I believe some cultures are superior to others.” He went on, “For example, I prefer cultures that do not encourage wife beating, paedophilia, clitorectomies, stoning and constant inflation of the male ego[.] I am also aware of the difference between Islamoscepticism and Islamophobia.”
He ended with a point that he has probably had to make many times to his former friends and colleagues: “Notice that hate does not come into this. Only moral preferences.” Unfortunately, most Western celebrities have become incapable of moral distinctions.The scenes from Spain right now are proof enough of how suicidal Western immigration policies have become.
Spain’s migration crisis is reaching a breaking point. Thousands of Moroccan migrants crossed into Ceuta in a single wave while just four officers tried to hold the border. Security forces say they are overwhelmed, abandoned and unable to contain the influx. This is no longer a… pic.twitter.com/MqvJeOKdiz
The British mass migration crisis likewise made international headlines recently over bodycam footage of Henry Nowak’s death and the rape gang inquiry. Nowak was a young Polish-British boy who bled out on the ground while pleading for help. UK cops cuffed him, sneered at him, and listened empathetically to his murderer’s fake story of racism. The rape gang inquiry found that 250,000 British girls and women have been victims of the gang abuse, with the overwhelming majority of perpetrators being Muslim. One Welsh girl was raped 1,000 times, which is almost unimaginable.
Islamic sacred texts endorse pedophilia and rape of non-Muslims. They also promote jihad, domestic abuse, sex slavery, honor killings, and other horrific evils. These are the facts behind Cleese’s comments. I also particularly applaud Cleese’s clarification because he more eloquently expressed a point I have made before. For instance, if America or England or Spain offered to welcome in some of the persecuted Nigerian and Syrian Christians, or the Persian freedom fighters who draw their inspiration from America, or the Israeli Jews so persecuted in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, I would understand it (provided we have some clear vetting and a numbers limit).
We have many of the same basic moral principles in Western civilization as all the above-mentioned people have, even if our music and food and village traditions are different. But it is obvious that almost any country that is overwhelmingly Muslim or Communist will train most of its citizens or subjects to honor values completely at variance with ours. I, too, am a culturalist. Nor are all cultures morally equal.
Search for “traitor” on X this week, and one man will flood your timeline: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. The reason? Shocking images of thousands of migrants from Morocco crossing the border and flooding into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. The head of the association that represents Spain’s Civil Guard officers in Ceuta told the Associated Press that the border had “totally collapsed.” After watching video footage of migrants breaking through fences to get into the city, one would be justified in using the word “invasion” to describe what’s happening. Indeed, Santiago Abascal, the leader of the rising populist/conservative Vox party, called it just that and wrote that “Pedro Sánchez is its main promoter and guilty of all its consequences.”
The migrants don’t disagree. Video footage captured some of the arrivals chanting, “Viva Pedro Sánchez!” or “Long live Pedro Sánchez!”
Their gratitude to the Socialist prime minister is due to his mass amnesty plan, which received 1.2 million applications by its June 30, 2026, deadline. As I wrote in So, How’s Spain’s Mass Amnesty Working Out?, “Sánchez, of course, looks at every new immigrant as a potential future voter who won’t care about the mind-boggling corruption within his Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). As increasing numbers of Spaniards take to the streets to demand the prime minister’s resignation, Muslim migrants are among his most loyal supporters.”
In that article, I linked to a video of a Muslim store owner with a poster of Sánchez on his wall who says Muslims who become citizens are “100%” going to vote for the prime minister because of his support for Palestine and Iran. This is why I’ve called him the West’s most hostile leader toward Israel. (The Gazans who celebrated Spain’s World Cup victory would agree with me.)Elon Musk dubbed Sánchez something else: a traitor. After the prime minister defended his amnesty plan in April, Musk wrote on X, “Dirty Sánchez is guilty of high treason.” Sánchez responded cheekily at the time, “Mars can wait. Humanity can’t.”
How’s that humanity working out? Juan Jesús Vivas, the president of Ceuta, said the current situation was an “absolute humanitarian and social emergency.” Reuters reports that Vivas also said that facilities for unaccompanied minors were operating at 2,400% of capacity and that 60 bodies had been recovered at sea over the previous few months. As for the fate of Europe’s citizens, Abascal said Sánchez had “opened the doors of Europe to all dangers.” He described the prime minister’s high treason more vividly than Musk did: “For every rape, every stabbing, and every slash to the pockets of Spaniards to keep them afloat… there is a direct culprit: the mafia boss desperately calling in more hitmen to stay in power.”
Sánchez, who is mired in corruption scandals, can’t go out in public now because, as Abascal says, everyone knows he doesn’t defend Spain’s interests and is only interested in holding on to power. (Watch him get heckled here as he visits areas affected by Spain’s wildfires.) The lower house of the Spanish parliament called on the prime minister to resign last month in a non-binding vote, but he somehow remains in power as one of Europe’s great political survivors.
Could these images of the border invasion be the last straw for Sánchez? Hundreds of Spanish citizens are reportedly already taking to the streets of Ceuta to protest, and they aren’t alone in their anger at the prime minister. I’ll end with several prominent voices echoing what Musk said several months ago: Sánchez is a traitor.
Your treason to Spain and all of Western Civilization will be your legacy. What did you think would happen when you legalized a million foreign invaders? Or was this the goal the entire time?
To survive or not to survive, that is Europe’s question. What is happening in Spain with up to 60,000 Moroccan men rushing the borders of Spanish territory over a couple of days is actually what has happened to almost every single Western nation, just sped up and condensed into a small timeframe. But even some European leaders who have overlooked the crisis till now are panicking as they watch the literal invasion of Spain by Muslim men.
Spain is part of the Schengen Area, a group of countries that agreed to cut down on almost all of their border restrictions for individuals in the member countries, allowing for travel without passports. But given the horrific scenes unfolding in Spain, Italian and Finnish representatives, among others, are suddenly realizing the dangers of this system. Dutch Party for Freedom Chairman Geert Wilders posted the following:
Visegrád 24 reported Friday on the Schengen Area countries that are already rushing to complain about how the influx into Spain’s North African territory could affect them. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has been a critic of the mass migration crisis before, said the other member nations should expel Spain from the Schengen visa-free zone as she worries about Italy’s borders from the gargantuan horde of Muslim illegal aliens. “Italy will not stand idle,” Meloni warned.
Her initiative is already backed by Finland, Czechia, and Denmark — forming a bloc of four states with Italy. France has already introduced border controls with Spain. “Spain has completely failed to protect the external Schengen border. This cannot continue. Countries that do not fulfill their obligations cannot remain members of the Schengen area,” the Finnish minister stated. Commentator Eyal Yakoby reported that Austria also wants Spain booted.
It’s incredibly ironic that France, where the government habitually tries to cover up for the massive explosion of migrant-caused violence, is even on board with some border safeguards. Just last month, French President Emmanuel Macron was joining with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to bash Meloni’s repatriation policies. Now that Sánchez’s idiocy led to a full-on invasion, maybe French elites are backtracking?
The tens of thousands of Moroccans who invaded Ceuta and Melilla broke into homes, trashed businesses, and set cars on fire. I have yet to see almost any women among their ranks. It is entirely accurate to say this was a military-style invasion by an entirely male force, likely religiously influenced, and they took over without firing a shot. It took the Spanish almost 800 years to drive out the last Muslim invasion, and this time the enemy just had to show up.
Listen closely to what the Moroccan illegal immigrants were saying as they were charging into Cueta.
Lodovico Carracci St. Sebastian Thrown into the Cloaca Maxima
As I wrote yesterday, Dr. Anthony Fauci was not the only one taking the Fifth yesterday on his record during the pandemic. The media effectively invoked the same privilege to avoid self-incrimination for their years of deifying the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Across the cable networks, hosts and guests were going into vapors as Republican senators pummelled Fauci over his COVID policies and the glaring contradictions found in his diary entries. Some, like Dr. Scott Ratzan, echoed Fauci’s own prior claim that any questioning of his judgment was an attack on science.
Once again, Fauci had every right to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. That does not mean that it was the right thing to do. Fauci already had a pardon that notably extended back to 2014 when his agency approved gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab in China. Any prosecution would be difficult in light of the pardon. It would not be impossible since he could be charged with perjury for any false statements. Yet, that was the same threat that existed during countless prior hearings for Fauci.
So what was the difference now? The answer is found in diary entries and other evidence that contradicts Fauci’s public statements on subjects ranging from the lab theory to school closures. It is not that Fauci would have been tripped into false answers but that he did not have any obvious answers to some of these criticisms. Instead, Fauci invoked the privilege 111 times. That fell short of Vito Genovese’s record, who invoked the privilege 150 times.
Rather than address the long list of criticisms and contradictions for Fauci, the media rallied around the scientist. Fauci was portrayed as something akin to the St. Sebastian of Science, taking barbs and arrows for his faith. It did not matter that over 1.2 million people died, an economy shut down, and millions of children prevented from going to school based on these alleged errors. Fauci would remain silent rather than risk being charged with false testimony.
On CNN, Dr. Scott Ratzan repeated Fauci’s much-maligned claim in June 2021 that “attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.” Yesterday, Ratzan declared: “This is an assault on science and scientists, and unfortunately, Dr. Fauci is in that seat. 38 years of service to the country, one of the best known scientists for infectious disease, unfortunately, has taken a lot of heat…”It was a maddening statement, repeated by many, that treated Fauci as inviolate, if not infallible. Fauci was wrong about issues that produced tragic costs for this country. When confronted about policies such as school closures, he insisted he had never recommended them while privately admitting he had.
Fauci owes the public explanations, including millions who lost loved ones. Instead, he refused to take the risk of being accused of perjury. Fauci is no Sebastian. Notably, Sebastian remained silent in public to conceal his faith, but when discovered by Diocletian, he remained faithful. The price was to be shot through with arrows, but he somehow survived. After being nursed back to health by Irene of Rome, he immediately confronted Diocletian in public and denounced his abuses. For that act he was beaten to death with clubs and tossed into a sewer.
Fauci spoke endlessly in public and remained silent only when asked to address the contradictions in his diaries and the costs of his alleged errors. What is also frustrating for many is the reappearance of figures who toed the line on prior narratives about masks, the virus’s origin, and other issues. They are now claiming victimization in being asked to account for evidence that they were wrong. As Dr. Scott Atlas has laid out, many of those who abused dissenting scientists faced no repercussions after those scientists were largely vindicated in later research.
“I have nothing to hide. I can explain and validate everything that I’ve done.” —Dr. Anthony Fauci, recorded for TV in 2022.
“They want to put your sons in a cocktail dress. They want mutts from savage lands slavering on your daughters in a drainage ditch. Will half the people in this country really vote for that again?”
However you cut this Fauci business, one thing Americans have learned is how slippery and treacherous this thing called The Law has become. You saw it in the sundry Trump prosecutions of 2024, too — a marvelous demonstration of how to play Hide-the-Salami with the truth about anything and everything. You saw it in the structured failure to adjudicate election fraud in 2020. You saw it in the Jan-6 prosecutions and the Congressional Jan-6 Committee charade that followed. And much more.
And one thing it’s good for is demoralizing the whole citizenry to the max. Who in this land was not mortally depressed watching Rand Paul’s Senate hearing Wednesday starring Dr. Fauci? (One last time, the center of attention!) We have become a procedural republic, slipping into an impotence of legalistic self-fuckery the way old folks slip into dementia, one lost memory at a time. There sits the murderer of millions cloaked in the banality of his evil — as it was at Nuremburg eighty years ago — and this time, you just have to lump it, America. The law can’t touch him at all.
Dr. Fauci ran his own titanically corrupt fiefdom out of the nation’s public health complex. Half-a-million a year wasn’t enough for — let’s call him what he was — an executive bureaucrat. He doled out millions in grants to universities, drug companies, and putative public service orgs, and extracted his vig, about a million bucks in prize money during the Covid-19 episode, not counting his share of royalties from drug patents. A modest million. He must have thought: who will even notice. . . who would ever be bothered by that tiny number when Congress, the Federal Reserve, and everybody else is drowning in numbers with so many zeros it gives them tachycardia just to glance at the balance sheet.
Plus, the thoroughly dishonorable news media was busy making Dr. Fauci a rock-star. He had everything but the stadiums. The grand old gals of Hollywood were going all moist over him. “Julia Roberts sent me flowers today,” he typed into his government-issue diary. Barbra Streisand called him on the phone. “I told her that I work listening to her songs on ALEXA,” He gushed. His work resulted in the deaths of millions and the injury of millions more. Neverminding that, he carefully tracked and marveled at his burgeoning fame:
“Big front-page article abut [sic] me appeared in the Washington Post, [Dr. Fauci wrote]. Very flattering. The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It is not hyoperbole [sic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson [sic] in the world.”
Did Dr. Fauci know that his work-product, the Covid-19 episode and the operations around it, were aimed at setting up conditions to get President Trump bum-rushed out of office in favor of the vacant and pliable tool that was “Joe Biden?” Did others on the White House Covid Task Force know how that would work? Did they know who or what they were in league with?
Anyway, it didn’t turn out as well as they’d planned, of course. The four years of “Joe Biden” only proved how much that coalition of Deep Staters, globalists, and domestic riffraff hated the old American republic and its pain-in-the-ass Constitution. But when they foundered in 2024 — when old Joe-from-Scranton finally gave away the game on that fatal debate stage — and the party had to stuff his idiot veep into the nomination, the Democratic Party crossed an event horizon into total detachment from reality, where they remain to this day.
So then, where did the Democratic Party get the idea that going balls-out Bolshevik-Jacobin would be their salvation after what they already did to try to wreck our country? And by Bolshevik-Jacobin I mean the marriage of murderous envy with civic psychosis. The line it is drawn; the curse it is cast, Dylan prophesied half a century ago. They’re in your face now. Just listen to them. They mean it. They want all your stuff and they want you dead. They want to put your sons in a cocktail dress. They want mutts from savage lands slavering on your daughters in a drainage ditch. Will half the people in this country really vote for that again?
Yet great forces unseen just now are driving the nation to an autumn reckoning, and the main thing to be reckoned is the survival of the USA as a functioning republic with the credibility of law restored and the demons of lawfare crushed. The possibility of legislated election reform slips away day by day, it’s true. But, please understand, this president will not allow the coming election to get pounded down a rathole. If nothing else, we are going to get an intervention under a national security executive order, on the president’s constitutional duty (and his oath) to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
The ensuing fight over this will be short and decisive. These mad dogs will be put down, as mad dogs must be. We are going to take our country back. Depend on it.
“She traveled the country in the summer of 2020 to lobby governors and state health officials to institute strict guidelines on masking and reducing the sizes of indoor gatherings ..”
Rush Limbaugh called her “the scarf queen” in reference to her failed attempts to humanize herself through a common female fashion accessory – her trademark scarves that she wore when she conducted White House Coronavirus Task Force Briefings in 2020. She is Deborah Birx, who served as the White House coronavirus response coordinator under President Donald Trump in his first term, finishing in that role once Trump was safely out of office and the Biden regime had taken control.
You may remember her as the taller, handsome woman who often appeared alongside Anthony Fauci at press briefings and task force events. She was tapped to serve on that task force after serving as the U.S. Global AIDS coordinator, which was considered an ambassador-level job within the State Department. From 2014 under President Barack Obama through 2019-2020, she had overseen American programs whose stated purpose was to counter the global spread of HIV. Before that, she ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) global HIV/AIDS division. Only in the federal government can failure give you upward mobility.
In her memoir Silent Invasion, Birx painted herself as a heroine for what she framed as balancing Trump administration skepticism over COVID-19, politics, media narratives, the need to treat millions of Americans, and the effort to prevent or mitigate the spread of the virus. In that book, Birx admitted that she was integral to the effort to extend the initial lockdowns beyond the “15 days to slow the spread.” “No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it. Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread was a start, but I knew it would be just that. I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them”, she wrote.
Technically, Birx was a Trump insider. He relied on her, Fauci and their team to give him the advice he relied upon to make critical national decisions. But as we’ve seen with Fauci, who clearly worked against Trump and his administration, Birx was more discreet but still a kindred spirit.
She played a major role from the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 with the “15 days to slow the spread” messaging theme and related policies. Those policies, which she advanced, included limiting group gatherings, social distancing, and the closure of churches, gyms, places of employment, restaurants and bars, but not, curiously, liquor stores. She pushed for policies to keep asymptomatic people trapped in their homes under lockdown. She advocated for the quarantine of an entire household if just one member tested positive for COVID-19.
And she was aggressive in her push to test everyone, including those with no symptoms. More than anyone else on the White House task force, Birx championed mask-wearing in spite of existing evidence that the masks would prove ineffective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. She pushed to mask indoors and even at home.
She traveled the country in the summer of 2020 to lobby governors and state health officials to institute strict guidelines on masking and reducing the sizes of indoor gatherings they would permit. She did all of this while at the same time, leftist governors like Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf were out encouraging people to join large groups of “peaceful protestors” to support Black Lives Matter. At the time, she expressed worry, but even on pandemic grounds, she did not condemn those “peaceful protests.”
Because of Birx and Fauci and their people, you couldn’t go to a funeral for a family member; you couldn’t visit loved ones in the hospital; your kids couldn’t go to school; you couldn’t go to church or work; you couldn’t gather in full for Thanksgiving or Christmas; you had to cancel that wedding and that elective health procedure because “group size.”
She took particular issue with White House advisor Scott Atlas, who took an entirely different stance on managing the pandemic. Atlas rejected the Birx/Fauci approach of masking, testing, and the arbitrary “six-feet social distancing” requirements. He correctly advocated for testing just those with symptoms or who were clearly sick. He wanted to manage the nation’s response to COVID-19 until herd immunity could take over, which is how most epidemics throughout history had been effectively handled. Isolate those with symptoms, treat them with all the means at your disposal, and get to herd immunity as quickly as possible.
More to the point, Atlas subscribed to something called the Great Barrington Declaration, which stated: “We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza. As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.
The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.” Medical doctors and public health professionals who openly advocated for the declaration were widely canceled by the left and the Birx/Fauci cabal. In fact, social media platforms broadly censored that declaration and those who supported it. Birx tried to get Atlas kicked off the White House task force.
What’s next for the guy who managed to make Josef Mengele and Jack Kevorkian both look like amateurs by comparison, Anthony Fauci? There are several possibilities here, and I’ll try to cover all the ones I can foresee. I warn you that like many of my deep analytical dives, this is going to get a little messy. So, stay with me here. Understand that I make no claims to actually covering all possibilities, of course, but here’s how I see things at the moment.
Sen. Rand Paul has scheduled a committee vote for August 5, on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer a single question. Fauci invoked the Fifth more than 100 times during the hearing—some reports say 111, which is either a constitutional strategy or a new Olympic event—and the vote will almost certainly break down along party lines, since several Democrats on the panel rushed to Fauci’s defense mid-hearing. Clearly, they’re not interested in the truth of the matter.
Several GOP members, Sen. Josh Hawley chief among them, argue Fauci has no valid Fifth Amendment claim in the first place, since Biden’s pardon already grants him immunity from criminal prosecution. The idea being, you can’t incriminate yourself with testimony if there’s no crime left to charge you with. Our own Matt Margolis caught the moment yesterday, quoting Hawley directly: “Let’s just get one thing straight, you don’t have any rights under the Fifth Amendment because you’ve been pardoned,” Hawley said. “As you very well know, as the Supreme Court has been clear for a century and more, Brown v. Walker, 1896. When he has been pardoned, he may not stand upon his privilege.”
Paul himself called this legal theory “untested,” saying it would likely have to be decided by a court. Far be it from me to correct Sen. Paul, but I doubt that very much. The test happened already—in 1896, in fact—under the name Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591. I’m interested that Paul didn’t know that, and also that Hawley hadn’t mentioned it to him.
Here’s the short version of the Walker case review, for anyone who skipped that week of law school. Walker, a railroad officer, got subpoenaed to testify before the Interstate Commerce Commission about rate-fixing collusion. He refused to answer, invoking the Fifth, even though a federal immunity statute already promised nothing he said could be used against him. Walker’s position was that statutory immunity wasn’t good enough—that only a pardon, or the total impossibility of prosecution, could strip him of the right to stay silent. He got held in contempt, and the case climbed to the Supreme Court.
The question the court had to settle: does the Fifth Amendment protect against self-incrimination itself—any admission that makes you look bad—or only against testimony that could actually convict you of something? By a 5-4 vote, the Court sided with the government. Justice Henry Billings Brown, writing for the majority, held that the privilege tracks the risk of prosecution, not the risk of embarrassment.
Once that prosecution risk disappears entirely—by statutory immunity, or by pardon—the constitutional basis for silence disappears with it. A pardoned witness, Brown wrote, “stands, with respect to such offense, as if it had never been committed.” He didn’t pull that out of thin air, either—he grounded it in English common law and the Aaron Burr treason trial, so the “untested” label doesn’t even survive contact with the 19th century, let alone the 21st.
The logic holds up fine today: the Fifth protects against testimony that could convict you. Erase the possibility of conviction, and there’s nothing left for the privilege to attach to.
A later case, Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79, brushes up against this, though I doubt it changes the outcome here. Burdick was a journalist Woodrow Wilson tried to pardon specifically to force him to testify. Burdick refused the pardon outright and got held in contempt anyway for pleading the Fifth. The Court sided with him, ruling unanimously that a witness can still refuse to testify if he declines the pardon offered to him. Crucially, that doesn’t help Fauci—everyone knows he’s already accepted his. And we also know he was campaigning for it to be granted.
Fauci’s team is left arguing the pardon only covers conduct through the date it was signed, so any new admission could expose him to fresh charges. That’s a shaky proposition at best, resting on three narrow legs: First, anything Fauci says today that amounts to a new offense—perjury, false statements to Congress—isn’t covered by a pardon issued before he said it, and it revives full Fifth Amendment protection for those specific answers. Second, a presidential pardon covers federal offenses only; it does nothing to block state prosecution under the dual-sovereignty doctrine, and I’m already seeing chatter that a few state AGs are circling this exact opening. Our Catherine Salgado touched on this.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier evidently was keeping an eye on the proceedings, because after the hearing on Wednesday, he posted on X, Fauci’s lack of candor to Congress is unbelievable. My office is launching an investigation into Dr. Fauci. It’s past time we get the truth of what happened during COVID. Third, the pardon addresses criminal exposure and nothing else—it says nothing about civil suits, and sworn testimony today becomes fair game as an admission in any civil case where Fauci’s a party or witness. That last one may be the real engine behind the blanket silence, whatever the pardon technically covers.
Bottom line: Hawley and Paul had the stronger textbook argument in the room. For conduct squarely inside the pardon’s window, Fauci’s blanket Fifth Amendment invocation doesn’t rest on solid ground—not against better than 130 years of precedent, anyway.
The Senate has scheduled a vote on holding Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Aug. 5 will consider a contempt resolution for Fauci. The resolution has not been released as of yet. If the panel approves the resolution, then it will be sent to the Department of Justice with a recommendation to prosecute Fauci, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), chairman of the Senate panel, said during an appearance on CBS on July 30.
Paul has previously requested prosecution of Fauci for allegedly lying to Congress, but federal prosecutors have not brought any charges to date. Fauci, who led the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022, read an opening statement at a hearing of the committee on July 29, then refused to answer any questions. Fauci said he was following advice from his lawyers and invoking his right under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which protects people against self-incrimination.
Paul noted at the end of the hearing that a preemptive pardon from then-President Joe Biden issued in early 2025 covers Fauci for any crimes he may have committed from Jan. 1, 2014, through Jan. 19, 2025. Paul asked Fauci whether he, at any point during the time period the pardon covers, destroyed any federal record or instructed others to. Fauci declined to answer, pointing to the Fifth Amendment. “My question was limited to the period of your pardon only. I find your objection unsupported,” Paul said. bFauci said in his opening statement that Paul is obsessed with calling for his prosecution.
“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,'” Fauci said.Some senators said the situation called to mind what transpired with Lois Lerner, an IRS official who read an opening statement while appearing before a congressional panel in 2013 before refusing to answer any questions. The House of Representatives voted to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress.
Congress more recently approved contempt resolutions against Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, onetime advisers to President Donald Trump. The men were convicted of contempt and spent time in prison. bPeople convicted of contempt of Congress can land a fine of up to $100,000 and a prison term of up to 12 months. Several legal experts told The Epoch Times that Fauci wrongly invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to some of the questions.
Democrats have a socialism problem, and even one of their own on Fox News’s The Five isn’t pretending otherwise. On Thursday, Harold Ford Jr., who is far and away smarter than Jessica Tarlov, ripped into his party for propping up socialist candidates like Abdul El-Sayed, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan.
Ford didn’t hedge. His argument was straightforward: the Democrat Party has drifted so far from ordinary voters that its own candidates no longer resemble what the country is asking for. “Because the American people are not being ambiguous at all about what they want,” Ford said. “They want lower prices; they want not-forever wars. They want their kids to have better futures and an opportunity to achieve the American dream.”
Ford then turned to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the democratic socialist who has spent years boosting candidates well to his left. Ford summed up the platform creeping into his party’s fringe in a single breath. “No prisons, no borders, pro-Hamas, no Senate,” he said. He added that he’d never once heard Sanders personally endorse those positions, and that’s exactly the problem. “Senator Sanders, you have to denounce them,” he said.
Ford made clear he doesn’t think Sanders actually believes in abolishing prisons or police. “I don’t believe you’re for no police; I don’t believe you’re for no prisons,” he said. “You are better than that.” His demand was simple: Democrats who reject the radical fringe need to say so loudly instead of letting it define the party for everyone else. Ford then pointed to El-Sayed, who is trailing badly in a race Democrats can’t afford to lose. “We’re 15 points behind with the fellow in Michigan, who probably is a nice guy, but he doesn’t deserve to be in the U.S. Senate if he can’t win,” Ford said. He was careful to note he wasn’t shilling for Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), El-Sayed’s Democrat rival.
“We Democrats will deserve to lose if these are the people that we put up to run in the fall,” Ford concluded. Ford is right that nominating unelectable ideologues in the name of purity is a losing strategy dressed up as principle. He’s also right that a party that can’t manage a firm no to abolishing prisons, abolishing borders, and cheering Hamas has a branding problem that no amount of spin will fix. Where I part ways with Ford is with his implication that this is a fringe problem rather than a party-wide one. The far-left positions he described extend well beyond a few primary long shots.
“We Democrats will DESERVE TO LOSE if these are the people that we put up to run in the fall.” @HaroldFordJr questions Bernie Sanders for standing behind socialist candidates who push his radical ideology. pic.twitter.com/CkqVF3AyUy
Democrat leadership has tolerated, indulged, or quietly embraced those positions for years, and pretending otherwise lets the party off far too easily. Still, his larger point stands. Democrats have almost everything working in their favor heading into November: a favorable midterm map, an energized base, and a president whose approval numbers give them plenty to campaign against. If they still manage to lose because they couldn’t resist nominating candidates who can’t win a general election, they will have earned every bit of that defeat.
ELON MUSK: “The reason I went so hardcore for Trump was because, to me, this was a fork in the road. If they had another four years, they would legalize enough illegals in the swing states to make the swing states not swing states, they would be blue states. Then they would win… pic.twitter.com/bud2sgX8vJ
That’s my actual car that I drove for 3 years that is currently orbiting the Sun between the Earth and the edge of the asteroid belt https://t.co/UpwO8AV9r1
This compilation of Fauci lies brilliantly assembled by Matt @0rf Orfalea should be watched by all. Thank God he has secret service protection. It would be awful if they were pulled. https://t.co/cv6Jl7uUIW
NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang: I want to be involved in nearly everything Elon Musk does.
"For xAI, we're an investor already. The only regret I have is I didn't give him more money. Almost everything that @elonmusk is part of you really want to be part of as well, and and he gave us… pic.twitter.com/AvNQCIhqTH
In the wake of the overnight fresh round of US airstrikes on Iran, which resulted in destruction and casualties especially along coastal areas, Iran’s military has retaliated once again especially on Jordan. US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that it completed a “heavy” wave of strikes on the Islamic Republic, in response to “attempted missile attacks” on American bases in the region earlier this week. This US wave lasted two hours, the Pentagon said, striking “military command centers, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance and defense sites, and maritime capabilities”.
It accused Iran of a “surprise attack” the prior night, Tuesday, but said that “all Iranian missiles were successfully intercepted.” As a result of the US bombing, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRTC) said three of its troops were killed in a missile attack, according to semi-official Tasnim. The three IRGC members died while “defending Iran’s borders and people” in what it described as a “brutal attack by the criminal terrorist regime of the United States.”
Iranian officials are also saying that US bombardment of Qeshm island has killed a family. In Qeshm island, the Director General of Crisis Management of the Hormozgan Governorate said search and rescue efforts are underway amid mounting casualties there. “So far, two children have been pulled out from under the rubble and transferred to medical centers, and efforts are ongoing to rescue three other members of this family,” Mehrdad Hassanzadeh said.
Iran launched ballistic missiles at Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in response to US strikes, but Jordan says it intercepted all five missiles. pic.twitter.com/25MxHgn1LR
In response Iran says it has again targeted a US airbase in Jordan, and claims to have taken out three F-35 stealth fighters, though there’s been no indication of this from the Pentagon side. According to details via Al Jazeera:In a statement directed to Jordan, the IRGC says in response to a US attack on Qeshm island that killed two parents and their child, aerospace fighters targeted a ramp and maintenance shed at the al-Azraq airbase, which hosts US F-35 fighter jets, with several ballistic missiles, state news agency Fars reports.
The IRGC said that it had completely destroyed three F-35 aircraft and caused “heavy damage” to three others. The IRGC stated that “A number of enemy officers and technical and maintenance personnel were also killed in this attack. Our region is no place for the infanticidal army that cruelly slaughters innocent families in the middle of the night while they sleep.” They added that the war will continue until “the last American occupier is expelled from the Islamic lands” and that Muslims in Jordan and the region want this too. Aftermath of US attack on a residential area of Iran’s Qeshm Island:
Footage shows aftermath of a US missile strike on civilian residences in Qeshm.
As a result of the US attack on homes in Qeshm's Chah-Tangu, three members of the family were killed, while two of their children sustained injuries and were taken to a hospital for ongoing care. pic.twitter.com/43vjC6qjw5
As I wrote in Tuesday’s Morning Briefing, conservative Americans are once again finding out that we were right about everything they called us crazy for during the Wuhan Chinese Bat Flu pandemic. Never in recorded history have “conspiracy theorists” been on a roll like the one we’re experiencing right now. I’m beginning to think that the planet might change its shape if we decide to go the Flat-Earther route. We’re that good these days.
Our current “You shoulda listened to us,” moment is courtesy of Satan’s Garden Gnome, alleged Doctor Anthony Fauci. We’ve been finding out how wrong he was for years but, thanks to his personal diary entries that we’re seeing for the first time, we have evidence of Anthony Fauci proving that Anthony Fauci is a liar. We also now have evidence that Fauci was far more concerned with his own perverse pandemic-fueled celebrity than with anyone’s health. His diary entries about his growing fame (infamy for those of us on this side of the aisle) read as if he were working himself into a sexual frenzy after every television appearance. Anthony Fauci most definitely had an Anthony Fauci fetish.
Being proven right is always a good feeling, and watching Fauci being berated by Republican senators while pleading the Fifth (which Matt covered here) was entertaining for a minute or two, but it’s not sufficient payback for what we endured during the interminable slog of the pandemic. The cold, harsh reality is that it never will be. Yes, the public exposure of the unhinged nature of Fauci’s ego is newsworthy. And, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, there is some entertainment value in watching him squirm a little. However, unless you get extraordinary satisfaction from pointing at the television and saying, “I told you so,” there’s not a lot of satisfying “there” there.
I am not an attorney, so I will not be indulging in any legal speculation about what might happen to Fauci. From a layman’s perspective, it seems that a presidential pardon that’s backdated to the Mesozoic Era probably covers a lot. If there is some workaround that can be used to nail this vile human being, I hope it’s found soon. I don’t want to just see Fauci in an orange jumpsuit, I want to bring back town squares and pillories and put him on display for his crimes.
That sentiment may not be brimming with Christian charity, but I think we all know that I’m rather imperfect in that regard. There’s also the fact that I only attack people with words, and I’m honest about it. I’ve never fear-mongered with lies that got elderly people sent to assisted living death beds. Once a person has a body count, he or she is deserving of some ill will. (I believe that’s Confucius.)
My reaction to these Fauci revelations is the same as last year when the lefties started admitting that Joe Biden had pudding for brains during his presidency. The validation wasn’t much of a balm for the steaming piles of misery those four years heaped upon us. OK, it wasn’t any kind of balm at all, especially given the fact that Joe Biden has never been held accountable for any of his awfulness in the half century-plus that he poisoned American politics.
The Biden years were a catastrophic abomination that did damage to this great country that we will probably still be uncovering for years to come. President Trump is doing a brilliant job of cleaning up Sir Sniffsalot’s messes, but it all can be undone if another Dem gets into the White House soon.
There is no satisfaction to be derived from any of this. Anthony Fauci will almost certainly live out his days having his lying rear end kissed by the same low-IQ lefties who made him famous. Their alternative universe-dwelling powers of denial can’t be shaken. This was shared by my Twitchy colleague Doug P. in a post on Wednesday:
Dr. Fauci is a deeply caring physician, a brilliant scientist, an extraordinary public servant, a humanitarian, & a patriot—whose work has helped save tens of millions of lives.
It is a shame to watch him be dragged in front of Congress in the name of bogus conspiracy theories.
— Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) July 29, 2026
Nobody can fix that kind of stupid.
Look for the Dem water-carriers in the mainstream media to give Fauci some storytelling camera time in the coming weeks. The hag coven on The View probably already has the vapors just thinking about it. They can fawn over Dr. Mengele-Light and then he can scribble in his Trapper Keeper that he’s still the most popular boy in the lunchroom.
Can he take the fifth? Or can’t he? It’s not so clear. Here’s the law professor’s take.
“The impact of a pardon on invocations is a bit murky but, as I stated yesterday, the odds favor Fauci in a court finding that he can still invoke the privilege.”
Below is my column on Fox.com on yesterday’s “testimony” from Dr. Anthony Fauci. Americans deserve answers to the questions raised by his diary and other remarks. The most likely course to gain such answers would be through an immunity grant. The impact of a pardon on invocations is a bit murky but, as I stated yesterday, the odds favor Fauci in a court finding that he can still invoke the privilege. In any challenge, a court would likely find that there remains a risk of self-incrimination. What is clear is that many in Washington would prefer Fauci to remain silent on the questions raised by his diary.
Here is the column:
“Stick with the science and never veer from that, even when the science turns out to be an inconvenient truth for somebody.” Dr. Anthony Fauci delivered those words to Georgetown students in 2017 as the touchstone of medical ethics. Today, before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, that line was replaced by Fauci in repeating “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”
The optics could not have been worse, but what you saw depended largely on how you viewed the hearing. For critics, Fauci sounded like Crazy Joe Gallo without the sunglasses. For supporters, Fauci is still a hero who refused to fall into a trap laid out before him. Democratic senators such as Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) actually praised Fauci for refusing to answer questions before Congress.
There is no question that it is Fauci’s right to refuse to invoke his privilege against self-incrimination and many advised him to do so. It could be taken for strategic reasons separate from any criminal culpability. After all, he was given a last-minute pardon by President Joe Biden, and any false statements he made before the Committee could be used to bring criminal charges against him. However, Fauci is unlike many who have invoked the privilege. Unlike many past witnesses who have invoked the privilege, Fauci has testified for days in countless prior hearings. He also has appeared in countless interviews on these issues. He had reason to fear this hearing after his diary revealed startling contradictions with what he was stating publicly.
The question many will ask is why Fauci could not just “stick with the science” and resolve these contradictions. The fact is that he would have had difficulty in dealing with his own “inconvenient truths.”Fauci’s opening statement expressed obvious anger over the release of his “unredacted diary.” The new evidence shows that Fauci connected the Wuhan lab to the emerging crisis before most people had ever heard of the lab. It also shows him repeatedly referencing the lab’s gain-of-function work and discounted the “wet market” as the true origin of the virus as opposed to an “amplifier.”
Some of the most embarrassing areas for Fauci concerned his entries acknowledging that he pushed to close schools, despite public denials that he ever recommended such closures. His entries take credit for convincing figures such as then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, the staff of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and others to close the schools. In an Oct. 16, 2022, ABC interview, Fauci repeated that denial: “They always come back and say, ‘Fauci was responsible for shutting schools down.’ I had nothing to do [with it]!”
The media has also taken the Fifth on these subjects, declining to publish many of these contradictions. They have the same reason as Fauci: there are no spins that would reconcile their own prior coverage and gushing reviews of Fauci. The diary entries also show disturbing references to private meetings with media figures.
Fauci’s diary refers to CNN anchor Jake Tapper 41 times. In some entries, Fauci suggested that the host was concerned about crafting an interview to better serve Fauci: “Jake wanted to make sure the interview did not cause me any problems.” Fauci also related how he met socially with Tapper in July 2020: “Had dinner over Jake Tapper and Jen Tapper’s home in DC. Terrific couple. Friendship building.” (Notably, on October 14, 2020, CNN published a report repeating the condemnation of the dangers of “small household gatherings.”).
The diary revealed an obsession with his publicity and access to celebrities. The diary is replete with his gushing accounts of himself, such as “It is not hyoperbole [sic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson [sic] in the world.”
The fact is that diaries tend to be self-obsessed, and no one would want their unvarnished private thoughts made public. Rather, my gripe with these passages is something I have previously written in criticism of Fauci. During this period, dissenting scientists were barred from social media, removed from positions, and vilified for expressing views, despite now being vindicated on subjects ranging from the lab origin of the virus, the efficacy of masks, the six-foot rule, natural immunities, and school closures.
As these courageous scientists were being abused (by academic and media figures who still hold their positions), Fauci said not a word in their defense despite privately acknowledging that they could be right. Yet, Fauci remained silent as his allies in the media savaged those who voiced the view that the virus was man-made and escaped from the lab. In 2021, New York Times science and health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was still calling on reporters not to mention the “racist” lab theory. (Federal agencies found the lab theory to be the most credible despite Fauci claiming publicly that a natural origin was the most likely explanation).
Fauci stayed silent while relishing his celebrity status. Indeed, his diary shows no concerns for these scientists as he breathlessly recounted his bobbleheads and cover shoots. Once again, Fauci has every right to invoke his constitutional rights, but the public has every right to demand answers to these questions related to the deaths of 1,238,563 Americans. That may result in a grant of immunity to compel him to answer these questions. If it is any solace for Fauci, he will clearly be able to maintain that he is “the most famous and talked about person in the country.”
Lois Lerner gave opening statement, then clammed up in 2013 hearing on IRS discrimination against conservative applications for tax-exempt status, and it didn’t work, Sen. Lankford notes at Fauci’s inquisition. The San Francisco 49ers trounced the Denver Broncos 55-10 in Super Bowl XXIV, the biggest blowout in the game’s history. The Seattle Seahawks snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Super Bowl XLIX through the most notorious goal-line decision in history, delaying the Emerald City’s second Vince Lombardi Trophy for 11 years.
Wednesday’s Senate Homeland Security Committee inquisition of former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, about his suspected role in the origin of COVID-19 and allegations that he tried to cover his tracks, similarly displayed elements of both tedious romp and last-minute shocker. The alternate celebrity and villain of the COVID-19 policy response repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse answering even mundane questions, such as the color of the hearing room’s carpet, following publication of over 1,100 pages of diary-like notes that have raised even more questions about the veracity of his COVID-era public statements.
Committee Republicans repeatedly argued Fauci could not opt out of answering questions due to President Biden’s sweeping preemptive pardon, the validity of which has been questioned because it was signed by autopen amid Biden’s cognitive decline. Legal analysts explained Wednesday how Fauci could still be prosecuted.Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Lankford, who pointedly disagreed with colleagues on the Fifth Amendment issue, waited until the hearing’s end to recall that Congress went through a near-identical exercise in President Obama’s second term.
It held former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt for giving an opening statement at a House hearing in 2013 on her alleged discrimination against conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, then invoking her rights under the Fifth Amendment to decline giving testimony or answering questions that may expose one to criminal prosecution. Fauci did the same Wednesday. Lankford asked committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., whether the Lerner vote determined the Fauci outcome. Paul, who has called for Fauci’s prosecution for years, said lawmakers have a week to study the issue before voting on a contempt resolution.
The question that courts may have to answer is whether Biden’s pardon preempts Fauci’s right against self-incrimination, since he can’t be prosecuted “as long as he answers truthfully” and the statute of limitations forecloses some claims anyway, Paul said. George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf floated two other ways Fauci could testify without risk to himself: a two-thirds committee vote or a simple House majority to immunize him, or doing media interviews in which he’s not under oath, since “it is not a crime to lie to the public.”
Fauci is Roosevelt’s ‘Man in the Arena’
Republicans and Democrats largely repeated their dynamics from COVID-related hearings since the GOP took back the House in 2022 and full Congress in 2024. The committee majority repeatedly confronted a visibly weary Fauci with the costs of his decisions going back to 2011, when NIAID funded an American lab mutating avian flu to easily transmit through the air among mammals and published the research over the initial objections of government biosecurity experts.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, credited his decision to enter politics to the tasing and arrest of an Ohio woman in 2020 for not wearing a COVID mask at a middle-school football game, a policy he blamed on Fauci’s masking recommendations. “Who the f— do you think you were?” Moreno bellowed, already speculating Fauci knew he was “in deep sh–” because he hired criminal defense lawyer David Schertler, who represented ex-Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., now serving 11 years for convictions including bribery. Paul ejected Schertler from the hearing for repeatedly trying to speak on behalf of his client.
“In no courtroom in America can you have your witness plead the Fifth Amendment and then your attorney gets to testify,” Paul responded when Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he had “gagged” Schertler. Democrats deflected from the evidence of Fauci’s alleged duplicity in his diary, given to Paul and Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who called Fauci’s notes “government records created on a government computer by a federal employee.”
They repeatedly blamed President Trump, Kennedy and other MAGA bogeymen for gutting public health, increasing vaccine hesitancy, failing to control cyclospora and enabling a spike in measles cases, though Fauci’s diary complicated the latter by predicting children’s measles deaths caused by COVID lockdowns would vastly outnumber their COVID deaths.”This hearing is designed to entrap you,” Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., told Fauci, like other Democrats praising his five decades of public service. She called Kennedy the most unqualified HHS secretary ever, who “pursues conspiracy theories, degrades people with disabilities, and continues to promote disproved science.”
Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., went so far as to dub Fauci the “Man in the Arena” from President Teddy Roosevelt’s “Citizenship in a Republic” speech, which elevates the man who “strives valiantly” and “comes short again and again” over “cold and timid souls” who don’t try. Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., mocked Kim specifically and other Democrats for fawning over Fauci.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the architect of America’s COVID response, who lectured the rest of us about “the science” for years, appeared before Congress on Wednesday and invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself over 100 times. He refused to answer questions about what day of the week it was. He wouldn’t even say what color his tie was. Naturally, President Donald Trump was asked about it, and his response did not disappoint. When a reporter asked whether the Department of Justice should reopen the autopen investigation as it relates to Fauci, Trump zeroed in on the one question that matters.
“Well, the only thing you can really think about is the auto pen,” Trump said. “Because the most powerful thing the president has, they say, is the power of pardon. So, he was pardoned by Biden, and I respect that. I know how powerful it is. It’s a very powerful, they say. It’s literally the most powerful thing a president has.”
Then came the twist of the knife. Trump said the only pardon he was certain Joe Biden personally signed was the one for Hunter Biden, and he suggested Biden likely never signed Fauci’s pardon himself, which raises real doubts about whether it meets legal requirements. Whoever operated the autopen, Trump argued, would need proof, letters, and full knowledge of what was being authorized, and he suggested that person had no idea what the pardon covered.
.@POTUS: "The most powerful thing a president has they say is the power of pardon. [Fauci] was pardoned by Biden… the only thing I know that he signed was Hunter Biden's pardon. He probably didn't sign this one." pic.twitter.com/MpsgJ2OnfS
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 29, 2026
When a reporter asked Trump whether Fauci should face repercussions, the president reminded everyone that he knows Fauci better than just about anyone.
“Well, I watched the whole thing today, but more importantly, I was a part of the whole Fauci — I inherited Fauci. He was here from the 1980s, so I had him for a period of time, and I disagreed with him on a lot. I would have had to close down the whole country if I listened to him,” Trump said. “I went the federalist way, which is basically to let the governors decide. And generally speaking, the Republican governors did very well; the Democrat governors did not do very well. But Fauci wanted to have nobody wearing masks, if you remember, and then everybody had to wear five masks, as many masks as you could get.”
Trump kept going, and it got better. “Operation Warp Speed was talked about as being one of the great success stories anywhere in the world, actually, and we did a good job. But many more people died under Biden than died in the Trump administration from COVID. COVID was a disaster, but Fauci did not help.”
President Trump on Dr. Anthony Fauci and Covid-19: "Fauci wanted to have nobody wearing masks, if you remember, and then everybody had to wear five masks, as many masks as you could get… I mean, he made a lot of mistakes." pic.twitter.com/jlVEJjCSnV
But here’s the problem for Fauci, and it’s a big one. The Fifth Amendment protects you from incriminating yourself in testimony. Fauci was pardoned. A pardoned man has no self-incrimination to fear on anything the pardon covers, which means he has no Fifth Amendment right to hide behind.”As you very well know, as the Supreme Court has been clear for a century and more, Brown v. Walker, 1896. When he has been pardoned, he may not stand upon his privilege,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told Fauci during the hearing.
So the walls are closing in on Fauci from every direction. The Senate is expected to vote on contempt charges next week, the legitimacy of his autopen pardon is in serious doubt, and the president of the United States just calmly explained on camera why none of it ought to protect him. Fauci spent years telling Americans to trust him. This week, he wouldn’t even trust himself to answer a question about his tie. Trump’s response was epic, and Fauci’s reckoning may just be getting started.
Russia can only preserve itself by achieving victory in the Ukraine conflict because the West is seeking to destroy the country through Kiev, former President Dmitry Medvedev has said.Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, made the remarks on Wednesday while addressing young politicians and representatives of parliamentary parties at the ‘Territory of Meanings’ youth forum. He said Russia was facing an unprecedented challenge, citing Western sanctions and political pressure.
“Our common task is to preserve our country,” Medvedev said. “The only way to preserve our country is victory in the special military operation,” he added.Medvedev stated that Russia has long endured Western efforts to undermine its sovereignty, asserting that its adversaries harbor disdain for “our country – large, strong, proud and self-sufficient, one that cannot be commanded.” He claimed that Western nations are now employing Ukraine as a “battering ram” to bring about Russia’s downfall.
While political parties may disagree on economic and social issues ahead of the upcoming State Duma election, Medvedev said they must remain united on issues affecting the country’s survival, expressing confidence that Russia will ultimately prevail. Moscow has repeatedly said that it considers NATO expansion towards its borders to be a major national security threat, and cited Kiev’s ambitions to join the US-led bloc among the key reasons that led to the Ukraine conflict. Russian officials have long accused Western governments of waging a proxy war against Russia through military and financial support for Kiev.
On Monday, President Vladimir Putin told State Duma lawmakers that no one would ever succeed in breaking the Russian people, saying “This has not happened and will not happen in the future.” He added that the country’s political system and state institutions are prepared to repel any hostile actions. Putin also said that Russia’s opponents have failed on the battlefield and are now resorting to terrorist attacks. He argued that the Western sanctions have failed to damage Russia as intended and have instead inflicted the greatest harm on the European and other states that introduced them.
Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com. Renowned Attorney Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and later FreedomWatchUSA.org, is worried that massive Democrat voter fraud might do America in. Klayman warns, “There will be an inquisition by using a seized power of government by socialists, communists, jihadists and leftists. It will be a bloodletting in the courts and also a bloodletting in the streets. This is why we act now and not wait for November. . .. It could be the end of America if the Democrats take control. It almost was with Biden, and you can see what’s going to happen next. When people call them crazy, that is too charitable. They are not crazy. They know what they are doing. They are evil. They are the disciples of the devil. The Democrat Party is infested, and it is the devil incarnate.”
The Dems are fighting to hold on to their voter fraud. Just this week, the Governor of New Jersey “Mikie Sherrill refuses to provide DOJ with info about the 6,600 non-citizens erroneously registered to vote . . .” New Jersey also picks jury pools from the voter rolls, and every year “75,000 noncitizens are called for jury duty in New Jersey.” This is news from just one state in the past week. Multiply that by 50. Maybe this is why Department of Homeland Security Secretary “Markwayne Mullin Says State Officials Who Refuse to Cooperate to Secure Elections Could Face ‘Prison Time.’”
We have never heard these kinds of threats to secure elections in the past. Dr. Jerome Corsi says President Trump will not allow the voter fraud for the midterm elections and will use the President’s Article II powers to secure the elections from foreign and domestic intervention. Klayman says, “Dr. Corsi is exactly right . . . The President has those powers. The President has those emergency powers where he can step in. . .. If they have the guts to do it, they can. It’s a whole lot better than declaring martial law after an election. Let’s be proactive. Let’s do it before an election and clean the rat’s nest out now. . .. The Democrats are corrupt to the core.”
Klayman contends as the Trump Administration voter fraud crackdown heats up, so will the violence. Klayman predicts, “They are already violent. Look at Bernie Sanders, who is a supporter of Hamas. Look at Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and the Mayor of New York Mamdani, who cavorts with terrorists. Their mindset is of a terrorist. So, yes, they will resort to violence. . .. For you and my supporters, it is time for you to arm up, use it defensively and not offensively to protect you and your family. I would recommend that because we are going into a civil war. We are going to be in one very shortly.”
The last American population that is American grew up in the 1940s, graduated from high school in the mid to late 1950s and from college in the early 1960s. After that support systems for boys and young men were dismantled. There are no male spaces anymore. I attended 4 superlative universities–Georgia Tech, University of Virginia, UC Berkeley, and Oxford University. Only UC Berkeley, a large state university, was gender integrated. Georgia Tech says that it was gender integrated in 1952. In my years there I never saw a female student. Rumors were that there were a few taking masters degrees in engineering. The football cheerleaders were all male acrobats.
At UVa where I received a Ph.D. in economics, I never saw a female. Rumors, as at Ga Tech, were that there were a few women enrolled in masters degrees not available at the women’s colleges. The women attended excellent women’s colleges such as Sweet Briar. USA was gender integrated in 1970. At Oxford University there were ancient men’s colleges. Mine, Merton College, dated from 1264. There were four women’s colleges. Each collage had its own tradition.
For nonsensical reasons, men’s colleges at Oxford were gender integrated between 1974 and 1986, and lost their traditions. Women’s colleges followed during 1979 and 2008, and lost their traditions. What was it all about? What was achieved other than the destruction of tradition? Women were already at Oxford. Why did they have to be in men’s colleges? Men were already at Oxford. Why did they need to be in women’s colleges? The Boys’ Club of America was gender integrated in 1990, thus destroying the purpose of the Boys’ Club. Why? What was achieved?
Little League fell to gender integration 16 years earlier in 1974. Perhaps this was the death toll for the American male. Teams had to accept girls whose performance was inferior to that of the boys in order to comply with imposed gender regulations. As boys were expected to perform well, parents cheered the girls who managed to get to first base or catch a left field fly. The boy who got a double or threw a double play was cheered but not with the applause given to the most minor of female accomplishments. This subordination of male performance to female performance set the stage for the dispossession of the American male of his confidence.
Today corporate boardrooms are confronted with female members demanding advertisements against men, such as the Gillettes and Budweiser Light anti-male advertisements and Starbuck’s statement that it is not employing any white males until it has more women and people of color. Today American heterosexual men have been moved aside. What the dumbshit feminists have achieved is unprotected women. We have the evidence in England, Sweden, Norway, Europe, and America. Recently the state of Minnesota refused to prosecute an immigrant-invader child rapist “in the interest of justice.” In other words, it was just for the black guy to rape the white girl.
In Sweden and Norway white women are subject to public rapes. White men do not intervene out of fear that they will be arrested for the hate crime of abusing a black person.Throughout the Western world racial privileges have been institutionalized in law and practice. Is is racist for whites to protect themselves. With the confidence of white men destroyed, the field is open for immigrant-invaders. This is feminism’s achievement.
Jack Fowler: I mentioned a couple of episodes ago our friend Bill Jacobson with Legal Insurrection. He has some efforts aimed at ferreting out that stuff. Yeah, it’s not only, let’s just say, racism in schools, which could be in hiring. This could be in scholarships. Here’s a scholarship: blacks only need apply. Or teachers, you’re going to get this bonus, but only if you’re a minority. So he has a legal arm there that goes after that. There are efforts to …
Victor Davis Hanson: You know, I had a student tell me, “You don’t know what it’s like to be Latino.” And I said, “I do,” because I came of age when this started. In those days, 4.0 was the top, and I had a 3.99. I had two Bs. I did pretty well for a country boy on the SAT, so I applied to UC Santa Cruz. It was a new campus. It was harder to get in than Stanford. I was on the waiting list at Stanford and UC, so I might not have gone away to college. They let me into both, I think, much later at Stanford, but I got into Santa Cruz from the waiting list.
So I went there, and there were two students from my high school who were C students, and they were there already. They had been there all summer long. They were Latino. I never said anything, but they could not believe that I had you know… There were three students who had the top grades. It’s a long story, but there was a valedictorian. I wasn’t that, but we were all one-tenth of a point apart. I was, I think, the third highest. But the point I’m making is that when I went to graduate school, this was in 1975, Mark Edwards was a great guy. He called us in, and there were four white males. He said, “I want to tell you right now, we’re hearing of lawsuits.”
This was kind of like the [Allan] Bakke era. “None of you are going to get a job. I’ve been to the American Philological Association, and everybody’s told me they’re going to hire women and minorities no matter what. We have to at Stanford.” We said, “Well, you have three or four women here, and you have an African American.” I said, “How about all you guys? Why don’t you all resign and then give up your places? You’re all in your sixties.” When you’re that age, 21 years old, you don’t believe it. So you think, “Well, I’ll be fine.” I told my advisor. He said, “Well, if you’re good, you’ll make it. I did.”
I said, “Yeah, but you were in a different generation.” So I finished all my exams in two and a half years. That’s all I did. I studied twenty hours a day and slept about five hours. I wrote my thesis in my third year. I went to the American School of Classical Studies for a whole year. I did all of that. When I applied to seventeen jobs at age twenty-five, I got one interview at the Naval Academy. They said, “That was a great interview.” They interviewed me on everything. “Can you tell us who Jomini was?” and things outside classics. Then they said, “But you’re not going to get the job. We have to hire a woman.”
I said, “Well, you guys are kind of old. Why don’t you resign and hire her?” Because they have a civilian system at the Naval Academy, not like West Point. So I came back, and I’d farmed for five years. I was unemployable. When I went to Fresno, Cal State Fresno, they said, “We’re not going to hire you. We’ll have you part-time.” I said, “I published a book.” They said, “Well, let me see. You have a Ph.D. from Stanford and you’ve published a book, but we’re going to hire a woman and a minority.” These were all white guys telling me this.
Finally, I gave a lecture, and a person from the McClatchy Foundation heard me speak. She said, “That was a great talk. Why aren’t you teaching?” I said, “I only have one class.” So she gave a gift for me to teach for one year. I did pretty well, and I doubled the enrollment. But my point is that there’s a whole generation of people born in the 1950s who came of age during this whole racial preference system, and that’s all they’ve known. So, when people say discrimination, there has been discrimination, but when I saw it institutionally, I’m not talking about what people thought. Institutionally, it was all one way, and people are tired of it.
So when I got a job and I got tenure, I had a guy from the philosophy department come to me and say, “They’re not going to hire me. I’m a white male. I’ve been a part-time teacher for eleven years, and I make one-third of what a professor does. I drive all over to community colleges. Can you help me?” So I went to the chairman, and I did that for about five people. I got all five hired. But it was very strange how amoral it was. It was just blatant. You know what I mean? Blatant racism. It would have been much better if, when people thought there was inequality, and there was, they had started at K through 12.
You could have gone down to the kindergarten level and said, “These are the types of schools in minority districts in the forties, fifties, and sixties that educated people well, and we’re going to restore them. We’re going to make them academies. Anybody can go, but they’ll be located in poorer areas to make sure that when you come out of there…”
Legendary Monty Python star John Cleese has drawn a clear line in the sand, declaring himself a “culturalist” who believes some cultures are superior to others. Cleese has also openly backed Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe amid the accelerating collapse of British norms under mass migration and parallel societies. The legendary comedian responded this week to ritual insults hurled at him for supporting Lowe by rejecting the tired “racist” smear from the usual uneducated quarters.
I see I am being ritually insulted for my support of this man
The uneducated call me a racist
I am not a racist
I am a culturalist
I believe that some cultures are better than others
I prefer cultures to do not advocate stoning, pederasty, wife beating, female genital… https://t.co/dpzlIRrAoV
“I am not a racist. I am a culturalist,” he stated in a post that now has over ten million views, adding “I believe that some cultures are better than others. I prefer cultures that do not advocate stoning, pederasty, wife beating, female genital mutilation, and beheading opponents. Call me old-fashioned…” Cleese had earlier made plain his preference for Lowe over the rest of the political class, stating he trusts the Great Yarmouth MP “more than any of the other leaders.” The Metro reported the comments as Cleese pushed back against the predictable pile-on.
John Cleese has insisted that he is ‘not a racist’ after voicing support for Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe. Responding to a post featuring the former Reform UK MP, Cleese recently said on X: ‘I trust this man more than any of the other leaders’: https://t.co/gObd5yE1Bwpic.twitter.com/saKZ0RlmXo
Lowe, for his part, simply called Cleese a patriot. The exchange has crystallised a growing recognition that Britain’s cultural foundations are under sustained assault from imported practices fundamentally at odds with the country’s historic values of individual liberty, equal protection under the law, and basic human decency. Cleese has for some time now been documenting the same pattern with characteristic clarity. In April he tore into the BBC over claims that the British education system was designed for “whiteness,” pointing out the obvious: it was built for British children in Britain, most of whom happened to be white at the time.
To treat that historical fact as a “racist conspiracy,” he said, is insane. The broadcaster, he charged, operates with a hidden agenda opposed to the beliefs of the majority of British people. He has also zeroed in on the political reality driving the double standard. With churches across Britain suffering more than ten recorded crimes every single day – theft, arson, vandalism, violence – Cleese observed that Labour politicians have become so dependent on Muslim votes that they no longer even pretend to be even-handed. “We need a new election,” the Python star demanded.
Cleese has noted that the focus on religion in Britain falls almost exclusively on Islam, while more peaceful and spiritual traditions are sidelined. He has asked why schoolchildren are not being introduced to Buddhism – a far more civilised belief system – rather than being steered toward Islam.
He has highlighted the one-way demand for respect: Islam insists its traditions be honoured while showing no reciprocal intention of respecting British ones, the polar opposite of genuine multiculturalism. And he has pointed out that other religions do not threaten to take over the country, whereas multiple Muslim clerics and scholars openly do. These are not abstract observations. They map directly onto the lived experience of communities watching churches burn, girls trafficked, and native citizens pushed down waiting lists.
That is precisely the ground Rupert Lowe and Restore Britain have chosen to fight on. The party, which surged past the Conservatives in membership within weeks of its launch, does not traffic in polite fictions. It has vowed to deport millions of illegal and burdensome migrants – “if that means millions go, so be it” – to outlaw incompatible cultural and religious practices, and to give the British people a binding referendum on the death penalty for pedophiles and rapists when guilt is undeniable. “Prison or deportation is too kind,” Lowe has said.
Lowe’s own record shows why the establishment treats him as a threat. As an MP he has submitted more than a thousand Freedom of Information requests that forced light onto grooming gang data, the true costs of mass migration, and foreign offender absconding rates. When the results proved too damaging, the WhatDoTheyKnow platform restricted his access. Lowe’s response was characteristically dry: the restriction was “not in the spirit of transparency.”
He has also refused to soft-pedal the immigration crisis itself. Lowe has called openly for a hostile environment toward illegal entrants, many of them criminals, stating he wants them all deported and does not care how it happens. Far-left politicians and media figures predictably denounced the stance as “cruel” and “repulsive.” Lowe’s reply was equally direct: he could not care less about defending the “humanity” of third-world conmen who break into the country and leave British families living in fear.
The practical consequences of the current open-door approach continue to surface. Lowe recently told Joe Rogan that arriving migrants are placed at the top of NHS waiting lists for dental treatment that British citizens cannot access. Rogan’s reaction was pure disbelief.The incentive structure is obvious: free housing, welfare, and priority healthcare create a magnet that draws people across multiple safe countries. Nowhere has the cultural incompatibility been more horrific than in the industrial-scale rape gang scandals.
Lowe’s Restore Britain-backed inquiry documented a nationwide pattern of abuse involving up to 250,000 young British girls, overwhelmingly by men from Pakistani Muslim and other Muslim backgrounds, with police and politicians suppressing the truth for decades under the banner of community cohesion. Elon Musk responded by endorsing Nuremberg-style trials for those who enabled the cover-up. “The politicians who turned a blind eye to the Rape of Britain must go to prison,” he wrote.
Cleese’s latest stand simply names what millions of Britons already see. Preferring a culture that does not stone people, mutilate girls, or treat women as disposable is not racism. It is the minimum requirement of civilisation. [..] Cleese, Lowe, and a growing public are no longer playing along. Some cultures produce free speech, scientific inquiry, and equal rights. Others produce the opposite. Pretending otherwise has already cost Britain dearly.
The New York Times reports that Elon Musk’s America PAC plans to spend as much as $120 million to help Republicans in November’s midterm elections, signaling that the world’s richest man is preparing to reenter the political game with fewer than 100 days until voters head to the polls. America PAC’s spending surge will likely spark a coordinated opposition campaign from Democratic groups and left-wing NGOs, ranging from protests and activist pressure to sustained negative press coverage of Musk, as well as attempts to damage his brands, including Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI.
The Democrats’ playbook could resemble their coordinated pressure campaign against Musk when he was involved with DOGE and the dismantling of most of USAID. This sparked street demonstrations by left-wing and far-left activist networks supported by left-wing NGOs, along with an aggressive left-leaning media campaign that sought to make him the public face of the administration’s agenda. The NYT report is based on “two people briefed on the plans,” and like many stories run by left-leaning corporate media. Musk usually denies the reports on X, but if this report is correct, it says Musk authorized America PAC to build a field operation across at least eight states, targeting Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, while considering contests in North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas.
America PAC is also gearing up to support House candidates in California, Wisconsin, and Washington, according to those people. Musk’s nearly $300 million bet on the 2024 campaign proved politically successful. Still, it came at a steep cost to his brands, which became targets of information warfare operations with coordinated pressure from left-wing journalists and NGO-backed activist groups. Remember when MSM outlets ramped up stories portraying Musk as a Nazi while he was at DOGE, dismantling the left’s USAID slush fund?
This is how the information operations game is played, and the ones being played were the American people. Remember, the far-left even launched a firebomb campaign against Tesla service centers, as the left fringe rules through intimidation, violence, and terrorism. Judging by Musk’s X posts and the broader Republican Party’s increasingly new messaging, the GOP appears to be converging on a single marketing platform ahead of the midterms: Democrats serve as the political vehicle for a socialist and Marxist takeover. It’s that simple.
That narrative is not being manufactured from nothing. The Democratic Socialists of America’s own rhetoric about dismantling the American “empire” from within gives Republican strategists a political gift in the market while establishment Democrats fret over their party fracturing in a far-left revolutionary takeover. The emerging theme for America PAC and Republican candidates will likely focus on anti-communism, framing the election as a choice between capitalism vs. socialism, national sovereignty vs. border abolition, and law and order vs. violent crime and revolution.
DSA has effectively handed Republicans the advertising material to connect illegal alien invasion, violent crime, attacks on law enforcement, street unrest, and all other failed globalist policies under a single ideological threat narrative. That is precisely the political branding that establishment Democrats fear and are melting down over.
“.. the author who created the most successful publishing franchise of our lifetime had somehow become too radioactive for many people even to write about”
Every week on my podcast Dangerous Laughter, I sit down with people whose ideas deserve a hearing, whether the cultural gatekeepers approve or not. Sometimes it’s a politician. Sometimes it’s a journalist. Sometimes it’s a historian. This week, it was Solomon Schmidt, a gifted historian whose new biography, A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling, should have been one of the easiest books in the world to promote. Instead, it became a case study in modern publishing.Schmidt told me that organizations serving independent bookstores declined to carry advertising for the book.
Harry Potter fan communities that once celebrated every new Rowling project have shown little interest in discussing a biography of the woman who created Hogwarts. Media outlets that ordinarily jump at the chance to cover major literary releases have largely looked the other way. Think about how absurd that is.=J.K. Rowling isn’t an obscure novelist looking for her first break. She’s the bestselling author of the bestselling book series in modern publishing history. Her stories have sold hundreds of millions of copies, been translated around the globe, inspired blockbuster films, and introduced an entire generation to the joy of reading.
If that resume isn’t enough to justify a serious biography, what exactly is? The answer has nothing to do with literature. It has everything to do with politics. Somewhere along the way, Rowling stopped being judged primarily as one of the world’s most successful authors and became a political litmus test. For some people, her views on sex and gender now outweigh everything else she has ever written, accomplished, donated, or inspired. You don’t have to agree with Rowling to recognize what’s happening here. You only have to ask a simple question. When did we stop being curious?
One of the things that struck me during my conversation with Solomon was how straightforward his motivation really was. He wasn’t looking to pick a fight. He looked around and realized something that should have been obvious. How could the woman behind Harry Potter, arguably the defining literary phenomenon of the last thirty years, not already have a definitive modern biography? Charles Dickens has biographies. William Shakespeare has biographies. J.R.R. Tolkien has biographies. C.S. Lewis has biographies. But the author who created the most successful publishing franchise of our lifetime had somehow become too radioactive for many people even to write about. That should bother anyone who claims to love books.
As Solomon explained, understanding Rowling’s life helps readers understand Harry Potter itself. Her struggles with poverty, depression, rejection, and single motherhood weren’t footnotes. They shaped the stories. They gave us Harry’s loneliness, the Dementors that captured depression so vividly, and the recurring lesson that courage usually comes at a personal cost. Biography isn’t an endorsement. It’s an exploration. Somewhere, we’ve forgotten the difference. The funny thing is, Harry Potter warned us about this long before social media existed.
Throughout the series, the Ministry of Magic spends as much time managing information as it does protecting people. The Daily Prophet becomes less interested in reporting facts than preserving approved narratives. Dolores Umbridge doesn’t need to burn books. She simply decides which voices deserve to be heard and which ones deserve to disappear. Sound familiar? Millions of readers recognized those lessons while turning the pages of Rowling’s novels. Some seem to have forgotten them the moment they closed the cover.
That brings me to my own new book, The Curse of the Bearded Lady. On the surface, it has little in common with a biography of J.K. Rowling. One is political satire. The other is literary history. But both books ask the same question. What happens when powerful cultural institutions stop encouraging debate and start discouraging curiosity? Unfortunately, that’s the road we’re traveling. I don’t expect everyone to agree with Rowling. I don’t expect everyone to buy Solomon’s biography. I certainly don’t expect everyone to agree with me. That’s never been the point.
The point is that readers should be free to encounter ideas, arguments, and people without first receiving permission from self-appointed cultural referees. Publishing used to trust readers enough to let them make those decisions for themselves. Now too many gatekeepers seem determined to make those choices in advance.History has never been written exclusively about saints, and thank goodness for that. The people who change the world are usually complicated. They succeed brilliantly. They fail publicly. They contradict themselves. They evolve. That’s what makes them worth studying.
J.K. Rowling is one of those figures, whether her critics like it or not. The greatest irony of all is that Rowling spent years teaching millions of young readers to question authority, resist propaganda, and think for themselves. Harry, Hermione, and Luna never accepted an official narrative simply because someone powerful told them to. Maybe that’s the real reason her books still endure. Because they encourage independent thought.That may be the most dangerous kind of magic left. Because somewhere along the way, “He Who Must Not Be Named” stopped being a fictional villain. For too many people, it became the woman who imagined him.
“Ankara now finds itself simultaneously managing several long running disputes while its domestic bandwidth is consumed by an economic downturn and a reshaped opposition.”
Turkish politics rarely stands still, but even by local standards, the past week has moved fast. Ozgur Ozel, the leader of the Republican People’s Party, told his parliamentary group that a new party will be formed within days.
On the surface, this looked like a routine reshuffling of parliamentary seats – the kind of maneuver that happens periodically in Ankara without lasting consequence. Underneath, it is nothing of the sort. The announcement was framed as a defensive move, yet its implications reach far beyond the corridors of the CHP. Against the backdrop of Türkiye’s stalling economy, the tense regional environment, and the unresolved Kurdish question, the birth of this new formation looks like the opening move in a broader contest over who controls the timing of the country’s next election. Taken together, the pieces suggest that Ankara is entering a period in which political survival, not policy, will dictate the pace of events.
A party born out of necessity
Ozel did not describe his move as a rupture. He insisted that the CHP’s role as the parliament’s main opposition voice would not be abandoned, only carried forward under a new banner. The language was careful, almost defensive, and for good reason. Splitting a party while claiming continuity is a delicate balancing act, one that requires convincing both loyal voters and international observers that nothing essential has been lost in the transition. In practice, the plan is to bring roughly 85 deputies with him, instantly turning the new party into the second largest bloc in parliament and pushing the CHP itself down to 4th or 5th place. A party that has anchored Turkish opposition politics for a century is being hollowed out from within, not by an external rival but its own recent leader.
The logic behind the move becomes clear once the legal pressure on the CHP is taken into account. Courts have been steadily encroaching on the party’s internal affairs, including the reinstatement of Kemal Kilicdaroglu as the formal leader of the CHP. For Ozel, remaining inside a party whose leadership could be legally reassigned at any moment is a losing bet. Commentator Murat Yetkin described the new project as a reserve platform, built precisely so Ozel can wait out the legal storm without being dragged into seven months of an internal power struggle before elections arrive. This is an insurance policy, drafted by a politician who understands that Turkish courts have repeatedly proven capable of reshaping party leadership through rulings where ballots fail.
CHP falls back into Kilicdaroglu’s hands, Ozel keeps a functioning vehicle of his own, complete with parliamentary representation and a base of loyal deputies. If it does not work, he has lost remarkably little, since the new party can, in theory, be folded back into a friendly CHP once the legal dust settles. It is a move built for optionality rather than conviction, and that pragmatism is precisely what makes it significant. Ozel is betting that having control over a smaller, loyal formation beats having a contested claim over a larger, legally vulnerable one.
The reaction in the press captures the split perfectly, and it is worth dwelling on because it previews how the story will be fought over in the months ahead. Cumhuriyet ran the story as a march toward power, presenting Ozel’s decision as painful but historic – a step taken for the good of the wider democratic camp. The framing was almost heroic, portraying a leader forced by circumstance into a bold act of political self-preservation on behalf of an entire opposition movement.
Sabah took the opposite line, framing the new party as inheriting a corruption problem, naming several founding figures already tied to bribery investigations and describing Ozel’s supporters as having plundered the old CHP headquarters on their way out. The tone there was mocking and accusatory, designed to strip the move of any moral standing before it could gain traction with undecided voters. Two newspapers, two entirely different versions of Türkiye, and neither side is likely to soften its framing in the weeks to come.
An economy running out of room
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Türkiye’s banking sector is heading into a difficult second quarter, with net profits expected to fall by more than 20 percent as inflation expectations stay elevated and tight monetary policy pushes up the cost of financing. For a country that has leaned heavily on its banks to sustain consumer spending and keep growth numbers presentable, that is a signal that the buffer policymakers have relied on for the past several years is thinning when they can least afford it.
More troubling is the currency exposure building up in the real economy. Foreign currency liabilities among Turkish companies hit $392.4 billion in May, the highest level recorded since 2013, while the net foreign currency deficit reached $204.4 billion. Numbers on this scale are not abstract statistics for policymakers to just shrug off. They represent a private sector increasingly vulnerable to any depreciation of the lira, and a government with steadily shrinking room to maneuver on interest rates without triggering the kind of corporate distress these figures already hint at. Companies holding that much foreign currency debt need a stable or strengthening lira simply to service their obligations, which locks the central bank into a defensive posture regardless of what domestic conditions actually call for.
This is the trap facing Turkish economic policy right now. Tightening further to defend the currency risks strangling growth and deepening the sense of stagnation that voters already feel in their daily expenses. Loosening policy to stimulate the economy risks reigniting inflation and putting even more pressure on companies already struggling under record foreign currency exposure. There is no comfortable middle path left – only a series of trade offs that grow less forgiving with each passing quarter. And because Turkish monetary policy rarely operates independently of political considerations, every one of these trade offs eventually becomes a political decision as well, made with an eye on elections rather than purely on economic fundamentals.
Türkiye’s foreign policy is not offering any relief either. Tensions with Israel remain unresolved, friction with Greece over Aegean and maritime issues continues to simmer, and the Cyprus question sits as stubbornly unsettled as it has for decades. Each of these fronts demands attention and resources from Ankara at a moment when the government would prefer to focus inward. None of them are new disputes, which in some ways makes the current moment more dangerous rather than less. Familiar tensions have a way of being taken for granted as innocuous right up until the moment they’re not. Meanwhile, Ankara now finds itself simultaneously managing several long running disputes while its domestic bandwidth is consumed by an economic downturn and a reshaped opposition.
Western media are downplaying the numbers, continually saying a “few thousand.” However, local officials and eyewitnesses are describing the migrant invasion as something substantially more; over 50,000 more. As night fell, the horde of migrants continue to overwhelm the region of Cueta, a region of Spain in North Africa. The invasion force shows no signs of slowing down and the region is entirely overwhelmed. There are 80,000 Spanish residents trying to retain their safety against the arrival of 50,000 invading north-Africans.
(REUTERS) – […] A Guardia Civil spokesperson said earlier migrants were “massively entering from the sea” around the Tarajal breakwater, a border seawall that migrants can swim around and enter Ceuta. The spokesperson could not estimate the number of migrants but said police were overwhelmed. Many local shops were shuttered. Enrique Serrano, who runs a women’s clothing store in central Ceuta, told Reuters business owners were organising self-defence because they believed police resources would be insufficient.
“I’m not opening this afternoon because the situation is extremely tense … The first thing I have to do is protect my business and my family,” he said, adding that when the fence was breached after midnight, hundreds of migrants rushed through in a matter of minutes. Ceuta and Melilla — another Spanish autonomous city located in North Africa — have the European Union’s only land borders with Africa. Both cities periodically experience surges in attempted crossings by migrants seeking to reach Europe.
[…] Spain’s Socialist government stands out in Europe for its pro-migrant stance, and it has recently launched a programme to provide legal status for some 500,000 undocumented migrants, triggering an influx of applications double that number. Right-wing parties criticised the drive, arguing it would attract more migrants to Spain, and were quick to blame Sanchez for allowing the situation in Ceuta to reach crisis proportions
Conservative opposition People’s Party leader Alberto Nuñez Feijoo said in a post on X: “The situation in Ceuta is desperate. The government cannot look the other way… because we are facing a national security crisis.”
Earlier on Thursday, Ceuta Mayor Juan Jesus Vivas had urged the national government to declare an emergency over the mass arrivals. (read more) President Trump tried to warn the Spanish people that socialist President Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón would open the borders and destroy their country. Trump was right! “Fernando Rodríguez Contreras, an official in the government, said the working estimate for the number of people who had crossed was in the tens of thousands, though that figure could not be confirmed.” ~NYT
January, 2026. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez responds to criticism from Elon Musk and others about his immigration policies. Sanchez's government had just decided to grant illegals amnesty.
"Spain is a welcoming country and this is the path we choose."
Spain's far-left PM Pedro Sanchez gave amnesty to 1,000,000+ illegal immigrants, and now hordes of unvetted men are storming across the border from Africa.
It’s the same playbook across the West. These people will destroy our civilization. pic.twitter.com/NcERXfTbPv
Kamala Harris speaks to AOC one day before the 2024 election 
The Jihad for Lunch Bunch Sends Greetings to Infidel America
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic at a joint press conference with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, Belgrade, Serbia, August 8, 2026.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Utah Governor Spencer Cox 
BananaMamdani 
Lodovico Carracci St. Sebastian Thrown into the Cloaca Maxima 
