James Carville Archives - The Automatic Earth

China Produced Fake US Driver’s Licenses to Manufacture Tens of Thousands of Biden Mail-In Votes in 2020

Now we know why they pushed to Vote By Mail and changed election law to allow mass Mail-In Ballots pic.twitter.com/qw08HicmcF
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 17, 2026

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2078098376281686122?s=20

Convoluted. Complicated.

• IRGC Targets US Command Center In Syria In Unprecedented Attack (ZH)

Iran’s large-scale ‘retaliation’ on US bases and Gulf states overnight included a rare first if confirmed. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it conducted a missile or drone attack on an American special operations command center at al-Tanf in Syria on Friday. The action came after the US bombed Iran for a sixth consecutive night, and while Iranian targets have on several occasions reached into Jordan, it is unprecedented that the Iranians take active aim at sites within Syria. The IRGC stated the attack was in retaliation for the killing of Iranian soldiers in Iranshahr, in southern Iran.

While the hit on Syria was reported in Reuters based on state media claims, the alleged Tanf strike hasn’t been independently verified: A Syrian military source told Reuters that Iran carried out an attack near al-Tanf, but it had not hit the base itself. There were no casualties or material damage, the source added. The episode is the first reported attack on Syria since the US-Israeli war on Iran began in late February. And more: “The IRGC statement claimed that a radar system, multiple helicopters, and several US personnel were destroyed in the strike. Reuters reported that it has not yet been able to independently verify these claims.”
While it is unprecedented or at least unusual for US bases in Syria to come under direct attack by Iran, Tanf base has on multiple occasions come under attack from Iran-aligned Iraqi paramilitaries, and other hostile actors both within Syria and Iraq. US troops had long operated out of Tanf to pressure the Assad government as part of the long-running US-backed regime change project. The US primarily trained the Syrian Free Army (FSA) in that remote desert area – which was an umbrella group of various factions, likely among them jihadists, armed and funded by Washington.
But when Assad was finally ousted in December 2024, replaced by an Al-Qaeda group founder (Jolani/Sharaa), this also put Iranian forces in rapid retreat from the country after an over decade-long proxy war. Syria’s new AQ-linked government has been trying to impress its backers by claiming to bust up Iran-Hezbollah axis arms shipments:

🇸🇾🇮🇷🇱🇧 Here's footage of the massive weapons cache that was hidden inside an oil tanker by Iran and bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Until Syria intercepted it along the way.

Inside were hundreds of drones, missiles, and components…

Writer: Michaelpic.twitter.com/4uEykApWFW
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 17, 2026

Iran, alongside Russia, had been a close military supporter of the Syrian army, but the Syrian government’s collapse – along with the weaking of Hezbollah with the recent Israeli assassination of much of its leadership in Lebanon, caused most Russian and Iranian troops into a hasty and forced withdrawal.

“.. nearly 92% of respondents expressing dissatisfaction with the country’s current state.”

We don’t see nearly enough news coming from the inside Iran angle. That makes people speculate. Like “Iran is winning”.

• Leaked Document Exposes Iran’s Regime Now on Brink of Collapse (Ward Clark)

Iran is in the process of having its military teeth kicked in, which is presenting the remains of Iran’s civil government (and its military) with an existential problem. But it’s not the only existential problem facing the seventh-century barbarians running Iran right now. Their population has been growing more and more restive, more and more unhappy about living under the iron sandals of the mullahs. Now we can put some numbers to that discontent, in the form of a leaked survey of the Iranian people. Here’s the interesting bit: The survey was commissioned by the Iranian government.

“A leaked confidential survey by the Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA) has revealed a staggering level of public discontent inside Iran, with nearly 92% of respondents expressing dissatisfaction with the country’s current state. The report, first disclosed by Rouydad24 on November 12, shows an unprecedented collapse in public trust toward the ruling establishment. According to the outlet, the findings go far beyond criticism of Masoud Pezeshkian’s government—they reflect “the public’s broader perception of the ruling system.” The data underscores a growing crisis of legitimacy that has shaken the foundations of the clerical regime.
Over the past year, Iran has been gripped by worsening economic collapse, systematic human rights abuses, brutal crackdowns, and deepening environmental disasters—from severe water shortages and power cuts to record air pollution. Together, these crises have fueled nationwide anger and resentment, leaving the regime more isolated than ever.”

One expert on the region had some thoughts for Fox News Digital: “Miad Maleki, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that the report should prompt a fresh assessment of the potential for political upheaval inside Iran. “If anything, this research understates the depth of Iranians’ rage,” Maleki said. “And that is what makes it remarkable: even a survey prepared for the regime’s own president, by its own pollsters, records anger levels above 63%, well beyond the highest rate Gallup has ever recorded anywhere in the world, alongside 81% struggling to put food on the table and a majority expressing hopelessness.”
All of this begs the question: What can the Iranian people do about this? The answer remains, likely, “not much.” Iran’s government, or what’s left of it, seems determined to go down swinging, and there are indications they are looking to use their Houthi proxies to widen the scope of the war.
Still, the cause of the downtrodden Iranian people isn’t hopeless. Historically, peasant revolts have often succeeded simply because there are so many peasants, and if you have enough farmers with torches and pitchforks, you can overcome even the King’s knights. The Iranian population has one disadvantage, though, and it’s one that those of us who are Second Amendment advocates are continually pointing out, wherever a totalitarian government is in place: The people are disarmed.
But there’s something the United States could do to help with that, and there’s even a historical precedent in World War II. During that conflict, the USA produced around a million examples of what was called the FP-45 Liberator pistol, a cheap, stamped, single-shot .45 ACP derringer. Each one cost about $2 at the time, which would be about $42 in today’s dollars. The notion was that the French Underground (or anyone else) could use one of these to pop a German and take his weapon. In the end, only about 25,000 were dropped, and it’s unclear how many Germans met their end as a result, but the number’s greater than zero.
Maybe the United States should start mass-producing these again and air-dropping them into some Iranian neighborhoods. What downside is there for the USA, after all? If Iran is to see real, substantive change, it will have to be the Iranian people who do it – and this survey sure makes it look like they are ready to rock.

“NBC, ABC, and CNN, chose not to carry what may be the biggest story in a generation..”

• NBC, ABC, and CNN Blacked Out the President’s Speech (Victoria Taft)

President Donald Trump’s speech about how China and other bad actors compromised American elections in 2020 and 2024 might be the biggest speech this side of “a day which will live in infamy.” Unlike the respect accorded to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, however, the news media at NBC, ABC, and CNN decided in advance that President Trump could not be trusted to tell the truth about the Titanic hitting America’s election iceberg. So they refused to give the president the time he requested to tell Americans, in the middle of vacation season, that America’s elections have been screwed up for at least the last two major election cycles.

More’s the pity. For the media, I mean. Because you, NBC, ABC, and CNN, chose not to carry what may be the biggest story in a generation, you just lost Aunt Mary and Uncle John. Have you met my Uncle John and Aunt Mary? John and Mary are no simps. I’ve known my Uncle John for my whole life and my Aunt Mary for most of it, and the thing is, they saw the stories coming out over the last couple of years about election issues, including no voter ID, bums being paid to register to vote (how you doin’, Brenda?), and “China printed how many ballots?” stories this whole time, which were already UNDERreported by the mainstream media. But surely, they thought, Trump’s bringing the receipts. “This is gonna be big!”
And he did bring those receipts… even though Google News pre-fact-checked the president of the United States for the pre-crime of lying.

Google News calls Trump a liar pic.twitter.com/NkfafRdHYe
— Dan Schneider (@Schneider_DC) July 17, 2026

Trump quoted intelligence documents he just declassified that will be available for the proletariat to read on document dump Fri-yay. They were found in an already announced “secret room” full of burn bags containing some of America’s biggest secrets that Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden thought were destroyed. That’s better than the 51 “intelligence professionals” telling us that Hunter Biden’s laptop was fake when it wasn’t, riiight? The president said the documents revealed “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure. This evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes — and really exposes — like levels never thought possible to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference.”
Just for grins, remember with me the government cybersecurity guy from CISA who said the 2020 election was the most “secure” election in American history, or some such poppycock. Yeah, he was — what’s that word? — wrong. Maybe intentionally wrong. President Trump said that, in fact, that line was part of a “cover-up of this colossal security breach [that] is even more disturbing in light of the additional information showing that China engaged in other election related activities to undermine my first administration and our 2020 campaign.” But sure, no biggie, according to the blackout media. These malefactors, including the media, “fought like hell not to have a Donald Trump win, and for good reason.”
Even Aunt Mary and Uncle John knew this was a big freaking deal. The president went on to verify that, “U.S. spy agencies began learning about the compromise of voter registration files in 2020, when they discovered that tens of millions of voters’ data in 18 states had been bought, stolen, or hacked by China” but they didn’t tell the American people or Donald Trump. mIn fact, the president told the American people that this information about foreign breaching of American elections was intentionally kept from him and censored from his President’s Daily Brief (PDB). That used to mean something to the George-Bush-is-Hitler American left, but how far we’ve come.
Uncle John won’t forget. Indeed, the military veteran heard the president say “those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden. They did not disclose to me as president or to anyone else, and to the best of our knowledge, they did not inform Congress.” And he thought, “Whose side are these spooks on, anyway? Uncle John and Aunt Mary missed the part about the CIA being in charge of U.S. elections. Is 278,000 voters illegally voting in key congressional districts not a big deal or something?

WATCH: President Trump denounces 278K non-citizens have illegally voted in elections per DHS. "This is worse than any Third World country." pic.twitter.com/HyQyMQ3gge
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) July 17, 2026

Mary and John really exist. And they are legion. Bad move, TV “news” elitists.

“They’re censoring the President of the United States. Somehow, I don’t recall them ever doing such a thing when Joe Biden occupied the White House and would tell a boatload of falsehoods.”

• CNN Tells on Itself, Reveals Why It Didn’t Air Trump’s Speech Live (Arama)

As we reported, President Donald Trump gave an important prime-time speech on Thursday evening that focused on the vulnerabilities in our election system and revealed newly declassified information, which he said showed how China had acquired U.S. voter files. Now you might think that this would be something the media would want to cover, given how much time they spent on the fake Russia collusion hoax. But as we reported, major liberal media outlets like ABC, NBC, and MS NOW passed on the president’s prime-time address, even though such speeches are routinely televised in full. But in some ways, CNN was the worst, revealing more than it probably intended when it explained why it didn’t air the speech.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2078098376281686122?s=20

“Some network executives felt it would be dangerous to just air Trump’s speech live, in full, unedited without knowing what he was going to say ahead of time. That’s where we are in America.” Why is it dangerous? Why can’t they allow you to judge what he says on its own merit? “Trump’s election lies led to violence,” Stelter said. Even this is misleading, since Trump never incited violence, told people to act peacefully, and when they didn’t, encouraged people to stop on Jan. 6. It apparently wasn’t “dangerous” to falsely report on Russia collusion or any of the slew of other false reports CNN and other media have made about Trump, which greatly divided the country and still has people believing lies for years.
What they’re telling you is that you’re only entitled to hear it through their filter and the way they report it. You can’t hear it without the spin from them. It’s apparently “dangerous” if you are allowed to come to your own conclusions about what is said. Why didn’t they want you to hear the details about vulnerabilities? Then they say it’s not a “plot” — as they all decide to shut you off from it. They’re censoring the President of the United States. Somehow, I don’t recall them ever doing such a thing when Joe Biden occupied the White House and would tell a boatload of falsehoods.
“That’s where we are in America,” Brian Stelter warned. Yes, that is very troubling — just not for any of the reasons he thinks.
‘Dangerous to air it live, unedited’ means dangerous to let people hear it without someone telling them what to think first. That’s the whole confession right there. https://t.co/GKPbjyqwAe
— Jewels Jones ® (@JewelsJonesLive) July 17, 2026

“I think the mistake was made by the networks not to show it in its entirety, so people could see him in full and understand just how far this man has gone down the road,”

• James Carville Blasts Major News Networks For Not Carrying Trump Speech (JTN)

Democratic strategist James Carville criticized several major news outlets Friday for not airing President Donald Trump’s primetime speech on Thursday, stating they missed an opportunity to show the president acting “loonier than a tune.”mThe strategist was referring to the president’s speech, in which he presented new evidence detailing multiple security breaches in elections he said were concealed by a self-proclaimed “shadow government” and the Biden administration. Mainstream media networks, ABC, CNN and NBC, all declined to show the speech on its news programs and opted to stream it online and show clips of it with commentary during their regular live programming. “I think the president of the United States acting loonier than a tune is newsworthy,” Carville told CNN host Wolf Blitzer. “I don’t think we should have hidden that from the American people.” Blitzer questioned whether Carville believed that the president should have received even more publicity, to which Carville confirmed. “I think the mistake was made by the networks not to show it in its entirety, so people could see him in full and understand just how far this man has gone down the road,” he said. “I would say there was nothing normal about [the speech],” he continued. “You can do it with clips, and you can get people on, but there’s nothing like people sitting there, watching the whole thing to tell them what’s really going on.” The comment comes after Trump called for ABC and NBC to have their broadcasting licenses revoked over their refusal to air the full speech, claiming they were covering up what he said was election fraud. “In a rare move, NBC and ABC fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech,” Trump said. “They knew what it was about. Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.”

“. . . the Democrat Party. . . are morally bankrupt nincompoops who have been beaten by the establishment like the rented mules they are. “ —Kurt Schlichter on X

• Acceleration (James Howard Kunstler)

Strange to relate, in last night’s speech to the nation on election chicanery, President Trump managed to both overwhelm and underwhelm public expectation. He touched on voting machine shenanigans, registration skullduggery, cyber-fuckery, labor union toolery, ballot fraud, and especially China meddling.

Internal CIA / FBI docs at the time said that China’s policy around the 2020 US election was to “leverage all domestic and foreign elements” opposed to the President to prevent his re-election. The Intel bunch never sent that memo to the White House. They were too busy pushing fake Russia meddling, fake impeachment, and a fake Covid-19 pandemic. Then they declared the 2020 was “the most secure election in history.” As of yesterday, the President de-classified many thousands of Intel agency documents for the public (and news media) to peruse. And naturally, the major cable news networks (except Fox) declined to broadcast the speech. As of Friday morning, The New York Times leads the offensive to disparage the actual news.

He’s Obsessed, that Trump! The actual news: China hacked over 220-million voter registrations, plus social security files; manufactured and shipped tens of thousands of fake US driver’s licenses to be used in motor-voter states; and paid favored US journalists to write negative articles about Mr. Trump. The Department of Homeland Security reported 278,000 non-citizens were registered to vote in federal elections. But that number was compiled only from states that complied with DOJ demands for voter rolls. California, New York, and Illinois and many other states refused, so the number is probably more than double the DHS figure.
The big take-away was that US Intel agencies withheld all this intel from the President of the US, Mr. Trump, in the lead-up to the 2020 vote. Yes, there really is Deep State, as seen starkly in a now-declassified memo from the then-chief of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, one Nikki Floris, who wrote “I’m basically running a shadow government at this point” by hiding information from POTUS. Ms. Floris is now employed as Microsoft’s Director of Insider Risk (former Deputy Attorney General under “Joe Biden,” Lisa Monaco, is President of Microsoft Global Affairs.)
According to the NY Post’s Miranda Devine, in August 2020, Nikki Floris also tried to hoodwink Senators Chuck Grassley and Rob Johnson, telling them the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian op — a gag later ratified by fifty-one former intel officers (including five former CIA Directors) who signed the notorious October letter to the news media. All of this activity, Mr. Trump averred, amounted to a cover-up of a conspiracy by members of the permanent bureaucracy to overthrow the government. And that is exactly why more than one federal grand jury is convened in Fort Pierce, Florida, right now, to sort out who, exactly, is going to account for these rather grave crimes. The new document release is apt to accelerate the work of US Attorneys there, since declassification is the biggest routine holdup in the process.
On the “underwhelming” side of the president’s speech, there was little mention of the swing-state ballot fraud enabled and conducted by local election officials in Fulton County, Georgia, Maricopa County, Arizona, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Antrim County, Michigan, Mesa County, Colorado, and Philadelphia, PA. But you know that the FBI raided Fulton County election headquarters months ago and seized around 700 boxes of evidence, and then reassigned 260 FBI agents to examine all the material. All that might still be to-come.
Then there is the question of the millions of dollars that Hunter Biden winkled out of China over the years before the 2020 election — records of which were stuffed in his infamous laptop, along with photos and video of his sexual exploits there — and whether Hunter’s father, Joe, was a blackmail captive of China leading up to that election. Stay tuned on that.
Altogether, Mr. Trump’s speech and document drops are obviously an effort to move election reform, the Save America Act, through Congress, where it has languished in a procedural miasma for months due to one man: Senate Majority Leader John Thune. The President’s emphasis last night on China’s election meddling is purposeful in ways not broadly apprehended, but I will tell you:
If Congress does not find a way to vote that bill out to Mr. Trump’s desk before they recess for the rest of the summer in late July, Mr. Trump will invoke an executive order under the National Emergencies Act (NEA) — Public Law 94-412; codified at 50 U.S.C. §§ 1601–1651 — requiring the fifty states to employ all the same provisions that are in the SAVE America Act for the 2026 midterm elections. Under the NEA, the federal courts cannot be used to fight or strike down the executive order; it can only be stopped by a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate.

You can’t have anyone but Americans judge … Americans. It makes no sense. Should Americans be judged under Chinese law?

• Why Washington Is Challenging The International Criminal Court (ET)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent announcement of a “whole-of-government” campaign to challenge the International Criminal Court (ICC) has generated predictable discourse worldwide.

The Trump administration is applying diplomatic pressure on allied governments to reconsider their support for the Court. Washington is calling for expanded sanctions against ICC officials, visa restrictions, and renewed insistence that the Court has no lawful authority over citizens of sovereign nations. For the usual globalist critics, this is just another example of Trumpian unilateralism. But for sensible Americans, it reflects the president’s determination to place “America First” ahead of international institutions.
In fact, the issue deserves thoughtful examination that goes beyond ideological rhetoric. At its heart lies one of the oldest questions in constitutional government: Who has the ultimate authority to judge the citizens of a sovereign nation—its own national institutions, or an international tribunal whose judges are beyond the reach of that nation’s electorate? The answer explains why every American administration since the ICC’s creation has refused to recognize the Court’s jurisdiction over American servicemen and government officials.
The International Criminal Court was established under the Rome Statute in 1998 and formally began operations in 2002. It was created with an admirable purpose: to prosecute individuals responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and, more recently, the crime of aggression when national courts either cannot or will not act. The horrors of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia convinced many that the “international order” needed a permanent institution capable of bringing the world’s worst criminals to justice. Few people disputed that objective.
American governments have supported the prosecution of genuine war criminals. What Washington has never accepted is the proposition that an international court may exercise criminal jurisdiction over American citizens without the United States’ consent.
Global Overreach
Bill Clinton authorized the signing of the Rome Statute during the final days of his administration, but he deliberately declined to submit it to the Senate for ratification, acknowledging significant constitutional concerns. George W. Bush later informed the United Nations that the United States did not intend to become a party to the treaty. Congress reinforced that position through the American Service-Members’ Protection Act of 2002, declaring that American military personnel should never be surrendered to the ICC without U.S. consent.
Subsequent administrations differed in tone but not in principle. Barack Obama cooperated with the Court in certain cases involving foreign atrocities while continuing to reject its jurisdiction over Americans. Joe Biden lifted some sanctions imposed during Donald Trump’s first term but tacitly maintained that the ICC possessed no lawful authority over U.S. personnel. The American constitutional objection has remained remarkably consistent across the partisan divide. The present controversy over the court’s power arose from the ICC’s contention that if an alleged offense occurs within the territory of a country that has ratified the Rome Statute, the Court may prosecute even citizens of countries that have never accepted its jurisdiction.
The Court’s reasoning formed the basis for investigations involving American personnel in Afghanistan and has also underpinned recent proceedings involving Israeli leaders. Sovereign nations are right to see this as global overreach. History offers good reasons for American concern. International organizations, such as the United Nations, are not immune from politicization. Their legitimacy depends not only upon noble aspirations but also upon public confidence that they exercise their authority impartially and within clearly defined legal limits.
Whenever global institutions expand their jurisdiction beyond what states originally contemplated, they inevitably invite resistance. This concern echoes an argument made 50 years ago by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In his influential 1975 book “A Dangerous Place” and in articles and speeches during his tenure as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Moynihan argued that the United States had entered an era of permanent “opposition” within international institutions.
He believed that organizations originally established to foster cooperation had increasingly become grievance forums for a multinational majority of former European colonies that were determined to disparage the United States and its longstanding allies. Moynihan did not reject international cooperation; quite the opposite. He believed that international institutions were valuable—but only when they respected truth, legal restraint, and the sovereign equality of nations. When those institutions exceeded their proper authority or became instruments of political activism, he believed democratic governments had both the right and the obligation to resist.
Half a century later, Moynihan’s warning is remarkably relevant. The present dispute is not just about whether war crimes should be prosecuted. Every civilized nation supports bringing genuine perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity to justice.The real question is whether or not an international court has an independent right to define the limits of its own authority. American constitutional tradition holds that treaties bind only those nations that freely consent to them. The Senate never ratified the Rome Statute. Consequently, successive administrations have maintained that no international body can acquire criminal jurisdiction over Americans through the unilateral decisions of other governments.
This is not merely a legal technicality. It goes to the heart of democratic accountability. American judges answer to constitutional procedures established by the American people. Congress writes the laws. Presidents appoint judges under constitutional safeguards. Elections provide ultimate political accountability. The judges of the International Criminal Court answer to no American electorate. American citizens cannot vote them out of office, alter their mandate, or amend the Rome Statute under which they operate. This exempts the Court from democratic accountability and permits it to exercise extraordinary powers over individuals who never consented to its authority. Within this order of things, Americans are as inclined to trust the impartiality of international judges as they are to trust the neutrality of international soccer referees.

ICE agents have become very careful. But they do have a job to do.

• Why ICE Shootings Are Usually Justified (ZH)

It has been noted by many deportation advocates that the enforcement of basic immigration laws has always been a responsibility of government. It’s not a new, unique, bizarre or despotic policy – It’s simply common sense. However, in the past decade, the common sense enforcement of the law is being treated like a humanitarian crisis akin to slavery, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Why?

It’s not because the general public sees it that way. The citizenry did not suddenly change their views on mass immigration overnight. Most Americans are not particularly enthusiastic about “multiculturalism” or ethnic replacement and they never have been. The big change was the focus of the progressive spin machine. The multiculturalists turned up the heat on their propaganda from moderate to full-blown “we are the world” cult insanity, and they did this in the span of a few years. In other words, the pro-mass immigration movement is not a real movement; it’s astroturf largely created by an army of non-profit organizations with wealthy globalist backers.

Without these NGOs, “anti-ICE” protests and disruption groups would not exist. These people get compensated for the things they do. That’s how they’re able to spend most of their day tracking ICE agents without losing their jobs – because provocation is their job. You may have heard of the recent ICE related shooting in Maine this past week, in which a confrontation between agents and an illegal migrant from Columbia led to a deadly outcome. Maine activists took to the streets to protest the fatal shooting of the illegal by an ICE officer in Biddeford.
What they don’t mention is that 26-year-old Joan Guerrero reportedly attempted to run the agent over with his van and that’s why he was shot. DHS almost put a hold on traffic stops by ICE in response to the event, but Trump immediately brought the hammer down on that decision and traffic stops will continue unabated. Any capitulation, any sign of weakness in the face of left-wing disruption, only emboldens them further.
There is no training that can be conducted that will make ICE agents safer from migrants and leftists trying to kill them. Deadly force is the only response that makes a difference. The establishment media has tried desperately to make Guerrero into a martyr, much like they did with Renee Good and Alex Pretti, but with little success. The reason should be obvious and predictable: Americans are fed up with far-left activism and illegal immigration, and they’re tired of the disinformation surrounding these incidents.
Almost no one talks about Renee Good or Alex Pretti because the narratives around their deaths were debunked. When video footage was released showing Good attempting to run over an ICE agent and Pretti (armed with a pistol) attacking an ICE agent in the middle of an arrest, the outrage fizzled and the public realized they were being played. At bottom, the NGO’s want these shootings. They want the chaos and they want to sacrifice low-IQ activists to create martyrdom scenarios. Watch these groups in their post-killing demonstrations; they look almost happy or giddy. They believe that with each tragic sacrifice they are getting closer to a popular consensus against deportations.
Evidence suggests they are mistaken. The majority of Americans in polling still widely support deportations and strict controls on the southern border. What the NGOs didn’t take into consideration was the factor of fatigue. The American populace is tired. The public is growing increasingly acclimated to the idea that when activists and illegal migrants engage in violent encounters with ICE, those people are likely to be killed in the process.
It seems like common sense, but the past decade of propaganda has conditioned many Americans to the idea that immigration enforcement is supposed to be soft and unseen. This is naive. The truth is, most incidents would not have occurred if it weren’t for leftist disruption teams, and the public is starting to figure this out. They are also starting to figure out that much of the hysteria around deportations has been conjured from thin air by left-wing news outlets.
The goal is organized insanity – An engineered atmosphere of chaos. It is the attempt to overwhelm the brains of the citizenry and train them to associate all immigration enforcement with constant tension and random violence. They hope that the public will eventually beg for it all to stop, even if it means keeping borders open. But, as noted, there’s another potential outcome; the public stops caring completely. When activists and migrants engage in organized insanity and get killed, no one flinches. That’s what is happening today. Ultimately, the solution to ICE related deaths is simple: Just don’t interfere with or attack ICE agents.

“As their wealthy neighbors depart, those remaining will have to make up for their loss. Being among the last to leave New York will be a costly distinction.”

• New York Losing Billions as Millionaires Flee the Big Apple (Turley)

Below is my column in the New York Post on the sharp decline in millionaires in New York, costing the state billions as many flee. As Mayor Mamdani holds another press conference promising to end the “violence of evictions,” businesses are reading the writing on the wall. Rather than work to make the state more attractive to wealthy residents and businesses, Democrats are seeking to diminish the appeal of two-tax states. They want to tap into a long-barred area of taxation: the wealth rather than just the income of citizens. By passing a national wealth tax, Democrats will reduce the benefit of fleeing high-tax states like California and New York. Here is the column:

“Start spreadin’ the news, I’m leavin’ today” — that’s how the famous song “New York, New York” captures the Big Apple’s draw. Today, the line is becoming more ironic than iconic: Many people are indeed leaving … from New York, New York. Worse yet, those “vagabond shoes” that “are longing to stray” are on the feet of the wealthiest New Yorkers. And as they flee, according to a new study, they’re taking away billions in badly needed tax revenue. As Mayor Zohran Mamdani and others pledge massive social programs and free services by taxing the wealthy, the wealthy are just melting away.
The reason is simple: if “you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.” In today’s economy, it’s no longer necessary or even particularly beneficial to be in New York to make money in financial and other areas. When any business meeting is a screen and a click away, you can go to a low-tax state like Florida or Texas and do as well as you can in the Big Apple. Not surprisingly, many are choosing the money over the mystique and the madness. This week the Citizens Budget Commission reported that New York’s share of millionaires fell from 12.7% in 2010 to 8.7% in 2022 — the largest drop of any state.
The exodus of wealthy citizens left New York short $10.7 billion in tax revenue. By denouncing the remaining wealthy as effectively freeloaders who are “not paying their fair share,” Mamdani is only spurring them on.It’s a demonstrably false claim that I discuss in my book Rage and the Republic — and part of a growing class-warfare theme the left is deliberately using to fuel political rage. Yet it’s easy to form a mob — and far more difficult to control it. That is particularly the case when your economic policies destroy your economy, and your ability to pay for all the free services that you’ve promised.
There’s a good-faith debate to be had over optimal tax levels, but the fact is that the top 10% of Americans pay more in taxes than the other 90% of the country. The top 1% pays roughly 40% of federal taxes. As rational actors flee the state, Mamdani and New York Democrats are forced to cull the shrinking herd of high-end taxpayers who remain, layering on special fees like a pied-à-terre tax to be imposed on NYC’s luxury property owners. And rather than change course to make New York a more attractive place to do business and live, national Democrats are moving to make other states no better — by nationalizing wealth taxes and by taxing fleeing citizens as if they still lived in the state.
Many are following Sen. Bernie Sanders’ and Rep. Ro Khanna’s call to impose a federal wealth tax they’ve dubbed the Billionaire Tax. The idea is to stem the exodus from California and New York by giving the highest earners no place to go . . . except out of the country. That’s the option many took when similar wealth taxes were attempted in countries like France, only to be rescinded after doing massive economic damage. Fleecing the wealthy is a revenue loser. New York is losing billions, and California has reportedly lost trillions due to top taxpayers’ departure.
Unwilling to adopt greater fiscal restraints and truly compete for businesses and residents, Democrats are looking for pockets of new areas to tax. The wealth tax is a virtual bonanza of untapped revenue — if it can make it through the courts. Our Constitution was amended in 1913 to allow for an income tax, not a wealth tax. Once you pay taxes on what you earn, you’re supposed to be able to use your hard-earned money to buy whatever you wish, from bikes to boats. Democrats now want to tax those possessions: “your Rembrandts, your stock portfolio, your diamonds and your yachts,” as Sen. Elizabeth Warren once dramatically warned. And Khanna recently confirmed what some of us have been saying for years: The Billionaire Tax isn’t only for billionaires.
“The tax should not stop at billionaires,” he said in a pitch to his party’s rising socialist movement; “it must reach centimillionaires. The tax has to reach all fortunes $50 million and up.” Khanna and others hope that, once taken nationally, a wealth tax would destroy the benefit of moving to low-tax states — and open up literally trillions in new potential revenue. In the meantime, New York will continue to burn billions as it taps its dwindling number of millionaires. As their wealthy neighbors depart, those remaining will have to make up for their loss. Being among the last to leave New York will be a costly distinction. They will indeed “wake up” — and find that they’re “king of the hill, top of the list” for wealth redistribution.

A portable energy company. That’s rare. And precious.

“New APR Energy owns and maintains a fleet of gas turbines with more than 1 gigawatt of power generation capacity ..”

• Musk Buys Florida-Based Energy Company (ET)

Elon Musk has acquired a power company based in Jacksonville, Fla., paying $1 billion for the mobile gas-turbine provider as a possible solution to data center energy needs. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lists Musk as the acquiring party, with New APR Energy, LLC listed as the acquired entity. Neither party issued public statements on the deal that closed May 14. Local business news outlet Jacksonville Daily Record first reported on the news in June before it gained national media attention in recent days. The potential cost of the deal was found in a separate filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in which Technologies Group reported selling its 5 percent non-voting stake in New APR Energy in a May 28 SEC report.

Duos said its sale generated $50.4 million in net proceeds, which implies the Musk deal was worth at least $1 billion. Musk continues to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) development with the research company he founded, xAI, and its chatbot Grok. His xAI company runs the Colossus data center in Tennessee, a $20 billion facility near a power plant site, where he has had to rent turbine units as he waits for grid power to the site. New APR Energy owns and maintains a fleet of gas turbines with more than 1 gigawatt of power generation capacity, according to a statement from the company in January, when it expanded capacity.
The company has been delivering power to clients for more than 20 years, deploying its fleets “in as little as 30 to 90 days,” the statement said. Musk’s purchase of the Florida company represents his second investment in the energy sector. In 2006, Musk helped fund SolarCity, a company founded by his cousins, Peter and Lyndon Rive, which grew to be the largest residential solar installer in the United States. Tesla bought SolarCity in an all-stock deal worth about $2.6 billion in 2016 and turned it into Tesla Energy. Tech expert and podcaster Aakash Gupta said Musk’s latest transaction exposed the AI industry’s current problems.
“What [Musk] bought tells you where the real bottleneck in AI is,” Gupta said in a July 16 post on X. New APR Energy operates a fleet of mobile gas and diesel turbines with over 1 gigawatt of generation capacity—enough to power 750,000 homes at once. The fleet, which was built for disaster response, arrives on trucks and can be delivered, installed, and commissioned in a month. The fast set-up time makes sense for Musk, who has already lived through delays with xAI’s first Memphis plant, Gupta said.
“Environmental groups sued. The [Justice Department] intervened to keep the turbines running. He was renting the most important input to his most important company,” Gupta said. “So he bought the landlord. … Every AI lab can buy the same chips. Only one of them now owns a power plant fleet that ships by truck.”

Russia has guardrails. Also financially.

• Oligarchs Just Snuck HOW MUCH Money Out of Russia? (Stephen Green)

Russia has a money problem, and while it isn’t unusual — the Kremlin wants to spend more than it takes in — increasing wartime pressures have the country’s richest moving their riches out of the country. Three hundred billion dollars worth of riches just in the first half of 2026, according to a report today from Bloomberg News. “Several billionaires moved some additional assets out of Russia recently, amid concerns about the banking sector, according to some of the people and documents including corporate filings and property purchase records” that were seen and reviewed by Bloomberg. Paywalled link, sorry.

For a little perspective, the entire Moscow Exchange had a total market cap of a little less than $300 billion in October 2021, before the war. So it’s a bit like the entire pre-war MOEX just got up and left the country. Perhaps more telling is that this year’s capital flight reverses a trend that began in 2022 with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian billionaires used to be welcome sights in the West, with their “reputations for major business deals, glamorous property purchases, and lavish parties.” When sanctions hit, they “forced many Russian tycoons to move assets back to Russia and re-register their companies there.” The Kremlin enjoyed a sugar rush of capital inflows.
The problem with sugar rushes isn’t just that they wear off — it’s that they can leave you with a nasty headache. Former Ukrainian official Anton Gerashchenko reported earlier this week that “The fuel crisis in Russia has long ceased to be a problem solely for drivers and farmers,” and is now “gradually becoming a problem for the state budget.” According to Gerashchenko, Russian authorities originally projected that the deficit in 2026 would amount to 3.8 trillion rubles ($49 billion), or 1.6% of GDP. “However, in the first half of the year alone, it reached 5.731 trillion rubles ( $74 billion) (2.5% of GDP).” In the first half of the year, the Kremlin’s budget deficit was already 50% higher than the full-year projection.
“Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries played a significant role in this.” Despite sanctions, Moscow currently sells record amounts of crude oil, but that’s nothing to brag about. Russia sells crude because the country isn’t producing enough refined products for export. It’s the equivalent of the Amish selling low-margin lumber because they forgot how to make furniture. Moscow has raised taxes left and right, including a 10% hike in the VAT to 22% from 20%, expanding the tax rolls, and higher excise taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and sodas. But it isn’t nearly enough.
“Last year,” Mario Seminerio reported, “the Russian judiciary carried out seizures and confiscations worth more than $50 billion” to try and fill the growing gap between the Kremlin’s increasing wartime needs and shrinking revenues. Now, Putin’s judiciary is going after higher-profile targets, including the Rusal Group for alleged “failure to comply with a warning regarding an aluminum price adjustment.” Here’s the catch. Rusal Group is run by Oleg Deripaska, who is sometimes referred to as “Putin’s favorite oligarch.” If the Kremlin is putting the squeeze even on Deripaska, then likely nobody is safe.

Is the US Senate like the Roman Senate?

• The Trump Caesarship (Paul Craig Roberts)

Zionist agenda of Greater Israel–from the Nile to Pakistan. The millions of displaced persons from Washington’s 21st century wars for Greater Israel resulting in the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Palestine are changing the politics of Europe and America where these displaced persons have taken root and are entering politics and media.

Yesterday on July 16, the Washington Post reported that more than 100 House Democrats voted to cut off military aid to Israel for fiscal year 2027. That would mean a lack of US dollars for Israel to use to repurchase, as it annually does, the US Government with political campaign donations by which Israel uses our money to buy our government. The vote indicates that Israel’s rule of the United States is running into difficulties. The pressure is on the Israel-worshipping Republicans, bought and paid for with AIPAC political campaign contributions provided by Washington’s annual payments to Israel, to pass AIPAC’s bill that criminalizes any criticism of Israel, including the implied criticism of non-support of Israel.
The Israel Lobby is desperate to create law that would lead to the arrest of Democrat elected officials who do not support Israel’s agendas and crimes. The Republicans have shown their determination to sacrifice American interests, money, lives, and the First Amendment for Israel. By renewing at Netanyahu’s insistence Washington’s war against opponents to Great Israel–principally Iran and the southern Lebanon militia Hezbollah, Trump is further endangering his administration. For example, when was the last time you saw anyone wearing a MAGA hat?
For years I have pointed out, to no avail, that the failure of American democracy was turning the head of the executive branch into a Caesar, as happened in Rome. When democracy fails, as the American one has, a Caesar becomes necessary. Trump is already adopting the posture of a Caesar. Rome under the Caesars had their portraits on the coinage. Trump has adopted this sign of Caesarship. The US Mint is to produce a one dollar coin with Trump’s image.
The Roman Caesars ruled by force, by violence, and this is Trump’s approach. In his latest outburst, Trump claimed that everything in Iran, not just the oil, belongs to America. He has annexed Venezuela’s oil and government. He claims Greenland which is part of Denmark a US and NATO ally. He claims Cuba, and perhaps Canada and Mexico. For a person of my generation, which is rapidly dying out, these are incomprehensible claims. This is nothing we have ever previously seen. And the youth know no better. It is what they are born into. To them it is normal. As the rising generations see this as normal, what is there to stop it?

From Corruption “R” Us.

• Ukrainian Parliament Picks New PM Linked To ‘Zelensky’s Wallet’ Mindich (RT)

Ukraine’s parliament on Thursday approved former Naftogaz CEO Sergey Koretsky as prime minister. Koretsky has been linked to disgraced businessman Timur Mindich, a close associate of Vladimir Zelensky who fled to Israel amid a major corruption scandal. Koretsky’s appointment comes as Zelensky presses ahead with a sweeping government reshuffle less than a year after the previous overhaul, while Ukrainian forces face mounting battlefield pressure and authorities continue to grapple with large-scale corruption in the energy sector.

The investigation centers on an alleged $100 million embezzlement scheme involving state nuclear operator Energoatom. Western-backed anti-corruption agencies have tied the affair to Mindich, who has long been regarded as one of Zelensky’s closest associates and dubbed “Zelensky’s wallet” by Ukrainian media. Koretsky was “100% Mindich’s man,” Ukrainian lawmaker Aleksey Goncharenko claimed last August, citing the so-called ‘Mindich tapes’ – leaked surveillance recordings from the corruption investigation published by the media.
According to Goncharenko, Koretsky was placed in charge of Ukrnaftoburinnya, a private energy company previously owned by Zelensky’s former patron, oligarch Igor Kolomoysky, after it was seized by the state. “The idea: to take control of cash flows, withdraw billions, and install your own people. This plan was discussed and implemented right in Mindich’s apartment. Everything is recorded on the tapes,” Goncharenko said. “The main executor is Sergey Koretsky,” the lawmaker added, alleging that the executive coordinated all key decisions with Mindich and, by extension, with Zelensky.
The Energoatom affair has deepened tensions between Zelensky’s administration and the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). The scandal also led to the departure of Zelensky’s influential chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, often described by Ukrainian media as the country’s “gray cardinal.” In May, NABU and SAPO named Yermak as a suspect in a separate money laundering investigation.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2078135747639427504?s=20

Elon Musk just told the world his plan to own the one thing every AI on Earth depends on.

The silicon.

The entire AI industry is fighting over the same layer. Models. Parameters. Data. Benchmarks.

All of it runs on chips none of them produce.

Every frontier lab on the planet… pic.twitter.com/hMeuysjkmz
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) July 16, 2026

Elon Musk is building a training cluster/ supercomputer so vast it’s visible from space.

Colossus, in Memphis, Tennessee, is more than an AI experiment. It’s a statement of intent. A million GPUs wired together by the end of this year. A $40 to $60 billion physical bet that… pic.twitter.com/5761rIGF9n
— Nina Schick (@NinaDSchick) July 16, 2026

https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2077933422627172373?s=20

JOHN SOLOMON: If Iran hacking just 100,000 voter files was election interference, and China stealing 40 million British voter files was a national crisis, why isn’t China stealing and compromising 220 million American voter files the biggest election scandal in America?

The only… pic.twitter.com/O3sm3U2GcR
— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) July 17, 2026

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Debt Rattle April 18 2026

Apr 182026

April 18, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:52 am Finance Tagged with: AfD, Hunter Biden, James Carville, John Rubino, Orban, Sergey Shoigu, showdown, Tucker Carlson, Vladimir Palko 68 Responses »

Piet Mondriaan Still Life with Gingerpot I 1911/12

• Trump Is Turning Iran Into An Anti-Globalist Superpower (Rachel Marsden)

• Blockade Successful – Deal Reached – Strait Open – Oil Prices Plummet (CTH)

• Re-enter Death Spiral When Iran War Stops – John Rubino (USAW)

• With Strait Open, Kier Starmer Makes Effort to Remain Relevant (CTH)

• Miami Prosecutor Moved from Brennan Conspiracy Investigation (CTH)

• Judiciary Chair Confirms House Moving To Expunge Trump Impeachment (JTN)

• Showdown (James Howard Kunstler)

• EU Spied On Orban For Years – Former Slovak Minister (RT)

• Russian Security Chief Issues Warning To Four NATO States (RT)

• Does Trump Know Something We Don’t About Potential SCOTUS Vacancies? (Margolis)

• Tucker Carlson’s ‘Did He Really Say That?’ Era Is in Full Swing Now (Spencer)

• Germany: Anti-Immigration AfD Party Jumps To 27%, 4 Points Ahead of CDU (RMX)

• “F**k It…Just Do It”: Carville’s Plan to Add States and Pack the Court (Turley)

• “Mr. Biden Lives Abroad”: Hunter Leaves Country (Turley)

https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/2044957624215724224?s=20

"So it all starts to tie together and show this, this real distinct bias they had against President Trump and how they tried to undermine his entire first term" @Jim_Jordan explains how newly revealed impeachment memos show the clear bias of 2019 Ukraine accuser pic.twitter.com/4xCcevLMGZ
— Just the News (@JustTheNews) April 16, 2026

BOMBSHELL EXPOSÉ: Twenty CIA and FBI agents confirmed that Barack Obama and a former CIA director fabricated the Russia Hoax, which was then 'locked away in a CIA vault for almost a decade,' to brainwash voters and discredit Trump's election by manipulating intelligence. pic.twitter.com/F6gPpVgQ9U
— FAN TRUMP ARMY (@TRUMP_ARMY_) April 16, 2026

John Solomon Just Blew My Mind with His Prediction About Deep State Accountability

Solomon says President Trump is about to begin declassifying documents at lightning speed in an operation he is calling “Hypersonic Clarity."

He believes this massive document dump could pave… pic.twitter.com/oABYOmDTPR
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 16, 2026

John Solomon Reveals New John Brennan and James Comey Indictments Could Be Coming VERY Soon

Brennan is accused of lying to Congress in 2023 testimony about the CIA's use of the discredited Steele dossier in intelligence assessments of Russian interference in the 2016 election.… pic.twitter.com/x0iMyKz91Y
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 16, 2026

Hillary Clinton is cooked if the emails and videos from the Weiner laptop are fully released. This will burn the entire corrupt system down and everyone in it. Those emails contained:

– Child trafficking and abuse
– Money laundering
– Epstein ties
– Weiner's "Insurance policy"… pic.twitter.com/9X2u1kSbcu
— The SCIF (@TheSCIF) April 17, 2026

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2044812878192992698?s=20

The notion of Iranian strength persists. Why? The US will never accept the mullahs with nukes, and US/Israel want Iran to stop stoking up Hezbollah etc. They won’t give up until they have what they want.

• Trump Is Turning Iran Into An Anti-Globalist Superpower (Rachel Marsden)

If Team Trump has dragged itself to the negotiating table with Iran, it’s not because the U.S. is winning this war. One side of these talks features top Iranian brass. The other, two real estate agents (Steve Witkoff and Jared “Gaza Riviera” Kushner), Vice President JD Vance who’s fresh off complaining about meddling in Hungarian elections while over there doing some himself, and a top Pentagon official sufficiently problematic to have escaped recent firings by a war secretary who keeps evoking Holy War.

To even get to the table, Iran demanded a release of billions of U.S.-held funds under sanctions, and for Israel to stop bombing Lebanon under its usual pretext of striking terrorists, who routinely just always happen to be hanging out on land that it’s long wanted to expand into. We’re a long way from Trump’s longstanding whining about how Obama “gave” Iran $6 billion of its own money back that had, in fact, been held under U.S. sanctions in American banks.
“Obama gave them $1.7 billion in cash – green, green cash, took it out of banks from Virginia, DC and Maryland, all the cash they had, flew it by airplanes in an attempt to buy their respect and loyalty but it didn’t work. They laughed at our president,” Trump said in a primetime address earlier this month. Guess they’re laughing even harder now. Not only have any longstanding U.S.-Israeli objectives for Iran been frustrated, but they’ve virtually evaporated. First, there’s everything that Iran has maintained. It still has its enriched uranium, despite what Iran qualified as a failed Pentagon operation to take it while pretending to stage a personnel rescue.
But now it enjoys the added bonus of not being under any official obligation to abide by inspections either, since Trump unilaterally ripped that treaty up.] It’s also under no compulsion to open the Strait of Hormuz and let through oil tankers that fuel the world. A problem that didn’t actually exist until Trump unilaterally created it. But since the opportunity presented for Iran to close it under the pretext that missiles were flying around overhead, why wouldn’t they seize that leverage?
Now, the strait sits at the center of negotiations between the two sides. Not only has the U.S. lacked any leverage to compel Iran to open Hormuz, but they’ll also have to find some additional consideration to get Iran to give up the tolls that it recently imposed on ships passing through. And good luck trying to settle this one quickly, since Iran has also said that, “Oh yeah, by the way, we can’t find some of those land mines that we scattered underwater to prevent trespassing ships.” Guess that’ll conveniently take awhile to resolve, all while they collect tolls at the purported rate of $2 million per ship.
Tehran seems to have no end of weapons to adequately defend its territory from attacks, all while Britain’s Royal United Services Institute think tank reports “a strategically ruinous cost-exchange ratio that the West’s industrial capacity is not prepared to sustain” despite the astronomical cost billed routinely to Western taxpayers in order to avoid such things. So toss the myth of western military omnipotence onto the mounting pile of ripoff schemes that have aged badly. Who knew that an attempt to ruin Iran’s navy and army would result in the demilitarization of the West? Not the brainiacs in charge, apparently.
Iranian governance continuity doesn’t seem to have missed a beat, either, despite Trump’s avowed regime- change attempts. And when Trump issued his Churchillian ultimatum last week for Iran to “Open the F–kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” and threatened that “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one,” the same Iranians whom Trump had previously promised to liberate before bombing them, flooded Iranian cities to protect their own infrastructure from their self-styled savior.
Meanwhile, under pressure from their own citizens, blowback from U.S. allies is intensifying against Trump and his sidekick, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. European countries have denied military access to their airspace for the purpose of any attacks. Several European nations, and the European Commission itself, are now talking about suspending the bloc’s economic association agreement with Israel. “Israeli strikes killed hundreds last night, making it hard to argue that such heavy-handed actions fall within self-defence,” said the EU’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, of Tel Aviv’s attacks on Lebanon.
It’s all rapidly shaping up to be a prelude to anti-Israeli sanctions, all while Iran heads in the other direction with negotiation and rapprochement with European nations in exchange for passage through Hormuz. And for Team Trump’s deal with Iran to achieve a peaceful outcome and unscrew the global economy, they’ll have the added bonus of being stuck permanently babysitting loose-cannon Israel. Which is a markedly different relationship from the previous arrangement of backing Israel as a proxy against Iran while shrugging and promoting Tel Aviv’s sovereign right to self-defense.
Back home in the U.S., calls for cracking down on the kind of Israeli foreign interference in American politics that led Trump into this useless but totally counterproductive war are emerging. Hardly surprising when the average American citizen is being fiscally mugged by the consequences of double standards that have long been at play, with Israeli entities not only exempt from registering as foreign agents, but exceptionally blessed to freely interfere in American political life.
At this point, Iran is looking less like a rival to the average Westerner, and more like an ally of the America First anti-globalist movement, successfully dismantling the illusion that exorbitant and self-indulgent Western foreign policy serves anything more than outdated narratives.

Rachel Marsden

“It appears the blockade was successful in finally convincing Iran they had very few options.”

• Blockade Successful – Deal Reached – Strait Open – Oil Prices Plummet (CTH)

In a series of posts on Truth Social, President Trump has announced that a deconfliction deal with Iran has been agreed.

It appears the blockade was successful in finally convincing Iran they had very few options. Additionally, as we all well understand here, the blockade was halting oil shipments to China. It is very likely that Beijing was also putting pressure on Iran to reach a deal.

“THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS AND FULL PASSAGE, BUT THE NAVAL BLOCKADE WILL REMAIN IN FULL FORCE AND EFFECT AS IT PERTAINS TO IRAN, ONLY, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS OUR TRANSACTION WITH IRAN IS 100% COMPLETE. THIS PROCESS SHOULD GO VERY QUICKLY IN THAT MOST OF THE POINTS ARE ALREADY NEGOTIATED. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!” ~ PRESIDENT DONALD J.TRUMP
“The U.S.A. will get all Nuclear “Dust,” created by our great B2 Bombers – No money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form. This deal is in no way subject to Lebanon, either, but the USA will, separately, work with Lebanon, and deal with the Hezboolah situation in an appropriate manner. Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!! Thank you!” ~ President DJT
“Now that the Hormuz Strait situation is over, I received a call from NATO asking if we would need some help. I TOLD THEM TO STAY AWAY, UNLESS THEY JUST WANT TO LOAD UP THEIR SHIPS WITH OIL. They were useless when needed, a Paper Tiger!” ~ President DJT
“Thank you to Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar for your great bravery and help!” President DONALD J. TRUMP
“Iran, with the help of the U.S.A., has removed, or is removing, all sea mines! Thank you!” President DJT “
Again! This deal is not tied, in any way, to Lebanon, but we will, MAKE LEBANON GREAT AGAIN!”
“Thank you to Pakistan and its Great Prime Minister and Field Marshall, two fantastic people!!!” President DONALD J. TRUMP
“A GREAT AND BRILLIANT DAY FOR THE WORLD!” DJT
“Iran has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again. It will no longer be used as a weapon against the World!” ~President DONALD J. TRUMP
With the fighting ending and the conflict over, suddenly the U.K and France come running to assist.

War makes the world go ’round.

• Re-enter Death Spiral When Iran War Stops – John Rubino (USAW)

Analyst and financial writer John Rubino is still warning of a currency crisis. He thinks the big run up in gold and silver in the past year are sending a message about the quality of fiat currency that governments print at will. Lots of money will be printed to prosecute the Iran war, and there will be a financial price to pay. Rubino says, “War is incredibly expensive. If the US has to add another $1 trillion to the deficit to finish this thing off, that’s another trillion we have to borrow. . .. So, we are eroding the trust that people have in our big systems. . .. The wars that we have seen lately are making the financial crisis coming our way . . much worse and making it come that much sooner.

The more money we borrow right now, the bigger of a deal it is for inflation and currency exchange rate and, ultimately, for gold and silver. Nobody should hope things like this happen, but if you are strictly looking at your own finances and you are a gold bug . . . we are screwing up the financial system that is bad for the fiat currencies and great for real money (gold and silver) and other commodities. . .. There are a lot of reasons to think commodities benefit from this war. I am kind of hesitant to look on the bright side of war . . . but I do think a war time economy is inherently inflationary, and that is inherently good for commodities.”
If the war drags on, Rubino says, “It will make the coming financial crisis worse sooner.” If war finishes soon, can we all breathe a sigh of relief and be out of the woods? Rubino says, “Here’s hoping because that would be awesome. Let’s say it ends tomorrow. Then we go back to what we were doing before, which is bailing out everybody in sight, creating huge amounts of currency and lobbying the Fed to cut interest rates. In other words, we re-enter the death spiral of the world’s fiat currencies.”
Rubino is especially bullish on silver. A year ago, silver was selling in the low $30 per ounce range. Today, even after the big sell-off, it is selling in the low $80 per ounce range. Rubino says you ain’t seen nothing yet. Rubino says, “The silver story is great. More and more industries need it, and fewer and fewer mines are producing it. We have this decision point coming soon where the price is going to have to jump up to reflect the panic buying coming from the shortages.”
Rubino thinks you will be seeing $15,000 per ounce gold and $300 per ounce silver, but he can’t say exactly when. He just knows it will happen because with fiat currencies, history always repeats. Rubino says, “This sounds crazy now, but they are probably going to happen. That is just how currency collapses play out. We have seen hundreds of currencies in human history that have died. Just Google hyperinflation, and you will see a list of name brand countries that destroyed their currency. They rode them down to virtually zero. It’s hyperinflation, and something like that is coming. . .. We should not even think about it in terms of dollars, just buy it (physical gold and silver) to have real money.”

“:.. akin to a Monty Python skit that’s missing the part where a guy comes out and slaps them in the face with a big fish.”

• With Strait Open, Kier Starmer Makes Effort to Remain Relevant (CTH)

British Prime Minister Kier Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz issue a joint statement on their plan to open the Strait of Hormuz, after President Trump secured and opened the Strait of Hormuz.

Essentially, after holding an international teleconference, leaders from the U.K, France, Italy and Germany gather to express their importance on an issue that has been entirely resolved without them. The result is akin to a Monty Python skit that’s missing the part where a guy comes out and slaps them in the face with a big fish.

They play hard to get: juat move them around. Whack a mole. “… It is completely healthy and normal to change members of legal teams.”

• Miami Prosecutor Moved from Brennan Conspiracy Investigation (CTH)

According to multiple media reports Maria Medetis Long has moved away from the investigative case surrounding John Brennan.CNN was the first to report the move, and the anonymous sourcing indicates the information likely comes from notification sent by the prosecuting attorney to the witnesses and targets of the Florida-based grand jury.

Via CNN-The Justice Department has removed the career Miami federal prosecutor leading the investigation into John Brennan, after she resisted pressure to quickly bring charges against the former CIA director and prominent critic of President Donald Trump, according to people briefed on the matter. Maria Medetis Long on Friday notified attorneys representing people involved in the case that she was no longer handling the investigation, the people familiar with the matter said. She has led the politically sensitive probe for months amid demands from Trump to prosecute Brennan and other critics. The investigation into Brennan is focused on one of the president’s longest standing political grievances the 2017 intelligence assessment that found Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help him. (read more)
The fraudulent and politically manipulated Intelligence Community Assessment touches on the Ciaramella information recently released. Ciaramella participated in both the construct of the ICA in early 2017 and then became the anonymous CIA whistleblower in 2019. There is no indication the move of Maria Medetis Long is related to the recent discoveries; however, there is a certain continuity of conspiracy noted in the timeline that connects CIA Director John Brennan and CIA Analyst Eric Ciaramella. We shall wait to see what else surfaces.
(ABC) – Asked about the move, a Justice Department spokesperson said, “as a matter of routine practice, attorneys are moved around on cases so offices can most effectively allocate resources. It is completely healthy and normal to change members of legal teams.” (more)

Again: never happened before. But it seems more likely by the day now.

Congress can do it (too)?

• Judiciary Chair Confirms House Moving To Expunge Trump Impeachment (JTN)

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, has disclosed to Just The News that the House of Representatives, where President Donald Trump was impeached during his first term over a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is moving to expunge that impeachment from the congressional record. “You need a majority vote, we need a bill, and it’s actually something we’re looking at,” Jordan told Just The News.

On Monday, Just The News was first to report on declassified secret memos from the 2019 Ukraine whistle-blower scandal, which revealed that the CIA analyst accuser (identified in media as Eric Ciaramella) admitted having no direct knowledge of Trump’s private comments or communications with Zelenskyy, basing the complaint entirely on hearsay and second- or third-hand accounts. The latest disclosures also document Ciaramella’s potential political bias, including his status as a registered Democrat who worked closely with Vice President Joe Biden on Ukraine policy, including traveling with him and discussing the dismissal of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, who was probing Burisma, the corporation that paid Biden’s son Hunter millions of dollars.
Hiding facts from Congress, and the public
The memos also reveal Ciaramella’s dislike for Republicans like former Representative Devin Nunes and Kash Patel, and his prior procedural contact with Rep. Adam Schiff’s, D-Calif., staff, which he initially omitted from the official disclosure form before apologizing. A supporting “Witness 2,” an NSC/NSA official and co-author of the controversial 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian election interference, linked to Peter Strzok backed the complaint.
This, despite admitting he lacked granular insight, would not have acted on it himself, and was motivated by a “moral and patriotic duty” to help Ciaramella “sleep at night.” The concealed evidence of bias and hearsay was kept classified during Trump’s House impeachment in December 2019 and the subsequent Senate trial. On Monday, Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz reacted to the idea of expungement and said, “I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t be done. Impeachment is a quasi-judicial procedure, whether you have to go back to Congress and ask them to expunge it or go to the courts.”
Dershowitz: “They violated the Constitution”
The constitutional law expert continued: “But I have to tell you one thing, history will expunge it already because what you’ve done is you’ve created so much doubt about the credibility of the main accuser that it’s hard for anybody to sit back now and say that was a just impeachment. They violated the Constitution.”
Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced simple resolutions to expunge Trump’s two impeachments from the congressional record. In June 2023, during the 118th Congress, former GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a resolution for the 2019 impeachment, while New York Rep. Elise Stefanik introduced one for the 2021 impeachment. Former Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, also publicly supported those resolutions.

“Everything that’s wrong is staring us right in the face, and half this country simply will not join us in fighting and fixing it. It’s infuriating and depressing and maddening.” —James Woods on X

• Showdown (James Howard Kunstler)

The closer this Iran war comes to a favorable resolution, the more garishly negative the puling Lefty-left gets, wishing fervently for the enemy to prevail. Why? Because the Lefty-left is also an enemy of our country. They want the operation to fail so they can reclaim power and resume wrecking and looting the USA. By the way, what exactly would a favorable outcome of this war look like? An Iran that doesn’t threaten nuclear jihad and doesn’t sponsor endless terror operations here, there, and everywhere. It looks like we are going to get to that. Iran’s choice is how deep do they want to take their own economic collapse before capitulating? If they’ll just stop now, they’ll still keep the lights on. They can be a normal, modern, developed nation without a death wish.

Anyway, the paradigm Iran was operating in as a rogue state is dead, especially the malign influence of Britain’s banking and MI6 intel matrix. Britain, proven by its actions to be not a friend of America. . . Britain, a wretched little has-been island empire with bad teeth, overrun by wrathful Islamists, and, alas, soon to be a caliphate. President Donald Trump has rearranged the geopolitical landscape with startling speed and efficacy. Much of Europe, it turns out, are not our friends, either. They would not let us use the NATO bases we pay for to conduct air operations over Iran. Hence, NATO is four dead letters. They can go dangle while they figure out how to live without oil, possibly go back to their centuries-long condition as a nonstop slaughterhouse, besetting each other with stupid, age-old feuds. Not our problem anymore.
China? Their Belt-and-Road isn’t what it was just six months ago. Mr. Trump has kicked them out of South America. Their oil supply is suddenly sketchy. Notice, they didn’t lend a hand helping to clear the Strait of Hormuz. Turned out that the radars and air defenses they gifted Iran didn’t work too well. Uncle Xi Pooh Bear will have to re-think situation.
Mr. Trump says he might travel to Pakistan this weekend if there are papers to sign with Iran. Israel and Lebanon announced a ten-day truce to sort out where things stand. Both of them want Hezbollah expelled for good. Anyway, Hezbollah can no longer enjoy financial support from Iran, meaning no more munitions or salaries for Hezbollah warriors, meaning Hezbollah is out of business — a major regional irritant neutralized. Can you dare to imagine a peaceable Middle East?
So, things have changed-up greatly in this long-volatile corner the world, and that will leave Mr. Trump freer to attend to the discord and animus at home, namely the psychopathic Democratic Party’s non-stop demolition of political norms, with assistance from the bureaucratic Deep State and the NGO underworld. Just at hand this week, we have Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sending criminal referrals to the DOJ on two key players (both liars) in Trump Impeachment No. 1: former Intel Inspector General Michael Atkinson and CIA agent “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella — whose name the news media still fears to speak.
That impeachment, over the so-called “Ukraine phone call,” was from start to finish a complete fake, a criminal conspiracy. It involves a much larger cast-of-characters including then House Intel Committee Chair (now senator) Adam Schiff, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, CIA Director Gina Haspel, Chief Justice John Roberts, and virtually the whole Kiev US embassy staff at the time. Everybody involved was lying about one thing or another. The case is on Acting AG Todd Blanche’s desk now. Do you suppose it can just sit there?

The Brussels-backed intelligence operation will happen again, Vladimir Palko has warned.

• EU Spied On Orban For Years – Former Slovak Minister (RT)

The EU spy campaign that helped bring down Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a lesson to anyone who defies Brussels, former Slovak Interior Minister Vladimir Palko has warned. “What they did to Orban yesterday, they can do to you tomorrow,” he told the outlet ‘Marker’ on Monday. Orban’s Fidesz party suffered a landslide defeat to Peter Magyar’s Tisza on Sunday, with Tisza outperforming even the most one-sided polls to win a 54% to 38% over Fidesz. Magyar’s party now holds 137 of 199 seats in parliament, giving the incoming PM power to rewrite the country’s constitution as he – and his allies in Brussels – see fit.

That the EU wanted this result was obvious. Orban had been a thorn in Brussels’ side for 16 years and was an insurmountable obstacle to the bloc’s plans to approve a €90 billion loan package for Ukraine. Throughout the election, evidence of interference by the EU, Ukraine, and opposition-friendly Hungarian media trickled out of Budapest. With the election over, the full extent of the EU’s intelligence campaign against Orban – and its implications for populists across Europe – is slowly becoming apparent. “The defeat of Viktor Orban after 16 years of rule is not surprising at all,” Palko told Marker. “However, the tragedy is what happened in the election campaign.”
The EU spied on Orban for years
“Orban and his foreign minister were wiretapped by European intelligence for six years,” he continued. “Not Russian, not American. The secret service provided the content of phone calls to some journalists from several EU member states, and the members of the EU establishment used the content against Orban. This was an intervention into Hungarian elections.” Palko, who served as deputy director of Slovakia’s SIS intelligence agency in the 1990s and interior minister between 2002 and 2006, confirmed information that had already surfaced in the runup to the election: namely that opposition journalist Szabolcs Panyi gave Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto’s contact details to an unnamed EU intelligence agency, that then wiretapped Szijjarto and leaked details of six years’ worth of his calls with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov back to Panyi and other pro-opposition reporters. Panyi’s outlet, Direkt36, derives 80% of its project costs from the EU.
spies also fed the Hungarian and international media stories of Russian “election fixers” attempting to swing the election for Orban, and of plots by Russian military intelligence agents to stage an assassination attempt on Orban for publicity. The claims were unfounded, but were seized upon by Magyar, who worked chants of “Russians, go home!” into his campaign rallies. The EU in turn used these reports to justify the activation of its ‘Rapid Response System’ (RRS): a suite of online censorship tools that allowed Brussels’ “fact checkers” to remove supposed “disinformation” from social media platforms in the runup to the vote. In every election in which it has been activated, the RRS “almost exclusively targeted” right-wing and populist candidates like Orban, the US House Judiciary Committee found in an investigation last year.
“Only one thing is shown from the recorded phone calls: The Hungarians were friendly towards the Russians,” Palko noted. “But this already is a mortal sin for the EU establishment. This is the new European Union that is coming.” The EU’s pre-election attempts to influence the campaign offered a glimpse into a campaign that Orban alleges has been underway ever since he took a stance against Brussels on migration policy and support for Ukraine. However, Europe’s few populist leaders have largely stayed silent on the issue.
The Hungarian election ultimately came down to kitchen-table economic issues. Roads, healthcare, public safety, and public transport were the leading issues among voters in all 19 of Hungary’s counties, and the electorate chose Magyar’s promises of cash injections for underfunded public services over Orban’s geopolitics-heavy platform. Magyar will depend on the EU to fund his economic plan to the tune of €20 billion, and as such will be easily leveraged by Brussels, giving further incentive for the bloc to back his campaign.
Yet the role of EU intelligence in the result has been ignored, even by Orban’s ideological allies on the continent. This, Palko reckons, is a mistake. “All those who were not bothered by it should be warned,” he said. “What they did to Orban yesterday, they can do to you tomorrow.”As RT reported, the EU has rolled out its same censorship playbook in Bulgaria, where elections this weekend pit a veteran center-rightist against a populist, Euroskeptic challenger on the left. Robert Fico in Slovakia, a left-wing populist and vocal opponent of the EU’s Ukraine project, will likely face the same treatment when he seeks another term in office next year.

Sergey Shoigu has cautioned Finland and the Baltic states against allowing Kiev to use their airspace for attacks on Russia

• Russian Security Chief Issues Warning To Four NATO States (RT)

Russia would have the right to retaliate if Finland and the Baltic states are deliberately allowing Ukrainian drones to pass through their airspace, Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu said on Thursday. “Recently, there has been an increase in Ukrainian drone strikes against Russia via Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia,” Shoigu told journalists. “As a result, civilians are suffering and significant damage is being caused to civilian infrastructure.” Either Western air defenses are proving ineffective, or these four countries “deliberately provide their airspace, thereby becoming open accomplices in aggression against Russia,” he added.

In the latter case, Moscow has the right to self-defense in response to an “armed attack” under Article 51 of the UN Charter, the security chief stressed. In recent weeks, Kiev has intensified drone strikes on Russia in what Moscow has characterized as “terrorist attacks,” with the Russian military regularly reporting hundreds of UAVs downed in a single night. Late last month, Kiev attacked Russia’s Baltic Sea ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk with swarms of UAVs. The raids resulted in fires in both cities, which house extensive petrochemical infrastructure.
Kremlin aide Nikolay Patrushev said he believed that Finland and the Baltic states were “complicit in these crimes.” The provision of national airspace for Ukrainian drone strikes would “signify direct NATO participation” in attacks on Russia, he said Monday. Multiple Ukrainian drones have also struck the territories of Finland and the three Baltic states since early March. Despite this, all four nations have avoided condemning Kiev outright for violating their airspace.
Moscow has formally warned Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia against allowing Ukraine to send drones via their territory, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last week. “If the regimes in these countries are smart enough, they will listen. If not, then they will have to deal with the consequences,” she said.

For SCOTUS, Trump is super-prepared.

• Does Trump Know Something We Don’t About Potential SCOTUS Vacancies? (Margolis)

The midterm elections are coming up in November, and Democrats are generally favored to win the House, while the Senate is kind of a coin flip. While it would suck for Democrats to win the House because they’ll almost certainly find some bogus pretext to impeach President Donald Trump, there’s potentially more at stake regarding control of the Senate, including implications for confirming judges and potentially filling any potential Supreme Court vacancies. No retirements have been announced, but speculation is mounting, and I’m starting to wonder if Trump knows vacancies are coming.

In a recent interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, Trump confirmed he has a shortlist of potential nominees ready to go — and he’s prepared to fill as many as three seats if the opportunity arises. “In theory, it’s two — you just read the statistics — it could be two, could be three, could be one,” Trump said. “I don’t know. I’m prepared to do it. But when you mention Alito, he is a great justice.”
He added, “He does what’s right for the country. It’s the law, and he goes by it as much as anybody, but he gets to the point.” High praise from a president who has been, let’s say, less enthusiastic about some of his own past nominees. According to Fox News Digital, “Trump’s remarks sharpen the stakes around any potential vacancy, as the president has signaled he is ready to seize the opportunity to deepen the court’s conservative majority. With retirement speculation around Alito and Republicans eyeing the window before the 2026 midterms, the prospect of an opening is already putting fresh focus on succession politics.”
Rumors about Alito, 76, potentially retiring have grown because of his age, his two-decade tenure on the bench and speculation that he may want to make sure a conservative successor is confirmed by the current Republican-led Senate, especially before the upcoming midterm elections in which Republicans are at risk of losing or seeing a diminished majority. The rumors were further fueled when it was revealed Alito was treated last month for dehydration after becoming ill at a Federalist Society dinner. A Supreme Court spokesperson clarified at the time that the justice was “thoroughly checked” and returned to the bench the following Monday.
A source close to Alito insists he is not stepping down this term and is in the process of hiring the rest of his clerks for the next term. So at least for now, it sounds like he’s not going anywhere. Yet, Trump is ready with a shortlist of replacements? Is that a tell that he knows something we don’t? It could be. Or it’s just being prepared. After watching some of his own nominees drift from his expectations on high-profile rulings, you can be certain he’ll be far more deliberate this time around. Whatever seats open up, expect Trump to treat the selection process with a level of scrutiny he may not have applied before.
The bigger picture here is worth appreciating. No president since Ronald Reagan has reshaped the Supreme Court the way Trump has. His first three appointments — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — built the current 6-3 conservative majority. Trump may have an opportunity to secure a conservative majority for decades to come.= The question is, does he know that he will?

I haven’t been following Tucker’s split from Trump etc. closely.

• Tucker Carlson’s ‘Did He Really Say That?’ Era Is in Full Swing Now (Spencer)

Tucker Carlson, theologian, is at it again, giving rise to a new round of questions about what has happened to the man. The former Fox host and patriotic stalwart is now a full-time agitator against Israel and public relations agent for the religion of Islam, and if any religion ever needed a PR makeover, it’s Islam. In his newsletter on Wednesday, Carlson includes an entry with the curious title “Islam Is the Enemy? Are We Sure About That?” It’s an odd title because there isn’t anyone in either the Trump administration or the Israeli government who is saying, “Islam is the enemy.”

Certainly, there are people who point out Islam’s 1,400-year war against any and all non-Muslim entities, and its doctrines calling for warfare against and subjugation of unbelievers, which make it unique among what are called “the world’s great religions.” But such people aren’t in the Trump administration, or in the government of Israel, either. Also, up until now, Tucker has focused his ire upon the Netanyahu government, which is supposedly exercising Svengalian control over the Trump administration. Now, despite the fact that the Israeli government has not been critical of Islam, he is defending the religion of suicide bombings, stonings, amputations, and the rest.
Referring to the fact that his previous assertion that Muslims love Jesus “set off a firestorm,” Carlson claimed that this was “largely because most Americans do not realize the overlap between Christianity and the Muslim faith.” He insinuates darkly that this is because of some sinister conspiracy: “That is no accident.” Carlson continues by making the preposterous assertion that “the forces supporting the Iran War do not want the public to realize that the Quran hails the Christian savior as a prophet and messenger of the Lord.” The idea that there are forces in America today that are deliberately concealing information that might make Americans think better of Islam than they do now is beyond ridiculous.
The reality, in fact, is exactly the opposite. Ever since George W. Bush stood inside a Washington, D.C. mosque on Sept. 17, 2001, and proclaimed that “Islam is peace” and warned Americans not to harass innocent Muslims (which was not happening in the first place), the political and media establishment has done everything it could to ensure that people didn’t think ill of Islam. The media reflex of saying that a jihadi’s motive was “unclear” when nothing under the living sun could have been clearer has been a running joke for years.
Tucker Carlson, however, would have you believe that supporters of the war against the entity where they regularly scream “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” have deliberately obscured the fact that Jesus appears in the Qur’an as a prophet of Islam. I can adduce my own work to show that this isn’t true. In numerous books, including The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran and The Critical Qur’an, both of which were bestsellers, I’ve discussed the Qur’anic and Islamic view of Jesus in tremendous detail.
It’s not quite as wonderful as Carlson suggests. The Jesus of the Qur’an is an Invasion-of-the-Body-Snatchers version of the Biblical figure: he bears the same name, but is an entirely different personality. Even Carlson grants that the Qur’an’s mentions of Jesus do “not mean that Christianity and Islam are aligned. They definitely are not.” But he insists that “an anti-Muslim propaganda campaign” has “consumed our country for decades. Neocons have brainwashed the U.S. public into thinking Middle Eastern terrorists lust for American blood because they are Muslim. But it is not true. They behave as they do because they are evil criminals.”
Well, all right, Tucker, but they’re evil criminals whose holy book tells them to “kill them wherever you find them” (Qur’an 2:191, 4:89, 4:91), and just to make clear who ought to be killed, adds “kill the polytheists wherever you find them (9:5). In the Qur’anic scheme, pretty much everyone who is not a Muslim is a polytheist. The Qur’an also directs Muslims to fight Jews and Christians until they submit to second-class status under the hegemony of Islamic law (9:29).
Muslims are to fight unbelievers until “religion is all for Allah” (8:39), which is an open-ended declaration of war against all non-Islamic religious expression. Evil criminals they are indeed, but even more evil is the fact that when they plunder, rape, and kill, they think they are offering service to God, as the Biblical Jesus said would happen (John 16:2). The fact that Palestinian terrorist murderers are not considered “evil criminals” in Gaza, but great heroes, should give Tucker Carlson pause. But it won’t.

“4 out of 5 citizens also say they are dissatisfied with Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government, according to YouGov poll..”

• Germany: Anti-Immigration AfD Party Jumps To 27%, 4 Points Ahead of CDU (RMX)

In a new poll from YouGov, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party jumped to 27 percent, now four points ahead of the rival Christian Democrats (CDU), in a sign that the AfD continues to distance itself as the most popular party in Germany. AfD co-leader Alice Weidel was quick to publish the poll results on X, writing: “4 percentage points ahead of the Union, 4 out of 5 citizens dissatisfied with Merz: We no longer have time for undemocratic firewalls. The political turnaround must happen now.”
4 Prozentpunkte Abstand zur Union, 4 von 5 Bürgern unzufrieden mit Merz: Wir haben keine Zeit mehr für undemokratische Brandmauern. Die politische Wende muß jetzt erfolgen. pic.twitter.com/rWe3sm04RU
— Alice Weidel (@Alice_Weidel) April 15, 2026

The governing parties that make up the federal government are seeing their fortunes quickly fall. The CDU/CSU fell by three percentage points to 23 percent, which was the lowest figure measured by YouGov since December 2021. The SPD figure is at 13 percent, which fell one point from 14 percent. Meanwhile, the Greens and the Left each gained one point, jumping to 14 percent and 10 percent respectively. According to the poll, more and more Germans are dissatisfied, totaling 79 percent, with the work of the federal government led by Friedrich Merz. In comparison, in June 2025, this value was only at 55 percent.
Most threatening for Merz, CDU voters are increasingly turning on his government, with only 34 percent saying they are satisfied, falling from 48 percent in March. Other polls have shown AfD at the top, but with a narrower margin, averaging between 25 and 26 percent of the vote. Despite the AfD leading, the CDU has vowed to never form a coalition with the party. If the AfD’s values hold into the next national election, it may become increasingly difficult to form a coalition without the party’s support.

Democrats think it’s a sure thing they’ll win all upcoming elections. “If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress ..”

• “F**k It…Just Do It”: Carville’s Plan to Add States and Pack the Court (Turley)

Various Democrats have been openly discussing their plans after retaking power to change the system so they never lose power again. Democratic strategist James Carville has been one of the most vocal and returned to the subject this week in laying out how they will make D.C. and Puerto Rico states and pack the Supreme Court with a liberal majority. On his podcast with Al Hunt, Carville explained, “If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, I think on day one, they should make Puerto Rico [and] D.C. a state, and they should expand the Supreme Court to 13. F— it. Eat our dust.”

Notably, this week, New Jersey just elected a radical new member, Analilia Mejia, who ran on packing the Court and other radical agenda items. While some of us have written about the expansion of the Court, these politicians and pundits are pushing for the packing, not just gradual expanding, of the Court. However, Carville (curiously on a national podcast) seriously suggested that Democrats should keep the plan quiet: “Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.” Call it the Nike School of Constitutional Law. The need of the left to pack the Supreme Court is obvious. Many of the proposals coming from the left are clearly unconstitutional.
You will need a partisan majority to make the political changes that these figures hope will give the Democrats a lock on power for years to come. 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. Likewise, Carville previously explained how this process of how the pack-to-power plan would work:
“I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen. A Democrat is going to be elected in 2028. You know that. I know that. The Democratic president is going to announce a special transition advisory committee on the reform of the Supreme Court. They’re going to recommend that the number of Supreme Court justices go from nine to 13. That’s going to happen, people.” The push for court packing and war chests on the left remains unchanged despite conservatives on the Court ruling against the Administration on major cases. Carville and others cannot claim that the conservative justices are robotically voting with the Administration, but it does not matter. They want a Court that will consistently uphold the changes being planned by Democratic strategists.
The fact that these changes would come after the 250th anniversary of the most successful democratic system in history is a crushing irony. However, it is notable that the Democrats want Congress and the courts to push through these changes, not the public. The public remains opposed to court packing and making D.C. a state. That is why Carville wants candidates to keep quiet on the plan and run, like Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger, as faux moderates. Then, as in Virginia, they can move to fundamentally change districts and rules to guarantee their hold on power. It is a mentality summed up by NEA President Becky Pringle:

Hard times in the art markets. Dad is AWOL.

• “Mr. Biden Lives Abroad”: Hunter Leaves Country (Turley)

“Mr. Biden lives abroad.” Those four words in a filing from Barry Coburn confirmed what had long been rumored about his client: Hunter Biden has left the country as his former lawyers and creditors seek millions in unpaid debts. He added, “He cannot pay his current lawyers.” As I wrote about years ago, Biden’s art grift would dry up as soon as he could no longer deliver influence and access to power. Reportedly unable to move art, Hunter has moved out of the reach of many creditors. He is rumored to be in South Africa, where his wife, Melissa Cohen, was born and raised.

Hunter is the Blanche DuBois of American politics. He has always relied on the kindness (and greed) of strangers when he could allegedly offer influence or access to his father, Joe Biden. Hunter told a South African podcast in November that “We’re trying to be between Cape Town and the States, go back and forth.” He added, “I’ve fallen madly in love with Cape Town. You guys do not know how good you have it here. It’s the most beautiful city in the world.” It just also happens to be roughly 9000 miles away from creditors in Delaware.
According to his former counsel at Winston & Strawn LLP, Hunter has not paid a “substantial portion” of the fees owed to his legal team. Hunter told the podcast that he is facing “$17 million in debt … as it relates to my legal fees.” His criminal defense did not ultimately protect him. He was found guilty of a variety of crimes, and his father then broke his repeated promise to the public and pardoned his own son in December 2024. I have been a long-time critic of the Bidens, going back to when Joe Biden was still a senator. The family was long accused of influence peddling and corruption. Hunter Biden was hardly subtle in marketing his access and influence. He is now without a law license and any known means of support despite an enabling media that pushed his past books and art.
For those of us who have written about the Bidens for decades, the relocation to South Africa is about as surprising as having his father pop into dinners at Cafe Milano with foreign clients. Hunter Biden is the Enfant terrible created by his father and released upon the world.
I recently wrote that the Swalwell scandal reveals an ironic analogy to Hunter’s signature lifestyle. Swalwell supported Hunter and was by his side as he defied a congressional subpoena. Like Hunter, he has controversial dealings, including using tens of thousands of campaign contributions for child care. He even had the campaign support of Hunter’s “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, who appears to have a proclivity for narcissistic, self-destructive personalities. Swalwell could also face the same financial crunch as Hunter, as his campaign and congressional money run out. If so, there is always South Africa.

Take this very seriously.

Elon Musk: “This is going to sound pretty crazy. I’d say the economy is ten times its current size in ten years

Greater than 10x in roughly ten years is actually a fairly comfortable prediction

Obviously, if there’s World War III or something, that could put a kink in those… pic.twitter.com/puG9NeIU2S
— Mars University (@MarsUniversityX) April 17, 2026

Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.

AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 17, 2026

Elon Musk just weaponized gravity.

The entire trucking industry has a physics leak bleeding billions.

Musk just sealed it.

Most people look at the Tesla Semi and see a cleaner diesel. A truck that swapped a gas tank for a battery.

That is a complete misread of the physics.… pic.twitter.com/QAlAYz27ay
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) April 17, 2026

BREAKING: President Trump vows to look into the 10 scientists who have gone missing or turned up dead:

"I hope it's random, but we're going to know in the next week and a half."

"I just left a meeting on that subject."

"Pretty serious stuff… Some of them were very important… pic.twitter.com/VMgeZyayXl
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 16, 2026

HUNGARIAN 5D CHESS THAT MAKES BRUSSELS CRY!

According to information provided by Serbian intelligence sources, the real objective of Orbán's "defeat" is to allow him to become the Trojan horse that Donald Trump wants to place at the heart of the European Union.

The American… pic.twitter.com/u2ZxwZrykT
— Paul White Gold Eagle (@PaulGoldEagle) April 16, 2026

A single bird has completed a journey covering nearly one-third of Earth’s circumference, without stopping to eat, drink, or rest.

A five-month-old Bar-tailed Godwit, set a new record for the longest nonstop flight ever documented in a bird. It traveled from Alaska to Tasmania,… pic.twitter.com/jera80hl6Q
— Science girl (@sciencegirl) April 16, 2026

Imagine being able to make marble look like water.

In 1858, an Italian sculptor did exactly that.

And no one has done it since…

He was commissioned to carve a naiad — a water nymph — for the baths of a palazzo in Brescia, Italy. In Greek mythology, Naiads were the living… pic.twitter.com/T2rkREhtNd
— James Lucas (@JamesLucasIT) April 16, 2026

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