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Debt Rattle July 6 2026

Jul 062026
 
 July 6, 2026  Posted by at 9:36 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  27 Responses »


Nicolas Poussin A Dance to the Music of Time 1634-36


• Elon Decimates Mamdani’s Speech – DeSantis Drops in Off the Top Rope (Arama)
• The Obamas and Clintons on the Monsters Taking Over Their Party (Derek Hunter)
• No, The Framers Would Have Hated the Billionaire Tax (Turley)
• Mamdani’s Thermostat Moment Draws Conservative Backlash (JTN)
• The Most Important Initiative to Save Our Country’s Future (Margolis)
• This Rubio Video Might Be the Most Patriotic Thing You See All Year (Margolis)
• “What Then Is The American, This New Man?” (Turley)
• America at 250: Restoring America’s Greatness (Victor Joecks)
• Russia and US Bear ‘Special Responsibility’ For Global Security – Putin (RT)
• Trump Calls Putin on US Independence Day (RT)
• Putin Invites Trump To Visit Russia In ‘Constructive’ July 4th Phone Call (ZH)
• Russia’s Buffer Zone On Ukrainian Border ‘Expanding’ (ZH)
• Trump: ‘Netanyahu Knows Who The Boss Is’ After Phone Call (ZH)
• UK Government’s SHOCKING Bid to RIG YouTube Algorithm (MN)
• British People Are ‘Crying Out’ For Change – Vance (RT)

 


 

https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2073483665712308279?s=20 https://twitter.com/HomanNews/status/2073500616148554089?s=20 https://twitter.com/VividProwess/status/2073580119453520007?s=20

 


 


“Mamdani has built nothing. He is a taker, never a maker..”

• Elon Decimates Mamdani’s Speech – DeSantis Drops in Off the Top Rope (Arama)

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s speech for our nation’s 250th birthday has gotten a lot of well-deserved criticism. It was pretty awful on the whole. But there was one particular part on Friday that got a lot of attention, in which he lambasted America, attacked Elon Musk, and demonized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).


The swipe against Musk was particularly nasty, saying children go hungry while the world’s first trillionaire (Musk) “hungers for more.” In that you can see the evil of the radical left – to demonize the people who are actually achieving and whipping up envy and class warfare. But Elon Musk responded, decimating Mamdani with one simple fact.

“Mamdani has built nothing. He is a taker, never a maker,” Musk declared.

Bingo. Mamdani is basically a nepo baby who had wealthy parents and went to an expensive private school, whose work history could be described as “light,” at best. He worked briefly as a “foreclosure counselor” for an advocacy organization whose purpose was “organizing and advocating for systemic changes.” Oh, and he was a “rapper” before he went into politics. It’s sort of laughable for Mamdani to talk about “calloused hands,” given his work history. But it’s symptomatic of the champagne socialists we’ve seen.

Mamdani isn’t even worthy of mentioning Musk’s name, given all that Musk has achieved with all of his companies. He creates wealth, employs more than 160,000 employees, and contributes things no one else can, such as with SpaceX and Neuralink. His real “crime”? He supports President Donald Trump. Notice you don’t hear any of these leftists coming for Reid Hoffman or George Soros, the guys who contribute to Democrats. That’s the real problem here. The Democrats think they have the right to seize money from Musk because how dare he be so rich? Regardless of whether they are, themselves, rich.

But Elon wasn’t the only one who found some problems with what Mamdani said. So did Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). He laid a big smackdown on Mamdani for being “regressive.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2073215994848481717?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2073215994848481717%7Ctwgr%5Ea9971bbcfd2070ef5673c0b8d869eac483b51928%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fnick-arama%2F2026%2F07%2F04%2Felon-musk-decimates-mamdani-250-speech-with-a-simple-fact-then-ron-desantis-drops-in-from-top-rope-n2204002

“When I see the Mamdanis of the world, they’re basically offering these ideas, they claim they’re progressive. They’re really regressive. They are things that the founding fathers rejected,” DeSantis declared, talking about how rights come from God and how these ideas fly in the face of the principles of limited government on which our country was founded. The governor added: “Their ideas have failed throughout history. And we have a chance now with 250 to look back and say — we’re inheritors of an awfully good legacy. We got lucky to have the Founding Fathers pledge their lives, fortune, and sacred honor the way they did when they did it!”

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“That’s what makes the lack of comment from “leaders” on the left about the goose-steppers taking over so curious.”

• The Obamas and Clintons on the Monsters Taking Over Their Party (Derek Hunter)

As the Nazis took over Germany, they were a minority party that no one really took all that seriously. Hitler was crazy, but his ramblings weren’t thought of by most Germans or the political establishment as foreshadowing. People today forget they were not a majority, as history tends to obscure reality for the sensational. Communists in Russia and China (or anywhere they destroyed, really) were a minority, too. But you should never underestimate the ability of a distinct minority to bring about massive devastation, as once radicals gain power they tend to wipe out their opposition and move quickly to consolidate control.


That’s what makes the lack of comment from “leaders” on the left about the goose-steppers taking over so curious. There are a few people commenting – Rahm Emanuel has said some common-sense things, mostly about the messaging and issues these nuts are focused on – but the people who really matter on the left are silent. Where are Bill and Hillary Clinton or Barack and Michelle Obama?

Bill Clinton famously had his “Sister Souljah moment,” when the rapper opined that maybe black people should take a break from killing each other and kill white people for a while. She meant it as a commentary on how the media didn’t really pay attention to the scourge of black men killing other black men, something still true today (including to “Black Lives Matter”); she just did it in a way that could easily be taken out of context and exploited by an opportunist politician.

Enter Bill Clinton. He criticized Souljah for her rhetoric and gained a lot of positive media coverage in the 1992 election. It was dishonest because, well, did I mention it was Bill Clinton? It did, however, prove that Clinton could speak out against things other people in his party were doing. While Hillary, Barack and Michelle never really spoke out against their party, the concept is obviously one that applies to them too.

As the communist element of the left worms its way through the party, you’d think Democrats would care – you’d think they would be concerned with an anti-American element of their party seizing power. Granted, they may not care about the policies – there’s such a fine line between what socialists, fascists and communists want to do that it doesn’t really matter; the blood starts flowing over who gets to lead and what to do with the people who won’t obey.

The electability of Democrats is on the line. If these people don’t care about the country, which we all knew they didn’t, it’s one thing; but we know they care about their party. The American public will not vote for communists. Well, most of the American people will not vote for communists. Sadly, there is a growing percentage of the public who have no memory of the Cold War and the horrors of communism, who’ve also been “educated” by a bunch of granola-crunching leftists with every flag ever created hanging in their classroom except the American flag. These people’s understanding of communism is on paper, all theoretical, and they are convinced it will work.

Hey, I wouldn’t care if these people left the country and started their Utopia on some island somewhere – as they murdered each other for power and eventually starved to death, I’d watch the livestream – but they’re looking to do it here. With that, I have a problem. You’d think the people who stand to be eaten first when the liberal mob comes to dine on the rich might, if only for that reason, try to head that off at the pass. You’d be wrong. Just like you’d be wrong if you thought they’d speak out about their party heading down a path of either violence or electoral defeat.

Maybe they don’t care because they’ve made their fortunes and Secret Service protection affords them a sense of immortality, or maybe they are down with what the new emerging leaders in their party are looking to do. But one thing is certain: they don’t care. If they’d cared, they would’ve said something by now. If they cared, they would say something now. It’s all well and good if the damage is confined to the Democrat Party, because who cares, right? But these radicals are looking to destroy the country as well, which you’d think might bother people who’ve led incredible lives because of the country’s existence. If you’d thought that, you’d be wrong.

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“.. the constitutional system referenced by Mr. Newsom makes a federal wealth tax unconstitutional.”

• No, The Framers Would Have Hated the Billionaire Tax (Turley)

Was James Madison the Zohran Mamdani of his time? Gavin Newsom appears to think so. In joining the growing number of Democratic leaders supporting a wealth tax, the California governor claimed that the U.S. Constitution and our Founders were all about wealth distribution: “The system America’s founders built,” he said, “was designed to prevent the concentration of power in a few hands, but we have allowed that concentration to happen anyway, slowly, in plain sight, over decades.”


The only problem with this argument is that it is utterly and demonstrably false. The Madisonian democracy is designed to avoid the concentration of political power, not the concentration of wealth. The Founders were great believers in capitalism and the free market. In my recent book, “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss the economic philosophy of the Founders in exploring the history and future of this unique republic. This isn’t simply the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence but also the anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” which the Founders embraced.

Many of the Founders were themselves quite wealthy, including banker Robert Morris Jr., who was known as the “Financier of the Revolution” and would be a billionaire today. Our revolution was the first true Enlightenment revolution, heavily influenced by writers such as John Locke, who believed in a natural right to property. That right came not from the government, but from God, and “excludes the common right of other Men.”

That Lockean principle was manifest in George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was a basis for the Declaration of Independence. It extolled “the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” James Madison drafted protections from government seizure of property, including the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which requires compensation for any property taken by the government. The Constitution not only protects property, but was later amended to allow for income taxes rather than wealth taxes.

Far from supporting a wealth tax, the constitutional system referenced by Mr. Newsom makes a federal wealth tax unconstitutional. Mr. Newsom’s recent endorsement of a national wealth tax was likely meant to blunt the outrage over his opposition to the resolution to create a state Billionaires’ Tax on the coming November ballot.

California has reportedly lost trillions of dollars in the exodus of billionaires and other wealthy taxpayers fleeing the high taxes and class politics of the state. Mr. Newsom knows that this draining of wealth spells doom for his state, which is already grappling with a massive, growing deficit. He offered a curious argument for opposing the state wealth tax: “You may not be able to pick up and move to Texas or Florida to shelter your income from taxation, but I promise you that billionaires can, and do.”

The argument suggested that most citizens are effectively a captive population to be culled by California leaders, dupes who are unable to escape a state with a deadly combination of some of the highest taxes and highest living costs in the nation. Unions and others pushed the Billionaire Tax to avoid budget cuts and fund the state’s runaway expenditures, from pension funds to projects such as the infamous high-speed train to nowhere. To deal with California’s reverse Gold Rush, drafters made the proposed Billionaire Tax retroactive to claw back money from those who have escaped.

The national Billionaire Tax pushed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) seeks to cut off any escape for the wealthy short of leaving the country. When she ran for president, Ms. Warren warned the wealthy that she was coming for “your Rembrandts, your stock portfolio, your diamonds and your yachts.” Of course, this assumes that the wealthy would be little more than passive prey in a hunt by the Internal Revenue Service. That is precisely what socialists thought in France decades ago, before an exodus from the country that, along with other socialist policies, brought it to near economic ruin. It was later rescinded.

Nevertheless, wealth taxes make for great politics. What is concerning is that, in addition to a wealth tax, Democratic leaders like Ms. Warren are pledging to pack the Supreme Court if they retake power. A packed court with an insistent liberal majority would let the Democrats push through measures that would otherwise be declared unconstitutional, including a wealth tax.

Congress could then gradually lower the level of wealth needed to trigger the tax, opening up the homes and estates of citizens as an untapped reservoir of money for the taking. “You’re next” could then apply not just to office holders but to property owners in a push to redistribute wealth. That strategy may well unfold in coming years, but it will be the realization of a Mamdanian, not a Madisonian, system.

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“Set your air to 78 degrees? Bless your hearts New York City!! American energy should be so strong and plentiful that you never have to set it above 70 if you don’t feel like it.”

“Jimmy Carter’s turn down your thermostat and put on a sweater,” Holmes said about Mandani’s idea. “American dream.”

• Mamdani’s Thermostat Moment Draws Conservative Backlash (JTN)

New York democratic-socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdi’s suggestion that city residents turn up their thermostats to 78 degrees during the heatwave this July 4 holiday weekend to help conserve energy has drawn sharp criticism from essentially every corner of the conservative movement – with some members even going so far as to compare the mayor’s comment to Democrat President Jimmy Carter’s 1977 “sweater speech.”


“New York: it’s hot out there, and the power grid is working overtime to keep us cool,” Mamdani wrote Wednesday on the social platform X. “Set your AC to 78 degrees, turn off lights/electronics you’re not using, and unplug what you can.” He also wrote: “A stable grid means the AC stays on, and lives are saved. Let’s ease demand – and get through the heat – together.” The backlash was quick and came from everybody from former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, to at least six former (and perhaps future) Republican presidential candidates, to GOP Reps. Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who are, respectively, either leaving Congress in the next several months or left in the past several months.

Gingrich, a Georgia Republican, suggested Thursday on X that Mamdani’s idea reflects “the reality of big government socialism’s inability to solve problems.”He also wrote: “Telling New Yorkers to set their air conditioning at 78 degrees is an open admission of the failure of the left to provide enough inexpensive electricity that people can be comfortable even in hot weather.” Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said Mamdani’s request is “proof that communism is (unfortunately) alive and well.”

Said Greene: “This is the worst campaign ad for the Democrats. Set your air to 78 degrees? Bless your hearts New York City!! American energy should be so strong and plentiful that you never have to set it above 70 if you don’t feel like it.” Even Dave Portney, a media personality who founded Barstool Sports in 2003 and endorsed GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in 2024, got into the act, posting on social media, “78 degrees??? Welcome to communism people! Hope you enjoy.”

While they focused on attacking Mamdani, Josh Holmes, chief of staff for Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell when he was Senate Republican leader, and others recalled the Carter speech, which the president delivered while wearing a sweater and sitting by the White House Library fireplace. Carter, a Democrat, asked Americans in the televised speech to conserve energy by lowering their thermostats to 65°F during the day and 55°F at night in winter. Later that summer, he urged them to set their cooling systems to 78°F.

“Jimmy Carter’s turn down your thermostat and put on a sweater,” Holmes said about Mandani’s idea. “American dream.” A couple of years ago, The Washington Post recalled the moment with a story headlined: “Jimmy Carter wore a sweater – and ignited years of Republican backlash.” The conservative- and libertarian-minded Bill of Rights Institute once called Carter’s decision, about two weeks into his presidency, to first tackle energy, as part of a large attempt to fix an overall struggling U.S. economy, a “costly mistake.”

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“.. a generation graduating without a working knowledge of the country they’re inheriting.”

“We’ve gotten much more proficient at telling the negative stories and forgotten to tell many of the positive stories.”

• The Most Important Initiative to Save Our Country’s Future (Margolis)

America’s 250th birthday is here, and so much that has led up to this moment has made it clear we have a lot of work to do to restore pride in this country… for those on the left. And an answer is underway. The Department of Education and the America First Policy Institute launched the America 250 Civics Education Coalition to address a problem most Americans already suspected: kids don’t understand how their own country works. The coalition partnered with Education Secretary Linda McMahon and officially launched on Sept. 17, Constitution Day, the anniversary of the Constitution’s signing in 1787.


National Assessment of Educational Progress data show that only 23% of eighth graders scored at or above proficiency in civics. That’s a generation graduating without a working knowledge of the country they’re inheriting. It’s no wonder socialism is becoming so popular among young people. They don’t understand why our system is superior. “One of the first things we did was kind of a diagnostic on where we are in civic education, and that was kind of the sobering news,” Michael Shires, vice chair of education opportunity, higher education and senior policy officer at the America First Policy Institute, told The Center Square. “The numbers would say that we’re not doing a very good job of passing that along to the next generation.”

Shires has a theory for how this happened. “A big part of how we got here is we just stopped telling the stories of what was good about America,” Shires said. “We’ve gotten much more proficient at telling the negative stories and forgotten to tell many of the positive stories.” So the coalition is telling those stories again, at scale. Under the motto “Know America. Love America,” the group has run more than 100 events, including K-12 teacher summits, student competitions, lectures, classroom resources, and a 50-state “Trail to Independence Tour,” tracing how each state joined the Union. Recent polling shows the share of Democrats who say they’re “extremely” or “very” proud to be American cratered from 85% in January 2001 to just 29% in 2026. Republicans held steady at 90% across those same 25 years.

This can be fixed.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the mission comes down to something simple. “Every young American understands the beauty of our nation and is equipped with the civic knowledge required to contribute meaningfully to its future,” she said.

The coalition includes dozens of organizations working with the Department of Education, among them First Liberty Institute and Turning Point USA. First Liberty Institute President Kelly Shackelford told The Center Square just how deep the knowledge gap runs. “There are so many polls, for instance, like 71% of Americans don’t even know what the three branches of government are,” Shackelford said. “And one of the more disturbing polls is that a large percentage of the students don’t even love their country. And it’s because they don’t know what their country is.”

Shires doesn’t want the 250th anniversary to be a one-off celebration. “We don’t want July 5 to be the end of this conversation,” he said. And despite the noise on cable news and social media, Shires said Americans still feel good about where they live. “Despite what you see in the news headlines and the networks and the social media and everything else, for most people in their lives, they’re excited that they’re in America, that it’s a place where they can thrive and make their own choices and pursue their dreams,” he said.

Initiatives such as this can deprogram young people who have been brainwashed to hate our country. Let’s hope it expands and continues.

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“Their homes burned, their land ransacked. Every last pound and shilling to their name poured into the patriot struggle. Some would die as paupers. But that was a price that each and every one of them was willing to pay.”

• This Rubio Video Might Be the Most Patriotic Thing You See All Year (Margolis)

America turned 250 years old this week, and of course, the left’s knight in socialist armor had something to say. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked the occasion with an insulting America 250 address he delivered from George Washington’s actual desk. He used the moment to describe his own country as an “arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal.” He accused federal agents of “terrorizing our streets” and warned that the nation’s founding ideals “are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them.”


That he made such a speech at the desk of George Washington is such an insult. In his speech, he framed his own government as an authoritarian regime that needs to be endured. Make no mistake about it, that is not patriotism, no matter what flowery language he used.

President Donald Trump took a sharply different approach at Mount Rushmore on Friday. He spoke of American exceptionalism, something that the likes of Mamdani don’t believe in. He also warned of “a resurgence of the communist menace in our land” and didn’t soften the message for anyone. “Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty,” Trump said. “It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11.” He drew the line without apology. “You can be loyal to Karl Marx, or you can be loyal to America,” Trump said. “You can be a communist, or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”

Another message you need to hear came from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who posted a video Saturday, narrated in his own voice, laying out exactly why this country is worth loving without qualification. “250 years ago today, a small band of men gathered in Philadelphia and declared war on the most powerful empire on the earth,” Rubio said. “They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of their posterity.”

“Many of them would lose everything in the Revolution,” Rubio continued. “Their homes burned, their land ransacked. Every last pound and shilling to their name poured into the patriot struggle. Some would die as paupers. But that was a price that each and every one of them was willing to pay.” He then tied the founders to something larger than themselves. “America has never been merely a proposition,” Rubio said. “It has always been a real and living civilization. A unique and distinctive people unlike any other nation or people in the history of the world.”

He continued, “America is an exceptional nation because Americans are an exceptional people. We are a people born on the edge of the known world. We are a frontier nation. From the hardy pioneers on the Oregon Trail to astronauts transcending the limits of Earth itself, America made the frontier a principle of national life. The men who built our country were heroes, among the greatest and most noble that the world has ever seen.”

Rubio closed his video with a line every American should be able to say without flinching. “This is the greatest nation on Earth,” he said. “That has been true for 250 years. And with God’s grace, it will be true for the next 250 as well.” That’s the difference between a party that has stopped loving this country and an administration still willing to say so out loud. Mamdani wants Americans to see their nation as an arena where the powerful crush the weak. Rubio wants Americans to see it as the greatest experiment in self-government the world has ever produced.

Because it is.

This country has had 250 years to prove itself, and it’s earned the right to be proud of what it has built. Never apologize for loving America, and never apologize for being proud of everything it has accomplished.

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The American was the first man not beholden in some way to one sort of king or another.

• “What Then Is The American, This New Man?” (Turley)

Across the country today, Americans are celebrating a common article of faith: the belief that a free people can govern themselves under rights given to them not by the government but by their creator.


Two hundred fifty years ago, the Republic was founded as the first major Enlightenment Revolution. The Enlightenment had started roughly 100 years earlier. Many in Europe had long argued for a society based on the writings of figures like John Locke. But it would happen thousands of miles away, among a collection of colonies where a people came together and put those principles to the test. They believed that they were entitled to rights of free speech, free exercise, and property as human beings, not as subjects.

We became the fascination of Europe among writers and intellectuals who could not understand how the world’s first Enlightenment Revolution could be brought about by a people with little connection to each other or the land; with no calcified class structure or fixed institutions. It led one Frenchman, who wrote under the name John Hector St. John, to ask, “What then is the American, this new man?” In my book, Rage and the Republic, I ask whether we can answer that question today. Who were we then, and who are we now?

In 1776, two revolutions were developing in America and in France. One would become the world’s oldest and most successful republic The other, in France, would become “the Terror,” in which tens of thousands would die on guillotines and in the streets. The true miracle of Philadelphia was the creation of a system that could harness the self-destructive powers of a democracy. The framers, and particularly James Madison, would create a constitutional system that forced moderation and compromise through checks and balances.

Many wanted a less restrained democratic system, but the Framers understood that such systems stretching back to ancient Athens had become little more than what Benjamin Rush called a “mobocracy.” In France, such voices prevailed. They unleashed a blood-letting that would ultimately even devour the Jacobins themselves. They first turned on the wealth and aristocrats, then on the priests and then each other. It would lead French journalist Jacques Mallet du Pan to write that “like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.”

Those voices are with us today. Many, including Democratic and socialist leaders, are denouncing the Declaration and the Constitution as tools of repression. This week, various Democrats went public to call for radical revolutionary changes or criticize our founding. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani used an occasion with newly admitted citizens to trash the country, oligarchs, ICE, and our “arena of supremacy.”

Socialist Mamdani described a virtual hellscape of a country run by “oligarchs who buy elections” as “children go to sleep hungry.” He added, “We see monopolies that dominate every industry, and oligarchs who buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans.”

Mamdani mocked the narrative of the republic, telling the new citizens that “the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional.” Others joined the celebrations with their own condemnations. Pennsylvania socialist Chris Rabb, the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, has joined the chorus of critics.

Speaking at “America at 250 — Trump Fascism, Historical Erasure, and the Battle Over Truth” in Philadelphia, the unopposed Rabb lashed out at a country built on “stolen land and stolen labor.” He also mocked the “lofty” “screeds” that “were notoriously catering to a performative aspect of collective genius that purposely erased indigenous and black peoples.” He denounced this country as based on harmful “myths” supporting white supremacy and fascism: “Fascism is not new. These systems of harm are built into the very fabric of this nation.”

Others, such as former MSNBC host Joy Reid, declared that black Americans don’t celebrate the Fourth. Reid dismissed celebrating what she called “MAGA America” which she described as “sad, pathetic, boring.” Others, like Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), used the anniversary to praise Cuba as the true model of success (something Mamdani had also done in his inaugural address). Blue states — Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Pennsylvania—declined to participate in the 250th anniversary celebrations on the Mall.

In Massachusetts, a historic church ended its long-standing celebration of the Fourth of July to focus on the “on-going process within the congregation to better understand our own whiteness.” This is the home of John Adams and other patriots. Adams wrote his wife Abigail that this day would be “celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”

We are seeing not a constitutional crisis but a crisis of faith. Polls show that fewer than half of Democrats are now proud to be Americans. For many of us, this day remains, as Adams described it, that day of deliverance. These are revolutionary times, but we remain a revolutionary people who believe that free speech and other rights belong to us as human beings. Our belief in individual rights and the free market built the greatest engine of prosperity and freedom in the history of the world. Many of these critics cite our flaws, including slavery, in a country based on inalienable rights. But what the framers gave us was a system that allows an imperfect people to form a “more perfect union.”

It was here that citizens could pursue their own manifest destiny. It is here that a black minister could speak on our National Mall about his unrealized dream and galvanize a nation to fight for the civil rights of every American.

It is here that an African American, and the child of a Kenyan, could become president.

It is here that the son of Vietnamese immigrants could rise this year to be Navy Secretary.

It is here that a black child growing up in a home with a dirt floor and no plumbing could become one of the longest-serving justices of the Supreme Court.

It is here that a people could survive economic meltdowns, global wars, and natural disasters, based on the simple belief that we share a common article of faith: “E pluribus unum” — “out of many, one.”

“What, then, is this American?” Look around you.

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“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”

• America at 250: Restoring America’s Greatness (Victor Joecks)

The pages of tomorrow’s history are written by today’s decisions. History is littered with failed republics and democracies. The Roman Republic became the Roman Empire. Democracy in ancient Greece turned into an aristocracy. This didn’t just happen in ancient history. In 1961, a new constitution in Venezuela divided the government into three branches. But in 1999, Hugo Chavez swept to power and rewrote the country’s constitution. He eventually became a dictator.


The Founding Fathers were well aware of the fleeting nature of our form of government. In 1787, Elizabeth Willing Powell asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” For context, in Federalist 39, former President James Madison defined a republic as “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior.”

The term “democratic republic” references the role that popular elections play in selecting some of our leaders. But the Founding Fathers held a much dimmer view of democracy by itself. In Federalist 10, Madison observed that democracies “have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” Even as America celebrates her 250th birthday, there are plenty of reasons to wonder about the country’s future. America has abandoned her Christian heritage. Government-funded schools teach children to hate America and Western Civilization more broadly.

Birth rates have generally been below replacement level for decades. You can see the fruit of those trends. Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Democrat congressional nominee from New York City, founded a group that seeks “the total eradication of Western Civilization.” Chants of “Death to America” have rung out on college campuses and the streets of New York City. Muslims are openly plotting to turn America into a Muslim country. But concerning trends are not outcomes. Americans still have the freedom and ability to change course. The most important thing is for America to return to her Christian roots. Listen to our Founding Fathers, not the misinformation taught in most modern history classes.

“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” Thomas Jefferson wrote. A version of that quote is on the Jefferson Memorial. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” George Washington said in his farewell address. “In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.”

You can’t force people to become Christians. But students should learn historical truths, not skewed leftist narratives. Institutions should also elevate and honor other pillars of America’s past — like the ideas of Western Civilization and the family. Part of this requires political action. You can’t win the war of ideas when the government subsidizes the losing side. America needs leaders who will act vigorously to defend America’s values. That includes deporting immigrants who hate America.

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“The Russian president has congratulated Donald Trump and the American people on 250 years of independence..”

• Russia and US Bear ‘Special Responsibility’ For Global Security – Putin (RT)

Russia and the United States bear a “special responsibility” for maintaining global security, President Vladimir Putin has said while congratulating his counterpart Donald Trump on the 250th anniversary of American independence. In a letter published by the Kremlin on Saturday, Putin wished Trump and his family “health, well-being and success,” and the American people “happiness and prosperity,” while describing the signing of the US Declaration of Independence as “an important milestone in world history.”


He also emphasized the countries’ shared history and special responsibilities as nuclear powers. “We were allies in two world wars, together freed humanity from the horrors of Nazism, and later played an important role in laying the foundations of the modern world order. Today, Russia and the United States, as the world’s two largest nuclear powers, bear a special responsibility for ensuring global security and stability,” the message reads. Putin also recalled that Russia had supported the North American colonists in their struggle for independence from Britain 250 years ago.

During the American Revolutionary War, Empress Catherine the Great refused Britain’s requests to send Russian troops to fight the colonists and later established the League of Armed Neutrality, which challenged London’s naval blockade and was widely seen as favoring the American cause. Since Trump returned to office last year, Moscow and Washington have renewed high-level contacts after years of strained relations. Putin and Trump met in person last August and have held several phone calls discussing the Ukraine conflict, the Middle East, and broader bilateral ties. However, several outstanding issues, including Ukraine-related sanctions and diplomatic property disputes, have not yet been resolved.

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The US and Russian leaders spoke for nearly 1.5 hours ..

• Trump Calls Putin on US Independence Day (RT)

US President Donald Trump called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to discuss the Ukraine conflict, the situation around Iran, and the prospects for restoring bilateral ties, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov has said. The conversation took place on Saturday, as the United States marked the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. According to Ushakov, Putin personally congratulated Trump and the American people on reaching the milestone, after sending a formal message to the White House a day earlier. The call lasted one hour and 25 minutes, Ushakov said, describing it as “businesslike and highly constructive.”

Ukraine conflict
Putin briefed Trump on what Ushakov described as the real situation on the ground in Ukraine, saying Russian forces were advancing along the entire line of contact and taking “one settlement after another.” Putin described the liberation of Konstantinovka, a key Ukrainian stronghold, as an important step toward establishing full control over the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic. The Kremlin aide said Moscow expects the remaining fortified areas still held by Kiev’s forces to be taken as well.

Putin reiterated Moscow’s preference for a political and diplomatic settlement, provided that Russia’s core positions are taken into account. At the same time, he accused Kiev and its European backers of seeking to prolong and escalate the conflict, including through “terrorism against civilians.” Trump, according to Ushakov, again confirmed his readiness to help bring the hostilities to an end and seek a peaceful settlement. He also argued that ending the Ukraine conflict as soon as possible could unlock “enormous prospects” for mutually beneficial cooperation between Russia and the US, the Kremlin aide said.

Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, will continue mediation efforts and are ready to visit Moscow “at a convenient time,” Ushakov added. The two leaders also discussed the situation around Iran, where a public farewell ceremony is being held for slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Putin expressed hope that the negotiation process based on the memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran would help produce mutually acceptable, long-term solutions to key issues, Ushakov said. The Russian president also reaffirmed Moscow’s readiness to provide practical assistance to efforts aimed at de-escalation and stabilizing the region.

Trump thanked Russia for what he described as its balanced position and constructive proposals, according to the Kremlin aide. Turning to bilateral ties, the presidents emphasized the importance of continuing contacts, including with regards to military-political and economic issues. The leaders also pointed to the upcoming launch of a joint Russian-American crew to the International Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome as a symbolic example of cooperation between the two powers.

The two presidents stressed the importance of preserving the shared pages of Russian-American history. Putin reminded Trump of Russia’s contribution to the emergence of American statehood, while both leaders highlighted the alliance between Moscow and Washington during World War II. Trump mentioned that he personally admires St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, while Putin wished the US success in hosting the ongoing FIFA World Cup, citing Russia’s own experience as host in 2018.

What’s next?
According to Ushakov, Moscow initiated the previous phone call on June 14, Trump’s 80th birthday, while this time it was the American side that proposed speaking on the day of the 250th anniversary of US independence. The presidents agreed to remain in contact and hold another call in the near future, according to Ushakov. Putin also reminded Trump that he has a standing invitation to visit Moscow.

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Standing invitation.

• Putin Invites Trump To Visit Russia In ‘Constructive’ July 4th Phone Call (ZH)

A nearly 90-minute phone call between Presidents Trump and Putin on July 4th could signal shifting White House priorities, as it tries to find permanent offramp and settlement in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, but also as the Ukraine war seems to be fast heating up again. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said in comments made public Sunday that Trump offered Putin to help find a solution to the war in Ukraine. “The American president once again confirmed his readiness to work towards a rapid end to the fighting and find solutions to overcome the crisis,” Ushakov said of Trump’s call. He called conversation “business-like and quite constructive.”


The spokesman further stated that Russia sought “a political-diplomatic resolution of the conflict, with due account of Russia’s fundamental approach.” But Ushakov also lashed out at the Zelensky government, accusing it and its European allies of “counting on extending and even escalating the conflict, and on terrorism against civilians.” This referred to the fact that Ukraine’s repeat drone strikes deep inside Russian territory have severely damaged energy infrastructure, as well as hit residential buildings and areas, resulting in casualties.

Ushakov further described that in the call Putin “depicted the real situation on the battlefield where the Russian armed forces are confidently advancing, liberating one locality after another.” Putin had also apparently renewed his initial Alaska Summit invitation for Trump to visit Russia, where further bilateral dialogue can take place, Axios noted. Trump on Saturday had also held a call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, who later said on Telegram the talk was “very good”. Zelensky stated that “There is a real prospect to end this war and American resolve will have a crucial meaning.”

Zelensky and Trump are expected to continue the discussion at the upcoming NATO Summit in Ankara, set for July 7-8. Zelensky had further taken the opportunity to highlight some of the latest weapons support from Washington: “We are grateful to the United States for all the assistance we have received – from Javelins and Patriots to political support – and we deeply value that America stands by us in defending our independence. I am grateful to every American heart that cares about the future of Ukraine, Europe, and everyone around the world for whom freedom matters,” he said.

Currently each warring side disputes the degree to which Russian forces are advancing. Supporters on either side have even been issuing contradictory battlefield maps, and the fog of war is thick.

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“Our troops are advancing,” Peskov continued. “No one here should have any doubt that our military is proceeding systematically, and we are seeing concrete results.”

• Russia’s Buffer Zone On Ukrainian Border ‘Expanding’ (ZH)

Russia has announced that one key measure that will be taken in response to Ukraine’s ramped-up drone attacks on Russian territory, including last month’s major strikes on the Moscow area, is the significant expansion of the border ‘buffer zone’ between the waring countries. “A security buffer zone on the Russian-Ukrainian border is conditioned by the aggressive nature of the Kiev regime and the Russian military is engaged in this process systematically reaching the appropriate progress,” presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.


In essence this is the Kremlin saying that Russian forces plan to permanently take over territory deeper into Ukraine. “Based on the aggressive nature of the Kiev regime and in order to insure the safety of our citizens, we are setting up a security zone, or the so-called, buffer zone,” Peskov continued. “This buffer zone is being created systematically. We do register significant results regarding the terms of our troops’ advancing.” “There area should be no in no one doubts that it would will be serve to extend the necessary area ensuring our security,” he added.

“Our troops are advancing,” Peskov continued. “No one here should have any doubt that our military is proceeding systematically, and we are seeing concrete results.” He cited the taking of Konstantinovka: “This is a milestone, it is the most important step towards taking the common fortified area of Kramatorsk and Slavyansk,” he claimed according to TASS. President Putin has of late been taking steps to strongly signal he’s committed as ever to completing the war aims of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ – despite reports of nationwide fuel shortages, and also a full-blown gasoline supply crisis in Crimea.

The Kremlin released footage on Friday evening of the 73-year old Russian leader visiting an auxiliary command post to meet with the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. Putin wore a military uniform, which Russian state sources described as a sign of his resolve to “finish off the terrorist neo-Nazi vermin”. [English-language RT’s response: “…seems to desire for that security zone to begin on the Polish border.”

https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Frussias-buffer-zone-ukrainian-border-expanding-result-worsening-drone-attacks-kremlin

The scene appeared aimed primarily at the West, which has been questioning Moscow’s resolve due to the now frequent Ukrainian drone hits on sensitive energy infrastructure.President Trump has also lately appeared to pivot back to wanting the resolve the Ukraine conflict, while still seeking permanent offramp regarding to the Iran war crisis.

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“Trump is said to have told Netanyahu “you’re fucking crazy’” while demanding Lebanon truce: “I’m saving your ass..”

• Trump: ‘Netanyahu Knows Who The Boss Is’ After Phone Call (ZH)

President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could meet as early as next week after the US leader returns from the annual NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. That’s what Trump told Axios on Saturday after a Friday phone call, wherein the Israeli PM congratulated the American leader on the 250th Independence Day of the United States. Trump said something very interesting in the wake of the call: “We get along very good. [Netanyahu] knows who the boss is,” he told Axios. US-Israel relations have been deeply strained of late, given deep Israeli reluctance on the US-Iran MoU signing, as well as the US-mediated ceasefire in Lebanon.


Israel fears that the end result to a hasty peace could be a nuclear-armed Iran, and some Israeli leaders have gone so far as to say military action must not stop until there’s true regime change. “During their conversation, the Prime Minister said that the United States is a guarantor of global freedom, and that Israel greatly values the close relationship between the two nations. Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump agreed to meet soon in the United States,” Netanyahu’s office said of the Saturday call. On the issue of controversy over the US-Israel relationship and the push to launch Operation Epic Fury, Axios provides the following: “

Many of Trump’s closest advisers think that Bibi was wrong about everything,” a U.S. official said. Trump lashed out at Netanyahu over Israel’s escalation in Lebanon in a phone call last month, calling the prime minister “crazy” and accusing him of ingratitude. The tensions have deepened a broader Republican schism over Israel and the war, with MAGA influencers like Tucker Carlson accusing Trump of being beholden to Netanyahu. Indeed there seems of late a concerted White House effort to dispel this narrative. It seems that Trump is at least now more conscientious about it, given he’s publicly seeking to assure Americans that Bibi “knows who the boss is.”

A prior Trump-Bibi call in June didn’t go so well. At that time reports based on US officials indicated that President Trump ripped into Netanyahu, cussing at him and the president essentially ‘steamrolled’ him – angry over breaking the Lebanon truce and demanding that Israel’s military not attack Beirut. Trump is said to have told Netanyahu “you’re fucking crazy’” while demanding Lebanon truce: “I’m saving your ass,” he also reportedly said. Israeli officials have sought to downplay these negative reports…

Since then, the US has essentially forced Israel to acknowledge the Lebanon ceasefire – though it should be noted that the IDF occupation has been allowed to continue in southern Lebanon – and direct exchanges of missile fire between Tehran and Tel Aviv has been silenced.

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” calling the targeted media “trustworthy” is a misnomer when people have already abandoned it.”

• UK Government’s SHOCKING Bid to RIG YouTube Algorithm (MN)

In a brazen move that reeks of authoritarian control, the UK government is pushing plans to seize influence over YouTube’s recommendation system. Their goal is to prioritise content from the BBC, and other state backed propaganda machines, while burying independent journalists and creators who dare challenge the official narrative.


This isn’t subtle nudging – it’s direct engineered suppression, which they’re dressing up as “protecting democracy” from so-called disinformation. As public trust in legacy media plummets, the establishment’s response is to rig the game rather than earn back credibility. YouTube itself has warned creators about the proposals. The platform alerted users that new rules could force it to give privileged positioning to approved outlets, limiting growth for everyone else and reshaping what millions see daily. Independent voices who built audiences by speaking truth to power now face algorithmic exile.

GB News’ Alex Armstrong labelled the move “an act of pure tyranny, designed to control you, your family and your friends on an industrial scale.” The Free Speech Union described the move as “beyond dystopian.”

People fled to platforms like YouTube and X precisely because of the BBC’s documented biases on mass migration, Net Zero, and more – biases even internal BBC reports have acknowledged. Now, the government wants to drag that failing model into your feed by law. Technology and free speech lawyer Preston Byrne slammed it as the British government seeking to “influence and control the marketplace of ideas.” Lord Toby Young highlighted the absurdity in The Spectator: calling the targeted media “trustworthy” is a misnomer when people have already abandoned it. Forcing platforms to promote it won’t restore trust – it will confirm the desperation.

The Free Speech Union also linked the development to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy’s exit from X, where she cited threats to democracy all while her department advances state-favoured content rules. It’s the same playbook we’ve seen over and over: label dissent as dangerous, then legislate your preferred sources into prominence. The Mercian News pointed out the BBC’s own admission that only around 30% of the public trusts national news organisations, with over 50% trusting social media more. Forcing exposure won’t fix that – it exposes the contempt for audience choice.

Even some on the left, like the Labour Digital Rights Network, have criticised the hypocrisy of engineering a sanitised internet while claiming to fight Big Tech.

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“The carousel of six prime ministers in recent years proves something is “very broken” about UK politics, according to the US vice president”.

• British People Are ‘Crying Out’ For Change – Vance (RT)

The constant churn of British prime ministers shows that the UK political system is badly failing the public, US Vice President J.D. Vance has said, warning that ordinary people are “crying out” for real change. Britain’s problem is bigger than any single leader, as the succession of David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer points to deep dysfunction in a system that is no longer delivering for the public, Vance suggested in an interview with The Sunday Times.


“What I see is six prime ministers in the last few years. What that says to me is that something is very broken about British politics and that people are really crying out for significant structural change,” Vance said. He added that the country has “been failed by its leadership for a long time” and “can do a lot more than it’s currently doing.” Starmer announced last month that he would step down as prime minister and Labour leader after less than two years in power, following a revolt inside his own party. Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is widely expected to replace him after winning a by-election in Makerfield.

Vance said he did not know much about Burnham personally, but stressed that Washington would work with whoever leads one of America’s “closest and most important allies.” The vice president’s comments, published on the 250th anniversary of the US declaration of independence from Britain, come after months of unusually blunt criticism of London from Washington. US President Donald Trump recently said Starmer had “failed badly” on migration and energy. Earlier this year, he said Starmer was “not Winston Churchill,” as relations soured over London’s hesitation to support the US-Israeli war with Iran.

Vance was especially outspoken when he condemned the brutal stabbing of British teenager Henry Nowak last month, arguing that it would not have happened had European elites “stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants.” Downing Street responded by accusing foreign politicians of trying to “interfere” in British democracy and “stir up division.”

The vice president rejected the idea that such criticism amounted to hostility toward Britain, insisting that “it comes from a perspective of love and admiration… even though sometimes what we say is provocative.” Vance made a similar argument at the Munich Security Conference last year, when he accused European governments of opening the “floodgates” to migrants while restricting free speech and hollowing out democratic norms.

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Debt Rattle July 5 2026

Jul 052026
 
 July 5, 2026  Posted by at 10:07 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  17 Responses »


Edward Hopper Room in Brooklyn 1932


• Semiquincentennial (Greg Byrnes)
• My Love Letter to America (Catherine Salgado)
• Burning Down the House (James Howard Kunstler)
• ‘Gave Iran Week Off Because We’re Nice’: Trump (ZH)
• Trump’s Mount Rushmore Speech Outrages the Media (Spencer)
• Survey: Democrats Turning Heavily in Favor of Socialism (Turley)
• America Turns 250. How Much Does It Owe Russia? (RT)
• Putin Is Destroying Russia (Paul Craig Roberts)
• ‘The Crisis Is Deep’: The View From Russia As Fuel Shortages Worsen (AlJ)
• New York’s Heat Wave Exposes the Cost of Political Fantasy (Manney)
• Ron DeSantis Has a Couple GREAT Questions For Zohran Mamdani (Doug P.)
• Congresswoman Labels Hillary Clinton ‘Deplorable’ (JTN)
• After Importing 50 million Migrants, Europe Declares a “Housing Crisis” (CTH)

 


 

https://twitter.com/HistoryBoomer/status/2073510103496413234?s=20

 


 


Love the word.

“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n” is the most famous line of the poem.

• Semiquincentennial (Greg Byrnes)

Revolutionary greetings, fellow Americans, on our semiquincentennial. How odd it is that we who disdain revolution celebrated it. Some may consider this an irony of history. In fact, it is built into the new system of government from its birth in 1775 through the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. The first year of the American Revolution was 1775, at least on the battlefield. And without that battlefield, all the talk in that hot summer in Philadelphia would’ve gone nowhere. Like millions of other Americans, on this day, I also salute our forebears who fought in the Revolution. According to a book I read, 75 of my family members were under arms, most lowly grunts.


One actually made it into one of those majestic paintings hanging in a museum. He is near a mounted George Washington treating a wounded Lt. James Monroe. The lieutenant survived and later declared a doctrine that people debate to this day. George Bailey and Paul Harvey, call your offices. Of course, the important person in the picture is Gen. Washington: No Washington, no revolution. Or even worse, no Washington, and we get an American version of the French Revolution! That would’ve been a double calamity.

Americans talk about the Civil War, that unpleasantness between North and South. But they forget the first civil war was between loyalists and what we now call patriots. So hats off to their descendants today, whether living in the United States or Canada. Since things turned out so well, all is forgiven. bIn high school, our summer reading assignment included books on the revolution by Kenneth Roberts. Arundel and Rabbel in Arms from the revolutionary point of view, and Oliver Wiswell from the loyalist point of view. In grammar school, we read Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. Good books, as I recall, and conducive to understanding both history and patriotism.

The hidden warning in the American Revolution is government debt. With massive debt and the tragedy of compound interest over generations, England was desperate for money and decided the colonies were a ripe chicken to pluck. Mismanagement of debt and hubris led to their fall. Have we learned the lesson? The founding fathers were, dare I say it, a bit nuts as creative geniuses tend to be. The two most opposite extremes were John Adams and Thomas Paine.

Paine was a radical anti-clerical atheist who relied on Satan’s speech and other gems in the epic poem Paradise Lost in his writing, including Common Sense. “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n” is the most famous line of the poem. No wonder the Catholic Church placed Milton on the Index of Forbidden Books.

And there was Adams, who, as the revolution loomed, didn’t get cold feet but felt something of a cold chill at the prospect that this revolution would lead to a destructive form of democracy. He feared control by a mobocracy like the ones that destroyed every other republic in recorded history, especially if radicals like Tom Paine were to take control. In fact, Paine eventually did join the French Revolution. Adams took a different course. Ever the rival of Thomas Jefferson, Adams was of the opinion that the true Declaration of Independence was actually on May 15, 1776, when the Continental Congress passed “the most important resolution that was ever taken in America.“

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1,000 of these.

• My Love Letter to America (Catherine Salgado)

Two hundred and fifty years ago, a new nation came into being, utterly unique in history, conceived in liberty, acknowledging only one king (God), and destined to become the greatest country upon earth.


From George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan, from Alexander Hamilton to U.S. Grant, from Frederick Douglass to George Patton, from John Fitzgerald to Davy Crockett, America has produced some of the greatest men in history. Brilliant leaders, thinkers, statesmen, generals, inventors, scientists, and writers fill the annals of our history. We the People of the United States alone can say that our nation arose not out of conquest or power grabs or ethnicity, but out of noble principles and fundamental truths about human dignity.

I love America more than anything except my faith, and it is tragic that this has become for many Americans a sappy or an offensive statement. At one time, not so long ago, a majority of Americans were proud to say publicly how much they loved this nation. Now it seems as if most Americans (especially young Americans) either hate America or couldn’t care less. Some major U.S. cities are holding no significant public July 4 events. Democrats gripe about every event that is happening. Traveling across Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia in the last few days, I have seen far more ads for the World Cup than for America 250. What happened to the patriots of yesteryear?

I ask this because it has shocked and saddened me how few people I know, especially Gen Z, share my excitement about America’s 250th birthday. What a magnificent achievement, what a historic day this is! In 1776, a couple dozen men in the Continental Congress voted for independence, knowing only a third at most of the colonists were patriots, knowing Britain was the most powerful empire in the world, knowing how impossible seemed their chance of success. In 2026, America is the most powerful, prosperous, and influential nation on earth. God has given us so many blessings, and it behooves us to be grateful.

Unlike any other country, America alone lived up in principle (though not always in practice) to the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14ff, Luke 19:12ff). America uniquely took into account God’s affirmation that seeking a king besides Him is sinful and foolish (1 Samuel/Kings 8). If other modern countries have attempted a republican form of government, it is in imitation of us and our Biblically-influenced system.

From my earliest childhood, I learned how remarkable and marvelous it was to be American. My grandfather and mother taught me many patriotic songs and tales of U.S. heroes. My father and mother both emphasized the honor of wearing a U.S. military uniform. My siblings and I acted out battles of the American Revolution during the long summer days. In college, I researched the anti-American propaganda I heard and found the truth even more compelling than I had supposed. When I grew up and could afford to travel, I wanted to go to every American museum and historic monument I could reach.

From Mount Vernon to Gettysburg to Tombstone to San Antonio to West Point to Trenton, everywhere I found the tales of great and good and dynamically original Americans, pioneers and revolutionaries and warriors. Yes, there have always been those who wish to destroy America from within, particularly the Democrat Party, and they have sometimes made America fall from its ideals. But my family was right to teach me to take pride and joy in being American, in living in a country that always strives for liberty even when it falls short.

Being American is a defining part of my identity. I only wish I could say I have sacrificed and accomplished something for the U.S., because like many young Americans now, I enjoy the blessings without the trials the previous generations endured. I hope if ever a trial comes, I can be as brave as the men and women of past generations. Without America, the world plunges into hopeless tyranny and chaos. Living here is a gift and being a citizen here a privilege. May God bless America, now and always.

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“I forgot to get napkins. I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” —Darializa Avila-Chevalier, primary election winner, New York’s 13th Congressional District.

• Burning Down the House (James Howard Kunstler)

Who are all these Democratic Socialists of America, anyway? “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization,” one of their spoxes declared on Instagram in 2024. Hmmmm . . . . I wonder if you can be a little more specific. Like, including democracy and socialism, two western civ constructs? Kind of looks like a baby / bathwater situation, followed by burning down the house where the baby lived. Do we get a chance to debate this proposition in the midterm election? Likewise, a St. Paul, Minnesota, school board member, one Chauntyll Allen offered the following policy recommendation on the We Love Our Dog Park Facebook page:


A bad moon is rising on our nation’s 250th birthday. The country is in a rancid mood. You begin to see what happens when political ideas are carried to their last limits. Question is: does all this add up to a winning party platform? You must suppose that higher-ups in the Democratic Party are asking themselves the question now. What do Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer think when they see these Angels of Death on the march (or in flight) over the midterm battlefield?

Darializa Avila Chevalier, Claire Valdez, and Melat Kiros are going to Congress to link arms with “The Squad” — AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley — and they will bring their cargo of DSA policy ideas with them: racial, gender, and social justice; abolish ICE (no more deporting anybody); defund the police; end incarceration (no more jails); free housing and medical care; green this-n-that; government ownership of business; abolish the Senate and the electoral college; pack the SCOTUS. . . .

The platform apparently has a lot of appeal to a certain demographic — which, I suspect, includes the many young recent graduates of the diploma mills who are pissed-off that Mr. Trump & Company are methodically shutting down the NGOs that were supposed to furnish these young race-and-gender studies majors with cushy, six-figure jobs doing “activism.” Alas, that pathway is increasingly blocked and the country only needs so many baristas. What to do then? Take it to the limit! Be communists. . . with all that entails. What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine, too.

his new gen of Democratic Socialists is arguably worse than the Confederates of 1861. Those Rebs only wanted to secede from USA and go their own way in one corner of the land. They didn’t want to piss on Johann Sebastian Bach, Leonardo DaVinci, Jane Austen, Margaret Fuller, and Ralph Waldo Emerson as they walked out. The Democratic Socialists of our day are fully aligned with their avatars: Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot, who operated human meat-grinders at scale to tamp down the opposition. Not a great look to align with the great mass-murderers of history.

It must be agony for Schumer and Jeffries. Eradicate Western Civ. . . ? Piss on white people’s corpses. . . ? Are they really going to get behind that? No-o-o-o-o. But they will try to wriggle around this steaming pile for some weeks to come until it is obvious that the Democratic Party has blown itself up, hoisted itself on that old petard. It may be too late for the party’s old guard. No matter how many rain-dances Elizabeth Warren does, nothing will put out this dumpster fire.

Another question for the months ahead: can that party control its increasingly maniacal street warriors, the Antifas, the Pink Pistols, the Transgender Armed Defense forces, and whatever remains of BLM. There is still a lot of money in circulation for public demonstrations and disruptions from George Soros and other sponsors. And apart from that are the forces of jihad, with their own foreign patrons. Gawd knows how many jihadis came into the country during “Joe Biden’s” orchestrated alien invasion. Not just a few, you can be sure.

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“References Ayatollah Funeral In Rushmore Speech”

• ‘Gave Iran Week Off Because We’re Nice’: Trump (ZH)

On Friday President Trump delivered a speech at Mount Rushmore to kick off the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations, and in it he confirmed that everything regarding Iran – whether on the military or diplomatic fronts – have been paused to allow for the Islamic Republic to bury its late supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Trump said Washington “knocked the hell out of Iran” and that the country was “dying to settle”. He also made comparisons between the lengthy Iran conflict and the brief US operation to overthrow Maduro of Venezuela.


“We beat Venezuela in one day, and we knocked the hell out of Iran,” he said. That’s when he claimed that the current US posture and pause in action is all about allowing the Iranians time to conduct a week-long funeral for the slain Khamenei, killed during the opening day of Operation Epic Fury. “We gave them a week off for a funeral because we’re nice,” he said. The funeral ceremonies began in Tehran on Friday, with government representatives from dozens of countries paying respects, and with the public multi-city procession in full swing on Saturday, amid a heavy Iranian security presence.

While the US administration is touting its Iran ‘excursion’ as a ‘win’ – the reality is that it is looking more like a quagmire with each passing week. Iran is no closer to abandoning its nuclear program, it is proclaiming its own control over the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian protocol, and its ruling clerics and IRGC military apparatus are firmly in place. Trump and White House officials had from day one vowed a rapid engagement, saying repeatedly it would end ‘fast’ – and had even initially touted that regime change would be imminent – but now it’s been 127 days since the conflict’s start.

Trump in his Rushmore speech didn’t dwell long on the Iran (mis)adventure, but moved on rather quickly to themes of American exceptionalism. “Americans honor excellence; we admire boldness; we respect ambition,” Trump said. “We are a nation of dreamers and believers, warriors and explorers, doers and fighters and in every human endeavor Americans see an unfinished competition.

“What is strong can be made stronger. What is fast can be made faster. What is great can be made greater than ever before. And that’s what’s happening with America.” He continued: “Show us a mountain, and we’ll just climb it. Show us an ocean and we’ll just cross it. Show us a problem and we will just solve it. Show us a task the world calls impossible and Americans will get it done.”

There’s a rich irony in Khamenei’s public funeral starting on the very day, July 4th, that America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding. The founding fathers warned the young Republic that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” John Quincy Adams famously warned, “She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”

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“Like Nothing Since the Days of Reagan “

• Trump’s Mount Rushmore Speech Outrages the Media (Spencer)

Speaking at Mount Rushmore on Friday to commemorate the 250th anniversary of our nation, President Donald Trump sounded the alarm: “As we approach this magnificent anniversary, we see our American identity under a renewed attack.” He observed that “a generation after we fought and won the Cold War against the menace of communism, there is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success.”


There was no doubt whatsoever that what he was saying was true, and that thirty-five years after the end of the Cold War, communism is indeed resurgent in the U.S. The establishment media confirmed this by falling easily back into its old Cold War habit of sneering at foes of communism as if patriots were fabricating the threat entirely, or at very least wildly exaggerating it in order to advance their own agenda.

The New York Times report was dripping with so much contempt that you’d think it was the good old days again, when they were sneering at Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. “Mr. Trump,” sniffed the Gray Lady, “read from an apocalyptic script as the stony faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln looked on. He said the word ‘communism’ so many times, you might’ve thought the Cold War was still on.” You’d think Trump had done something really gauche like ask Mr. Gorbachev to tear down this wall. (Back in 1987, when Ronald Reagan actually called on Soviet top dog Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, the Times complained that the president was “using this speech to portray Moscow as the villain in the arms race.”)

Trump, the rootless cosmopolites continued, was — horror of horrors — “not subtle.” He declared that communism was “‘the enemy of July 4, 1776.’ He called it a bigger threat than Pearl Harbor and even 9/11. He name-checked Karl Marx.” As well he should, for Marx is the intellectual godfather behind the communist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s petulant 250th anniversary remarks, in which he whined that “the powerful” view America as “an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal.”

Trump didn’t address Mamdani’s remarks directly, but he made it very clear that he knew what they represented: the politics of envy and hatred, which leads to social upheaval, total government control, and the state’s enslavement of its citizens. “These are not mere political disagreements,” Trump said, “like differences over taxes or regulations. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country.”

Speaking accurately about communism in a way that the New York Times hasn’t done since its Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter Walter Duranty covered up Stalin’s Ukrainian famine, Trump said that it was “the exact opposite of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s death, tyranny and the pursuit of evil.” He added: “You can be loyal to Karl Marx, or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist, or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”

That is undeniable, both because communism is an internationalist system that rejects all nationalism, and because it considers allegiance to anything but the international working class (which is in reality the bosses of whatever communist system is at hand) to be an unacceptable attachment to bourgeois capitalism.

Continuing in his classic Trumpian fashion, the president said that “the Communist Party is made up of illegal immigrants, criminals, and everybody that doesn’t want to work. Communism is a loser. It always was, and it is. Right now, it’s a big loser. Look at the people that are promoting it.” Trump has called a lot of people losers over the years, and in this case his usage may seem odd, given the fact that Democratic Socialists of America candidates have just won some impressive victories, and the Marxists appear to be on the march in America.

Trump is, however, entirely correct. Communism is an ideology for losers, as it punishes the productive for their productivity and rewards the thugs who manage to seize and hold power, all while presenting itself as the triumph of social justice and equality of rights for all. Only losers would fall for that lie, and only slaves would submit to it, and Trump doesn’t want to see America become the land of either one.

“Tonight,” the president said, “we gather on the eve of one of the most extraordinary days in the history of the world. Tomorrow we mark 250 years of glorious independence and 250 years of majestic American freedom – nothing like it.” Indeed there isn’t. And now that we have come this far, it would be a world-historical tragedy to lose it all to the most obviously failed ideology in the history of the world.

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“While 85 percent of Republicans and 40 percent of independents said that they would not vote for socialists, 62 percent of Democrats said that they would.”

• Survey: Democrats Turning Heavily in Favor of Socialism (Turley)

For many of us who were raised in liberal, Democratic families, the infusion of socialist, anti-free-speech, and anti-Semitic elements into the party has been alarming. The party was always in favor of social welfare programs but remained ardently committed to free markets and free speech. Now, we have CNN anchors openly questioning whether candidates are too Jewish-looking for the Democratic base as socialists sweep away establishment candidates. A recent poll reaffirmed that trend with a vast majority of Democrats saying that they are prepared to support the socialists.


A recent Economist/YouGov survey asked respondents, “Would you ever vote for a candidate who identified as a “Democratic Socialist?” While 85 percent of Republicans and 40 percent of independents said that they would not vote for socialists, 62 percent of Democrats said that they would. Among self-described liberals, the percent of support for socialism soars to 73 percent. For Kamala Harris supporters, 64 percent would support socialists.

Even more alarming is the preference of Democrats for socialism over capitalism. Some 34 percent choose socialism while only 22 percent choose capitalism. Overall, 58 percent of Democrats view socialism in general “favorably.” It is not surprising that socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders went on YouTube this week to proclaim that “we are on the verge of the political revolution” that they have long sought to fundamentally change our system. In Rage and the Republic, I discuss this shift toward socialism:

“Much of the anti-capitalist movement is composed of young people who have never lived under a socialist or communist government. Popular politicians like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have made socialism chic, alongside wealthy celebrity adherents such as Lawrence O’Donnell, Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore, and Sarah Silverman. There is a superficiality to many in this movement of wealthy celebrities wearing socialism on their designer sleeves. In one of the most glaring disconnects, Ocasio-Cortez attended the ritzy Met Gala (where tickets cost tens of thousands of dollars) wearing a designer dress with ‘Tax the Rich’ in large letters. It perfectly captured America’s armchair socialists, a commitment that often seems more performative than philosophical.”

Democratic establishment figures are maneuvering to stay ahead of the mob, many offering the far left the Supreme Court as bona fide. Others are staying silent as anti-Semitic figures fill their ranks. Some politicians are struggling to curry support with the growing socialist movement. Rep. Dan Goldman, who inherited a massive fortune as a trust baby, unwisely promised to help subsidize his campaign from his family fortune. With the addition of three homes, Goldman looked like the Richie Rich of the Democratic Party and lost by over 30 points.

Others are trying to downplay their wealth, from Rep. Ro Khanna, who reportedly has half a billion dollars from his wife’s inheritance, to Gov. Jay Robert “J.B.” Pritzker, who also inherited his fortune. Pritzker assured the mob that he is a different kind of billionaire, pointing at Trump billionaires as the rightful targets (not him with $4.3 billion). Notably, votes for socialists are not coming from blue-collar workers but from young, college-educated voters. These younger voters never experienced or watched the collapse of socialist systems in the last century. For them, the promise of the Mamdani’s “warmth of collectivism.”

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“The forgotten story of how the Russian Empire helped the US survive two defining crises..”

• America Turns 250. How Much Does It Owe Russia? (RT)

On July 4, the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its independence. Americans will honor the Founding Fathers, the Continental Army, and France’s decisive contribution to victory over Britain. But one foreign power that also helped shape the fate of the young republic has largely disappeared from popular memory. Twice in American history, first during the War of Independence and later during the Civil War, the Russian Empire took diplomatic and naval steps that helped the United States survive moments when its future was far from certain. Both times, St. Andrew’s flag flew on the side of the American republic.


The weapon that nearly strangled the American Revolution
When people think of the American Revolution, they usually picture battles at Lexington, Saratoga, or Yorktown. Far less attention is paid to the struggle at sea. Yet Britain’s greatest advantage over the rebellious colonies was not simply the Royal Navy itself, but its ability to wage economic warfare across the world’s oceans. In the eighteenth century, a maritime empire lived or died by commerce. Merchant fleets carried not only wealth but also food, weapons, military supplies, and the resources needed to sustain both armies and colonies. Disrupting those shipping lanes could cripple an opponent without winning a single decisive naval battle.

One of the most effective tools for doing so was privateering. Privateers occupied a legal middle ground between naval officers and pirates. Governments issued them letters of marque authorizing privately owned vessels to capture enemy merchant ships. Unlike pirates, privateers operated under state authority, bringing captured cargoes back to friendly ports, where the proceeds were divided between the state and the shipowners.

The system allowed maritime powers to wage commercial warfare on an enormous scale without maintaining prohibitively expensive fleets. Privateers could also stop neutral merchant ships if they were suspected of carrying goods destined for the enemy, particularly military supplies. As the American War of Independence expanded into a broader European conflict following the intervention of France and Spain, this increasingly drew neutral shipping into the fighting.

Russia, despite remaining outside the war itself, found its merchant vessels among those affected. Russian ships carrying grain and other cargoes to Mediterranean ports were increasingly intercepted by both regular warships and privateers. What had begun as Britain’s campaign against its enemies was gradually becoming a threat to neutral commerce across Europe. By the late 1770s, Catherine the Great concluded that neutrality meant little unless it could be defended. The stage was set for one of the most consequential diplomatic interventions of the American Revolution.

By 1778, Russia had already begun looking for ways to protect its merchant shipping. St. Petersburg proposed that Denmark jointly escort commercial vessels sailing to Russian ports, hoping to shield neutral trade from the growing conflict. The following spring, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden each dispatched naval squadrons to patrol northern waters while issuing declarations defending the rights of neutral commerce.The effort, however, failed to stop the seizures. Spain, despite being aligned with revolutionary France against Britain, continued intercepting Russian and Dutch merchant ships carrying grain to Mediterranean ports.

On February 28, 1780, the Russian empress responded with one of the most important diplomatic initiatives of the eighteenth century: the Declaration of Armed Neutrality. bIts message was simple. Russia had respected the rights of neutral commerce throughout its own wars and expected the same treatment in return. If Russian merchant ships continued to be stopped or their cargoes confiscated, the empire would defend its maritime rights by force. Any attempt to seize Russian vessels now carried the risk of war with one of Europe’s great powers.

The declaration established several principles that would reshape maritime law. Neutral ships were to enjoy free navigation between the ports of belligerent states. Enemy goods carried aboard neutral vessels were to remain protected unless they constituted military contraband. Blockades would be recognized only when they were physically enforced by naval forces rather than proclaimed on paper. Most importantly, Russia pledged to back these principles with armed squadrons rather than diplomatic protests alone.

Catherine’s initiative quickly evolved into something far larger than a Russian policy. Denmark and Sweden joined almost immediately, effectively closing the Baltic to unrestricted operations by the warring powers. Over the following years, the Netherlands, Prussia, Austria, Portugal, and the Kingdom of Naples also adhered to the convention. Even France, Spain, and the United States broadly accepted its principles, although they never formally entered the league. Britain, whose naval strategy stood to lose the most, remained the only major power to reject it. The greatest beneficiary, however, was neither Russia nor the European neutrals. It was the thirteen rebelling colonies.

Without the principles established by the Armed Neutrality, Britain would have enjoyed far greater freedom to isolate American ports and choke off the overseas trade on which the revolutionary economy depended. By limiting London’s ability to interfere with neutral shipping, Catherine’s declaration made such a blockade far more difficult to sustain. The young republic still had to win its independence on the battlefield, but the sea became a far less effective weapon against it. For a nation celebrating 250 years of independence, this remains one of the least remembered international chapters of the American Revolution.

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Yeah yeah.

• Putin Is Destroying Russia (Paul Craig Roberts)

Yulia Shapovalova, Moscow correspondent for Al Jazeera, reports that Pusillinamous Putin’s ever-widening war has, as I said it would, expanded deep into Russia far from the Donbas battlefield. Shapovalova reports “The crisis is deep,” as civilian fuel shortages worsen. Ukraine’s successful strikes on Russian refineries and fuel storage have imperiled supply and resulted in gasoline rationing throughout the country and long lines as Russians wait hours for their rationed supply. What Putin has achieved is a reduction in Russians’ confidence in their government.


Russia has had to halt export sales of gasoline and jet fuel, and lower the fuel grade standards for gasoline. In Crimea, a state of emergency has been declared. Concerns are being expressed that to insure adequate fuel supply for agricultural harvesting could result in industry shutdowns. Russia has had to purchase 80,000 tons of gasoline from India and hopes to be able to import 400,000 tonnes of gasoline each month from wherever Russia can get it. This clearly will not help the Russian balance of payments, which the pro-American Russian bank director will use for more punishment for Russians.

Confronted with a genuine crisis, what is Putin’s response?v“I would say it is not critical,” says Russia’s failed war leader. Little doubt that Russia’s population’s response to Putin is “not critical for who?” “Not critical for those of us who cannot rely on transportation because you refuse to win a war?” “Not critical for those of us whose choices might be to be laid off from our jobs or face a food shortage?” “Not critical to those of us who will face more punishments from your central bank director to pass the cost of the Russian trade deficit you are causing to us?”

Clearly, Putin and his incompetent Kremlin entourage are, while in the middle of an ever-widening and ever-unsuccessful war, destroying the confidence of the Russian people in the Russian government. The American Zionist Neoconservatives seem to have Putin in their camp, aiding and abetting Washington’s hegemony. Why would Putin do this? Why would he be allowed to do this?

Recently I asked, tongue in cheek, “Is Putin an Unaware Agent of the West,” and linked to Gilbert Doctorow’s article raising a similar question. Both articles were translated and published in a Russian newspaper, which served notice that the Russian media is no longer reticent and is asking pertinent questions. We are now half way into the fifth year of Putin fighting a war that he has shown no intention of winning.

The cause of such extraordinary failure is difficult to discern. Is the cause the alliance of Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s main negotiator, with the Russian billionaire oligarchs and the West and the advice of Putin’s pro-West central bank director who intentionally left $300 billion of Russian bank reserves where the West could seize it? Have pro-Western forces in Russia made it difficult for Putin to represent Russian interests?

I can’t say, but at least this is an explanation why a militarily powerful country would fail to win a conflict with a third rate military power after 4.5 years, much longer than it took Stalin’s Red Army to defeat the mighty German Wehrmacht. Putin now ranks as the worst failure of a military leader in world history.

Frederica Marsi, also a correspondent for Al Jazeera, reports: “Ukrainian drone attacks on energy infrastructure are intensifying fuel shortages in Russia, triggering a rare admission from President Vladimir Putin of the gravity of the situation. In unusually candid public remarks to a meeting of senior officials on Sunday, Putin explicitly acknowledged that Ukrainian strikes had led to fuel rationing.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/30/how-severe-is-russias-energy-shortage-because-of-ukrainian-strikes

But what Putin refuses to acknowledge is that the Ukrainian strikes on Russia are war. Putin calls increasingly successful Ukrainian strikes on Russia, aided and abetted by NATO and Washington, “terrorist attacks on our civilian targets and infrastructure.”

In other words, Russia is not at war. Russia is merely experiencing terrorist attacks. Like the US attack on the Nord Sea Pipeline. Like the US attack on the Russian strategic bombing fleet. Like the US attack on Putin’s home intended to kill him. There is no war here folks. Just terrorist actions.

As Putin has redefined war as random terrorist acts, he doesn’t have to win a war, just ration gasoline, run up the Russian trade deficit with gasoline imports, accept Russian civilian casualties as a result of “terrorist activities,” and do nothing to win a war. The failure to win the war is demoralizing the Russian people and discrediting Russia as a military power, a discrediting that is bringing on a much larger and more dangerous war with the West, a war that will be nuclear.

So readers, tell me, why is Putin destroying Russia’s military reputation and leaving the Russian people ever more open to attack? What can possibly explain the total failure of such a powerful military force as Russia to win a war with a third rate power after 4.5 years? The only possible answer is the total failure of Russian leadership.

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‘I would say it is not critical’: Putin

• ‘The Crisis Is Deep’: The View From Russia As Fuel Shortages Worsen (AlJ)

Russia faces a severe fuel deficit as Ukrainian drone strikes knock out a significant portion of its refining capacity. With continuing war in Ukraine and agricultural harvesting under way, the government is scrambling to re-route supplies, maintain price caps and enforce export bans to prevent further domestic shortages. Long lines at petrol stations are now a common sight throughout the country, including in the prosperous capital Moscow. People wait for hours to fill up their cars. In some places, the pumps are completely dry. There is a sense of patience but also mounting anxiety in the air.


“I’m deeply frightened by the uncertainty and the lack of understanding where the situation is heading,” a woman named Irina, waiting to fill up her car in Moscow, told Al Jazeera. Igor, another Moscow resident, said: “I think things can get out of control if the crisis causes major industries to shut down.” Analysts predict that increased fuel prices will mean higher transportation costs followed by significant price hikes for goods and services. Stanislav Mitrakhovich, an expert at the National Energy Security Fund at the Russian Financial University, said the crisis is “deep, yet for a long time, Russian authorities were unwilling to acknowledge it”.

He added that the Russian response has led to “greater public distrust” of authorities and, consequently, triggered panic buying. b“Indirect evidence indicates that Ukrainian drone attacks have disabled about a quarter of Russia’s oil refining capacity,” he told Al Jazeera. “Seasonal demand has also contributed to the problem. The crisis has led to rising fuel prices and local shortages, as some regions simply lack oil refineries.” The situation is “even worse” in regions close to the combat zone, he said. “Measures to restrict and ration fuel sales have long been in place there.”

To tackle the problem, Russia has imposed fuel rationing. Sales are often limited to about 20-30 litres (about 5-8 US gallons) per vehicle, and drivers must pump fuel strictly into vehicle tanks. Filling jerry cans is largely prohibited. Earlier, the government banned petrol and jet fuel exports. Officials are now weighing a ban on diesel exports, too. Authorities have loosened fuel-quality regulations, temporarily allowing lower-grade fuel for the domestic market. In Russia-controlled Crimea, a state of emergency has been declared.

As the approaching agricultural harvesting season relies on a steady stream of diesel, authorities are prioritising farming allocations to prevent a hit to food security. To offset the domestic shortfall, Moscow has sought fuel imports from neighbouring countries, such as Belarus, as well as Asian markets. Moscow has shipped in 60,000 to 80,000 tonnes of petrol from India, according to industry sources cited by the Reuters news agency. Russia reportedly plans to import 400,000 tonnes of petrol monthly from various countries.

‘I would say it is not critical’: Putin
While Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledges the crisis, he appears reluctant to end the war in Ukraine and insists the situation is under control. “These attacks on our facilities certainly create problems, that is obvious. We are currently seeing a certain shortage, though I would say it is not critical,” he said. “First and foremost, we have to rapidly and significantly increase production of air defence systems that are most in demand. We must also continue to improve them … Repairs at refineries must be completed more quickly.”

Ukraine is seizing its opportunity. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has authorised a 40-day military and intelligence campaign, aimed at pressuring Russia into ending the war. Mitrakhovich said the way the crisis unfolds from here depends on what’s more effective: Ukraine’s drone strikes or Russia’s air defences.

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How will Mamdani fix the grid?

• New York’s Heat Wave Exposes the Cost of Political Fantasy (Manney)

A grandmother in Queens didn’t need a lecture about her thermostat; she needed electricity. Con Edison temporarily shut off electric services Friday to about 9,800 residential and commercial customers in Southwest Queens after extreme heat and heavy demand damaged equipment. bThe affected neighborhoods included Howard Beach, Ozone Park, Richmond Hill, and South Ozone Park.bThe company said the move was meant to allow quicker repairs and prevent longer, wider outages. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had already asked businesses and residents to set thermostats to 78ºF and hold off on running major appliances until early morning or late at night.


“I am asking every New Yorker to make a heat plan before the worst of this weather arrives,” said Mayor Mamdani. “The best protection against extreme heat is air conditioning. If you don’t have it at home, know now where you’ll go to stay cool. Check in on your neighbors, especially seniors, and if you see someone outside who appears to be in distress, call 311 so we can get help to them. This administration is using every tool we have to keep New Yorkers safe, but the strongest city is one where neighbors look out for one another.”

“We have deployed every resource this city has, but our most powerful tool isn’t a forecast or a cooling center. It’s a New Yorker,” said NYC Emergency Management Commissioner Christina Farrell. “The neighbor who knocks on the door, the family member who calls to check in, the stranger who stops to help. This holiday week, we are asking every New Yorker to look out for one another so that no one faces this heat alone. Visit nyc.gov/beattheheat or call 311 to find a cooling center near you and get the resources you need to beat the heat.”

City Hall said temperatures could feel as hot as 112ºF during the historic holiday weekend heat wave. The mayor’s office also opened more cooling centers, extended pool hours, and expanded outreach to vulnerable New Yorkers. Conservation during a heat wave can be reasonable; families understand the strain. Most people will turn a dishwasher off, delay laundry, or nudge the thermostat up a few degrees if it keeps the lights on for a sick neighbor down the block.=v The insult comes when political leaders preach sacrifice after years of treating reliable energy like a dirty habit.

New York doesn’t have an ideology problem when the air is mild and the lights are on. It has one when the heat index climbs, the grid strains, and ordinary people are told to sweat through a crisis while the political class poses as noble managers of scarcity. Con Edison said heat, humidity, and higher demand from air conditioners strained the system. By Thursday night, crews had restored power to nearly 31,000 customers affected by scattered outages since the heat wave began. They were still working to restore service to about 5,000 customers in Staten Island, 5,000 in the Bronx, and 6,000 in Queens.

The company later said the heat wave was one of the most intense in more than a decade, with dangerous temperatures topping 100ºF. Crews worked around the clock repairing underground cables in sweltering conditions. bCon Edison told customers to defer major appliances between 2 p.m. and 10 p.m., use only one large appliance at a time, and set air conditioners to the highest comfortable temperature.

Gov. Kathy Hochul also urged New Yorkers to conserve electricity if safe, setting air conditioners between 75ºF and 78ºF and avoiding unnecessary appliance use. Her office said state officials were coordinating with Con Edison, NYISO, and New York City leaders so large energy users could switch to other fuel sources where possible. From the governor’s statement: “New York State is in the midst of a prolonged heat wave, and we’ve been carefully monitoring our electrical grid to ensure it is able to withstand the increase in energy usage and keep New Yorkers safe.

“My team has been coordinating with Con-Ed, NYISO and New York City leaders to ensure all large consumers able to switch to other fuel sources have done so to reduce their usage. Due to the increase in energy demand and unexpected load challenges, I am also calling on New Yorkers to do their part to proactively conserve electricity if safe to do so by setting air conditioning units between 75 – 78 degrees and avoiding unnecessary appliance use. These small steps can go a long way. “While we are asking for New Yorkers to voluntarily conserve power, it’s critical to stay safe in this dangerous heat: stay hydrated, reduce time outdoors and find a cooling center near you, especially if you’re a senior citizen or have health concerns.

“I thank New Yorkers for taking these steps to reduce their usage and helping us keep the power on and protect the most vulnerable in our community.” The problem isn’t one emergency request; it’s a governing culture that sees command as competence. Set the thermostat here, delay the appliance there, dim the signs, open a cooling center, and ask families to absorb the failure politely. If the power returns, politicians claim management; if the grid buckles, residents are told they didn’t sacrifice enough.

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Trump should step in.

• Ron DeSantis Has a Couple GREAT Questions For Zohran Mamdani (Doug P.)

Yesterday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivered a speech about America’s 250th, and it was a patriotic tribute in appreciation of the freedom we all enjoy as citizens.

Just kidding!

Comrade Mamdani’s speech was exactly the kind of thing we were expecting from the socialist darling of the Democratic Party:

The American pride was palpable. Well, not really:

That’s… something. If Team Mamdani was going after a “hostage video” vibe they nailed it.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has a couple of questions for Mamdani and his America-bashing pals:

Right? https://twitter.com/IsaiahLCarter/status/2073196564588163325?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2073196564588163325%7Ctwgr%5Eba6cb3cf6922af1b3f429ac3af248e965988fa1f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fdougp%2F2026%2F07%2F04%2Fron-desantis-has-a-couple-of-fair-questions-about-zohran-mamdanis-airing-of-grievances-about-the-us-n2429892

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They sure are scared of Bill Pulte.

• Congresswoman Labels Hillary Clinton ‘Deplorable’ (JTN)

Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, is turning Hillary Clinton’s most infamous phrase against her, sharply criticizing the former First Lady’s suggestion that spy agency workers resist Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte and keep intelligence from him. “I’m going to use Hillary Clinton’s own words: deplorable,” Miller/Meeks told the Just the News, No Noise TV show on Thursday. “That is disgusting behavior from a former secretary of state, from a former first lady, from a former senator.”


The Iowa congresswoman emphasized that President Donald Trump should have “every tool in his tool box” when it comes to national intelligence, especially given that the threat level is high as the United States hosts the World Cup and the 250th anniversary of Independence Day. “We need to have all ears to the ground to prevent tragedies from happening, such as the 9/11 tragedy,” Miller-Meeks said. In a “Democracy Docket” podcast on Wednesday with host Marc Elias, Clinton said Pulte’s appointment was “deeply insulting to the intelligence community” and that he lacks intelligence experience after Elias questioned her concerns regarding Trump’s replacement of Tulsi Gabbard with Pulte.

Gabbard announced in May she would be stepping down from the position to help care for her husband as he battles cancer. Clinton questioned why a lawsuit hasn’t been brought, stating she believes Pulte is “manifestly unqualified under the statute to hold that position.” The former First Lady has a tenuous relationship with the intelligence community given that the FBI in 2016 found evidence that she and her colleagues were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” “It certainly is unconscionable that she would say this,” Miller-Meeks said of Clinton.

Clinton said on the podcast that the DNI has access to all the nation’s spy secrets, that people should be “worried about everything” with Pulte in the position and that she hopes there are “career and even political appointees in various of the agencies that are slow-walking or refusing to share information with Pulte.”

After assuming his position, Pulte quickly followed through with Trump’s wish to lay off staffers within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.Other Democrats have criticized Trump for appointing Pulte, namely, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). “You’re going to turn the keys of all of our intelligence agencies over [to] somebody so grossly unqualified who’s shown he’s willing to take information and misuse it — secret information,” Warner said last month on Fox News.

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“The majority of the EU citizens did not want this migrant influx..”

• After Importing 50 million Migrants, Europe Declares a “Housing Crisis” (CTH)

The EU President Ursula von der Leyen travelled to Ireland to deliver remarks as Ireland takes their turn in managing the bureaucratic affairs of the EU Commission. As part of her speech to the audience, von der Leyen notes one of the biggest challenges facing the EU is a housing and affordability crisis. In the last 10 years, Europe has intentionally allowed around 50 million migrants to arrive and claim asylum. The majority of the EU citizens did not want this migrant influx. EU leadership is now declaring a “housing crisis” created by their own migrant policies. WATCH:



At this point in history, the European leadership is just making fun of European citizens.

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Debt Rattle Fourth of July 2026

Jul 042026
 
 July 4, 2026  Posted by at 9:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  27 Responses »


Claude Monet Water lillies 1914 – 1917


• 250 Years of Fighting for Liberty (Ashley McCully)
• US At 250: Why America Has Been So Successful And Can It Continue (ZH)
• Mamdani Gives 250th Anniversary Speech (Robert Spencer)
• UK Labour Party Proves Why America Was Right to Ditch Parliament (Queen)
• The AI-Quantum Race Is About Who Governs the Future (Jeff Dornik)
• World’s Largest Data Center Project On Verge Of Collapse (ZH)
• Secret Service Missed 102 Warnings Before Trump Assassination Attempt (ET)
• Tulsi Gabbard Outlines the Mechanics of the Deep State (CTH)
• FBI Mole Wore Wire Inside Newsom’s Inner Circle: Lawyer (ZH)
• Need Another Reason to Loathe Michelle Obama? (Matt Margolis)
• Chancellor Friedrich Merz Delivers Statement to German Workforce (CTH)
• Germany’s Rotten Center Is Heading For A Reckoning (Amar)

 


 

 


 


I very much like she includes Dr. King as someone who fought for liberty in America.,

• 250 Years of Fighting for Liberty (Ashley McCully)

The pursuit of freedom has inspired every step of America’s journey and, as we all reflect on what the last 250 years have produced, it is imperative that we view our history through the lens of liberty. America’s story is vastly different from other countries because our definition of freedom is vastly different. From individual colonies to our 47th president, the United States is founded on the idea that our rights come from God, not government. For more than three centuries, we have fought to preserve this belief, and if we want to keep it, the fight will continue for at least another three.


Consider the colonists. They endured filthy, deadly conditions to cross the Atlantic to find freedom. Monarchies consolidated power and exercised it tyrannically, limiting how people could and could not worship God, imprisoning, beating, or fining anyone who did not comply. Rigid European class structure mandated that anyone born in poverty would die in poverty because there was no reason the upper crust should tolerate individualism. These people finally broke free of the Crown only to be hounded and taxed an ocean away, so they fought back with the greatest breakup letter of all time.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”
—The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

It’s straightforward: our rights come from God, and men form a government to protect those rights, not to issue or infringe upon them. After winning the Revolutionary War, America’s quest for freedom was only beginning. Yes, we were no longer under the jurisdiction of the Crown, but we did have to secure our sovereignty on the world stage. We wanted to regroup economically, so we opted to stay out of the British-French trade squabble, but neutrality soon became impossible. The British, for all intents and purposes, kidnapped as many as 9,000 American sailors, claiming they were British deserters and forcing our ships into their ports, requiring us to pay their duty tax. Not even 30 years after we threw off the yoke of tyranny, they were after us again, so we fought back in the War of 1812.

“There shall be a firm and universal Peace between His Britannic Majesty and the United States, and between their respective Countries, Territories, Cities, Towns, and People of every degree without exception of places or persons. All hostilities both by sea and land shall cease as soon as this Treaty shall have been ratified by both parties as hereinafter mentioned.”
—Treaty of Ghent, December 24, 1814

Finally free to sit at the grown-up table in world affairs, the United States set out to make its fortune, and it did, on the backs of slaves. Chattel slavery robbed men and women who were created in the image of God—the same God who supposedly endowed all of His creation with inalienable rights outlined in the Declaration of Independence — of their freedoms and dignities. The North and the South both willingly engaged in the slave economy, but enough people understood how egregious and contradictory the practice was and fought back.

“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free”
—Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863

It would be more than two years before the Civil War came to an end and the last remaining slaves in Galveston, Texas, were notified of their freedom. We added the 13th Amendment to our Constitution, finally and forever abolishing slavery in America. We added the 14th Amendment to afford those born into slavery in America the status of citizens. The 15th Amendment granted citizens the right to vote regardless of the color of their skin.

Women were the unsung heroes of the American abolitionist movement and, once they saw freedom secured for black people, they continued to cast off their own chains. Fighting against assumptions of intellectual ineptitude and the idea that women were far too busy in the home to cast well-informed votes, women pushed themselves across the finish line in 1920 with the 19th Amendment, giving them the right to vote.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice. He has taken from her all right in property, even to wages she earns…
—The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, Seneca Falls Convention, July 20, 1848

Close readers will pick up the thread of freedom shifting ever-so-slightly from rights in life to rights in politics. It is this shift, wherein the government begins to issue rights to participate, that we must pause and reflect, especially when it comes to questioning the next 300 years of freedom in America.

Regardless of laws declaring a person’s right to vote, pervasive Jim Crow laws were unofficial statutes designed to keep black people down. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. picked up the thread and moved it back toward rights in life. The Civil Rights Movement in America reminded us that God does not only care about votes, but about how His children are treated. We watched growing numbers of citizens link arms and peacefully march across bridges, endure dog attacks and fire hose boundaries, sit in chairs they were supposedly not good enough to sit in, and people fought back.

“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1964

Today we are still fighting for freedom, at home and abroad. Brave men and women wearing the cloth of a sometimes-grateful nation work to protect us from terrorists who seek to kill us for no reason other than that we are not one of them. God-fearing patriots stand up every day for the unborn and their right to be born. Good guys with guns have to remind politicians and special interest groups that the right to keep and bear arms is not about hunting. As AI increases and privacy is decreasing, it is up to us to come together and protect that which no one has a right to: intrusion of personal information and space.

The definition of freedom has never changed; it has always come from God and will forever need to be protected against government. Our lives, though, have changed substantially, and we are facing new threats to our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. We have a constitutional republic, if we can keep it—if we want to keep it. No one said this road would be easy, but we all know in the core of our selves that freedom is worth its price.

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The world was ready for it.

• US At 250: Why America Has Been So Successful And Can It Continue (ZH)

So what has caused this incredible success?


The first reason, and one of the most critical historically, has been the US’ political and institutional stability. Clearly, there have been moments of intense turmoil, most notably with the Civil War in the 1860s. Its historical path also should not be over-romanticised, with US territorial expansion during the 19th century having many similarities to that of the Old World colonial empires. Nonetheless, the US is incredibly rare in that its political system is recognizably the same over the last 200 years. This relative stability and early development of property rights provided a fertile environment for long-term investments, which in turn has aided economic growth over the centuries.

The second reason is its geographic advantages. The US possesses vast arable land, navigable rivers, large coastlines, and access to two oceans. It therefore found itself more insulated from the destructive effects of the world wars, with productive capacity not impacted in the same way. Moreover, the country borders Mexico and Canada, who in both population and GDP terms are much smaller than the United States, meaning it didn’t face the security risks that many European powers faced over the 19th and early-20th centuries.

The third reason has been its abundance of energy resources, particularly relative to Europe. In large part a corollary of its geographic strengths, this energy abundance has given the US several advantages. First of all, lowering costs for households and industry, which has helped the economy be more resilient against geopolitical shocks. Moreover, with the US becoming a net energy exporter in recent years, it also strengthens the external position.

The fourth reason for the US’ relative success was that its main competitors in Europe were deeply affected by the world wars and wider political turmoil. Their productive and financial capacity was severely degraded, with the destruction causing huge loss of life as well. Even among those who survived, many scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs left for the US in the first half of the 20th century. Whilst not a US “success” as such, this meant that on a relative basis, the US’ divergence widened considerably. Indeed, in the first half of the 20th century, the US economy grew by 5.7 times, Germany by 3.4 times, the UK by 2.0 times, and France by 1.8 times.

The fifth reason for the US’ outperformance is scale. It has a large domestic market of over 300m people, with high average incomes, a common language, and low internal barriers to trade. This has given firms the ability to reach a large-scale domestically before expanding abroad. Indeed, it is notable that 8 of the world’s 10 largest firms are based in the US, whereas none are in Europe.

The sixth reason is the structural advantage of the US Dollar, which remains dominant in global trade and FX reserves. This dollar demand matters because it lowers borrowing costs and raises demand for US Treasuries. In turn, it leaves the US with an exceptional capacity to run bigger fiscal and external deficits without facing a funding crisis, and expands the geopolitical leverage that the US possesses. This has been dubbed the “exorbitant privilege”, and has been a major advantage in recent decades.

The seventh reason is financial depth. The US has a large banking system, but also a wide range of non-bank financing, which means startups have access to other sources of capital. In fact, in the decade from 2013 to 2023, annual venture capital financing was 0.7% of GDP in the US, compared to just 0.2% in the EU. This financial depth is important because innovative firms can often be loss-making for lengthy periods, so countries with bigger pools of patient risk capital are better placed to commercialise new technologies.

The eighth reason is its self-compounding advantages in education and research. The US has many of the world’s strongest research universities, including 7 of the top 10 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2026. Moreover, this research also has an economic angle, as scientific discoveries feed into startups, workforce training and industrial scale-ups. In turn, this becomes self compounding, because top global talent is attracted to the US, and ensures it remains at the forefront of new sectors such as artificial intelligence.

The ninth reason is its pro-business architecture, including a greater tolerance of business failure than many European systems. For instance, Chapter 11 reorganisation is designed to preserve and restructure viable firms rather than liquidate them. This more positive approach to business failure ties into the empirical literature, which suggests that more debtor-friendly and efficient insolvency frameworks are associated with greater entrepreneurship and innovation.

The tenth reason is adaptability. The cultural acceptance of failure and capacity to reinvent itself have boosted US ability to adapt to the changing world. This has allowed it to navigate repeat boom-and-bust cycles, as well swings of the policy pendulum – between openness and isolationism, between protectionism and free trade – without threatening overall the institutional stability we highlighted above. And while capitalism has been a key underlying driving force, it is pragmatism rather than ideology that have driven continued success over time.

It is also important to note that these advantages do not play out individually, but are mutually reinforcing, with the interaction between them allowing the US to benefit from network and externality effects that few if any countries can match.

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He talks like it’s his annniversary.

“America, in Mamdani’s view, is a sad place where heartless, racist, xenophobic plutocrats rule the roost ..”

• Mamdani Gives 250th Anniversary Speech (Robert Spencer)

New York City’s Communist Twelver Shi’ite Mayor Zohran Mamdani has bestowed upon a waiting world his speech commemorating America’s 250th anniversary, and it is just as small, petty, grievance-laden, fantasy-based, and angry as you’d expect a speech from a man who hates America to be.


The visual effect was even worse, as Mamdani delivered the speech while seated at a desk that seemed to be turned the wrong way around, while surrounded by a social studies-book array of glum-looking, unsmiling, unhappy people, all black and brown and hijabed and whatnot and all forlornly holding small flags of the country their mayor despises, with a single grim-faced white guy standing in the back (as is his place). But even if one didn’t avail oneself of the joys of watching Mamdani, who was just as grim as his prop companions, what the young Commie mayor said was bad enough.

America, in Mamdani’s view, is a sad place where heartless, racist, xenophobic plutocrats rule the roost and oppress the rest of us to the degree that you wonder why anyone from elsewhere would want to immigrate in the first place. Mamdani does hold out some hope in the end, saying that the foes of these cruel tyrants can throw off their yoke and remake this unhappy land in their own image. And that, of course, is just what Mamdani has set out to do.

Mamdani began by painting a verbal picture of the “land, lush and teeming with life” to which newcomers arrived, only to encounter “men waiting at the docks to take them into bondage” and “tenements rife with squalor.” As you’d expect, he claimed that the Declaration of Independence established “the ideals our nation still strives to fulfill,” with no indication of how marvelously it has fulfilled them already, or how it has inspired the world in doing so.

The mayor goes on to fill in all the expected blanks, telling the story of how a freed slave made a new life for himself, thereby showing America to be “a place each of us has the power to make.” Immigrants poured into America, not yet seeing “the nativism they would face — the jobs they would be refused, the landlords who would not rent to them, and the abject labor and living conditions they would withstand.” Still, they kept coming.

Mamdani goes on to mock and misrepresent the idea of American exceptionalism, and here he begins to claim that “we are told” a series of things that few people, if any, have ever been told. “We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else.” On the contrary, in less fractious days, we were told that we were “richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else,” because we were a uniquely just society in which anyone could make something of himself.

Mamdani, however, couldn’t possibly admit that without betraying his Marxist ideas, which tell him that America is inherently oppressive, and his Islamic beliefs, which tell him that only a Sharia society is truly just. And so instead, he claims that “the powerful” view America as “an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.”

This is pure leftist rage fantasy. Who ever says any of that? Can Mamdani produce even one “powerful” person who says even one of those things? Donald Trump doesn’t (contrary to leftist claims). Elon Musk doesn’t. Mamdani would be hard pressed to substantiate his smear here, and he prudently refrains from naming any names as he continues to lambaste these imaginary capitalists: “How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal.”

Apparently hoping you won’t notice how divisive his hateful speech really is, he goes on to slam his fantasy foes for supposedly fostering “division.” This apparently involves wanting sensible immigration controls, so that the country isn’t overwhelmed with criminals, terrorists, and people who do nothing but put an added burden upon American citizens: “And yet today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted — but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum.” Persecutes, i.e., by not letting them in and paying for their every need.

Mamdani then goes on to offer a frankly Marxist vision: “We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world — one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more.” By all means, the wealth this trillionaire has earned must be confiscated! “We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans.”

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We’ve read about this Andy Burnham guy as a leader for 2+ weeks now, but he hasn’t shown his face.

What’s wrong with him? Something must be.

• UK Labour Party Proves Why America Was Right to Ditch Parliament (Queen)

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our last day as colonists on Friday, the UK is giving us a huge reason to be glad that we got out from under the crown and the parliamentary system. The current leadership turnover in the Labour Party makes our republic look more sensible than ever. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is stepping down as leader of the Labour Party — and as prime minister along with it — and the frontrunner to replace him is newly minted Member of Parliament Andy Burnham. My friend and colleague Stephen Green pointed out that Burnham stands to drag Labour further to the left and take the UK along with him.


The trouble is that Burnham has been awfully quiet on policy. As Michael Gove and Madeleine Grant put it on The Spectator’s Quite Right! podcast, Burnham acts like he can lead a major political party on vibes alone. Charles Moore writes at The Spectator: “The British constitution is an admirably flexible thing, so I would not claim that Andy Burnham’s leadership campaign, and the coverage thereof, is unconstitutional, but it is certainly unseemly. Why did a BBC helicopter follow his train from Manchester to London (which arrived, of course, late) as if he were Lenin heading for the Finland Station? And why was he allowed to pre-empt his result with a mass selfie with about 200 of his supporting MPs in Westminster Hall?

He is merely a new Member of Parliament, until he isn’t. Turning the place into his stage set is a way of intimidating possible challengers. If he is challenged, he will surely still become leader, but the point of a challenge is to force him to say what he means to do. So far, no one – not even, one suspects, Andy Burnham – knows what Andy Burnham stands for.” Moore suggests that Burnham might abandon the UK’s horrific net zero climate policy. The biggest blowback to that might happen at home; Burnham’s wife is on the board of an NGO and an EV company executive who expresses a “passion for sustainability and the green economy” and for “championing the fair and accessible transition to electric vehicle ownership.”

In a Spectator column, Grant likens Burnham’s campaign launch to the sickly sweetness of Tony Blair’s campaign. The optimism of this leadership challenge is at odds with the way many Britons feel about the state of their nation. “His promise of ‘a new era of possibility’ was a lot of style – mingled with some inevitable Burnhamite sentimentalism: ‘hope in every heart and good growth in every postcode,’” she writes. “It made me long for a gun in every hand and a cyanide capsule in every drawer.” Ross Clark has plenty of daggers for Burnham in a Spectator column. He sees Burnham as a different sort of throwback.

“Whoever thought of putting him in a grey outfit against the backdrop of a grey door for [Monday] morning’s speech in Manchester certainly wasn’t thinking of injecting a bit of colour into national life,” he writes. “It was like watching Harold Wilson: the last PM before colour TV was introduced to Britain.” Clark also has his doubts that Burnham’s big vision will get many people excited (although I wouldn’t mind something like this in the U.S.):

Burnham’s big mission for the country – to devolve power to the regions and localities – also wasn’t exactly calculated to set pulses racing. Rightly or wrongly, few things can be relied upon to provoke a yawn in British life than local government. Just look at the turnout in local elections and the increasing tendency for the electorate to use them as little more than a referendum on national government. It was, after all, the local elections which finally did for Keir Starmer and put Burnham in the position he is now.

If Burnham can really make the British public excited about local government, he will have achieved something genuinely impressive, but I would say he has an uphill task.

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Quantum computing is not a reality, despite what the article suggests.

Which is good, because we’re nowhere near ready.

“.. whoever gets there first could lock in “irreversible strategic superiority.. ”

• The AI-Quantum Race Is About Who Governs the Future (Jeff Dornik)

President Donald Trump’s June 22, 2026, executive orders on quantum computing should be understood for what they are: not a shiny technology announcement, not a photo-op for the federal innovation class, and not another soothing Washington press release telling us that “America remains competitive,” which is usually government-speak for “we found the cliff and are now forming a task force to admire it.”


Executive Order 14413 directs the federal government to accelerate quantum innovation, commercialization, deployment, manufacturing, and national-security applications, while Executive Order 14412 warns that large-scale quantum computers in adversarial hands will threaten widely used cryptographic systems and enable hostile actors to collect encrypted American data now and decrypt it later. The White House’s companion post-quantum cryptography effort requires federal agencies to prioritize migration of vulnerable cryptographic systems with the objective of mitigating quantum risk by December 31, 2030.

That is the right level of urgency, because quantum computing is not merely faster computing, and artificial intelligence is not merely better software. AI is already becoming the decision layer of the digital world, shaping what people see, how companies operate, how banks assess risk, how governments investigate threats, how militaries plan, and how institutions increasingly outsource judgment to machines that speak with the confidence of a consultant who has never once been interrupted by reality. Quantum computing, once mature enough for practical cryptographic and scientific use, becomes an amplifier for problems that classical computers cannot solve at a useful scale.

Put them together, AI as the mind and quantum as the accelerator, and the winner does not simply build a better tool, but actually builds the operating system for global power.The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission has already noted that nations that integrate quantum with AI-driven research platforms will compound their advantages exponentially, and that the country achieving quantum supremacy in quantum computing and AI will gain disproportionate and likely enduring advantages in intelligence collection, encryption, precision targeting, materials science, energy, medicine, and the digital economy.

The Commission also warned that whoever gets there first could lock in “irreversible strategic superiority,” especially because current global infrastructure remains exposed to attacks on public-key encryption. That is why this is an all-or-nothing race. America is not competing against a friendly research consortium at a science fair where everyone claps politely and shares their grant proposals over room-temperature coffee. We are competing against the Chinese Communist Party, a regime that does not have our Constitution, our courts, our churches, our independent press, our civil society, our due process traditions, our free-speech protections, or our national gift for holding seven hearings before deciding whether a light switch is racist.

China can centralize resources, compel cooperation, absorb civilian research into state priorities, hide its most sensitive work, and deploy technologies against its own people without any meaningful legal restraint from the governed. Human Rights Watch reports that under Xi Jinping, there is no independent civil society in China and no freedom of expression, association, assembly, or religion, while critics and human rights defenders are persecuted.

The technological edge is narrowing because China has made quantum a state priority and is building the infrastructure to match. CSIS reports that China’s superconducting, photonic, trapped-ion, and neutral-atom quantum computing efforts are moving from laboratory prototypes toward commercial use, with Chinese systems including Zuchongzhi, Origin Wukong, and Tianyan-504 supported by universities, research centers, state-linked firms, and companies such as China Telecom Quantum Group and Origin Quantum. The Special Competitive Studies Project has also noted that China has made quantum computing a strategic priority since the 14th Five-Year Plan, with government funding showing China’s strategic prioritization of quantum technology at a projected $15 billion compared to $4 billion in the United States.

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Never enough money for never enough electricity (power).

“Virginia’s “Digital Gateway” project, a mega site roughly twice the size of New York’s Central Park with city-sized power needs.”

Zero Hedge take from almost a year ago.

• World’s Largest Data Center Project On Verge Of Collapse (ZH)

Up until now, when it comes to real estate, Blackstone was best known in recent years for dumping many of its trophy office properties – which in the aftermath of work from home never recovered their projected cash flow potential – at a huge discount. Now, it may be pulling a page from its old, pre-Lehman playbook by calling the top in yet another commercial real estate segment: data centers.


Two days ago we reported that Blackstone was selling its stakes in a trio of data centers across Northern Virginia for $3.5 billion, cashing out of part of a bet it made less than three years ago. According to Bloomberg, Digital Realty Trust would pay $1.2 billion of cash and offer $2.3 billion of its shares (which the PE giant has largely cashed in by now) to Blackstone funds; in exchange, the data center company will acquire Blackstone’s 80% interest in two 96-megawatt data centers in Manassas, Virginia, and a 50% interest in a 96-megawatt center in nearby Sterling.

We said that “the question is why did Blackstone decide to pull the cord now, just as fresh doubts are creeping whether the Mag 7s will continue funding the AI expansion with virtually unlimited capex.” Two days later we have an answer. The digital ink is barely dry on its Virginia data center sales, and we learn that Blackstone’s QTS (QTS Realty Trust) is again quietly fading its AI exposure by walking away from plans to build its portion (which at this point is the only portion left after its partner already pulled out days ago) of a 2,100-acre data center campus in Virginia – also known as Prince William Digital Gateway which would house as many as 37 data-center buildings – handing a win to residents who fought for years to topple the project.

QTS’s proposed facility at 9400 Godwin Drive in Manassas


The data center developer had planned to transform more than 800 acres in Northern Virginia’s Prince William County, a project that would have spanned 22 million square feet, making it the largest data center campus in the world. Located on the edge of an historic Civil War battlefield and on what used to be land protected from development, the project ignited strong pushback from homeowners and has been stalled by lawsuits.

As part of Wall Street’s broader push into data centers, investment has poured into Northern Virginia, which is considered the country’s largest data center market, and is better known as “Data Center Alley”. But in a strategic U-turn, in recent days QTS executives decided that it isn’t worth pressing forward in court, the Bloomberg sources said. The firm’s attorneys plan to inform the court of their decision as soon as this week, the people said, asking not to be named discussing non-public information. QTS’s rapid growth has made it a poster child of how private equity has fueled the data center industry’s breakneck expansion. Those ambitions are colliding with public anxiety over strains to electricity grids and home prices from AI data centers.

The retreat may be the final blow to Virginia’s “Digital Gateway” project, a mega site roughly twice the size of New York’s Central Park with city-sized power needs. The initiative was supposed to bring in some $100 billion in spending and create one of the world’s largest technology corridors. Not any more. The project had sparked contentious, drawn-out public hearings. A clerical blunder related to a key zoning meeting created setbacks for developers. Already, Brookfield-backed Compass Datacenters, which was supposed to build on more than 800 acres at the site, had pulled out in May. The U-turns by both firms, Bloomberg writes, amount to one of the most dramatic retreats by developers from a data center project.

It’s a reminder of how tech firms’ race for the computing infrastructure to support AI advances is increasingly facing the same bottlenecks, from power shortages to supply crunches, we have been warning about for the past two years and which Citadel Securities warned about just yesterday. Organized opposition is mounting, forcing firms and developers to be more deliberate about where they choose to build. This is precisely what we warned one year ago would happen as more grassroots organizations pushed back against the relentless data center rollout. At least we haven’t gotten to the arson stage (yet).

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Paint me skeptical. I can take missing 1 or 2 warnings, maybe even 5. But 102?

“The Homeland Security Department report lists communications failures and security lapses that led up to the gunman opening fire from a rooftop.”

• Secret Service Missed 102 Warnings Before Trump Assassination Attempt (ET)

The U.S. Secret Service missed multiple opportunities to detect, prevent, and disrupt the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024, including missing more than 102 radio transmissions warning of a suspicious person, a Department of Homeland Security report concluded. The report, released on July 2 by the department’s Office of Inspector General, chronicles a series of communication failures, inadequate planning, limited intelligence sharing, and security lapses that combined to create the conditions that allowed gunman Thomas Crooks to open fire from the roof of a nearby building during a July 13, 2024, campaign rally in Butler. Crooks was fatally shot by a Secret Service agent.


Among the report’s most significant findings was that Secret Service members did not receive 102 radio transmissions “that local law enforcement officers in a separate communications room received concerning an increasingly intense search for a suspicious person. Instead, we found that the Secret Service received only five phone calls and three text messages about Crooks. As a result, Secret Service members did not alert President Trump’s protective detail about concerns of a suspicious person.” The Secret Service would have delayed Trump’s speech or removed him from the stage had they been aware of the search for Crooks, the report stated.

The report also said the Secret Service failed to detect a drone that Crooks flew over the rally site about two hours before the shooting. Investigators said the agency’s counter-drone system was inoperable because of a malfunction, and the lone operator assigned to the event lacked sufficient training to repair the equipment. The system remained offline while Crooks flew the drone for nearly nine minutes, allowing him to survey both the stage and the rooftop he later used to carry out the attack.

The report also found serious communication breakdowns between the Secret Service and local law enforcement. The Secret Service never received three radio reports from law enforcement that Crooks had climbed onto a roof with a rifle. The inspector general also found that classified intelligence concerning a long-range threat to Trump was not shared with the Pittsburgh field office or agents responsible for planning security at the rally. The report said broader dissemination of that intelligence likely would have resulted in additional security personnel being assigned to the event.

Investigators further concluded that the Secret Service failed to ensure the American Glass Research complex, where Crooks launched the attack, was secured by state and local law enforcement. In addition, the agency did not use available resources to block the rooftop’s line of sight to the stage, despite recognizing it as a potential vulnerability. The inspector general issued seven recommendations to improve protective operations. The Secret Service agreed with all of them, and the report said some have already been implemented while others remain in progress.

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I wonder how Tulsi now views what’s becoming of her work.

• Tulsi Gabbard Outlines the Mechanics of the Deep State (CTH)

Former Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, gives a speech outlining the mechanics of the Deep State and how the people within it operate. At around 3:30 of the presentation, Gabbard gives a specific example of the attitude of the employees on assignment to the ODNI. Obviously, I am not certain, but Tulsi seems to be describing the FBI liaison desk within the DNI as she explains how this federal government employee refuses to participate in the DNI request. Listen and you gain an appreciation of the challenge that exists for any appointed leadership. WATCH:


There is no apple; it’s all worms!

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This goes back to 2024, and the Biden FBI. So of course Newsom accuses…Trump.

• FBI Mole Wore Wire Inside Newsom’s Inner Circle: Lawyer (ZH)

A mole working for the Biden FBI was secretly recording Gavin Newsom’s inner circle before the agency expanded its corruption probe into the California governor and his wife, according to a bombshell report by the NY Post. Democrat insider Alexis Podesta, a 45-year-old Sacramento consultant and Newsom appointee – no known relation to John Podesta – secretly taped conversations for the FBI as early as June 2024, while Joe Biden was still in the White House, according to McGregor Scott, the former US attorney now representing Dana Williamson. Williamson, 53, ran Newsom’s office as chief of staff until late 2024; in May she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, filing a false tax return, and lying to federal agents.


Federal prosecutors accused Williamson and others of orchestrating a scheme to siphon roughly $225,000 from a dormant campaign account which belonged to former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra -disguising the payments as legitimate consulting fees while routing the money to benefit Becerra’s former chief of staff, Sean McCluskie. According to Podesta’s attorney, she was placed in charge of overseeing the account in question – but did not know the payments were improper. Becerra is now the Democratic nominee to succeed Newsom as governor. “Alexis wore a wire, and Dana did not,” said Williamson’s lawyer and former US attorney for the Eastern District of California, McGregor Scott.

“A lot of people received letters essentially informing us that there were certain periods of time where the FBI was given access to follow phone calls,” said assemblymember Josh Hoover (R-Folsom), who said he was among those who received a letter even though he had never spoken with either Podesta or Williamson. “I don’t know how these investigations work, but it sounds like they cast a pretty broad net across the Capitol community to see what they could find.”

A separate source with knowledge of the matter said they knew of four Sacramento insiders who also received FBI notifications confirming they had been recorded.= One recipient told the source: “Dude, I got this f—ing letter. I never even met with Dana Williamson!” “Their curiosity was that they never even met with Dana Williamson, so they were wondering what this is all about,” the source said. “And now you have the answer.” -NY Post. News of the wire comes just over two weeks after Newsom claimed that the Trump administration is punishing him because he may run for president in 2028.

“They’re demanding records, they’re abusing the grand jury process, digging through years and years of random documents. Donald Trump isn’t just coming after me because of my mean tweets, he’s coming after me because I’m considering running for president, because he hates that I’ve consistently called him out over and over again for his lies and deceit,” Newsom said, before sending a mass email asking for political donations. Sources close to the investigation, however, told The Post that the feds have spent the past year digging into Newsom, his staff, and his wife’s taxes after whistleblowers reportedly dropped the dime that led to the probe. Williamson’s attorney told the outlet that his client declined to cooperate because she didn’t have anything on Newsom.

Podesta – a former staffer for the late Dianne Feinstein, is a longtime Democratic power broker who remains on California’s State Compensation Insurance Fund board – to which Newsom appointed her in January 2020. She also held senior positions in Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration, and served as secretary of the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. While she hasn’t been charged with a crime, her attorney identified her as an uncharged co-conspirator in the Williamson indictment.

Of note, Podesta is still getting paid $60,797 by the state while cooperating with the FBI, while she sits on the Insurance Fund Board. nCampaign finance records show Becerra’s committee making $10,000 monthly payments to ‘Podesta Company’ during 2023 and 2024. During this period, Williamson – while Newsom’s CoS – shared confidential info with Podesta regarding a corporate client that has now been identified as Activision Blizzard.

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FYI.

• Need Another Reason to Loathe Michelle Obama? (Matt Margolis)

I’m sure you don’t, but I’ll give you one anyway.


Michelle Obama has spent years selling herself as America’s warm, approachable former first lady. Remember the whole “when they go low, we go high” thing? We knew then it was just an empty slogan, because whenever she had a chance to prove she’s the bigger person, she just proved the opposite. According to a Daily Mail report, Barack Obama’s wife personally torpedoed Cheryl Hines’ return to the small screen when Larry David’s new HBO series, Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America, began casting. The show premiered last week. Higher Ground, the production company the Obamas own, produces it.

Hines, 60, spent all 12 seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm playing Larry David’s wife, and having her return for the new show made sense. But apparently, Obama couldn’t handle the fact that Hines is married to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. According to unnamed sources cited by the Daily Mail, that was disqualifying. One insider claims that Obama wanted Kennedy’s wife banned from the cast outright because she is “all-MAGA, all-the-time.” Another source says Obama reacted sharply when production staffers who knew Hines from Curb floated the idea of bringing her back.

According to one insider, Obama’s message was simple. “She’s not one of us,” she reportedly said. Funny thing is, Hines is most definitely a leftist herself. She spent decades as a reliable Hollywood liberal long before she ever said “I do” to Kennedy. None of that bought her a pass. In Obama’s world, being married to someone in the Trump administration gets you blacklisted. A third source confirmed to the Daily Mail that the exclusion had nothing to do with talent and everything to do with Hines’ perceived politics, tied to her marriage and her proximity to Trump’s circle. Obama reportedly stayed out of the writers’ room and never touched a script. But casting, including guest stars, was hers to control. She used that control to keep Hines off the set.

An insider says Hines felt devastated when she learned producers had cut her, and who could blame her? She reportedly believed that David could look past his own politics for the sake of a 12-season friendship. Another source says that David didn’t have that option. Michelle made the call, and David felt that he had no room to overrule her. David has made his own politics abundantly clear. He’s a rabid leftist who despises Trump. Could he have fought for Hines? Probably. But it may not have done any good, and he shouldn’t have had to fight for Hines anyway.

In the end, this just gives us another reason to loathe Michelle Obama, who says, “when they go low, we go high,” one day, then blacklists an actress over her husband’s Cabinet post the next. That’s the opposite of going high. Hines has learned the hard way just how horrible her side is. Back in November, she told Bill Maher that while Republicans have treated her with basic kindness and respect (even when RFK Jr. was running as a Democrat), her fellow Democrats reacted with spite and the urge to exile anyone who steps out of line. Hines indeed has become living proof that the party that preaches “tolerance” has become a cult of cancellation, while the people they demonize are the tolerant ones.

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He’s dragging the country to its grave. It is too late.

“Merz was shocked not only by the technological capability, but also by the Chinese industrial work ethic and capabilities of the workforce.”

• Chancellor Friedrich Merz Delivers Statement to German Workforce (CTH)

This next storyline needs context to understand appropriately what just happened. In February of this year, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz travelled for the first time in his business and life to China. Merz a lawyer by training, worked in business and corporate life doing mergers and acquisitions (Blackrock), but had never been to China. Despite his upward climb in German politics, his worldview was always dominated by an internal acceptance that Germany was the industrial heart of the European Union.


Chancellor Merz believed that Germany was unrivaled within industrial manufacturing, particularly in aeronautics and mechanical engineering (auto sector). So, when Merz went to China -while he held no trade capabilities as an outcome of the EU collective controlling everything- he also had no idea what Chinese industrial capacitary actually looked like. To say Chancellor Merz was stunned by the advancements in robotics and industrial manufacturing within China would be an understatement. Merz was shocked not only by the technological capability, but also by the Chinese industrial work ethic and capabilities of the workforce.

Merz returned to Germany and immediately began discussing how Chinese industrial capacity was far beyond anything he previously estimated. Merz was shook. His reaction was, essentially, the #1 industrial nation within the EU confronting a reality of years of industrial complacency. Immediately he began talking about how things in Germany must change; how the German workforce must immediately start to get serious about productivity and production capacity. That was late February and early March.

Today, Friedrich Merz announced a series of reforms, radical modifications within the German industrial workforce. German workers are no longer allowed to call in sick. The German government will now adopt a policy to make sure all workers report to their jobs, or else. The German workforce may not like this at all. There is a certain, shall we say, “Fascist irony,” when you think about mandated private sector productivity compliance and the relationship with official government policy.

Germany’s coalition government has announced a wide-ranging package of pension, tax and labor reforms aimed at boosting economic growth and strengthening competitiveness. Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the measures would create jobs, reduce bureaucracy and preserve key social welfare protections. The 34-point plan includes income tax relief for low- and middle-income households as well as a gradual increase in the retirement age.

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Expect fighting in the streets.

“As the AfD heads to its party congress in Erfurt, Germany’s collapsing mainstream braces for protests, panic, and a deeper political rupture..”

“..every sixth German is at risk of poverty.”

• Germany’s Rotten Center Is Heading For A Reckoning (Amar)

In the summer of 2026, Germany is a punch-drunk country reeling from harsh knocks, many of which are self-inflicted. In the short term, it has just suffered a humiliating defeat at the UN General Assembly, where it was punished for Berlin’s brazen arrogance, political provincialism, and last but not least, steadfast support for Israel and its crimes, including genocide. At the World Cup, the German team was booted out of the tournament early and crushingly. To make things worse, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz felt this was just the right moment to release some X posts apparently meant to be reassuring but stunning the nation by their cack-handed ineptitude and sheer disconnect with reality.


Why settle for a mere national depression if you can trigger a raging s**t-storm in addition? Germany’s fundamentals are also thoroughly catastrophic. According to Handelsblatt, Volkswagen, a traditional flagship of the German car industry at the core of the national economy and national pride, is stuck “in the greatest cost and structural crisis in decades.” Around 100,000 jobs are on the chopping block. And yes, that is representative of the economy as a whole.

The country’s birth rate – at 1.35 children per woman – is the lowest since the mid-1990s, which reflects the mood of anxiety and pessimism across the country. Even Germany’s public (de facto state) broadcasters, not known for unbiased reporting or serious criticism of the powers that be, are admitting that poverty is becoming entrenched. In what was once a country of economic success and optimism, according to official statistics, every sixth German is at risk of poverty.

And all of the above is happening under a succession of textbook-centrist governments, based on coalitions of parties and politicians that share a fundamental lack of convictions (apart from the blind urge to fight Russia again), egotism, careerism, and a coldhearted indifference, if not disdain, for the worsening problems and hardships that shape the lives of ordinary Germans. At this point, the latest iteration of centrist uselessness warming seats in Berlin unites deeply unpopular Social-Democrats (SPD) – 12% in the polls – and widely scorned mainstream conservatives (CDU/CSU) – 22% and falling. No wonder that a whopping 53% do not trust any political party, while an abysmal 77% are dissatisfied with Merz.

It is this catastrophic decline, ruling fecklessness, and national frustration that will really be at stake in what is soon going to happen in the eastern German city of Erfurt, where the AfD (Alternative for Germany) will hold its party congress July 4-5. Ahead of the meeting, Germany has the jitters. While the AfD is expecting hundreds of party delegates as well as guests, the authorities are predicting that 35,000 to 70,000 protesters will gather as well. That is a significant number by any measure. But it is even more impressive – or concerning – if you consider that Erfurt is historic (with one of Germany’s oldest universities) but not big, with a population of not quite 220,000.

It is extremely unlikely that all the anti-AfD protests about to converge on Erfurt will remain peaceful. While calling for calm, the local authorities and police are clearly trying to prepare for disturbances and violence, including blockades and worse. Bjoern Hoecke, the key representative of the AfD Right and the powerful leader of the party in Thuringia, where Erfurt is located, may have been a touch hyperbolic when speaking of “civil war-like conditions.” Yet leaked documents show that Thuringia’s police are warning of thousands of violent activists who they believe will stage firebomb attacks from roofs, accept severe injury and death among their targets, and even execute an “endgame scenario” of storming the AfD congress.

The police union is concerned about not having enough officers on the ground. Whatever happens in Erfurt, it is already clear that the scene has been set for some big symbolic showdown theater. According to centrist and mainstream narratives, the battle lines are as Manichean as the best of Tolkien: Here, the forces of Mordor of the AfD, widely labeled as hostile to democracy and the constitution if not outright fascist; and there, the Hobbit forces of light of conformist protest, civil society, and a wholesome resistance that knows its place. If the latter features serious violence as well, then that will be written off as the exception, and ultimately the fault of the AfD.

So much for the childish story you will hear a lot about in the mainstream media.

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https://twitter.com/MrJohnJnr/status/2072671824870084962?s=20 https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/2072645371432522193?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 25 2026

Jun 252026
 
 June 25, 2026  Posted by at 10:17 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  22 Responses »


M.C. Escher Dream 1935


• Iran Calls MoU Deal A ‘US Defeat’ (ZH)
• Trump Threatened Netanyahu With ‘Divorce’, NYT Reporters Say In New Book (RT)
• The Democrat Party Is Dead (Matt Margolis)
• ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Now Officially Controls the Democrat Party (CTH)
• Mamdani-backed Candidates Sweep Democratic Primaries In NYC (Guardian)
• Can Anyone Govern Britain — Or America? (Daniel McCcarthy)
• Brent Falls To Pre-War Levels (ZH)
• ‘Customers Are Being Gouged’: Trump Tells DOJ To Look Into Gasoline Prices (ZH)
• An AI Cyber Apocalypse Is ‘Months, Not Years’ Away, Five Eyes Warns (Moran)
• US To Set Up Testing Ranges Mimicking Ukraine Battlefield (RT)
• US Carmakers Could Produce Missiles – Trump (RT)
• Journal Under Fire for Retracting Article Challenging Claims of Racism (Turley)
• Investigation Launched Into Von der Leyen Over Secret Chat With Zelensky (TASS)
• Sweltering Heat As Europe Heatwave Spreads (BBC)

 


 

https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2069522132988543210?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2069539332084375596?s=20

 


 


The more they give in, the stronger their claims.

• Iran Calls MoU Deal A ‘US Defeat’ (ZH)

“The war is going very well. As you know, we’re winning by a lot. Iran is making very big concessions,” Trump told reporters at the Capitol. “We’ll see what happens — but it has been very, very, very powerful,” the US President added. Tehran has remained insistent it never agreed to allow nuclear inspector access, and that the Strait of Hormuz is opening on its terms. Meanwhile, the latest on the Lebanon tenuous ceasefire and crisis:


Tehran Provokes Trump: Deal to End War a ‘Declaration of US Defeat’. The post-war narrative battle between Washington and Tehran intensified Wednesday after Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf claimed the recently signed Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) – and confirmed in Switzerland – amounted to nothing less than a US capitulation. Speaking in Baku during a gathering of parliaments from member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Ghalibaf argued that the agreement validated Iran’s long-held position that negotiations only succeed when foreign powers abandon coercion and recognize the Islamic Republic’s rights.

“The Islamabad memorandum of understanding became a declaration of the US defeat,” Ghalibaf said. The remarks underscore the widening disconnect between how Washington and Tehran are portraying the agreement. While the Trump administration has presented the MoU as evidence that its pressure campaign forced concessions from Iran, Iranian officials continue to frame the deal as proof that the United States ultimately backed away from attempts to dictate terms.

Ghalibaf further suggested that the agreement demonstrated dialogue can only produce results when the opposing side ceases efforts to impose its will and instead accepts Iran’s sovereign rights. Iran has lately stated that it asserted its red lines through ‘action’.

Energy Secretary: 72 Ships Have Exited Strait in Last Day
Several vessels have already navigated the Strait of Hormuz utilizing a fresh evacuation framework established by the United Nations’ shipping agency, an official confirmed on Wednesday. More via newswires:US Energy Secretary Wright says roughly 72 ships have exited Strait of Hormuz in last 24 hours. “Ships have already begun to pass under the plan,” stated a spokesperson for the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO), though they opted not to disclose specific details regarding the transiting vessels.

According to the latest LSEG ship-tracking data Wednesday, at least two dry bulk carriers and one cargo vessel successfully crossed the strait under the new program within a 12-hour window. An additional analysis of ship movements by Reuters, utilizing data from LSEG and MarineTraffic, indicated that at least 35 other commercial vessels – primarily dry bulk, cargo, and container ships – are gearing up to make the passage. Brent crude oil prices fell below $75 a barrel late yesterday, marking the first time the global benchmark has traded under that level since the outbreak of the Trump-initiated Iran conflict. The drop in crude prices could provide relief for consumers and businesses by easing pressure on fuel costs and inflation, a desired Washington outcome of the MoU signing – for which Trump has come under severe criticism from hawks at home. Speaking of escalating, we have another early morning Trump Truth Social statement, openly contradicting the consistent stated position of Tehran leaders.

Read more …

“The US president reportedly said “all the Jews” are tired of the Israeli prime minister..”

• Trump Threatened Netanyahu With ‘Divorce’, NYT Reporters Say In New Book (RT)

US President Donald Trump claimed that “all the Jews” are tired of Benjamin Netanyahu and threatened the Israeli prime minister with “divorce” between the close allies during a phone call, according to a new book by New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. The account comes from ‘Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump’, excerpts of which were cited by media outlets on Tuesday. The heated exchange reportedly took place in September 2025, when Trump was pushing Israel to accept his peace plan for Gaza. He spoke with Netanyahu in the presence of US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.


“Everybody’s sick of you, Bibi. All the Jews are sick of you. Even the two Jews on this call are sick of you,” Trump reportedly told Netanyahu, according to the Times of Israel. “Everybody hates you, and I’ve stood by you,” Trump said, warning that Israel’s refusal to accept the deal would result in “a divorce” between the countries, according to The Independent. Trump and Netanyahu praised their close cooperation during the opening weeks of the US-Israeli war against Iran, which was launched on February 28. Trump became increasingly critical of Israel as efforts to subdue Iran faltered and peace talks stalled.

Trump condemned Israeli strikes in Lebanon after Iran threatened to pull out of negotiations, at one point arguing that Netanyahu has “no f**king judgment” and reportedly calling him “f**king crazy.” According to the Washington Post, US intelligence agencies recently warned Trump that Netanyahu is likely to attempt to undermine efforts to secure a lasting peace with Iran. Both leaders have faced criticism at home, with opponents arguing that the interim agreement signed by the US and Iran last week failed to achieve their stated war aims.

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The system makes the Dems live on as zombies. You need two parties, and it’s -practically, not theoretically- impossible to add a third one.

• The Democrat Party Is Dead (Matt Margolis)

New York just gave America a preview of who’s actually running the Democrat Party, and it isn’t Hakeem Jeffries. On Tuesday, all three socialist candidates endorsed by socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani swept their targeted congressional primaries. Three races, three wins, zero exceptions. Three Democrat incumbents in safe districts all lost. “Their positions are some of the most extreme & far left Dems have seen,” Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin said on X. Trust me, he’s not exaggerating.


Darializa Avila Chevalier took NY-13 on a platform built around abolishing prisons, abolishing ICE, abolishing borders, defunding the police, and opposing the deportation of every illegal immigrant, including violent criminals. Claire Valdez won NY-7, promising citizenship and voting rights for people who broke into this country illegally, taxpayer-funded transgender medical treatments, and the elimination of private health insurance for every American. These aren’t fringe positions anymore. They’re the new mainstream of the Democrat Party, and voters in these districts chose them enthusiastically.


And no Democrat is safe. Just look at NY-10, where Brad Lander demolished Rep. Dan Goldman, grabbing nearly 65% of the vote. Goldman was one of the loudest anti-Trump voices in Congress, and he led impeachment efforts against President Trump. None of that mattered. His support for Israel and his refusal to endorse Mamdani are the reasons he lost. Lander, meanwhile, ran on abolishing ICE, forgiving almost $2 trillion in student loans, and packing the Supreme Court.= That’s the candidate Democrat primary voters preferred over a guy who spent years trying to remove Trump from office.

The Democrat establishment knows exactly what happened, and it’s terrified. “Tonight wasn’t just a bad night for so-called ‘Leader’ Hakeem Jeffries. It was the night the Democrat establishment officially surrendered to Zohran Mamdani and the socialist wing of their party,” NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella said in a statement. “Every House Democrat, in safe and competitive districts alike, will now answer to the radicals calling the shots. And Americans should be terrified by where the Democrat Party is headed.” Even CNN’s Van Jones couldn’t spin his way out of this one. “This is a battle between the establishment and this insurgency,” Jones said. “And the roof is collapsing on the Democratic party establishment tonight.”

Here’s the reality nobody on the left wants to say out loud: the Democrat Party as it existed even a few years ago is finished. The socialist wing didn’t build a new party from scratch. It crawled inside the old one and took it over from the inside, like the zombie fungus controlling a dead ant. The Democrat Party is the corpse. The Socialist Party is what’s controlling it now. This should terrify the establishment because it makes it impossible to keep hiding what the party has become. This is going to terrify independent voters, who are watching candidates run on abolishing borders and prisons while still calling themselves Democrats. They’ll have no choice but to vote Republican to stop the radicals from taking over.

The socialist takeover isn’t slowing down. It’s accelerating, and every safe-district Democrat in Congress now has to answer to it. And now Republicans have been handed an opening most political parties only dream of. “That’s what the left is putting out. It’s these radical leftists that are being elected. They’re being inspired by Mamdani, AOC, Bernie Sanders. They’re running all across the country, and the only good news is in a lot of these districts where it’s actually competitive districts. If they’re putting up these radicals, we’re getting a lot of favorable matchups,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said on Newsmax. “It’s the mainstream. This is what’s happened to their Party. They’ve gone so far to the left. This is normal. But the people are going to reject this at the polls.”

Gruters argues the math looks really good for the GOP. “There’s 18 toss-up seats,” he pointed out. “We’re at 212. I think we have a chance to defy history and win these midterms. It’s because the left has gone so far to the left. It’s really the choices are crazy versus normal, and what do people want?”

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”IDEOLOGY: Capitalism is bad. Law enforcement are pigs. Policy should support emotions. The collective should rule every decision.”

• ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Now Officially Controls the Democrat Party (CTH)

It did not happen last night folks. It took them another 15 years after they installed Obama to become the legitimate heirs to the political party formerly known as Democrats.mThe progressive movement is now branded as “Democrat Socialists of America” (DSA), but those who have followed the arc of this group well understand every single member within DSA is from the Occupy Wall Street / Anarchy movement that preceded it. Fingers are being pointed toward New York as the epicenter of the new Democrat Party Headquarters of DSA, which is a fitting location of focus given the OWS origin.


The front line of the DSA movement consists of 18 to 30-year-olds, mostly white, urban, upper-middle-income activists, carrying Macbooks with anarchist stickers and physical attire resembling a blend of hipster ‘grunge’ and skateboard beanie resistance. They don’t shower much and love to talk about AOC and Bernie on Social Media. Don’t belittle them, they are authentic. They don’t misunderstand things; they bought into the nonsense and genuinely believe the popular narrative sold to them since High School that capitalism is horrible and Communism or Socialism is the preferred system of government.

Individually, not one of them would shed a tear if their collective comrades broke into their parent’s houses tomorrow and murdered the elders. When joined in group assemblies, their emotions are controlled by the sensibility of the group. This is the Mao generation, repeating and rhyming. IDEOLOGY: Capitalism is bad. Law enforcement are pigs. Policy should support emotions. The collective should rule every decision. Democrat socialists believe all dissent must be squashed unless they actually lose a popular election – then, the system is oppressing them. Speech that argues against their belief system is ‘violence’. However, violence that supports their belief system is ‘speech’.

Democrat Socialists of America are factually Occupy Wall Street activists. The traditional mechanisms of self-controlling morality do not apply to this group of generational ideologues. The haves -vs- have nots is their religion. They never cede power and elections do not remove them. Go look at history, the only thing that has ever stopped Socialism is physical violence. You may have read the stories of multi-billionaires building bunkers. The predictable DSA is why. People who say, “violence is not the answer” are pretending they don’t know history.

POLITICO – […] Fresh off sweeping victories across New York City that showcased the growing power of the anti-establishment progressive left inside the Democratic Party, Democratic Socialists of America leaders, eager to capitalize on their momentum, are already plotting their next act: making sure one of their own is on the presidential primary debate stage, whether the party wants them or not. “What DSA represents is a real contrast to Democrats who have run the last couple of elections on fear,” DSA national co-chair Megan Romer said. “You can’t run on that. You have to offer an alternative. And it’s really important that we be involved in that conversation in 2028. It’s important that we have somebody saying sensible things.”

Their search process is already underway. This summer, DSA is dispatching surveys to all 250 of its chapters, asking members to weigh who they want to back and why, and return their findings to national leadership by Sept. 15, details the group first shared with POLITICO. DSA expects to receive a stack of 20-page to 40-page dossiers from chapters coast to coast weighing in on who should carry the democratic socialist banner into 2028.The organization plans to hold national discussions, including with leaders like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is 84 and not expected to run in 2028, with a formal vote expected at the group’s 2027 convention next year — though leaders say they could move faster if the primary timeline demands it.

“We’re going to be talking about millions of hours knocking doors for 2028 — so when we decide to really run somebody, people have to feel like they had a say,” Romer said. Mamdani-backed candidates swept three closely watched New York congressional primaries Tuesday, with Claire Valdez, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier all defeating more establishment-aligned rivals — including two incumbents. It was a major show of force for Mamdani’s political operation, and fresh evidence of the left’s growing muscle heading into 2028. “They ask, ‘Who do you want to run in 2028?’ Then they ask, ‘When does the race for 2028 begin?’ It starts now. It starts on Tuesday,” Mamdani said at a Brooklyn rally last week.

The elephant in the room for the group, of course, is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

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Jerry Nadler, George Conway et al, as in: The anti-Trump field.

“JFK’s grandson Jack Schlossberg fails to advance in election to replace Jerry Nadler in Manhattan district. “

• Mamdani-backed Candidates Sweep Democratic Primaries In NYC (Guardian)

Zohran Mamdani’s growing influence over the Democratic party was on show in New York City on Tuesday as three congressional candidates endorsed by New York’s democratic socialist mayor won closely watched primaries, while voters in Maryland, Utah and South Carolina cast ballots in primaries and runoffs.Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller who also ran for mayor last year before endorsing Mamdani, won his race comfortably, defeating the Democratic representative Dan Goldman.


Another Mamdani ally, Claire Valdez, a state lawmaker and former union organizer, defeated Antonio Reynoso, the preferred successor of retiring Democratic Representative Nydia Velázquez in New York’s seventh district, encompassing parts of Brooklyn and Queens. And in a stunning upset, the public defense investigator Darializa Avila Chevalier toppled Representative Adriano Espaillat, the powerful five-term incumbent who chairs the Congressional Hispanic caucus, in the state’s diverse 13th congressional district, which covers Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx.

“What a glorious time to be a New Yorker,” Lander declared at this election night party in Brooklyn, where he was joined by the mayor. Mamdani then appeared at a watch party for Valdez, where he told a jubilant crowd: “The old politics that got us into this crisis is not the politics that’s going to get us out of this crisis.” It was a clean sweep for Mamdani, who waded into the House primaries earlier this year, spending his political capital to boost three leftwing allies – a gamble that would test his popularity and his influence. With his slate of candidates all but certain to be elected to Congress in November, Mamdani has left his stamp on the state’s congressional delegation and expanded his ascendant progressive movement.

Elsewhere in the city, Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F Kennedy, was unsuccessful in his bid to revive the political legacy of the US’s most vaunted political family. In a House race that attracted outsized national attention, Schlossberg, 33, had hoped to parlay his huge social media presence and charisma into a Congressional seat, but he came up short in a crowded field of Democrats hoping to succeed the long-serving representative Jerry Nadler. Micah Lasher, a longtime New York politician and self-described “nerd”, won the primary in New York’s 12th district, a deep-blue district whose voters tend to identify as liberal rather than left-wing.

The race also included the prominent anti-Trump critic George Conway and state assembly-member Alex Bores, whose candidacy became the fulcrum for what observers described as an “AI civil war”. Lasher will be the heavy favorite to win the safely Democratic district in the November midterm election. Late on Tuesday night, Queens-born Donald Trump celebrated the defeat of both Goldman and Conway in a pair of social media posts. “Weak and pathetic Congressman Dan Goldman just lost, BIG! I guess people didn’t like him illegally targeting President TRUMP,” the president said of the congressman, who served as the lead counsel to House Democrats during the Trump’s first impeachment. Of Conway, whose ex-wife was a top adviser to the president during his first term, Trump gleefully predicted that he would “end up at about 5% of the vote in a rather weak field of young and aggressive Communists”.

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UK: No

US: Trump is doing it.

• Can Anyone Govern Britain — Or America? (Daniel McCcarthy)

As Britain gets ready for its seventh prime minister in just 10 years, it’s time to ask whether the parliamentary system itself is broken. That might explain not only why landslide election victories don’t translate into stable leadership in Britain but also why America’s Congress is so feckless. Is representative government an idea whose time has passed? In Europe as well as America, leftists prefer that judges and bureaucrats wield permanent power, as supposedly impartial experts who know best how to stop the weather from changing and how many genders there are.


Britain’s Labour party started out as a vehicle for the working class, in theory. It was closely connected to the country’s major industrial unions — but Britain in the 21st century has lost most of its hard industry, and Labour is now led by the same kind of socially left-wing, technocratic wonks that make up the “inner party” of the Democrats in this country. Brexit, passed by the British people in a referendum 10 years ago this week, proved Labour had lost the working class — the party elite favored remaining in the European Union, but working-class voters themselves cast their ballots for “leave.”

Unfortunately, the Conservative party’s elite also favored “remain” — Prime Minister David Cameron himself did, and losing the Brexit referendum compelled him to resign. Yet Cameron was followed by another Conservative PM, Theresa May, who had also been a remainer. It took a third Tory PM, Boris Johnson, to follow through on the voters’ mandate, but Johnson proved to be Britain’s Joe Biden where immigration was concerned, unleashing the “Boriswave” of mass migration, which flooded Britain with some 4 million newcomers from places like India, China, Pakistan and Nigeria.

Personal scandals forced Johnson from office before the scale of the damage his policies did came to light — but bond markets didn’t tolerate Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, for long. That left Rishi Sunak to lead the Conservatives in 2024 to their first general election defeat in 14 years. In that time, Conservatives had given Britain same-sex marriage, bigger government, deeper debt, more green-energy regulation and record-high immigration. Labour more than doubled its number of seats in Parliament with Keir Starmer leading the party into the election, yet the landslide didn’t translate into any mandate for him.

His popularity soon slid and polls indicated the Reform party would win the next election, making Nigel Farage prime minister. Labour is now gambling its problems are personal, not political, and once Starmer has made way for a new PM — virtually certain to be Andy Burnham — its majority will be salvageable. Burnham is even more left-wing than Starmer: at least as far left on social issues and even more enthusiastic about nationalizing industry. Farage is wagering Starmer wasn’t the millstone around Labour’s neck — the party’s politics are.

But even as traditional parties of the left and right elsewhere in Europe have decayed in ways much like those of Britain’s Tories and Labour, new populist parties have struggled to win and maintain power. Farage has to contend not only with Labour and what’s left of the Conservatives, but also with a small but vociferous insurgency to his right, the Restore party. All this suggests Burnham or Farage can’t count on enjoying a tenure longer than Starmer’s or Sunak’s. Parliamentary elections haven’t produced a stable British government by anyone in the last 16 years. What are the odds the next election, which has to be held by August 2029, will do so? [..]

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“Trump is also asserting that Iran will allow IEAE inspectors in, something the Islamic Republic is also vehemently rejecting.”

• Brent Falls To Pre-War Levels (ZH)

Brent crude oil prices fell below $75 a barrel late yesterday, marking the first time the global benchmark has traded under that level since the outbreak of the Trump-initiated Iran conflict. The drop in crude prices could provide relief for consumers and businesses by easing pressure on fuel costs and inflation, a desired Washington outcome of the MoU signing – for which Trump has come under severe criticism from hawks at home. Speaking of escalating, we have another early morning Trump Truth Social statement, openly contradicting the consistent stated position of Tehran leaders.


Since the Switzerland high level talks led by Vance, there’s been a series of issues where Tehran and Washington have issued clearly contradictory statements. Trump says in the fresh statement that Iran informed the United States that there would be “NO TOLLS, NO INSURANCE COSTS, & NO OTHER CHARGES OF ANY KIND” imposed on vessels traveling through the strategic waterway. Trump as is typical criticized media reports that had suggested Iran could seek payments from ships using the route, calling such coverage “Fake News.” He added that if the information provided by Iran proved inaccurate, ongoing negotiations between the two sides would end “immediately.”

The president also denied reports that the United States had provided funds directly to Iran or released Iranian assets without conditions. “No money has been given to Iran, or released from their money to them, by the U.S.,” he said. However, Trump stated that Washington plans to make some Iranian funds available for agricultural purchases. According to the president, the money would be used to buy US farm products, including “Corn, Wheat, Soybeans, and more.” But Iranian leadership has vehemently rejected this narrative too.

“Food is desperately needed in Iran,” Trump said, adding that the purchases would be made “exclusively from the United States. The Strait of Hormuz remains one of the world’s most important energy shipping routes, and any disruption or additional costs imposed on vessels passing through the channel could have significant implications for global trade and oil markets. It is officially ‘open’ in the wake of the MoU signing – but the next few days and weeks will be telling.Meanwhile, some new developments on the Hormuz opening front, and Qatar LNG:

Qatar’s prime minister said establishing a hotline between the US and Iran is essential to prevent rogue actors impeding the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, as he predicted that the Gulf state would resume normal liquefied natural gas production “within a few weeks”. –FT. Trump is also asserting that Iran will allow IEAE inspectors in, something the Islamic Republic is also vehemently rejecting.

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Exactly like the old Lou Reed tune:

They’re never early, they’re always late.

First thing you learn is that you always gotta wait.

• ‘Customers Are Being Gouged’: Trump Tells DOJ To Look Into Gasoline Prices (ZH)

President Trump said on Wednesday that he had instructed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to open an investigation into oil companies over high gasoline prices. In a Truth Social post, Trump said that oil companies have not lowered their prices at the pump despite a recent decline in crude prices following the U.S.–Iran preliminary agreement. “Those prices are dropping like a rock! In other words, customers are being ‘gouged,’” he said. “Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster than what I’m seeing!” Brent crude futures fell below $75 per barrel on Wednesday (back near pre-war levels), while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures dropped to $72.29, amid the resumption of shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.


Bloomberg’s energy guru, Javier Blas, remarked after President Trump’s post: “US President Trump, all political theatre, has just discovered the refining (and marketing) margin.” The national average price for regular gasoline stood at $3.93 per gallon on June 23, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), down from $4.04 the previous week. The gas price was $4.53 per gallon a month ago. Of course, given the supply/refinery chain, it takes time (two weeks) for crude prices to ripple through to pump prices… AAA said it observed that gas prices remain above the levels before the conflict with Iran erupted in February.

The national average price for regular gas was $2.98 on Feb. 28, the day when the United States and Israel launched military operations against Iran, triggering the war. “Getting prices back down to prewar levels will take longer because of the time it takes to resume shipping and production,” Marie Dodds, public affairs director for AAA Oregon/Idaho, said in a statement. As Aldgra Fredly reports for The Epoch Times, US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding last week to end the war. Under the agreement, the Strait of Hormuz would be fully reopened, and Tehran would not procure or develop a nuclear weapon. The United States also agreed to waive sanctions on Iranian oil for 60 days.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright told ABC News on June 21 that commercial shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz had returned to normal levels, and that Americans should expect further declines in oil, gasoline, and other energy prices as traffic resumed. “Flows of oil and natural gas through the straits have already returned to normal, and they will continue that way whatever happens with the negotiations with the Iranians,” he said.

Arsenio Dominguez, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization, said on June 23 that more than 11,000 seafarers stranded in the region due to war would be evacuated under a coordinated effort with Iran, Oman, other coastal states in the region, the United States, and the maritime industry following the U.S.–Iran preliminary deal. “We have secured the necessary safety guarantees and have thoroughly verified the conditions for safe navigation to support these operations,” Dominguez said in a statement. Iran had previously blocked traffic in the Strait of Hormuz—a critical waterway through which a significant share of global oil and gas shipments passes—in response to the U.S. and Israeli attacks on its nuclear and military sites.

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“Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.”

• An AI Cyber Apocalypse Is ‘Months, Not Years’ Away, Five Eyes Warns (Moran)

The Five Eyes intelligence group, comprising the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, is warning governments and corporations that AI models capable of launching devastating cyber attacks that could overwhelm their defenses are months, not years away. They are urging nations and companies to “act now” to improve cyber defenses.


This is a highly unusual warning from the normally circumspect intelligence group. The Five Eyes alliance typically operates with deep, classified sharing. They do not issue public joint statements lightly. When they align to release a unified message directly to the public and business leaders, it signals that the threat landscape has shifted in a way that regular, incremental IT adjustments cannot handle. In short, Five Eyes doesn’t do “hype.” When it releases a joint warning, it’s to alert governments and corporations to a real, imminent threat.

Usually, the group’s intelligence warnings paint a picture of cybersecurity risks across a multi-year window. This warning explicitly breaks from that convention, shifting the perspective from years to just “months.””While AI will help us improve cyber defense over time, it also accelerates the speed, scale, and sophistication of cyber threats,” the group notes. “Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. The timeline is not years; it is months.”

The writing has been on the wall for the last few months regarding an increase in urgency in the potency and capabilities of newer AI models. For instance, earlier this month, the U.S. government took the unusual step of ordering the AI startup Anthropic to suspend access to its powerful Mythos and Fable 5 models for foreign nationals. Policymakers expressed severe national security concerns that these specific models possess unprecedented capabilities to independently identify code vulnerabilities, potentially resulting in a “vulnerability tsunami” if misused by hostile actors.

From the Five Eyes Statement:

Cyber risk can no longer be treated as a purely technical issue. This is a core business risk and leadership responsibility. Boards and executives should ensure cyber resilience is in place and works under pressure. It is not enough to have controls. Leaders must be confident those controls will perform during a real incident. This requires reassessing long-standing trade-offs and using AI deliberately to strengthen defense – not just improve efficiency.

Core principles:
• Secure-by-design and secure-by-default must become standard practice not an aspiration.
• Resilience cannot depend on a single solution or technology.Defense in depth remains essential.
• As AI systems evolve, new and previously unknown vulnerabilities will emerge, including zero day vulnerabilities.
• Breaches will occur. Preparedness helps you contain them quickly and prevent escalation into major operational and financial crises.

Rather than targeting IT administrators with technical alerts, it directly holds boards and corporate executives accountable, framing AI-driven cyber risk as a fundamental threat to business continuity and trust. It demands that leaders move past treating cybersecurity as an IT standalone department and actively use AI defensively to outpace adversaries.”

“What it was saying is that in an age of AI, breaches will occur. It’s not a matter of if, but when, so it’s important to get prepared now,” Olivia Shen, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the University of Sydney, told CNN. “Sophisticated businesses, usually your large corporations, they already invest in cybersecurity, and they’ll be better prepared,” Shen said. “The ones who are more exposed will be those small and medium-sized businesses who maybe have under invested so far, and they’ll basically be like sitting ducks.”

The speed with which these cyber threats are materializing is putting a damper on some efforts to place significant guardrails on AI. This month, several dozen cybersecurity researchers, AI entrepreneurs, and corporate executives signed an open letter urging the Trump administration to commit to “an open, scientific and transparent process of handling AI risk assessments” and said it was “essential” for security teams to “find and fix flaws in their own newly-written as well as decades of legacy code faster than our adversaries.”

“We know these technologies can be used for both defensive and offensive purposes, and we need a few more guardrails about how we can maximize the benefits for defensive cyber security, while gate keeping it away from potential cyber adversaries and scammers and cyber criminals,” Shen said. When the first major breaches happen, perhaps then we’ll get more serious about the speed with which AI development is outpacing our ability to adequately control it.

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Drones.. US lags behind.

• US To Set Up Testing Ranges Mimicking Ukraine Battlefield (RT)

The US will set up at least two domestic testing ranges that mimic battlefield conditions in Ukraine, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said on Tuesday. Driscoll said defense contractors will have access to the sites, where the Army and industry “can start to do much more aggressive testing,” according to DefenseScoop. The US has been struggling to keep pace with rapidly evolving drone technology used extensively by both Russia and Ukraine. “You can have a kind of electronic warfare and all of the contested environment created, and you can have drone manufacturers and counter-drone tool-builders engaging together,” Driscoll told reporters at an Army-hosted industry event.


“Then, we also want soldiers to be able to go there so that they can strengthen their skills and work hand-in-hand with developers,” he added. According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon is actively seeking companies capable of producing 300,000 low-cost kamikaze drones and is prepared to spend $54.6 billion next year on an expanded drone warfare program. The widespread use of surveillance and attack drones in the Ukraine conflict has created vast ‘kill zones’ along the front line, with both sides using UAVs to repel mechanized assaults and carry out strikes deep inside enemy territory. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov said earlier this month that domestic companies now have the capacity to produce more than 15,000 FPV drones per day, up from around 15,000 per month in 2023.

Moscow has warned that Western supplies of drone technology and other weapons to Kiev make NATO a de facto participant in the conflict and risk further escalation. Ukraine frequently uses drones to strike civilian targets. Last month, UAVs destroyed a college dormitory in Starobelsk, Russia, killing 21 students. On June 3, a Ukrainian drone struck a commuter bus in Enakievo, killing eight passengers. Two weeks later, a drone hit a bus carrying a youth football team from Belarus near the Russian village of Nelzhichi, killing a pregnant woman and injuring eight people, including six children.

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“Washington wants to expand weapons production after reportedly depleting key stockpiles in the Iran war and Ukraine”..

• US Carmakers Could Produce Missiles – Trump (RT)

US automakers could begin producing missiles and other weapons as Washington moves to expand military output and replenish its arsenals, President Donald Trump has said. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump said car companies with spare factory capacity are discussing deals to manufacture weapons, including Patriot air-defense missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles. ”They’re dealing with General Motors. They’re dealing with Ford,” Trump said. “I know General Motors is all excited about building weapons now.”


He added that some plants belonging to the two carmakers are expected to be converted to military production, describing the shift as part of a “big strong economic push” to produce arms. His remarks come after the Wall Street Journal reported in April that the Pentagon had approached General Motors, Ford, GE Aerospace, and Oshkosh about retooling civilian factories to produce munitions and other military equipment. The talks were reportedly part of an effort to put US industry on what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called a “wartime footing,” echoing the World War II-era conversion of Detroit factories to military production.

The push comes amid mounting concern over the state of US weapons stockpiles after years of arms deliveries to Ukraine under former President Joe Biden and heavy missile use during the recent US-Israeli war against Iran. US media and think-tanks have warned that Washington burned through large quantities of critical munitions during the Iran campaign, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, Patriot interceptors, THAAD missiles, and other advanced systems.

Reuters has also reported that depleted inventories could delay US arms deliveries to fellow NATO members. Trump has downplayed shortage concerns, saying the US has “quite a few” missiles but wants to keep larger reserves. His administration has requested a record military budget of around $1.5 trillion for the 2027 fiscal year, with much of the increase expected to go towards replenishing stockpiles and expanding production.

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“..psychology as a field is a tool of white power..”

• Journal Under Fire for Retracting Article Challenging Claims of Racism (Turley)

We have previously discussed academic journals canceling publications that challenge the orthodox views of mainstream scholars. The latest such example can be found in the Journal of the New Zealand College of Clinical Psychologists, which pulled the 2025 article of Arna Mitchell who questioned claims that psychology as a field is a tool of white power. The editors reportedly declared that such conclusions are inconsistent with the publication’s values.


Dr. Kumari Valentine, a psychologist and former editor of the journal, wrote an article raising concerns over the retraction: The reason given for the removal was not research fraud, plagiarism, ethical misconduct, or factual error. Rather, the NZCCP Council determined that retaining the article was inconsistent with the values of the College and could perpetuate harm to Maori. The article, He Wero Ano: Don’t Just Tell Me, Show Me How Science and Psychology Are Racist in New Zealand, took issue with the broad, unsubstantiated claims of systemic racism in psychology across all levels of the discipline, including that science itself is a social construct of white Europeans and white power.

Mitchell, a Maori woman herself, also took issue with the view that tribal ways of knowing should be given equal weight to scientific ways of knowing in the training and practice of psychologists in New Zealand. One would think that such a viewpoint, particularly from a Maori woman, would, at a minimum, be welcomed as a provocative and interesting perspective. However, various readers were less interested in reading it or even responding to it. They campaigned to cancel it.

Some did respond, saying they felt the critique was based on a misunderstanding of Kaupapa Maori psychology. That should also be a welcome perspective in allowing a free exchange of viewpoints on the subject. Some faculty have cried foul, calling the cancellation raw censorship. This is reminiscent of the controversy at the Emory Law Journal and the firing of an editor at JAMA. These controversies are a reflection of the viewpoint intolerance that has taken hold of much of academia, supporting groups, and journals.

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Nice pair.

• Investigation Launched Into Von der Leyen Over Secret Chat With Zelensky (TASS)

European Ombudsman Teresa Anjinho has launched an investigation into European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen over a secret chat involving German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and Vladimir Zelensky, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported. Anjinho notified the European Commission of the investigation last week. She is examining whether the EC violated transparency rules by refusing to grant the Dutch organization Follow the Money (FTM) access to the correspondence.


The European Commission justified its refusal by stating that publishing the chat data could “complicate the international relations of the European Union (and its member states) with third countries.” “I have decided to launch a probe into the European Commission’s actions regarding the applicant’s request in accordance with EU regulations concerning public access to documents,” Anjinho wrote to the FTM organization. She expects to meet with EC representatives by mid-July.

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Places are hot that were not built for it. 40 people drowned in France alone in a few days.

• Sweltering Heat As Europe Heatwave Spreads (BBC)

France is bracing for another day of exceptionally hot weather, with more than half the country remaining under a red heat alert on Wednesday. Tens of thousands of homes have been left without power in western Brittany, while a major wildfire was brought under control overnight in the Maine-et-Loire region. It comes after the country experienced its hottest June day since records began on Tuesday, with an average temperature of 29.8C (85.54F) recorded.


The heatwave is expected to spread to other parts of western Europe on Wednesday, with an orange alert for dangerous weather in place for parts of the Netherlands. Temperatures are expected to peak in the Netherlands and Belgium on Friday, while Germany is expected to see the mercury rise to 40C (104F) over the weekend. The heatwave is also expected to spread to eastern Europe over the next few days, with severe heat warnings issued for countries including Poland, Croatia and Hungary for later in the week.

So far, France, Spain and Italy have been hardest hit by the heatwave. Forty people have drowned in heatwave-related incidents in France since last Thursday, according to the prime minister.

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https://twitter.com/niccruzpatane/status/2069567930308624607?s=20

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 


M.C. Escher Dream 1935


• Iran Calls MoU Deal A ‘US Defeat’ (ZH)
• Trump Threatened Netanyahu With ‘Divorce’, NYT Reporters Say In New Book (RT)
• The Democrat Party Is Dead (Matt Margolis)
• ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Now Officially Controls the Democrat Party (CTH)
• Mamdani-backed Candidates Sweep Democratic Primaries In NYC (Guardian)
• Can Anyone Govern Britain — Or America? (Daniel McCcarthy)
• Brent Falls To Pre-War Levels (ZH)
• ‘Customers Are Being Gouged’: Trump Tells DOJ To Look Into Gasoline Prices (ZH)
• An AI Cyber Apocalypse Is ‘Months, Not Years’ Away, Five Eyes Warns (Moran)
• US To Set Up Testing Ranges Mimicking Ukraine Battlefield (RT)
• US Carmakers Could Produce Missiles – Trump (RT)
• Journal Under Fire for Retracting Article Challenging Claims of Racism (Turley)
• Investigation Launched Into Von der Leyen Over Secret Chat With Zelensky (TASS)
• Sweltering Heat As Europe Heatwave Spreads (BBC)

 


 

https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2069522132988543210?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2069539332084375596?s=20 https:/twitter.com/Adams_Tech_AI/status/2069412440140325371?s=20

 


 


The more they give in, the stronger their claims.

• Iran Calls MoU Deal A ‘US Defeat’ (ZH)

“The war is going very well. As you know, we’re winning by a lot. Iran is making very big concessions,” Trump told reporters at the Capitol. “We’ll see what happens — but it has been very, very, very powerful,” the US President added. Tehran has remained insistent it never agreed to allow nuclear inspector access, and that the Strait of Hormuz is opening on its terms. Meanwhile, the latest on the Lebanon tenuous ceasefire and crisis:


Tehran Provokes Trump: Deal to End War a ‘Declaration of US Defeat’. The post-war narrative battle between Washington and Tehran intensified Wednesday after Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf claimed the recently signed Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) – and confirmed in Switzerland – amounted to nothing less than a US capitulation. Speaking in Baku during a gathering of parliaments from member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Ghalibaf argued that the agreement validated Iran’s long-held position that negotiations only succeed when foreign powers abandon coercion and recognize the Islamic Republic’s rights.

“The Islamabad memorandum of understanding became a declaration of the US defeat,” Ghalibaf said. The remarks underscore the widening disconnect between how Washington and Tehran are portraying the agreement. While the Trump administration has presented the MoU as evidence that its pressure campaign forced concessions from Iran, Iranian officials continue to frame the deal as proof that the United States ultimately backed away from attempts to dictate terms.

Ghalibaf further suggested that the agreement demonstrated dialogue can only produce results when the opposing side ceases efforts to impose its will and instead accepts Iran’s sovereign rights. Iran has lately stated that it asserted its red lines through ‘action’.

Energy Secretary: 72 Ships Have Exited Strait in Last Day
Several vessels have already navigated the Strait of Hormuz utilizing a fresh evacuation framework established by the United Nations’ shipping agency, an official confirmed on Wednesday. More via newswires:US Energy Secretary Wright says roughly 72 ships have exited Strait of Hormuz in last 24 hours. “Ships have already begun to pass under the plan,” stated a spokesperson for the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO), though they opted not to disclose specific details regarding the transiting vessels.

According to the latest LSEG ship-tracking data Wednesday, at least two dry bulk carriers and one cargo vessel successfully crossed the strait under the new program within a 12-hour window. An additional analysis of ship movements by Reuters, utilizing data from LSEG and MarineTraffic, indicated that at least 35 other commercial vessels – primarily dry bulk, cargo, and container ships – are gearing up to make the passage. Brent crude oil prices fell below $75 a barrel late yesterday, marking the first time the global benchmark has traded under that level since the outbreak of the Trump-initiated Iran conflict. The drop in crude prices could provide relief for consumers and businesses by easing pressure on fuel costs and inflation, a desired Washington outcome of the MoU signing – for which Trump has come under severe criticism from hawks at home. Speaking of escalating, we have another early morning Trump Truth Social statement, openly contradicting the consistent stated position of Tehran leaders.

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“The US president reportedly said “all the Jews” are tired of the Israeli prime minister..”

• Trump Threatened Netanyahu With ‘Divorce’, NYT Reporters Say In New Book (RT)

US President Donald Trump claimed that “all the Jews” are tired of Benjamin Netanyahu and threatened the Israeli prime minister with “divorce” between the close allies during a phone call, according to a new book by New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. The account comes from ‘Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump’, excerpts of which were cited by media outlets on Tuesday. The heated exchange reportedly took place in September 2025, when Trump was pushing Israel to accept his peace plan for Gaza. He spoke with Netanyahu in the presence of US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.


“Everybody’s sick of you, Bibi. All the Jews are sick of you. Even the two Jews on this call are sick of you,” Trump reportedly told Netanyahu, according to the Times of Israel. “Everybody hates you, and I’ve stood by you,” Trump said, warning that Israel’s refusal to accept the deal would result in “a divorce” between the countries, according to The Independent. Trump and Netanyahu praised their close cooperation during the opening weeks of the US-Israeli war against Iran, which was launched on February 28. Trump became increasingly critical of Israel as efforts to subdue Iran faltered and peace talks stalled.

Trump condemned Israeli strikes in Lebanon after Iran threatened to pull out of negotiations, at one point arguing that Netanyahu has “no f**king judgment” and reportedly calling him “f**king crazy.” According to the Washington Post, US intelligence agencies recently warned Trump that Netanyahu is likely to attempt to undermine efforts to secure a lasting peace with Iran. Both leaders have faced criticism at home, with opponents arguing that the interim agreement signed by the US and Iran last week failed to achieve their stated war aims.

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The system makes the Dems live on as zombies. You need two parties, and it’s -practically, not theoretically- impossible to add a third one.

• The Democrat Party Is Dead (Matt Margolis)

New York just gave America a preview of who’s actually running the Democrat Party, and it isn’t Hakeem Jeffries. On Tuesday, all three socialist candidates endorsed by socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani swept their targeted congressional primaries. Three races, three wins, zero exceptions. Three Democrat incumbents in safe districts all lost. “Their positions are some of the most extreme & far left Dems have seen,” Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin said on X. Trust me, he’s not exaggerating.


Darializa Avila Chevalier took NY-13 on a platform built around abolishing prisons, abolishing ICE, abolishing borders, defunding the police, and opposing the deportation of every illegal immigrant, including violent criminals. Claire Valdez won NY-7, promising citizenship and voting rights for people who broke into this country illegally, taxpayer-funded transgender medical treatments, and the elimination of private health insurance for every American. These aren’t fringe positions anymore. They’re the new mainstream of the Democrat Party, and voters in these districts chose them enthusiastically.


And no Democrat is safe. Just look at NY-10, where Brad Lander demolished Rep. Dan Goldman, grabbing nearly 65% of the vote. Goldman was one of the loudest anti-Trump voices in Congress, and he led impeachment efforts against President Trump. None of that mattered. His support for Israel and his refusal to endorse Mamdani are the reasons he lost. Lander, meanwhile, ran on abolishing ICE, forgiving almost $2 trillion in student loans, and packing the Supreme Court.= That’s the candidate Democrat primary voters preferred over a guy who spent years trying to remove Trump from office.

The Democrat establishment knows exactly what happened, and it’s terrified. “Tonight wasn’t just a bad night for so-called ‘Leader’ Hakeem Jeffries. It was the night the Democrat establishment officially surrendered to Zohran Mamdani and the socialist wing of their party,” NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella said in a statement. “Every House Democrat, in safe and competitive districts alike, will now answer to the radicals calling the shots. And Americans should be terrified by where the Democrat Party is headed.” Even CNN’s Van Jones couldn’t spin his way out of this one. “This is a battle between the establishment and this insurgency,” Jones said. “And the roof is collapsing on the Democratic party establishment tonight.”

Here’s the reality nobody on the left wants to say out loud: the Democrat Party as it existed even a few years ago is finished. The socialist wing didn’t build a new party from scratch. It crawled inside the old one and took it over from the inside, like the zombie fungus controlling a dead ant. The Democrat Party is the corpse. The Socialist Party is what’s controlling it now. This should terrify the establishment because it makes it impossible to keep hiding what the party has become. This is going to terrify independent voters, who are watching candidates run on abolishing borders and prisons while still calling themselves Democrats. They’ll have no choice but to vote Republican to stop the radicals from taking over.

The socialist takeover isn’t slowing down. It’s accelerating, and every safe-district Democrat in Congress now has to answer to it. And now Republicans have been handed an opening most political parties only dream of. “That’s what the left is putting out. It’s these radical leftists that are being elected. They’re being inspired by Mamdani, AOC, Bernie Sanders. They’re running all across the country, and the only good news is in a lot of these districts where it’s actually competitive districts. If they’re putting up these radicals, we’re getting a lot of favorable matchups,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said on Newsmax. “It’s the mainstream. This is what’s happened to their Party. They’ve gone so far to the left. This is normal. But the people are going to reject this at the polls.”

Gruters argues the math looks really good for the GOP. “There’s 18 toss-up seats,” he pointed out. “We’re at 212. I think we have a chance to defy history and win these midterms. It’s because the left has gone so far to the left. It’s really the choices are crazy versus normal, and what do people want?”

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”IDEOLOGY: Capitalism is bad. Law enforcement are pigs. Policy should support emotions. The collective should rule every decision.”

• ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Now Officially Controls the Democrat Party (CTH)

It did not happen last night folks. It took them another 15 years after they installed Obama to become the legitimate heirs to the political party formerly known as Democrats.mThe progressive movement is now branded as “Democrat Socialists of America” (DSA), but those who have followed the arc of this group well understand every single member within DSA is from the Occupy Wall Street / Anarchy movement that preceded it. Fingers are being pointed toward New York as the epicenter of the new Democrat Party Headquarters of DSA, which is a fitting location of focus given the OWS origin.


The front line of the DSA movement consists of 18 to 30-year-olds, mostly white, urban, upper-middle-income activists, carrying Macbooks with anarchist stickers and physical attire resembling a blend of hipster ‘grunge’ and skateboard beanie resistance. They don’t shower much and love to talk about AOC and Bernie on Social Media. Don’t belittle them, they are authentic. They don’t misunderstand things; they bought into the nonsense and genuinely believe the popular narrative sold to them since High School that capitalism is horrible and Communism or Socialism is the preferred system of government.

Individually, not one of them would shed a tear if their collective comrades broke into their parent’s houses tomorrow and murdered the elders. When joined in group assemblies, their emotions are controlled by the sensibility of the group. This is the Mao generation, repeating and rhyming. IDEOLOGY: Capitalism is bad. Law enforcement are pigs. Policy should support emotions. The collective should rule every decision. Democrat socialists believe all dissent must be squashed unless they actually lose a popular election – then, the system is oppressing them. Speech that argues against their belief system is ‘violence’. However, violence that supports their belief system is ‘speech’.

Democrat Socialists of America are factually Occupy Wall Street activists. The traditional mechanisms of self-controlling morality do not apply to this group of generational ideologues. The haves -vs- have nots is their religion. They never cede power and elections do not remove them. Go look at history, the only thing that has ever stopped Socialism is physical violence. You may have read the stories of multi-billionaires building bunkers. The predictable DSA is why. People who say, “violence is not the answer” are pretending they don’t know history.

POLITICO – […] Fresh off sweeping victories across New York City that showcased the growing power of the anti-establishment progressive left inside the Democratic Party, Democratic Socialists of America leaders, eager to capitalize on their momentum, are already plotting their next act: making sure one of their own is on the presidential primary debate stage, whether the party wants them or not. “What DSA represents is a real contrast to Democrats who have run the last couple of elections on fear,” DSA national co-chair Megan Romer said. “You can’t run on that. You have to offer an alternative. And it’s really important that we be involved in that conversation in 2028. It’s important that we have somebody saying sensible things.”

Their search process is already underway. This summer, DSA is dispatching surveys to all 250 of its chapters, asking members to weigh who they want to back and why, and return their findings to national leadership by Sept. 15, details the group first shared with POLITICO. DSA expects to receive a stack of 20-page to 40-page dossiers from chapters coast to coast weighing in on who should carry the democratic socialist banner into 2028.The organization plans to hold national discussions, including with leaders like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is 84 and not expected to run in 2028, with a formal vote expected at the group’s 2027 convention next year — though leaders say they could move faster if the primary timeline demands it.

“We’re going to be talking about millions of hours knocking doors for 2028 — so when we decide to really run somebody, people have to feel like they had a say,” Romer said. Mamdani-backed candidates swept three closely watched New York congressional primaries Tuesday, with Claire Valdez, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier all defeating more establishment-aligned rivals — including two incumbents. It was a major show of force for Mamdani’s political operation, and fresh evidence of the left’s growing muscle heading into 2028. “They ask, ‘Who do you want to run in 2028?’ Then they ask, ‘When does the race for 2028 begin?’ It starts now. It starts on Tuesday,” Mamdani said at a Brooklyn rally last week.

The elephant in the room for the group, of course, is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

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Jerry Nadler, George Conway et al, as in: The anti-Trump field.

“JFK’s grandson Jack Schlossberg fails to advance in election to replace Jerry Nadler in Manhattan district. “

• Mamdani-backed Candidates Sweep Democratic Primaries In NYC (Guardian)

Zohran Mamdani’s growing influence over the Democratic party was on show in New York City on Tuesday as three congressional candidates endorsed by New York’s democratic socialist mayor won closely watched primaries, while voters in Maryland, Utah and South Carolina cast ballots in primaries and runoffs.Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller who also ran for mayor last year before endorsing Mamdani, won his race comfortably, defeating the Democratic representative Dan Goldman.


Another Mamdani ally, Claire Valdez, a state lawmaker and former union organizer, defeated Antonio Reynoso, the preferred successor of retiring Democratic Representative Nydia Velázquez in New York’s seventh district, encompassing parts of Brooklyn and Queens. And in a stunning upset, the public defense investigator Darializa Avila Chevalier toppled Representative Adriano Espaillat, the powerful five-term incumbent who chairs the Congressional Hispanic caucus, in the state’s diverse 13th congressional district, which covers Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx.

“What a glorious time to be a New Yorker,” Lander declared at this election night party in Brooklyn, where he was joined by the mayor. Mamdani then appeared at a watch party for Valdez, where he told a jubilant crowd: “The old politics that got us into this crisis is not the politics that’s going to get us out of this crisis.” It was a clean sweep for Mamdani, who waded into the House primaries earlier this year, spending his political capital to boost three leftwing allies – a gamble that would test his popularity and his influence. With his slate of candidates all but certain to be elected to Congress in November, Mamdani has left his stamp on the state’s congressional delegation and expanded his ascendant progressive movement.

Elsewhere in the city, Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F Kennedy, was unsuccessful in his bid to revive the political legacy of the US’s most vaunted political family. In a House race that attracted outsized national attention, Schlossberg, 33, had hoped to parlay his huge social media presence and charisma into a Congressional seat, but he came up short in a crowded field of Democrats hoping to succeed the long-serving representative Jerry Nadler. Micah Lasher, a longtime New York politician and self-described “nerd”, won the primary in New York’s 12th district, a deep-blue district whose voters tend to identify as liberal rather than left-wing.

The race also included the prominent anti-Trump critic George Conway and state assembly-member Alex Bores, whose candidacy became the fulcrum for what observers described as an “AI civil war”. Lasher will be the heavy favorite to win the safely Democratic district in the November midterm election. Late on Tuesday night, Queens-born Donald Trump celebrated the defeat of both Goldman and Conway in a pair of social media posts. “Weak and pathetic Congressman Dan Goldman just lost, BIG! I guess people didn’t like him illegally targeting President TRUMP,” the president said of the congressman, who served as the lead counsel to House Democrats during the Trump’s first impeachment. Of Conway, whose ex-wife was a top adviser to the president during his first term, Trump gleefully predicted that he would “end up at about 5% of the vote in a rather weak field of young and aggressive Communists”.

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UK: No

US: Trump is doing it.

• Can Anyone Govern Britain — Or America? (Daniel McCcarthy)

As Britain gets ready for its seventh prime minister in just 10 years, it’s time to ask whether the parliamentary system itself is broken. That might explain not only why landslide election victories don’t translate into stable leadership in Britain but also why America’s Congress is so feckless. Is representative government an idea whose time has passed? In Europe as well as America, leftists prefer that judges and bureaucrats wield permanent power, as supposedly impartial experts who know best how to stop the weather from changing and how many genders there are.


Britain’s Labour party started out as a vehicle for the working class, in theory. It was closely connected to the country’s major industrial unions — but Britain in the 21st century has lost most of its hard industry, and Labour is now led by the same kind of socially left-wing, technocratic wonks that make up the “inner party” of the Democrats in this country. Brexit, passed by the British people in a referendum 10 years ago this week, proved Labour had lost the working class — the party elite favored remaining in the European Union, but working-class voters themselves cast their ballots for “leave.”

Unfortunately, the Conservative party’s elite also favored “remain” — Prime Minister David Cameron himself did, and losing the Brexit referendum compelled him to resign. Yet Cameron was followed by another Conservative PM, Theresa May, who had also been a remainer. It took a third Tory PM, Boris Johnson, to follow through on the voters’ mandate, but Johnson proved to be Britain’s Joe Biden where immigration was concerned, unleashing the “Boriswave” of mass migration, which flooded Britain with some 4 million newcomers from places like India, China, Pakistan and Nigeria.

Personal scandals forced Johnson from office before the scale of the damage his policies did came to light — but bond markets didn’t tolerate Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, for long. That left Rishi Sunak to lead the Conservatives in 2024 to their first general election defeat in 14 years. In that time, Conservatives had given Britain same-sex marriage, bigger government, deeper debt, more green-energy regulation and record-high immigration. Labour more than doubled its number of seats in Parliament with Keir Starmer leading the party into the election, yet the landslide didn’t translate into any mandate for him.

His popularity soon slid and polls indicated the Reform party would win the next election, making Nigel Farage prime minister. Labour is now gambling its problems are personal, not political, and once Starmer has made way for a new PM — virtually certain to be Andy Burnham — its majority will be salvageable. Burnham is even more left-wing than Starmer: at least as far left on social issues and even more enthusiastic about nationalizing industry. Farage is wagering Starmer wasn’t the millstone around Labour’s neck — the party’s politics are.

But even as traditional parties of the left and right elsewhere in Europe have decayed in ways much like those of Britain’s Tories and Labour, new populist parties have struggled to win and maintain power. Farage has to contend not only with Labour and what’s left of the Conservatives, but also with a small but vociferous insurgency to his right, the Restore party. All this suggests Burnham or Farage can’t count on enjoying a tenure longer than Starmer’s or Sunak’s. Parliamentary elections haven’t produced a stable British government by anyone in the last 16 years. What are the odds the next election, which has to be held by August 2029, will do so? [..]

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“Trump is also asserting that Iran will allow IEAE inspectors in, something the Islamic Republic is also vehemently rejecting.”

• Brent Falls To Pre-War Levels (ZH)

Brent crude oil prices fell below $75 a barrel late yesterday, marking the first time the global benchmark has traded under that level since the outbreak of the Trump-initiated Iran conflict. The drop in crude prices could provide relief for consumers and businesses by easing pressure on fuel costs and inflation, a desired Washington outcome of the MoU signing – for which Trump has come under severe criticism from hawks at home. Speaking of escalating, we have another early morning Trump Truth Social statement, openly contradicting the consistent stated position of Tehran leaders.


Since the Switzerland high level talks led by Vance, there’s been a series of issues where Tehran and Washington have issued clearly contradictory statements. Trump says in the fresh statement that Iran informed the United States that there would be “NO TOLLS, NO INSURANCE COSTS, & NO OTHER CHARGES OF ANY KIND” imposed on vessels traveling through the strategic waterway. Trump as is typical criticized media reports that had suggested Iran could seek payments from ships using the route, calling such coverage “Fake News.” He added that if the information provided by Iran proved inaccurate, ongoing negotiations between the two sides would end “immediately.”

The president also denied reports that the United States had provided funds directly to Iran or released Iranian assets without conditions. “No money has been given to Iran, or released from their money to them, by the U.S.,” he said. However, Trump stated that Washington plans to make some Iranian funds available for agricultural purchases. According to the president, the money would be used to buy US farm products, including “Corn, Wheat, Soybeans, and more.” But Iranian leadership has vehemently rejected this narrative too.

“Food is desperately needed in Iran,” Trump said, adding that the purchases would be made “exclusively from the United States. The Strait of Hormuz remains one of the world’s most important energy shipping routes, and any disruption or additional costs imposed on vessels passing through the channel could have significant implications for global trade and oil markets. It is officially ‘open’ in the wake of the MoU signing – but the next few days and weeks will be telling.Meanwhile, some new developments on the Hormuz opening front, and Qatar LNG:

Qatar’s prime minister said establishing a hotline between the US and Iran is essential to prevent rogue actors impeding the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, as he predicted that the Gulf state would resume normal liquefied natural gas production “within a few weeks”. –FT. Trump is also asserting that Iran will allow IEAE inspectors in, something the Islamic Republic is also vehemently rejecting.

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Exactly like the old Lou Reed tune:

They’re never early, they’re always late.

First thing you learn is that you always gotta wait.

• ‘Customers Are Being Gouged’: Trump Tells DOJ To Look Into Gasoline Prices (ZH)

President Trump said on Wednesday that he had instructed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to open an investigation into oil companies over high gasoline prices. In a Truth Social post, Trump said that oil companies have not lowered their prices at the pump despite a recent decline in crude prices following the U.S.–Iran preliminary agreement. “Those prices are dropping like a rock! In other words, customers are being ‘gouged,’” he said. “Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster than what I’m seeing!” Brent crude futures fell below $75 per barrel on Wednesday (back near pre-war levels), while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures dropped to $72.29, amid the resumption of shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.


Bloomberg’s energy guru, Javier Blas, remarked after President Trump’s post: “US President Trump, all political theatre, has just discovered the refining (and marketing) margin.” The national average price for regular gasoline stood at $3.93 per gallon on June 23, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), down from $4.04 the previous week. The gas price was $4.53 per gallon a month ago. Of course, given the supply/refinery chain, it takes time (two weeks) for crude prices to ripple through to pump prices… AAA said it observed that gas prices remain above the levels before the conflict with Iran erupted in February.

The national average price for regular gas was $2.98 on Feb. 28, the day when the United States and Israel launched military operations against Iran, triggering the war. “Getting prices back down to prewar levels will take longer because of the time it takes to resume shipping and production,” Marie Dodds, public affairs director for AAA Oregon/Idaho, said in a statement. As Aldgra Fredly reports for The Epoch Times, US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding last week to end the war. Under the agreement, the Strait of Hormuz would be fully reopened, and Tehran would not procure or develop a nuclear weapon. The United States also agreed to waive sanctions on Iranian oil for 60 days.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright told ABC News on June 21 that commercial shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz had returned to normal levels, and that Americans should expect further declines in oil, gasoline, and other energy prices as traffic resumed. “Flows of oil and natural gas through the straits have already returned to normal, and they will continue that way whatever happens with the negotiations with the Iranians,” he said.

Arsenio Dominguez, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization, said on June 23 that more than 11,000 seafarers stranded in the region due to war would be evacuated under a coordinated effort with Iran, Oman, other coastal states in the region, the United States, and the maritime industry following the U.S.–Iran preliminary deal. “We have secured the necessary safety guarantees and have thoroughly verified the conditions for safe navigation to support these operations,” Dominguez said in a statement. Iran had previously blocked traffic in the Strait of Hormuz—a critical waterway through which a significant share of global oil and gas shipments passes—in response to the U.S. and Israeli attacks on its nuclear and military sites.

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“Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.”

• An AI Cyber Apocalypse Is ‘Months, Not Years’ Away, Five Eyes Warns (Moran)

The Five Eyes intelligence group, comprising the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, is warning governments and corporations that AI models capable of launching devastating cyber attacks that could overwhelm their defenses are months, not years away. They are urging nations and companies to “act now” to improve cyber defenses.


This is a highly unusual warning from the normally circumspect intelligence group. The Five Eyes alliance typically operates with deep, classified sharing. They do not issue public joint statements lightly. When they align to release a unified message directly to the public and business leaders, it signals that the threat landscape has shifted in a way that regular, incremental IT adjustments cannot handle. In short, Five Eyes doesn’t do “hype.” When it releases a joint warning, it’s to alert governments and corporations to a real, imminent threat.

Usually, the group’s intelligence warnings paint a picture of cybersecurity risks across a multi-year window. This warning explicitly breaks from that convention, shifting the perspective from years to just “months.””While AI will help us improve cyber defense over time, it also accelerates the speed, scale, and sophistication of cyber threats,” the group notes. “Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. The timeline is not years; it is months.”

The writing has been on the wall for the last few months regarding an increase in urgency in the potency and capabilities of newer AI models. For instance, earlier this month, the U.S. government took the unusual step of ordering the AI startup Anthropic to suspend access to its powerful Mythos and Fable 5 models for foreign nationals. Policymakers expressed severe national security concerns that these specific models possess unprecedented capabilities to independently identify code vulnerabilities, potentially resulting in a “vulnerability tsunami” if misused by hostile actors.

From the Five Eyes Statement:

Cyber risk can no longer be treated as a purely technical issue. This is a core business risk and leadership responsibility. Boards and executives should ensure cyber resilience is in place and works under pressure. It is not enough to have controls. Leaders must be confident those controls will perform during a real incident. This requires reassessing long-standing trade-offs and using AI deliberately to strengthen defense – not just improve efficiency.

Core principles:
• Secure-by-design and secure-by-default must become standard practice not an aspiration.
• Resilience cannot depend on a single solution or technology.Defense in depth remains essential.
• As AI systems evolve, new and previously unknown vulnerabilities will emerge, including zero day vulnerabilities.
• Breaches will occur. Preparedness helps you contain them quickly and prevent escalation into major operational and financial crises.

Rather than targeting IT administrators with technical alerts, it directly holds boards and corporate executives accountable, framing AI-driven cyber risk as a fundamental threat to business continuity and trust. It demands that leaders move past treating cybersecurity as an IT standalone department and actively use AI defensively to outpace adversaries.”

“What it was saying is that in an age of AI, breaches will occur. It’s not a matter of if, but when, so it’s important to get prepared now,” Olivia Shen, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the University of Sydney, told CNN. “Sophisticated businesses, usually your large corporations, they already invest in cybersecurity, and they’ll be better prepared,” Shen said. “The ones who are more exposed will be those small and medium-sized businesses who maybe have under invested so far, and they’ll basically be like sitting ducks.”

The speed with which these cyber threats are materializing is putting a damper on some efforts to place significant guardrails on AI. This month, several dozen cybersecurity researchers, AI entrepreneurs, and corporate executives signed an open letter urging the Trump administration to commit to “an open, scientific and transparent process of handling AI risk assessments” and said it was “essential” for security teams to “find and fix flaws in their own newly-written as well as decades of legacy code faster than our adversaries.”

“We know these technologies can be used for both defensive and offensive purposes, and we need a few more guardrails about how we can maximize the benefits for defensive cyber security, while gate keeping it away from potential cyber adversaries and scammers and cyber criminals,” Shen said. When the first major breaches happen, perhaps then we’ll get more serious about the speed with which AI development is outpacing our ability to adequately control it.

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Drones.. US lags behind.

• US To Set Up Testing Ranges Mimicking Ukraine Battlefield (RT)

The US will set up at least two domestic testing ranges that mimic battlefield conditions in Ukraine, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said on Tuesday. Driscoll said defense contractors will have access to the sites, where the Army and industry “can start to do much more aggressive testing,” according to DefenseScoop. The US has been struggling to keep pace with rapidly evolving drone technology used extensively by both Russia and Ukraine. “You can have a kind of electronic warfare and all of the contested environment created, and you can have drone manufacturers and counter-drone tool-builders engaging together,” Driscoll told reporters at an Army-hosted industry event.


“Then, we also want soldiers to be able to go there so that they can strengthen their skills and work hand-in-hand with developers,” he added. According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon is actively seeking companies capable of producing 300,000 low-cost kamikaze drones and is prepared to spend $54.6 billion next year on an expanded drone warfare program. The widespread use of surveillance and attack drones in the Ukraine conflict has created vast ‘kill zones’ along the front line, with both sides using UAVs to repel mechanized assaults and carry out strikes deep inside enemy territory. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov said earlier this month that domestic companies now have the capacity to produce more than 15,000 FPV drones per day, up from around 15,000 per month in 2023.

Moscow has warned that Western supplies of drone technology and other weapons to Kiev make NATO a de facto participant in the conflict and risk further escalation. Ukraine frequently uses drones to strike civilian targets. Last month, UAVs destroyed a college dormitory in Starobelsk, Russia, killing 21 students. On June 3, a Ukrainian drone struck a commuter bus in Enakievo, killing eight passengers. Two weeks later, a drone hit a bus carrying a youth football team from Belarus near the Russian village of Nelzhichi, killing a pregnant woman and injuring eight people, including six children.

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“Washington wants to expand weapons production after reportedly depleting key stockpiles in the Iran war and Ukraine”..

• US Carmakers Could Produce Missiles – Trump (RT)

US automakers could begin producing missiles and other weapons as Washington moves to expand military output and replenish its arsenals, President Donald Trump has said. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump said car companies with spare factory capacity are discussing deals to manufacture weapons, including Patriot air-defense missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles. ”They’re dealing with General Motors. They’re dealing with Ford,” Trump said. “I know General Motors is all excited about building weapons now.”


He added that some plants belonging to the two carmakers are expected to be converted to military production, describing the shift as part of a “big strong economic push” to produce arms. His remarks come after the Wall Street Journal reported in April that the Pentagon had approached General Motors, Ford, GE Aerospace, and Oshkosh about retooling civilian factories to produce munitions and other military equipment. The talks were reportedly part of an effort to put US industry on what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called a “wartime footing,” echoing the World War II-era conversion of Detroit factories to military production.

The push comes amid mounting concern over the state of US weapons stockpiles after years of arms deliveries to Ukraine under former President Joe Biden and heavy missile use during the recent US-Israeli war against Iran. US media and think-tanks have warned that Washington burned through large quantities of critical munitions during the Iran campaign, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, Patriot interceptors, THAAD missiles, and other advanced systems.

Reuters has also reported that depleted inventories could delay US arms deliveries to fellow NATO members. Trump has downplayed shortage concerns, saying the US has “quite a few” missiles but wants to keep larger reserves. His administration has requested a record military budget of around $1.5 trillion for the 2027 fiscal year, with much of the increase expected to go towards replenishing stockpiles and expanding production.

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“..psychology as a field is a tool of white power..”

• Journal Under Fire for Retracting Article Challenging Claims of Racism (Turley)

We have previously discussed academic journals canceling publications that challenge the orthodox views of mainstream scholars. The latest such example can be found in the Journal of the New Zealand College of Clinical Psychologists, which pulled the 2025 article of Arna Mitchell who questioned claims that psychology as a field is a tool of white power. The editors reportedly declared that such conclusions are inconsistent with the publication’s values.


Dr. Kumari Valentine, a psychologist and former editor of the journal, wrote an article raising concerns over the retraction: The reason given for the removal was not research fraud, plagiarism, ethical misconduct, or factual error. Rather, the NZCCP Council determined that retaining the article was inconsistent with the values of the College and could perpetuate harm to Maori. The article, He Wero Ano: Don’t Just Tell Me, Show Me How Science and Psychology Are Racist in New Zealand, took issue with the broad, unsubstantiated claims of systemic racism in psychology across all levels of the discipline, including that science itself is a social construct of white Europeans and white power.

Mitchell, a Maori woman herself, also took issue with the view that tribal ways of knowing should be given equal weight to scientific ways of knowing in the training and practice of psychologists in New Zealand. One would think that such a viewpoint, particularly from a Maori woman, would, at a minimum, be welcomed as a provocative and interesting perspective. However, various readers were less interested in reading it or even responding to it. They campaigned to cancel it.

Some did respond, saying they felt the critique was based on a misunderstanding of Kaupapa Maori psychology. That should also be a welcome perspective in allowing a free exchange of viewpoints on the subject. Some faculty have cried foul, calling the cancellation raw censorship. This is reminiscent of the controversy at the Emory Law Journal and the firing of an editor at JAMA. These controversies are a reflection of the viewpoint intolerance that has taken hold of much of academia, supporting groups, and journals.

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Nice pair.

• Investigation Launched Into Von der Leyen Over Secret Chat With Zelensky (TASS)

European Ombudsman Teresa Anjinho has launched an investigation into European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen over a secret chat involving German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and Vladimir Zelensky, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported. Anjinho notified the European Commission of the investigation last week. She is examining whether the EC violated transparency rules by refusing to grant the Dutch organization Follow the Money (FTM) access to the correspondence.


The European Commission justified its refusal by stating that publishing the chat data could “complicate the international relations of the European Union (and its member states) with third countries.” “I have decided to launch a probe into the European Commission’s actions regarding the applicant’s request in accordance with EU regulations concerning public access to documents,” Anjinho wrote to the FTM organization. She expects to meet with EC representatives by mid-July.

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Places are hot that were not built for it. 40 people drowned in France alone in a few days.

• Sweltering Heat As Europe Heatwave Spreads (BBC)

France is bracing for another day of exceptionally hot weather, with more than half the country remaining under a red heat alert on Wednesday. Tens of thousands of homes have been left without power in western Brittany, while a major wildfire was brought under control overnight in the Maine-et-Loire region. It comes after the country experienced its hottest June day since records began on Tuesday, with an average temperature of 29.8C (85.54F) recorded.


The heatwave is expected to spread to other parts of western Europe on Wednesday, with an orange alert for dangerous weather in place for parts of the Netherlands. Temperatures are expected to peak in the Netherlands and Belgium on Friday, while Germany is expected to see the mercury rise to 40C (104F) over the weekend. The heatwave is also expected to spread to eastern Europe over the next few days, with severe heat warnings issued for countries including Poland, Croatia and Hungary for later in the week.

So far, France, Spain and Italy have been hardest hit by the heatwave. Forty people have drowned in heatwave-related incidents in France since last Thursday, according to the prime minister.

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https://twitter.com/niccruzpatane/status/2069567930308624607?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 20 2026

Jun 202026
 
 June 20, 2026  Posted by at 10:02 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  14 Responses »


Edgar Degas In front of the mirror 1889


• Israel, Hezbollah Agree To Ceasefire (JTN)
• Trump Made A Deal Out Of ‘Desperation’ – Iranian Supreme Leader (RT)
• America Lost The Iran War, But Americans Are Sold A Victory (Scott Ritter)
• Is California Reaching Critical Mass? (Victor Davis Hanson)
• DNI Tulsi Gabbard: Anthony Fauci Manipulated Intelligence and Lied to Congress (CTH)
• Gabbard Drops Fauci COVID-19 Receipts On Last Day (ZH)
• Tulsi Gabbard Drops Bombshell Documents on Her Way Out (Margolis)
• What AI Is and Is Not (Charles Hugh Smith)
• Handlers Abandon a Confused Joe Biden on Stage At Obama Center (Margolis)
• Appeals Court Allows Ohio to Restrict Children’s Use of Social Media (ET)
• Give Peace a Chance (Not?) (James Howard Kunstler)
• Why Aren’t All Brits Hanging from Lamp Posts? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Mamdani To Remake NYC Congressional Delegation In His Socialist Image (JTN)

 


 

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/2067655440201027785?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2067685591114735629?s=20 https://twitter.com/MrWhiplash_/status/2067600719742443786?s=20

 


 


It will take some time.

• Israel, Hezbollah Agree To Ceasefire (JTN)

Israel and Hezbollah reportedly agreed Friday to renew their ceasefire, to end their fighting in southern Lebanon Israel and Hezbollah reportedly agreed Friday to renew their ceasefire to end their fighting in southern Lebanon and help the US and Iran reach a broader deal to end their roughly four-month-long war. CBS News is reporting the ceasefire, based on what it said was information from three diplomats briefed on the matter. The ceasefire follows renewed fighting overnight between Israel and Hezbollah.


The United States and Iran recently entered into a so-called memorandum of understanding to end their war. President Donald Trump signed the agreement Wednesday, and the sides have 60 days to reach a final agreement, according to the memorandum. However, Israel attacking Iran proxy Hezbollah in southern Lebanon is complicating matters. Trump, and on Friday, Vice President JD Vance, sharply criticized Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the attacks.

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RT has a document ostensibly signed by Khameini. But no proof of that.

And what he is supposed to have said does not raise much confidence, Sounds more like the Guard.

• Trump Made A Deal Out Of ‘Desperation’ – Iranian Supreme Leader (RT)

US President Donald Trump pushed for a memorandum of understanding with Iran because he found himself in a dire situation, the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has said. The 14-point document was signed remotely by Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian late on Wednesday, and entered force with immediate effect, according to Pakistani mediators. Tehran previously said that the MOU envisages a series of concessions by Washington, including the lifting of the US naval blockade on Iran, sanctions waivers for Tehran’s oil exports, access to frozen Iranian funds, and a US-backed economic reconstruction plan to the tune of at least $300 billion.


On Thursday, Khamenei commented on the signing of the agreement, stressing in a statement that it was “the US president who – out of desperation – resorted to various means to bring about this outcome.” Fuel prices in the US went beyond $4 per gallon after Iran responded to the American-Israeli attack in late February by closing the Strait of Hormuz, while Trump’s approval ratings plummeted to a record low of 33%. Tehran vowed to reopen the key waterway, accounting for some 20% global crude trade, under the MOU. Khamenei noted that he initially had “a different view” regarding the need for diplomacy with Washington, but “granted permission” for the deal to go ahead after Pezeshkian assured him that he will be able to safeguard Tehran’s interests during future talks.

The MOU launches a 60-day negotiation period, during which Washington and Tehran are expected to discuss Iran’s nuclear program. According to the supreme leader, Pezeshkian also “stated explicitly that if the American side seeks excessive demands, they [Tehran’s negotiators] will not submit to them.”“From this moment, we, the proud nation [of Iran], and I, your humble servant, will await the fulfillment of the conditions that have been stated,” Khamenei wrote.Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, praised the supreme leader’s “wise and path-clearing message,” saying on Friday that by signing the MOU with Washington, it made clear that Tehran “only reached the beginning of a difficult and winding path” towards settling the conflict.

Trump had earlier slammed critics of the MOU, who claimed that it contained too many concessions to Iran, as being “jealous, bad people or stupid.” He also warned that if Tehran doesn’t honor its obligations under the deal, “we’ll probably go back to bombing them until they honor it.” Russia welcomed the signing of the MOU, saying “it is highly important that all parties involved in the armed conflict… do not allow a renewed dangerous escalation” and expressing hope that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would return to its pre-war levels, decreasing the volatility of global oil and food markets.

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He does not show that, or how, they lost. He jut says they did. “Americans Are Sold A Loss.”

• America Lost The Iran War, But Americans Are Sold A Victory (Scott Ritter)

The US-Iran War is officially over. After months of back-and-forth negotiations, a finalized Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed by US President Donald Trump and his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian, the fighting stopped, and shipping will resume at Iranian ports and through the Strait of Hormuz. It is this last part that deserves more attention, because the entire focus of the American effort during the negotiation period boiled down to getting oil flowing freely once again through this choke point. As James Carvelle famously noted during former US President Bill Clinton’s 1992 election, “It’s the economy, stupid.”


The minutia of foreign policy can drive those elites in power, but to remain in power they need the support of the people on election day, and to get that support they need to attend to affairs of the wallet. It’s the economy, stupid. The Israeli-driven military misadventure has ended in a strategic defeat for the United States. The inescapable irony is that the principle negotiating position of the US – the opening of the Strait of Hormuz – existed only because of this war. Before the US and Israel committed their combined act of perfidy back in February of this year, the Strait of Hormuz was open to all shipping, and there were no income-generating transit fees.

The nuclear issue, on which so much emphasis was placed at the start of this war, has evaporated, replaced by token references to common sense. The US blockade is likewise dissipating. The MOU calls for it to be totally lifted in 30 days, along with the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. Because Trump needs the oil to flow. Now. Because it’s the economy, stupid. This is the ‘Hormuz Effect’, the reality attached to the fact that Iran’s control of this strategic waterway has empowered it like no nuclear weapon ever could. Iran will forever be positioned to squeeze the economic life out of the world. And there is nothing the US military can do about it.

While the rest of the world ponders the geopolitical consequences of American (and Israeli) imperial overreach, the resumption of the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf is being touted as a masterstroke of US diplomacy, the epitome of presidential leadership, and the result of American grit, determination and military prowess. Of course, all this is being done to get the American economy (and that of the world, since everything is interconnected these days) back on track, so that by September some impressive economic growth and prosperity statistics can be generated for an American audience unable and/or unwilling to ask the obvious questions, such as how is the return to an economic ‘normal’ that existed before Trump ordered the US military to attack Iran considered good policy?

Left unspoken will be the real economic costs of this war – the depletion of the US arsenal of precision-guided munitions, and the excessive replacement costs the US taxpayer will be called upon to bear. The billions of dollars in destroyed and damaged infrastructure throughout the Middle East. And the lives lost – those of American servicemembers (a relatively small number), and those of the Iranian people (thousands, including the 165 children murdered while attending school in Minab). There is no time for morality and common sense amongst the American people. They have money to spend – gas prices are down, and there is a consumer-driven life that must be led. Because it’s the economy, stupid.

This is the ‘Hormuz Effect’: the deliberate dumbing-down of a society driven more by the need to sustain an artificial cocoon of comfort than the necessity of building a foundation of moral and legal responsibility. Because with responsibility comes the need for accountability, and no American will be called to account for the embarrassing defeat the US has suffered because of this war. The world will now wrestle with the questions of how the US fits into a changing world order, and any President worth his salt would do the same. But this would require the ability to engage in constructive self-criticism.

Instead, the American population will be sold a non-existent victory while being unable to pick out the Strait of Hormuz on a map, let alone Minab. As long as the terms of the MOU hold, the American people may yet forget about the costs they have collectively paid for this Middle East debacle, and instead focus on the trickle of dollars diverted their way, as if this temporary thickening of the American wallet symbolizes the victory of a nation. The ‘Hormuz Effect’ is the ultimate bribe for a people who have lost all self-respect. A people willing to sweep the crimes committed in their names under a carpet of illusory economic well-being.

The ‘Hormuz Effect’ is the ultimate symbol of the decline of the American dream. Because it’s the economy, stupid.

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I liked this sentence: “Preferential admissions, along with racially segregated dorms and graduation ceremonies, continued under euphemisms and denials.”

• Is California Reaching Critical Mass? (Victor Davis Hanson)

By any measure, California is a failed state—and a national embarrassment. Taxes? It has the highest income and gas taxes in the nation. Roads? A Reason Foundation survey ranks it 49th among the states. Mass flight? Between 250,000 and 350,000 more Californians leave the state than move in each year. Housing, gas, insurance, and electricity prices? The highest in the continental U.S. Illegal aliens, the poor, the homeless, the foreign-born, and welfare recipients? The largest numbers in the U.S. Public K-12 schools? Test scores in the bottom quartile. Poverty? Twenty percent live below the poverty line. So, what happened to the nation’s most richly naturally endowed—and once best governed—state?


The Left took total control—after millions of the embattled middle class fled. Millions more impoverished immigrants, legal and illegal, took their place. Left-wing Silicon Valley spawned some of the wealthiest elite liberal enclaves in the world. The result was a neo-feudal society that was hardly democratic. Millions of subsidized poor compose the bottom. A beleaguered middle continues to shrink. An ultra-rich apparat of left-wing coastal professionals and investors rules from the top. As upper-bracket taxpayers fled, taxes rose on those who remained to fund expanding entitlements for newly arrived poor would-be residents. In turn, even more of the middle class left.

The remaining pyramidal economic structure ensured a Democratic monopoly—further entrenched by changing balloting laws, gerrymandering voting districts, vote harvesting, fueling public employee unions, and ignoring or undermining popular referenda. In 2014, Californians voted for Proposition 1, a $7.5 billion water bond designed to solve the state’s chronic water storage deficit. Included was $2.7 billion specifically designated for new reservoirs, as the last major reservoir had been built in 1980, when California had roughly half its current population.Despite the people’s vote, bureaucracies, elected officials, and green activists blocked all new reservoir construction.

Adding insult to injury, Governor Gavin Newsom instead used $250 million from the Proposition 1 fund to blow up four dams on the Klamath River. They had once provided storage, electrical generation, recreation, and flood control. Californians have twice voted in referenda (for Proposition 209 and against Proposition 16) to bar the use of racial preferences for contracting, admissions, and promotion in public institutions. nMost public universities simply ignored the law. They continued their “diversity” quotas under new names, relying on left-wing elected officials and judges to ignore again the will of the people.

Preferential admissions, along with racially segregated dorms and graduation ceremonies, continued under euphemisms and denials. “Theme” houses, “affinity” graduations, and “safe spaces” practice “affirmative” discrimination. California voters in 2008 passed Proposition 11 to stop political gerrymandering by creating a supposedly nonpartisan state redistricting commission of five Democrats, five Republicans, and four Independents. Two years later, the commission took over redrawing congressional districts as well. But Democratic lobbyists and lawyers sabotaged the goal of disinterested redistricting according to population and geography. Instead, racial preferences and the interests of the Democratic majority of incumbents prevailed to warp the intent of the voters.

Although Republicans usually achieved nearly 40 percent of the California vote in national elections, two decades later, there were only seven Republicans in the 52-person congressional delegation, or a mere 13 percent of the state’s representatives. But even that tiny contingent was considered too generous by the Left. Thus, in 2026, it will likely be further redistricted down to four or five seats.The balloting mess in the recent Los Angeles mayoral race further reminds the nation and the world just how dysfunctional and anti-democratic California has become. Democrats warp elections without the need for the old Chicago way of outright ballot theft or destruction. Instead, they do so in a “legal” manner by passing insane laws that ensure fraud and Democratic victories.

The winners in the strange jungle primaries—usually both Democrats—were not announced until a week after the polls closed. One of the eventual winners in the mayoral race, the socialist Nithya Raman, had already given her teary concession speech after coming in well back at third on election night.The Republican Spencer Pratt was comfortably ahead of her in second place on Election Day—only to lose, as expected, when large numbers of late ballots that broke roughly 90 percent Democratic were counted.mRemember, every registered voter is sent a mail-in ballot. If it is postmarked on election day, it can arrive at vote centers up to seven days after the election.

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Tulsi left yesterday, and according to Sundance, she’s not coming back. So here’s some elaborate attention. Question is, what is Congress going to do with what she left here?

• DNI Tulsi Gabbard: Anthony Fauci Manipulated Intelligence and Lied to Congress (CTH)

The central question remains, and unfortunately it is a question that cannot be answered except by dropping all pretenses. That question is: Was the SARS-CoV-2 release ‘accidental’ or done with ‘intent’.On her last day as Director of National Intelligence, and I am certain she will never return, what Tulsi Gabbard releases is alarming evidence the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Anthony Fauci, lied -repeatedly- to congress, the media and the American people.



CTH has long espoused that in the aftermath of the release, the SARS-CoV-2 response, how they reacted to it and all the control mitigation stuff, came from the Intelligence Community and Military. What DNI Gabbard released is evidence of exactly that aspect; the NIAID under Fauci worked directly with the U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC). Remember, with emphasis, this is ‘after action’ stuff.

This is post-COVID-release information about what took place within government after the virus was released upon all of us. The fact that Tulsi had to wait until her final day in office to make this statement, together with the fact that no one has been held to account, and the establishment’s desperate effort from blocking Acting DNI Bill Pulte from succeeding her, only reinforces the conclusion that the people who orchestrated this cover up remain firmly in charge and that part of this battle is far from over.

WASHINGTON D.C. — Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Anthony Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—work which is now widely viewed as the source of the unintentional lab leak that sparked the pandemic.

Today, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives. These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research.

“The COVID-19 pandemic caused tremendous hardship and pain for millions of our fellow Americans and for countless people around the world. After years of lies, censorship, and cover ups, the American people deserve transparency, truth, and accountability,” DNI Gabbard said. “The tactics used to hide the truth are straight from the deep state playbook: politicized self-serving leaders like Dr. Fauci covered up their own wrongdoing and abuses of power, manipulated intelligence, lied to Congress, and undermined a duly elected President by restricting his access to vital facts needed to keep the country safe. It’s time the American people learn the real story.”

The materials released today are a result of DNI Gabbard’s yearlong declassification review in support of President Trump’s maximum transparency mandate. During this process, ODNI officials gathered testimony from multiple IC whistleblowers who reported retaliation for challenging the IC’s manipulation of intelligence on the virus’ origins. This unveiled a clear pattern of suppressing dissent, silencing critics, and burying evidence that undermined IC integrity and disserved the American people.

Fauci’s close IC relationships enabled him to assume three key roles during the pandemic that shielded him from scrutiny as he wielded outsized influence.

Fauci funded risky coronavirus research linked to big pharma and the pursuit of “universal vaccines” worth trillions of dollars.

Fauci was the behind-the-scenes advisor who, with his hand-picked experts, pushed the IC to endorse a natural, animal origin to hide his dangerous research.

Fauci became the nation’s pandemic “pundit” and publicly pushed lies, disinformation, and censorship.

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“Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions..”

• Gabbard Drops Fauci COVID-19 Receipts On Last Day (ZH)

Newly declassified documents released Thursday by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard show that a U.S. national laboratory assessed the COVID-19 lab-origin hypothesis as a serious possibility as early as May 2020, as well as evidence of U.S.-funded coronavirus research that included planning for spike-protein modifications, receptor-adaptation experiments, and testing in humanized mice in collaboration with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The documents also prove that Anthony Fauci lied under oath.


The release, issued on Gabbard’s last day on the job, includes an eight-page May 27, 2020, assessment from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Z Program. That assessment concluded that “all of the necessary conditions for an accidental release of a laboratory-modified coronavirus – specifically a coronavirus adapted to recognize human cell receptors – were present at the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology in mid-to-late 2019.” It assigned equal weight to a laboratory-modification hypothesis and a natural-origin scenario.

Meanwhile, Recall that while the government was locking us down, Dr. Anthony Fauci and those in his orbit were actively fabricating a ‘wet market’ narrative that would conceal US research as a possible origin – despite his own advisors initially insisting that COVID-19 looked manmade. In his January 2024 transcribed interview, Fauci was asked about conversations concerning the same three topics – COVID origins, WIV, and EcoHealth. When asked about the CIA, he answered yes: he said he was briefed “once or twice” in a secure NIH facility and also recalled a briefing in a White House situation room.

The newly released documents then show a June 4, 2021 briefing involving CIA/WCP personnel, NSC officials, and Fauci, during which Fauci offered views on pangolin research, sick WIV researchers, single-lineage vs. multi-lineage evidence, and recommended scientists for the IC to contact. A separate CIA-context email says that same 40-minute secure video teleconfrenece involved CIA/WCPMC officials and that Fauci gave thoughts on the 4 May 2021 COVID-origin briefing and recommended U.S. scientists to consult.

So, he lied.

According to a statement released with the files, “Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives. These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research.”

U.S.-Funded Research and Planning for Coronavirus Manipulation
The files include the Year 5 progress report for EcoHealth Alliance’s NIH grant 5R01AI110964-05. Under Specific Aim 3, the project outlined plans to:

Sequence spike genes from bat coronaviruses.

Create mutants to assess how much further evolution would be needed for efficient use of human ACE2 or other receptors.

Conduct receptor-mutant pseudovirus binding assays.

Perform infection experiments in cell lines and humanized mice.

This research track overlaps with work described in the 2018 DEFUSE proposal, which involved EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, and Shi Zhengli’s team at WIV. The proposal sought to create chimeric bat coronaviruses with enhanced human infectivity, including consideration of furin cleavage site insertion to improve lung-cell entry, and to test the resulting viruses in humanized mice originally developed in Baric’s lab.

A 2016 WIV paper included in the release describes a synthetic shuttle vector system for assembling large DNA fragments, with demonstrated capability up to 31 kilobases. The authors presented the method as a tool for “genome-scale DNA reconstruction,” a technique relevant to synthetic biology and virus engineering. Surveillance work under the same NIH grant reported that 9 of 1,497 rural residents in southern China (0.6%) were seropositive for bat SARS-related or HKU10 coronaviruses. And from leaked emails three years ago: Among other things, the NIH helped fund experiments at WIV that infected genetically engineered mice with “chimeric” hybrids of SARS-related bat coronaviruses in what some scientists have described as unacceptably risky research.

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”..how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024 .”

• Tulsi Gabbard Drops Bombshell Documents on Her Way Out (Margolis)

Tulsi Gabbard, on her final day as Director of National Intelligence, released a batch of never-before-seen communications and documents that tie Dr. Anthony Fauci directly to funding for dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the same lab now widely believed to be the source of COVID-19. The release lands as part of President Trump’s push for what Gabbard calls a “maximum transparency mandate,” and it paints a picture of a bureaucrat who didn’t just fund risky research with your tax dollars; he allegedly worked the intelligence community like a puppet to cover up his role in it.


“Before the COVID pandemic, Dr. Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, provided millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain of function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Gabbard said in a video posted to X, “work which is now widely viewed as the source of the unintentional lab leak that sparked the pandemic.” That’s bad enough on its own. But according to Gabbard, Fauci didn’t stop at funding the research. He allegedly leaned on intelligence officials to manipulate their assessments and steer them away from the lab-leak theory entirely.

“These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID 19 and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024 when under oath, he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research,” she continued. Gabbard laid out what she described as Fauci’s three-pronged scheme.

First, he funded the gain-of-function research connected to Big Pharma’s hunt for a universal vaccine, a market worth trillions. Second, he allegedly pressured handpicked “experts” to steer the intelligence community toward a natural-origin story, conveniently shifting attention away from the lab he helped bankroll. Third, he became, in Gabbard’s words, the nation’s “pandemic pundit,” using every media platform he could find to push his version of events while shutting down anyone who disagreed. But wait — it gets even uglier.

Whistleblowers told Gabbard’s office that analysts who dared question the official narrative paid a steep price. “A contractor was terminated just days after coming forward to ODNI as a whistleblower,” Gabbard said. Others who supported the lab leak theory were apparently told flat out that their careers depended on falling in line. “Those who advocated for the lab leak hypothesis or expressed dissenting views were reminded by their managers that leadership would determine which analysts would be promoted and which would not,” she said. The message, as Gabbard put it, was simple: Go along or be punished.

Senior officials reportedly went even further, stripping away the anonymity whistleblowers are legally entitled to and insisting that managers or attorneys sit in on meetings where complaints were being filed in a blatant attempt at intimidation. Gabbard didn’t hold back on what this all means. “The tactics that were used to hide the truth are straight from the deep state playbook,” she said. “Politicized, self-serving leaders like Dr. Fauci covered up their own wrongdoing and abuses of power, manipulated intelligence, lied to Congress, and undermined a duly elected president by restricting his access to the vital facts he needed to keep the country safe.”

Gabbard concluded, ”It’s time you know the truth.” Millions lost loved ones. Millions more lost jobs, businesses, and irreplaceable years of their children’s education, while being told to trust the experts and stop asking questions. The real scandal isn’t just what happened during the pandemic. It’s how many powerful people like Fauci spent years working to keep the public from finding out.

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I guess this is a work in progress. So far, I got nothing.

“.. or, When Electrocution of Innocents Becomes Profitable..”

• What AI Is and Is Not (Charles Hugh Smith)

It behooves us to be clear on what AI is and is not, as the confusion of the two is the source of both the giddy hype and the opaque risks. Whether we admit it or not, we are collectively making an epoch-changing bet that AI is fantastic, unstoppable Progress with a capital P so large it blots out the sky. Like all bets, this bet is risky, and if it fails we will all pay the price in capital mis-allocated and promises shattered. It behooves us, then, to be clear on what AI is and is not, as the confusion of the two is the source of both the giddy hype and the opaque risks. I am prompted to address this by an insightful essay submitted by longtime correspondent Simons Chase, who is both an AI builder/developer and supportive of my efforts to pin down what AI is and isn’t:


The Machine Is Made of Us: Pope Leo’s Encyclical, the Averaging of Language, and the Case for the Particular. “I build artificial intelligence for a living. I also think the Pope is mostly right. I want to explain why those two facts don’t cancel, and in doing so make a claim I believe is truer than the dread and truer than the hype: the machine is made of us. What we should fear is not that it is alien. It is that it is an average.

Trained on all of us, a model tends to speak as none of us. It moves toward the center of the distribution: the most probable next word, the safest phrasing, the generic competence that offends no one because it belongs to no one. This is the real face of the dehumanization the encyclical is reaching for. Not a hostile intelligence–a flattening one. The danger is not that the machine becomes too strange. It is that it makes everything, including us, a little more average. The particular voice, the earned turn of thought, the sentence only one person could have written–these live in the tail of the distribution, not its peak, and the tail is exactly what an averaging process erases first.

After all, a fast-food cheeseburger is nothing more than the average of our concept of food: the intersection of convenience, taste, and cost. It is right, and so utterly wrong, because in the long run it makes us metabolic donkeys, delivering a shortened, diseased life. Generic intelligence is the same bargain offered to the mind–the average of our language, plausible and cheap and frictionless, and over a long enough horizon just as wasting. A culture fed on the mean of its own thought gets the cognitive version of metabolic disease: fluent, abundant, and quietly losing the capacity for the particular. So the question becomes: is averaging the only thing this technology can do? It is not. And the whole of my work has been an argument against it. That averaging a probability distribution–i.e. AI–makes everything into Ultra-Processed Slop, is also addressed in this article:

What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity:
As a researcher studying AI’s effects on education, I have concluded that these tools only superficially improve writing. The bigger and more alarming impact they have is to constrict our full range of thoughts and our ability to generate original and useful ideas–what we call creative thinking. This seems to be especially true for students. AI’s smooth sentences, elegant transitions and rich vocabulary give the illusion of expansive creativity and individuality. But the underlying ideas often converge into a few homogenized categories.

In one study, he and his team examined personal statements from more than 370,000 students, and found that after ChatGPT became available, their essays suddenly used diverse and colorful language, but lacked truly creative ideas. And the linguistic coverup worked; post-ChatGPT essays were rated as more ‘creative’ by human judges, even if the substance of the essays trod familiar territory. For the first time in human history, we have a technology that can generate words separately from the thoughts they represent. When a chatbot writes, it is predicting the next word that is most likely to make a ‘good’ sentence or essay, based on the text it’s been trained on.

We can now discern what AI is: a homogenizing, flattening probability distribution that implicitly claims eloquence is understanding and the words it has strung together represent thoughts and judgment, when they do no such thing: they are only strings of words selected as the most likely response to a prompt, a response that “rewards” the model generating the output. We can now discern what AI is not: AI isn’t “thinking,” “understanding” or “making judgments”: AI tools are engines of linguistic automation, not engines of understanding. The simulation is not the thing simulated. AI is not a “mind,” it is a probability distribution.

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Really, he was fine in his 4-year presidency.

• Handlers Abandon a Confused Joe Biden on Stage At Obama Center (Margolis)

Joe Biden seems determined to prove he was unfit for the presidency, and boy, did he do so again during the opening ceremony for Barack Obama’s presidential center. I hate that I’m even talking about the event, but Biden’s “Biden moment” is just impossible to ignore. Video from the ceremony shows Jill Biden physically leading her husband onto the stage, which tells you everything you need to know about where things stand for Ol’ Joe before a single word was spoken.


And yes, things got worse from there. As the ceremony wound down, Obama strutted around, playing air guitar to the music while Jill watched approvingly and then trailed him offstage. Joe Biden, meanwhile, was left standing by himself at the podium. He looked completely lost, like a nursing home patient who forgot where he was. He took off his glasses, stared blankly out at the crowd, and appeared to mouth, “Where’s my granddaughter?” That was the last thing viewers saw before the broadcast feed mysteriously cut out.

https://twitter.com/ImMeme0/status/2067774119920202018?s=20

We all watched Biden’s presidency unravel in real time and recognized what went down. The wandering. The confusion. The blank stare into the void after the cameras were supposed to have stopped rolling. This is the same man the Democrat Party insisted was sharp as a tack right up until the moment he wasn’t allowed to run for reelection anymore because he imploded on stage while trying to debate President Trump. And perhaps the worst thing is that Biden’s handler-in-chief, Jill, wasn’t anywhere to be found.

“Why does Jill look so aggravated? Like she’s surprised he got lost on stage?” New York Post columnist Miranda Devine asked on X. “As usual she shirked her duty of ensuring her husband wasn’t embarrassed in public. It’s despicable. Her access to the spotlight and VIP outings she adores is entirely due to him and she can’t be bothered to be a decent wife.” The Obama Center opening came the same day that The New Yorker published an interview with Hillary Clinton in which she said that Biden running again in 2024 “was a terrible mistake.”

“He made a terrible mistake,” Hillary said. “He made a terrible mistake for himself, his legacy, and for the country. He had said that he would not run again, and counterfactual narratives are always a bit tricky, but I believe that if he had kept to that plan, that he wasn’t going to run, that he was going to pass the torch to the next generation, we would have had a real contest. And very sadly I believe whoever emerged from that contest—whether it was the Vice-President or a governor or a senator or anybody else—would have beaten Donald Trump. I think it was a terrible miscalculation on the part of President Biden, but once he held on for as long as he did we were in a terrible dilemma.”

That narrative conveniently ignores that Hillary enthusiastically endorsed Biden’s 2023 reelection bid when it actually mattered, when she had every opportunity to say exactly what she’s saying today. She said nothing. She cheered him on. They all did.

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“..requiring parental consent for children to use social media platforms.”

• Appeals Court Allows Ohio to Restrict Children’s Use of Social Media (ET)

The panel concluded that the state law does not violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. A federal appeals court on Thursday allowed Ohio to enforce a law requiring social media companies to obtain parental consent before permitting children under 16 to access their platforms. The law, known as the Social Media Parental Notification Act, was passed by the state’s legislature in 2023 and took effect in January 2024. NetChoice—a trade group representing TikTok, Meta, and other major tech companies—later filed a lawsuit, alleging that the law was unconstitutional.


In April, U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley ruled in NetChoice’s favor and permanently blocked Ohio from enforcing the law. The state subsequently appealed the ruling. In a 2–1 decision on June 18, a panel of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court ruling, finding that Ohio’s law does not violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge Eric Clay said the state law imposes only “a marginal burden” by requiring parental consent for children to use social media platforms.

“That requirement constitutes a marginal burden that precisely targets the multi-faceted problem that Ohio has identified: Children’s unsupervised assent to terms and conditions for use of platforms that take advantage of and harm them,” Clay said. “Parental consent will not always be narrowly tailored to the compelling interest in protecting minors’ well-being. It works here because the nature of the harm itself is that children’s unsupervised use of social media puts them at risk of the adverse effects of prolonged and unregulated exposure.”

Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson praised the appeals court’s decision, calling it “a win for Ohio families.” Wilson said in a statement that the ruling would allow parents to supervise their children’s use of social media. “The court agreed that parents—not social media companies—should get a say in what kids see online. We have an obligation to keep our children safe, and today, the most dangerous place for our kids is the internet,” he stated. “This decision gives parents the tools to be involved and provide oversight.”

NetChoice said the appeals court’s decision will threaten the online privacy and constitutional rights of Ohioan residents. The group suggested that it intends to continue the legal challenge. “By requiring parents to override the government’s determination, Ohio has violated bedrock First Amendment principles,” Paul Taske, director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, said in a statement. “We are currently reviewing our options on how best to move forward.”

NetChoice last year won court rulings blocking a similar social media parental consent law in Arkansas and a children’s digital privacy law in California. Australia became the first country last December to impose a ban on social media for children under 16 amid concerns about the online safety risks to the nation’s youth. Several countries have since followed suit or are weighing similar social media restrictions over concerns about the platforms’ impact on children’s mental health. Among those countries are the UK, Austria, Denmark, France, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

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“I’m telling you: the Lebanon Loophole was always baked in. Iran can think whatever it wants and go pound sand.” James Lindsay on X

• Give Peace a Chance (Not?) (James Howard Kunstler)

Consider that the many persons and parties yelling that “Iran won the war” have exceedingly cynical interests in painting President Donald Trump as a loser. His American enemies, lodged mainly in the party of “Our Democracy,” are not just striving to get back into power, but to stay out of prison, and perhaps off the gibbet, if treason ends up on the docket. (See: Gabbard Releases Documents on Fauci’s Alleged Role in Wuhan Lab Research Linked to COVID.)


The president’s globalist foes, lodged in the EU and London, resent his unwillingness to join their scheme for a big war against Russia — and are aggrieved about much else in matters of trade, international banking, and energy resources. The ink was hardly dry on the US / Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) when NATO arrantly assisted its proxy, Ukraine, in an audacious drone attack on Moscow. Brussels also stealthily opened “accession talks” for Ukraine and Moldova to enter the EU. More bear-poking. . . .

Just what is the MOU? It’s not a peace settlement. It’s a sixty-day window to negotiate a settlement within clearly laid-out, agreed-upon parameters. You might suppose there’s a fair chance Iran is just jerking the US around. But then, Mr. Trump noted, “. . . if they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head, okay? ‘Cause they’ve misbehaved for 47 years.”

Admittedly, an indelicate remark, yet with unmistakable intent: Jerk us around at your peril. Of course, Mr. Trump has also stated clearly that he would rue having to punish the ordinary Iranian people for the misdeeds of the IRGC maniacs who hold them captive. But also note that we have exquisite satellite intel on all their remaining missile and drone installation. Check out this stunningly detailed document: Atlas of Iran’s Missile Cities (thanks to Jim Shea, who sent it around). We know where everything is. Beyond those targets, if necessary, and alas, there are the bridges and power plants, which would surely cause the Iranian people to suffer. FAFO.

In short, the IRGC leadership have sixty days to get their minds right. On the positive side, the MOU offers them some powerful inducements to play nice in the way of economic assistance, a doorway to normal relations with the rest of the world, a chance to thrive. The question is whether any of that can overcome the IRGC’s apocalyptic “Twelfth Imam” death- wish jihad ideology — which requires the annihilation of Israel.

The MOU requires a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel and Hezbollah have faced-off for decades. Mr. Trump is very put-out with Prime Minister Netanyahu for continuing to return fire “disproportionately” on Hezbollah’s provocations. This has led to great consternation and antipathy in the US, which is already marinated in anti-Israel rancor. You might ask, though: if America is obliged to rein-in Israel, is Hezbollah’s long-time sponsor, Iran, not equally obliged to curb Hezbollah’s antics? And you might also ask: if Iran’s money to Hezbollah has been cut off, who is still funding them? Possibly the EU or London? (Just sayin’.)

Mr. Trump’s surprising work-around for that was to suggest that the Syrians go into Lebanon and mop up the floor with Hezbollah. Interesting. Get an Islamic Middle Eastern country to help clean up that mess? Mr. Trump commended Syria’s leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, saying, “He’s done an amazing job of pulling it together. . . . I suggested to Israel to let Syria take care of Hezbollah, because to be honest with you, I think they’d do a better job of doing it . . . . If Israel can’t do the job without killing everyone else, he’ll do the job. Syria will do the job.”

Read more …

“Enoch Powell predicted in the 1960s that the consequence of government-imposed multiculturalism would be “rivers of blood.”

• Why Aren’t All Brits Hanging from Lamp Posts? (Paul Craig Roberts)

A breaking news report followed by comment from PCR


A British Member of Parliament has just made available a report on Britain’s immigrant-invader rape gangs. Here’s what’s in the report the mainstream media is ignoring: “Rupert Lowe’s investigation implicates Keir Starmer’s government in the mass victimization of white girls by Pakistani men. “At least 250,000 British girls suffered sickening sexual abuse by Pakistani gangs, who were enabled by police, social workers, and even Prime Minister Keir Starmer, to commit “child rape on an industrial scale,” British MP Rupert Lowe’s ‘Rape Gang Report’ has detailed.

“Published on Tuesday [June 16], the 218-page report makes for sobering reading. It details the decades-long abuse of hundreds of thousands of white British girls – and smaller numbers of white boys and Sikh girls – by organized Pakistani ‘grooming gangs’ in 149 districts of the UK. ” “Witness testimony describes the most depraved acts of sexual violence – including preteen girls raped hundreds of times, threatened with death, and sodomized by dogs – happening in plain sight of the authorities tasked with its prevention.”

Comment by PCR

The Joys of Multiculturalism that the Despicable White Liberals Have Brought to White Ethnicities

White Governments Represent Immigrant-invaders, Not their Ethnic Citizens. The British government is the most anti-white of all governments. Here is my account of how this came about:

For a number of decades Western universities have engaged not in education but in indoctrination of students. Attacks on Western civilization have long been institutionalized in universities. Generations of students have been indoctrinated that white ethnicities are racist exploiters who have oppressed peoples of color. The indoctrination has been successful to the extent that in the US, for example, white heterosexual males have been second class citizens with unequal rights since EEOC official Alfred Blumrosen ignored the statutory language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and imposed race, gender and sexual preference quotas that disadvantaged white heterosexual men.

Feminists saw an opportunity and jumped in. As ideological feminists are essentially white women, they went after white men, not after immigrant-invaders, and the feminists’ attack further weakened the position of white ethnicities already undermined by universities. With white guilt assimilated into the population, it was easy for governments, themselves increasingly anti-white, to open the borders of white ethnic nations to a mass influx of immigrant-invaders who have firmly established themselves in every Western country.

One consequence has been the increasing removal throughout the Western world of white men from leadership positions. In the US corporate advertising has deep-sixed white families from advertisements and substituted multi-ethnic families. The very image of a white society is being erased. In England for the past 30 years there was no one in the government, the media, the police, the universities who heard the cries for help from parents whose children were repeatedly raped by immigrant-invader rape gangs and even subjected to being sodomized by dogs.

What Western universities have achieved is the destruction of the self-confidence of ethnic whites and the undermining of their belief system. White ethnics have lost confidence in public and private institutions. White ethnics throughout Western countries have been isolated from societal protection, and so far they have lacked the will to take their defense into their own hands. Enoch Powell predicted in the 1960s that the consequence of government-imposed multiculturalism would be “rivers of blood.” Perhaps the more likely consequence will be the submission of a weak-willed and abandoned people to subservience to immigrant-invaders who will expunge Western civilization from Earth.

Addendum:

British prime minister Keir Starmer is the excrement that released hardened criminals from prison in order to make room for people prosecuted for their social media tweets. Clearly for Starmer suppressing free speech–especially about immigrant-invaders and Israel–is far more important than suppressing crime. Sodom & Gomorrah-multi-cultural Starmer is very partial to pedophiles. He has let 13,000 of them off with a warning letter. According to testimony in Lowe’s report, British police have at times handed British girls who escaped from the rape gangs back to the gangs, in one case telling them to “have fun with her.”

Read more …

You can’t make New York a socialist city.

• Mamdani To Remake NYC Congressional Delegation In His Socialist Image (JTN)

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is betting he can swing three city elections to cement his political legacy at the expense of the local Democratic establishment. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is quietly seeking to remake the city’s congressional delegation in his image, and cement his power bloc within the Democratic Party while he still enjoys popularity in the city. The democratic socialist Mamdani has endorsed three ideologically aligned candidates — all considered “far left” by traditional Democrats — seeking to expand his influence in the city where he was elected as mayor last November.


In particular, Mamdani has endorsed three ideologically aligned candidates seeking to unseat current members of the Democratic caucus, two-term Rep. Dan Goldman and Congressional Hispanic Caucus leader Adriano Espaillat.

Collision course with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries
Mamdani’s endorsements and campaigning against incumbent Democratic lawmakers in particular are putting him on a quiet collision course with establishment Democratic leaders, especially House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who, tasked with winning a majority in the upcoming midterm elections, has been forced to divert resources to defend the incumbents.

Two of them are officially endorsed by the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the United States, which has close ties to Mamdani. The mayor, who is a member of the DSA, leaned heavily on the backing of the DSA to win both the Democratic primary in June and the city’s general election. Those close to Mamdani say that his decision to endorse candidates challenging establishment-backed figures and bucking party leadership is part of an attempt to “radically” reorient the Democratic Party towards his vision.

Sanders aide: “We can radically change the Democratic Party”
“He’s seeing that opportunity – that we can radically change the Democratic Party,” said Faiz Shakir, an advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders and described as a friend of Mamdani’s. “Like Bernie, he’s not saying I’m doing this out of spite against you, dear leadership. He’s saying, I am supporting these candidates who have a better vision, and I am prepared to lose if it has to be the case.”

Against Goldman in New York’s 10th Congressional District, Mamdani has backed Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller who once ran against Mamdani for the mayoral nomination, but who then gave his backing to the democratic socialist upstart. Lander has made his opposition to Israel’s campaign in Gaza and against Palestinian terrorist organizations a centerpiece of his campaign, aligning with Mamdani’s own criticism of the Jewish state. Lander, who is himself Jewish, has embraced much of the language and policy agenda of the pro-Palestinian movement, including describing Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide and pledging to oppose additional U.S. military aid while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues.

“As a proud Jewish New Yorker, I will join you in that fight to end occupation and apartheid and genocide,” Lander said at one campaign event earlier this month. Goldman declined to endorse Mamdani and did not vote for him in the general election, citing the socialist mayor’s lax attitude towards anti-semitism. “I have asked him to consider taking serious and concrete action to demonstrate that he is going to make sure that Jews are protected and are secure in our city, and I hope he does that,” Goldman said during the election.

Read more …

 

 

 


 

https://twitter.com/EvasTeslaSPlaid/status/2067811840541724847?s=20 https://twitter.com/wealthmoose/status/2067568254306984108?s=20 https://twitter.com/John_F_kJr/status/2067773586157551837?s=20 https://twitter.com/Maga4liberty/status/2067568018335383791?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 4 2026

Jun 042026
 
 June 4, 2026  Posted by at 9:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  27 Responses »


Herbert James Draper A Deep Sea Idyll 1902(?!)


• Trump Says He’d Like To Meet Iran’s New Supreme Leader (ZH)
• Iran’s War Math Still Doesn’t Add Up (David Manney)
• IRGC Says Trump Ongoing Talks Narrative ‘Not Reality (ZH)
• “Next Month, Next Quarter, Next Year” (Schwartz)
• Tulsi Gabbard Gives Us a Heartfelt Update on Her Husband’s Health (Anderson)
• Day 2: Rubio Enters a Hostile Clown Show (Sarah Anderson)
• Marco Rubio Went to Capitol Hill Today, and the Smackdown Was Brutal (Anderson)
• Marco Rubio Testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee (CTH)
• Supreme Court AGAIN Rules in Favor of Alabama’s Pro-GOP Map (Salgado)
• Just How Crazy Mamdani’s Housing Scheme Really Is (Spencer)
• Why Is Ukraine So Eager To Start A New War? (Vitaly Ryumshin)
• SpaceX Reportedly Targets $135 IPO Price (ZH)
• Is This a Sign a Supreme Court Vacancy Is Coming Soon? (Margolis)
• COVID-19 Was Spread Intentionally on Multiple Continents (Korsgaard)

 


 

https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2062163095334654319?s=20 https://twitter.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/2061952291469693079?s=20

 


 


“After three days their military was virtually wiped out. And then if you read the New York Times you think they‘re doing fantastically.”

“It’s good if they‘re confused, and the Iranians are confused..”

• Trump Says He’d Like To Meet Iran’s New Supreme Leader (ZH)

After US-Israeli strikes assassinated the last longtime Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, President Trump says he would like to meet the new one. Trump said he “would like to meet” Iran’s Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, in an interview published Wednesday. In surprising remarks, Trump told the New York Post’s Pod Force One: “I would like to meet him, and we probably will meet at some point, depending on how it all works out.” Trump reasoned that “They’ve already agreed they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon” – suggesting this could be the basis for new direct diplomatic engagement.


And yet the Iranians have already for years consistently stated they were never intent on achieving a nuclear bomb. All recent high level US intelligence community assessments have tended to support the claim that Iran was not seeking a nuke before the attacks of June as well as March into April, under Operation Epic Fury. But Trump has also dismissed the intelligence, insisting that Iran was ‘very close’ before the US-Israeli interventions. While Trump is now expressing openness to meeting the Ayatollah – who is said to be in hiding and only having limited, low-tech communications with his officials, for fear of being tracked by the CIA or Mossad – the Supreme Leader himself has not voiced a desire for such a meeting.

Tehran at this moment doesn’t appear in the mood for ‘talking’ – and has lately said it is ready to let its military retaliation and response do the ‘negotiating’. The US President once again made claims about the text of the possible agreement. He claimed that “Iran has agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons.” –Bloomberg This seems another element of confused messaging from the White House, which has many times denounced the Ayatollah and his regime as ‘murderous’ and ‘evil’ and a ‘tyrant’ – and yet now Trump apparently wants to sit down with him for tea time or something.

Trump in the NY Post interview actually addressed the general atmosphere of confusion and contradictions from his administration, and from him personally. “It’s good if they‘re confused, and the Iranians are confused,” Trump stated. He added: “But no, it‘s just the way I am. It changes. I could leave here, I could give you an answer, and then in 20 minutes go into the Oval Office and I’ll realize my answer is now incorrect. Facts change and things change quickly.” In this context, he went on to defend the controversial decision to go to war in the first place, saying it could not have been delayed as Iran was on the brink of having a nuclear weapon.

“I couldn‘t, I know because this is too important. If I did that, they would have had a nuclear weapon. They would have had a nuclear weapon two weeks after the B-2 bomber struck. So if I did that, they would have had a nuclear weapon.” Trump: “He’s missing a lot of different parts.” He again in the interview called it a necessary “excursion” – saying, “They‘re not going to have a nuclear weapon, lots of other good things are going to happen.” From the interview, on the question of boots on the ground in Iran… “You don‘t need boots on the ground right now. We wiped out much of their military with just bombing.

After three days their military was virtually wiped out. And then if you read the New York Times you think they‘re doing fantastically.” Trump elsewhere addressed the controversial Axios report which said Trump ‘steamrolled’ Israeli PM Netanyahu in a phone call. Per Bloomberg, “Trump said he swore at Benjamin Netanyahu in a call this week as the president tried to deescalate fighting in Lebanon and keep peace talks with Iran on track.” “I did,” Trump said, acknowledging he chastised his ally. “I wouldn\t say angry. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon, ` you know.”

Read more …

“Tehran tried to create a spectacle, while Washington created a result.”

• Iran’s War Math Still Doesn’t Add Up (David Manney)

Reckless, stupid, crazy, or crazy like a fox. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps managed to check the first three boxes Tuesday night, but it never came close to checking the fourth.Iran fired ballistic missiles toward Kuwait and Bahrain, where American forces and regional partners help hold the line in a region Tehran keeps trying to bully. U.S. Central Command said two missiles fired toward Kuwait fell short or broke apart in flight, while U.S. and Bahraini forces intercepted three missiles aimed at Bahrain.American forces also knocked down Iranian drones threatening civilian shipping and struck an Iranian military ground-control station on Qeshm Island near the Strait of Hormuz. From the South China Morning Post:


Two Iranian missiles shot at Kuwait fell short or broke apart in-flight, several ballistic missiles aimed at regional targets failed and three missiles heading for Bahrain were intercepted, US Central Command said. Since the conflict began in late February, Iran has repeatedly attacked targets in Bahrain and Kuwait, where US military bases are located. Central Command said US forces also downed Iranian drones targeting civilian shipping in regional waters and carried out strikes on Qeshm Island near the Strait of Hormuz in response to the attempted attacks by Iran.

In a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency, the Revolutionary Guards claimed they had struck the US military installations in response to the strike on Qeshm Island. Give Tehran credit for one thing: it found a way to turn a missile attack into a regional safety demonstration. Kuwait and Bahrain got sirens, nervous families, air defenses, and another reminder that Iran doesn’t only threaten Americans when it lashes out; it threatens every neighbor forced to live near its tantrums. President Donald Trump has kept pressure on Iran while leaving room for talks, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers sanctions relief would require Iran to give up its nuclear activity.

Iran, meanwhile, keeps acting as if leverage means firing expensive hardware into the sky and hoping nobody notices when gravity, air defenses, and American readiness ruin their show. The latest episode followed claims from Iranian sources that Tehran had stopped communicating with mediators about extending a ceasefire. President Trump disputed those claims and said talks continued. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has tried to wrap Tehran’s demands in diplomatic language, but missiles aimed toward Gulf neighbors speak more clearly than any prepared statement. Any regime that pauses diplomacy to launch weapons tells the world which tools it trusts the most.

Iran’s leaders seem trapped in the same old loop; they provoke, threaten, launch, miss, deny, and then announce some grand moral victory to whoever still has the patience to listen. The missiles and drones fail, the bases remain, and the regime still expects applause from its propaganda machine. Somewhere in Tehran, somebody probably stamped the operation a success because the printer still had ink. Behind the noise sits a colder reality; Iran’s economy keeps bleeding. Its people keep paying for the ambition of clerics and commanders who confuse defiance with competence.

It’s been rough for the regime’s people; Iran’s Central Bank put year-over-year inflation at 77.2% in May, with daily and general needs up 113.8% from the year before. One would think that leaders with any semblance of sanity and common sense might want fewer missiles and more bread, but Tehran has never shown much talent for learning from the pain it causes its own people.American restraint also deserves notice. U.S. forces answered direct threats without turning the Gulf into a free-fire zone. They destroyed incoming threats, protected American troops, helped partners, guarded shipping, and hit the control node tied to Iran’s aggression.

Tehran tried to create a spectacle, while Washington created a result. Iran’s latest missile show revealed rage, not genius. The IRGC wanted fear and delivered embarrassment, also wanting leverage, and handed Gulf partners another reason to tighten ranks with the United States. It wanted to prove strength and instead proved that American defenses, allied coordination, and steady nerves still carry weight.Crazy like a fox requires cunning. Iran brought fireworks, failure, and the same old appetite for humiliation. It’s past time for the U.S. to put the regime out of its misery and help the Iranian people.

Read more …

IRGC tries to lead the conversation.

• IRGC Says Trump Ongoing Talks Narrative ‘Not Reality (ZH)

State media statement on Wednesday: IRGC-linked Tasnim claims Tehran has frozen all back-channel communication with Washington over Israeli operations in Lebanon, directly contradicting Trump’s assertion that messages are arriving daily from Iran. Tasnim: “Trump’s claim that Iran is confirming the issue is completely different from reality.” Iran’s Foreign Minister is meanwhile articulating that Iran will lay down some new red lines via military strikes, which he has dubbed ‘self-defense’ in nature…


President Donald Trump is still trying to present some bright spots, telling NY Post he believes the situation in the Strait of Hormuz will “resolve itself fairly quickly” and went so far to say he expects to meet with Iran’s supreme leader “at some point.”

Major Attack on Kuwait International Airport: One Dead, 63 Injured
Kuwait International Airport has come under Iranian missile and drone attack on Wednesday, in a significant strike that killed one person and left 63 people injured – according to the country’s health ministry, with several of the victims being seriously wounded. A passenger terminal was directly struck, damaging facilities including diplomatic missions at the airport, Kuwaiti authorities have said. Area hospitals conducted seven major emergency surgeries following the incident, underscoring that it was a mass casualty event.

Kuwaiti defense ministry spokesperson Brig Gen Saud Abdulaziz Al-Atwan described the attack as “criminal Iranian aggression which resulted in significant material damage to the building and injuries.” It confirmed engaging 13 missiles and 17 drones total which were fired from Iran. Civil aviation authorities immediately suspended traffic and transferred arriving flights to separate unaffected airports after “terminal one came under Iranian attacks causing casualties and damage.” The cross-border airport attack came after violent exchanges of fire between the US and Iran, which at first looked like limited one-off incidents, but then became an extended tit-for-tat.

The Overnight Catalyst: US-Iran Exchange Fire in Hormuz
Overnight, the US military deployed a Hellfire missile to disable a tanker attempting to bypass the American blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. Following the intercept, American forces engaged in a wider kinetic exchange, stating they repelled subsequent Iranian reprisal strikes across the region and launched retaliatory attacks against military sites on Iran’s Qeshm Island.

In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) claimed it launched a missile and drone barrage targeting the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain – an assertion that Central Command (CENTCOM) has explicitly denied. The IRGC had also sent several missiles on two US bases in Kuwait, which were said to have been intercepted.

GCC Blasts ‘Cowardly Attacks’
Serous damage and chaos at Kuwait International Airport: The Gulf Cooperation Council has in response slammed Iran for their “ongoing aggression” against member states Bahrain and Kuwait, denouncing the “cowardly attacks on civilian objects” which mark a “dangerous and unprecedented escalation.” But Tehran is not backing down and is instead issuing further hardline warnings and threats, per Al Jazeera citing state media:

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says retaliatory strikes “should serve as a lesson” for the United States after it fired a barrage of missiles and drones at Kuwait and Bahrain. While Iran’s foreign ministry is warning that the overnight US assault on Qeshm Island continues a severe breach of the ceasefire, President Trump is saying that “conversations between us have been going on continuously” – in reference to the Iranians.

Read more …

By Molly Schwartz, cross-asset macro strategist at Rabobank

• “Next Month, Next Quarter, Next Year” (Schwartz)

In a tense Congressional Hearing before the foreign relations committee, Marco Rubio defended the Trump Administration’s war in Iran, praising the success of US military operations destroying Iranian military and nuclear facilities. He also said that a deal with Iran could happen “today, tomorrow, or next week.” However, the recent military escalations between the US and Iran, the refusal of Israel and Hezbollah to cooperate, and reports of Pezeshkian’s resignation — leaving Iran in the hands of the IRGC — mean that a deal seems to lie more on the horizon of next month, next quarter, or maybe even next year.


Our base case that we see passage through the Strait disrupted for at least three more months still stands as we have yet to see any tangible headlines to suggest an accelerated timeline. The negotiations currently lie in Iran’s hands, as Bloomberg reports Iran’s Mehr news saying that “officials in Tehran are discussing their ‘final text’ to send to the US.” One might be hesitant to truly deem this text as “final” (if it even exists), as it may be more of a “final_v3.doc”, or a “final_FINAL_v6.doc”, or even a “final_FINAL_totallyforrealthistime.doc”.

The most promising resolution right now is that the IRGC remains in power, but enriched uranium is handed over to an executor, like China, though we have yet to see any confirmed updates that this is a feasible solution that Iran would actually agree to at this juncture. The extended 60-day ceasefire is still ongoing, while both the US and Iran are dedicated to keeping the Strait closed and exchanging fire. CENTCOM posted on X today to show off the USS Abraham Lincoln enforcing the US blockade, which has apparently redirected 122 vessels to “ensure compliance.”

Yesterday, Trump slammed Vulcan’s Hammer on the AI industry, signing an executive order, “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security.” The executive order lauds how the administration has “unleashed tremendous technological growth and economic investment in AI by slashing the bureaucratic constraints that the prior administration placed on America’s AI developers and researchers, and by instead encouraging AI innovation and accelerating responsible AI adoption across government and industry.”

Part of the executive order is intended to support the AI industry, seeking to utilize AI in federal cybersecurity programs, and utilize AI models (potentially Mythos?) to pinpoint vulnerabilities. However, the order also seeks to impose new restrictions, likely in response to the emergency meeting triggered by Mythos a few months ago. This includes lots of classified processes and frameworks to make sure that an evil AI model, the likes of that in a Philip K. Dick novel, doesn’t usurp the American government as the presiding force leading the world’s global hegemon (or more likely, making sure these models can’t be used to hack into sensitive government websites).

The process is referred to as a “voluntary framework” so that AI developers can submit their new models to the government 30 days before release to the public. Though the order also clarifies that “nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize the creation of a mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement for the development, publication, release, or distribution of new AI models, including frontier models.”

Read more …

“Both Tulsi and Abraham are in our prayers.”:

• Tulsi Gabbard Gives Us a Heartfelt Update on Her Husband’s Health (Anderson)

On Tuesday morning, outgoing Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard posted a video on social media to let her followers know that her husband, Abraham Williams, was having surgery. She appears to be standing outside the hospital.


“Good morning. We’re getting ready to head into the hospital now for Abraham’s surgery,” Gabbard says. “And I just wanted to take a moment to say ‘thank you’ with all of our hearts to all of you who have shared such beautiful messages and prayers and well wishes for Abraham. We’re truly humbled and so grateful to be surrounded by so much aloha from all of you during this tough time. Aloha.”

Here’s the video:

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/2061788108727705658?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2061788108727705658%7Ctwgr%5E5949055dbcd121e1d76cc6b15d37bb92257dad88%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F02%2Ftulsi-gabbard-gives-us-a-heartfelt-update-on-her-husbands-health-n4953508

While Gabbard hasn’t posted an update since, her father, Mike Gabbard, who is a state senator in Hawaii, did post on X on Tuesday afternoon to let followers know that “Abraham is out of surgery and all went well.” He included a beautiful picture of the couple.

If you’ll recall, back in May, Gabbard announced that she was resigning from her position as DNI to spend more time with her husband who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. “Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” she said after thanking the president for the opportunity. “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer. He faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months. At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/2057876821421527476?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2057876821421527476%7Ctwgr%5E5949055dbcd121e1d76cc6b15d37bb92257dad88%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F02%2Ftulsi-gabbard-gives-us-a-heartfelt-update-on-her-husbands-health-n4953508

Williams, who keeps a fairly low profile, is actually a cinematographer, photographer, and filmmaker, and the two met in 2012 when he did some work for her congressional campaign. Both are avid surfers, and he eventually proposed to her on a surfboard. They were married in April 2015 in Hawaii.

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1910168836550303992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1910168836550303992%7Ctwgr%5E5949055dbcd121e1d76cc6b15d37bb92257dad88%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F02%2Ftulsi-gabbard-gives-us-a-heartfelt-update-on-her-husbands-health-n4953508

He’s been by her side through her time in Congress, multiple political campaigns, and her time spent in the Donald Trump administration. She calls him her “rock” and best friend.

“Abraham has been my rock throughout our eleven years of marriage — standing steadfast through my deployment to East Africa on a Joint Special Operations mission, multiple political campaigns and now my service in this role,” she wrote in her resignation letter last month. “His strength and love have sustained me through every challenge. I cannot in good conscience ask him to face this fight alone while I continue in this demanding and time-consuming position.”

Personally, I have to add that I’ve been a big Tulsi fan for years — she won me over in 2019 when she owned Kamala Harris during a primary debate when they were both running for president. I hate that we are losing her as a public servant for now, but I am glad she is able to take the time to support her husband as he fights this battle. Both Tulsi and Abraham are in our prayers.

Read more …

Not his first clown rodeo…

• Day 2: Rubio Enters a Hostile Clown Show (Sarah Anderson)

“Is this the Foreign Affairs Committee, or is this a circus?” That quote from Secretary of State Marco Rubio pretty much sums up what happened on Wednesday morning when he testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the FY27 Department of State Budget Request. In case you missed it, this is Rubio’s second day of hearings on Capitol Hill, and what he’s had to deal with so far today makes yesterday look tame. These Congress critters aren’t serious people. On Tuesday, I joked that it’s more like “Democrats, who were supposed to be asking questions, talked at Rubio and complained about everything Donald Trump does without giving the secretary a chance to respond.”


Wednesday was more of that — this isn’t even a hearing, Rubio said — but the “questioning” went beyond foreign policy, whether it was the lady criticizing the secretary’s shoes or the guy playing video upon video of Donald Trump’s so-called “cognitive decline.” I’ve never seen anything like it. Again, I’m just going to have to let the video clips speak for themselves because I don’t even know how to explain it anymore than saying “Congress is a clown show.”

Where to even start? Here’s Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.) getting mad that Rubio didn’t mention Ukraine in his opening remarks and talking to the secretary like he’s a toddler. For what it’s worth, Keating was one of the first to speak, and I guess this set the tone for the entire “circus.” This is only a short clip, but there was a lot of yelling.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2062191973604204700?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2062191973604204700%7Ctwgr%5E546fb9583372a698ed9c56b512c81b898bcb8bcf%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F03%2Frubio-enters-the-clown-show-aka-congress-and-you-just-have-to-see-this-n4953535

Next, I’ll go with the most ludicrous of interactions: Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) spending his entire five minutes playing videos of Trump “sleeping” during his “North Korea-style” Cabinet meetings and proof of his “cognitive decline,” and Rubio’s rightfully incredulous response. The secretary joked that Lieu fancies himself a medical expert and went on to explain how the president has more energy than people much younger than him and how he calls him at all hours of the night. Pop your popcorn. This one’s good:

https://twitter.com/OffThePress1/status/2062206241951105050?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2062206241951105050%7Ctwgr%5E546fb9583372a698ed9c56b512c81b898bcb8bcf%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F03%2Frubio-enters-the-clown-show-aka-congress-and-you-just-have-to-see-this-n4953535

Then there was Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) who felt the need to use her time talking about who won the 2020 election and… Rubio’s shoes. Seriously.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2062198413140136178?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2062198413140136178%7Ctwgr%5E546fb9583372a698ed9c56b512c81b898bcb8bcf%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F03%2Frubio-enters-the-clown-show-aka-congress-and-you-just-have-to-see-this-n4953535

One congresswoman said her bit, which included calling Rubio the “overlord” of Venezuela, and then she simply got up and left before he could respond. Here’s his response:

As I’m writing this, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Penn.) is calling Rubio a “comedy show” because he’s trying to answer her questions. This is giving me a headache — I can only imagine how the secretary feels. I’d share some of the actual substance that was discussed, but, well, there wasn’t much. With few exceptions, the only time Rubio actually got to answer any questions was when the Republican members of the House allowed him some of their time to do so. It was pretty shameful.

The hearing is actually still going on, and there’s another one on Wednesday afternoon — I’ll take one for the team and watch that too and bring you any noteworthy sound bites — but I think this gives you an idea of how things have gone. I’ll end on a fun note. Rubio continued his run of using rap lyrics during his public appearances. Today, it was a line from Kanye West’s “Stronger.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t take my previous advice and use “Mo Money, Mo Problems,” but I was still amused.

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Much more coming.,.

• Marco Rubio Went to Capitol Hill Today, and the Smackdown Was Brutal (Anderson)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio made his way back to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs on the FY27 Department of State Budget Request. It went as these things usually do: Democrats, who were supposed to be asking questions, talked at Rubio and complained about everything Donald Trump does without giving the secretary a chance to respond. And he, as he usually does, handled it with intelligence, wit, and… actual information with context.


Honestly, it’s almost boring at this point — I believe Rubio thinks so too. After finishing his opening remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he ended with, “So anyways, I look forward to your questions. At least that’s what it says here. I’m not sure if I really look forward to your questions. I look forward to probably half your questions.” A couple of things I noted: The Democrats must have gotten together and decided they’d all coordinate when talking about Iran. Nearly every single one referred to it as “Donald Trump’s illegal war in Iran.” (You can’t see me, but I’m rolling my eyes.)

I also noted that these Democrats love to talk about how many people have allegedly died due to the end of USAID and the restructuring of how we handle humanitarian aid around the world — for what it’s worth, their numbers are false — but they seem to turn a blind eye to the people who die at the hands of the regimes in countries like Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba, as well as at the hands of narco-terrorists, cartels, and criminal groups around the globe, and get mad that the United States is intervening to stop this. You can’t have it both ways, but I digress. Let’s get to a few highlights from the hearings.

The biggest smackdown of the day was when Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) decided to accuse Rubio of partying the night away while JD Vance was working on negotiations with Iran. She kept talking about him being at some “party” with President Trump. Rubio asked her what party she was referring to, but she couldn’t quite come up with an answer and continued with her accusations, asserting that while he was at this party, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff — two people who were never confirmed for this by the U.S. Congress, she says — were doing his job. The secretary did not take that sitting down.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about! I know your staff wrote up this cute statement for TikTok, but it’s not true. And it’s not real. That’s not what happened,” Rubio said. He explained that he was not at a party; he was on the phone constantly with all parties involved and “co-located with the president in the midst of a high stakes negotiation so that I could immediately inform him about events occurring halfway around the world.”

For what it’s worth, I believe she’s referring to the UFC fight in Miami. Trump made an appearance, and Rubio was there with some of his children, but it was widely reported that the secretary spent most of the night on the phone and keeping the president updated on what was going on in the Middle East. Here’s the video. This exchange is a must-watch:

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2061849591780135052?s=20

I’m not going to get too deep into everything the Congress critters talked about, but I do want to highlight a few more important exchanges, like this one in which Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) made up a bunch of stuff about Iran that was giving me Kamala Harris word salad vibes.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2061841598649180172?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2061841598649180172%7Ctwgr%5E4be138b21dd4974e9e0dfe8e5ca1c9c6589b0409%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F02%2Fmarco-rubio-went-to-capitol-hill-today-and-the-smackdown-was-brutal-n4953499

And then there was Sen. Chris “Margaritas in El Salvador” Van Hollen, who seemed oddly nervous during the entire thing — possibly because he remembers how Rubio owned him last time they did this. If you’ll recall, he told Rubio he regretted voting for him, and Rubio replied, “Your regret voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job.” Van Hollen started out by saying that Trump’s entire foreign policy was a “dumpster fire” and then went on to spew a bunch of leftists lies about, well, pretty much everything. Anyway, here are a couple of their exchanges for your viewing pleasure.

https://twitter.com/StephenGardnerX/status/2061850629187031273?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2061850629187031273%7Ctwgr%5E4be138b21dd4974e9e0dfe8e5ca1c9c6589b0409%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F02%2Fmarco-rubio-went-to-capitol-hill-today-and-the-smackdown-was-brutal-n4953499

Something else Rubio tried to hammer home to these people during these hearings is that the State Department is doing what’s in the United States’ best interests. It’s all common sense, but as we know, many Democrats lack that. I’ll leave you with a few of those videos.

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” Just like Q-Anon advocate Mike Flynn recently taking a job that pays him $100,000/month to lobby for the Republic of Srpska (aka ‘Serb Republic’..”

• Marco Rubio Testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee (CTH)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The U.S. Senate as a whole and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee specifically, have lost millions of dollars wealth for themselves and their families as a result of Rubio eliminating USAID. As a consequence, while they cannot publicly showcase that specific motive for opposition, the committee as a whole is not happy about losing a substantial portion of their stakeholder interests.


The families of all the senate committee members exist inside the think tanks, NGOs, political orgs, PACs and lobbyist companies for various foreign governments. Just like Q-Anon advocate Mike Flynn recently taking a job that pays him $100,000/month to lobby for the Republic of Srpska (aka ‘Serb Republic’, for advice, counsel and introductions), so too all the family members of the senate leverage their DC connections to foreign governments for personal gain.

Thus, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now being questioned by the very Senators he has defunded. Yes, Michael Flynn signed an agreement within the Trump administration not to lobby for foreign governments; but that was only a paper promise. That’s one of the reasons why it is more than a little silly for people to mention Flynn’s name as a potential DNI nomination.

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“.. we can’t be sure the activist District Court won’t try again and waste more time and money.”

• Supreme Court AGAIN Rules in Favor of Alabama’s Pro-GOP Map (Salgado)

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 2 intervened again to confirm its previous ruling that will allow Alabama to move forward with a map eliminating racial gerrymandering. In Allen v. Milligan, SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that Alabama is right to redraw its congressional map to eliminate race-based districts, just as it ruled in Louisiana v. Callais and Allen v. Caster. The Voting Rights Act does not allow race-based gerrymandering, the Court previously ruled, and that still holds true in spite of an activist District Court.


The reality is that judicial activists are mad because the map is likely to favor Republicans once it is drawn constitutionally and not based on voters’ skin color. Democrats have spent decades convincing many black Americans that Republicans are racist (when the opposite is more true), and now Dems are seeing that effort backfire in more than one state. This is a purely partisan fight. SCOTUS cited Callais in its Allen v. Milligan ruling, as that was the original decision this year clarifying how to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Below are excerpts from the majority ruling:

After Callais, we vacated District Court injunctions that prevented the State of Alabama from using a congressional map that it enacted in 2023. See Allen v. Caster, 608 U. S. ___ (2026). The District Court had held that the State’s map violated §2 because it had only one district in which black voters were a majority and did not include an additional ‘[b]lack-opportunity’ district… Two weeks after we vacated its injunction, the District Court entered another injunction on largely the same grounds…

The District Court also failed to follow our instruction in Callais that the mere fact that voters of different races vote for different parties is not relevant to proving racially polarized voting patterns… The State has also made a strong showing of irreparable harm and that the equities and public interest favor it. We have repeatedly cautioned that lower federal courts should not ‘alter the election rules on the eve of an election.’ So this was all a waste of taxpayer money again to make the Supreme Court reiterate what it already ruled.

To be honest, if Republicans would simply comply with the law instead of bowing to every idiotic, anti-law ruling from activist judges, it would save vast amounts of time and money. The reason judges have been issuing outrageous rulings thick and fast recently is that they know Republicans will even ignore the Constitution itself to comply with the court rulings. The GOP keeps assuring Americans they have to act thus or they’ll “set a bad precent” for Democrats, but after two centuries of Democrats violating every law and court ruling they wish, that’s not a convincing argument.

In Alabama’s case, the Supreme Court had already ruled for the new map — so why on earth would the contrary decision of a District Court matter? Fortunately, the Supreme Court rightly intervened again, but we can’t be sure the activist District Court won’t try again and waste more time and money.

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If there’s one place that can claim the title Capital of Capitalism, it’s New York City.

So of course it draws in the opposite too, becaue opposites attract. But they do not match.

• Just How Crazy Mamdani’s Housing Scheme Really Is (Spencer)

They voted for him, and so they have him, but that doesn’t mean that even New Yorkers are thrilled to see the systematic destruction of what was once the greatest city in the world. More of them voted for the young, handsome, dynamic candidate than for the sleazy retread corruptocrat Andrew Cuomo or the clownish Curtis Sliwa, but that doesn’t mean that New Yorkers are collectively ready to don Mao jackets and start singing the praises of the five-year plan. Mamdani’s audacious scheme to socialize New York City housing is already coming in for severe criticism.


One sign that some New Yorkers are aware of what Mamdani is really all about was an unsigned editorial in the New York Post on Monday. The Post Editorial Board wrote that Mamdani’s “‘Block by Block’ plan to build 200,000 subsidized apartments entails a lot of handwaving, magical thinking and reliance on ‘responsible stewards’ . . who have been failing to manage the real-estate portfolios they already have.” Mamdani promises that “if ‘community land trusts, nonprofits or even the tenants themselves’ control the city’s housing stock, these miracle-workers will ‘expand New Yorkers’ access to safe, stable, and affordable homes.’”

However, the Post points out that “programs that do all this are so old and tired that Mamdani’s Gen Z policy experts appear never to have heard of them, maybe because the experiments had already failed when they were building fantasy housing projects out of Legos.”

Indeed. If socialists learned from experience, there would be no more socialists. There is system on the planet that has been tried so many times and failed just as many times, and yet constantly gains new young adherents who don’t know how bad socialist regimes really have been, or would care if they did know, because in their youthful arrogance, they’re sure they’re going to do right this time what their elders kept doing wrong. Mamdani is going to be the world’s first socialist to build a society. Sure, and he is also going to sprout wings and fly to Mars.

Mamdani announced, of course, that he planned to seize rental properties from landlords who have not maintained them properly — in the judgment of none other than Mamdani and his cronies. He then intends to hand over ownership of those properties to “community land trusts” and “non-profits.”

Oh yeah, that’ll fix everything. As foredoomed as this idea is as any sort of real solution to New York’s housing problems, it has long been high on Mamdani’s to-do list. Intifada on the Hudson: The Selling of Zohran Mamdani shows how he has made socialized housing schemes a centerpiece of his program ever since he entered politics. “People often ask,” Mamdani wrote on Dec. 3, 2020, “what socialists mean when we say we want to ‘decommodify’ housing. Basically, we want to move away from a situation where most people access housing by purchasing it on the market & toward a situation where the state guarantees high-quality housing to all.”

One of Mamdani’s leading critics, New York City Council member Vickie Paladino, explains what’s really going on here: “The properties will then be turned over to nonprofits. This is no small detail. This is in fact the whole point. The idea here is to build up Zohran’s DSA-connected nonprofits with a multibillion-dollar portfolio of hard assets — New York City real estate. This portfolio could theoretically reach into the hundreds of billions or even the trillions, depending on how aggressive they get. Now these highly political nonprofits would become the new land barons of New York, complete with all the political clout, leverage, and reach that goes along with it. It would be a true nightmare scenario.”

Mamdani’s housing scheme would thus be a great leap forward for securing socialist control of New York City for the indefinite future. Also, once his Marxist comrades control New York City’s housing market, who will actually get the housing? Not political undesirables, i.e., patriots. Instead, the lucky recipients will be Muslim migrants, including an unknowable number of criminals and jihadis, and others who will help the leftist/Islamic alliance stay in power.

It will all work wonderfully — until, that is, Mamdani and his friends run out of other people’s money. The Post points out that “Community Development Corporations, non-profit groups that own and manage ‘deeply affordable’ apartments, have been around for decades, and are barely managing to keep themselves afloat as it is. CDCs operate more than 200,000 subsidized city housing units, and face the same problems as private landlords: rising costs (especially insurance), unsustainable debt, deferred maintenance and nonpaying tenants. Turns out that removing the ‘profit’ line from a balance sheet by getting rid of private ownership doesn’t repeal the laws of math when costs run higher than income.”

It isn’t going to be any different this time around. New Yorkers who have already caught on to Mamdani can only hope that enough of their fellow city residents will catch on to tbe truth about this smooth socialist before he does too much damage.

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“Why Kiev is reviving fears of a northern front despite little evidence of military preparations..”

Ukraine has become a money making casino. First for Zelensky and his gang, but now for politicians from everywhere.

They need one thing for sure: war. So they can order weapons, real or not

• Why Is Ukraine So Eager To Start A New War? (Vitaly Ryumshin)

For the first time in a long while, Belarus has again found itself at the center of the Ukraine conflict. For more than a month, Vladimir Zelensky has been warning Ukrainians about a supposed threat from the north. Minsk, he claims, is preparing to enter the war and he’s even threatened Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko with either a pre-emptive strike or a kidnapping in the style of Nicolas Maduro. The rhetoric has now reached the point where Zelensky has ordered preparations for the circular defense of cities in Ukraine’s northern regions, including Kiev itself. Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron has called Lukashenko for the first time since 2022, apparently to persuade him not to enter the conflict.


The problem is that nothing visible is happening on the Belarusian side of the border. There’s no mobilization and no unusual concentration of Belarusian forces and no redeployment of Russian units. The only recent event that could be stretched into a military signal was last week’s Russian-Belarusian nuclear exercise. But even that took place in the Osipovichi district, in the center of Belarus, and was more about strategic deterrence than any ground operation against Ukraine. The more obvious question is why Lukashenko would want to join the military operation at all. Such a move would be wholly out of character for him and would run against the geopolitical role he has tried to carve out for Belarus.

Lukashenko has always sought to preserve room for maneuver and he kept doing so after 2020, when he became de facto persona non grata in the West, and even after the conflict escalated in 2022. In the Ukrainian crisis, Belarus has remained largely a passive observer and that arrangement has suited Moscow. For Russia, he’s a valuable diplomatic asset, not a military one. Of course, a repeat of the February 2022 thrust towards Kiev may sound tempting in theory. But with all due respect to Belarus, its army is not suited to the role of battering ram, especially in conditions of modern warfare dominated by drones and constant surveillance. Could the reverse be true? Perhaps Zelensky is preparing to strike Belarus first, overthrow Lukashenko and open a second front against Russia.

His pointed invitation to the fugitive opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya gives this theory a certain surface logic, but the military reality makes it deeply implausible. The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ last major offensive operation was the incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region. To mount it, Kiev gathered around 30,000 troops, weakening its positions in Donbass and losing large areas there as a result. Even then, the operation failed to produce a decisive strategic outcome. A serious attack on Belarus would require far more resources. Since then, Ukraine’s army has weakened further and its present ceiling is local counter-attacks in Donbass, so it’s in no position to open a major new front.

Nor would it make strategic sense. Any escalation with Belarus would risk creating another 1,000-kilometer front stretching across Ukraine’s northern flank, with direct threats to Kiev. However odious the Kiev regime may be, it can’t fail to understand this. That’s why the current escalation around the ‘Belarusian question’ should be understood politically, not militarily.

The timing is telling. Zelensky began to raise the alarm just as relations between Minsk and Washington showed signs of thawing. In March, the US eased sanctions on Belarus and Washington spoke of reopening its embassy. There was even talk of a possible Lukashenko visit to America and a meeting with Donald Trump. For Kiev, this is dangerous because Zelensky may fear that the eloquent Belarusian leader could charm Trump and persuade him to increase pressure on Ukraine to bring the conflict to an end. Lukashenko might also secure further sanctions relief, potentially turning Belarus into a hub for the transit of American goods to Russia.

From Kiev’s point of view, that scenario must be prevented. Hence the effort to present Minsk as an imminent threat, because if Belarus can be cast once again as Russia’s military accomplice rather than as a possible diplomatic channel, any US-Belarusian rapprochement becomes far harder to sustain.

Domestic politics may also be driving Zelensky’s rhetoric. Since late April, the noose of a corruption scandal has been tightening around his circle and the latest revelations from the ‘Mindich tapes’ have led to formal charges against Zelensky’s closest aide, Andrey Yermak. For the first time, the name ‘Vova’ has appeared in case materials, alongside the mysterious ‘R1’, the anonymous owner of one of the mansions in the ‘Dynasty’ housing cooperative, where, by a happy coincidence, Zelensky’s closest friends had planned to live. I

n such conditions, inflating a new military threat is politically useful as it allows Zelensky to tell Ukrainians that the gravest crisis is still ahead, and that he remains the horse that cannot be changed midstream. But the old ‘Russian card’ is wearing thin in the fifth year of hostilities. Ukrainians are tired, mobilized society is fraying, and endless emergency politics no longer works as it once did. So now Kiev is reaching for the ‘Belarus card’. Will it work? Probably not. At most, it may buy Zelensky a little time, a little fear, and a little more room to maneuver, but as a strategy, it’s thin gruel. Or to put it more appropriately, it is worthy only of a carrot, and a dry one at that.

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“..As Morningstar says valuation should be halved..”

• SpaceX Reportedly Targets $135 IPO Price (ZH)

Last week, Elon Musk called Bloomberg’s “SpaceX Said to Cut IPO Value” story “false,” marking the latest clash between Musk and the MSM over coverage of his companies. Reuters has released a new report, which, based on sources, says SpaceX is planning an IPO at a price of $135 per share, aiming to raise a record $75 billion by selling about 555.6 million shares at an estimated $1.75 trillion valuation. SpaceX’s roadshow is expected to begin Thursday, with a potential Nasdaq debut under the ticker SPCX on June 12. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA, Citigroup, and JPMorgan are leading the deal.


Sources said the IPO is “structured as an all-primary offering,” which means the proceeds will go to SpaceX rather than existing shareholders. Musk will reportedly be subject to a 366-day lock-up period. At a $1.75 trillion valuation and projected 2025 booking revenue of $18.67 billion, SpaceX would trade at roughly 94 times trailing sales. The company also reported a $4.94 billion net loss in 2025, compared with a prior-year profit, with Starlink internet as the major profit engine.

Beyond Reuters’ reporting, there was a separate report from Morningstar analysts stating that SpaceX’s valuation should be less than half of the $1.75 trillion figure, and closer to $780 billion. Morningstar equity analyst Nicolas Owens wrote in a note that his team “doesn’t see Grok as one of the leading AI labs today,” adding: “We think the company has been significantly overvalued and investors will have opportunities to buy the stock at more attractive levels after the IPO.” Polymarket odds for “SpaceX IPO closing market cap above ___ ?” currently stand at 89% for a market cap above $1.8 trillion.

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“..when a growing cohort of conservative judges is crafting opinions designed to get attention, it tells me they sense something is in the air ..”

• Is This a Sign a Supreme Court Vacancy Is Coming Soon? (Margolis)

Speculation about a Supreme Court vacancy has been running hot pretty much since Trump returned to office. With midterm elections this fall potentially reshaping President Donald Trump’s grip on the judiciary, much of the chatter has centered on Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. However, sources close to both say neither has plans to retire this year. Allegedly.


Here’s the thing: Supreme Court justices rarely telegraph a retirement months in advance. When a justice decides to step down, the announcement tends to arrive quietly and suddenly, usually in late spring or early summer as the Court’s term winds down. Denials at this point aren’t proof. Here’s what might tell you considerably more: Conservative appellate judges across the country are behaving as though a vacancy is imminent.

A growing number of federal appeals court judges are issuing high-profile opinions that legal observers describe openly as auditions for the Supreme Court. The tactics are calculated and unmistakable. Some judges are using sharp language, adopting rhetoric designed to catch President Trump’s attention. Others are recording video dissents, a media-savvy move that ensures their opinions travel well beyond the courthouse and into conservative legal circles, including the White House orbit.

Legal scholars watching this pattern say the strategy is deliberate. According to them, these judges understand that Trump values a combative style and public loyalty, and they are writing to reflect those priorities, in hopes of getting noticed by Trump and those advising him before the next vacancy materializes. If an announcement happens, it will be near the close of the current SCOTUS term, which concludes in roughly one month. Inside conservative legal circles, the working assumption is that Trump would move quickly. He reshaped the federal judiciary at a historic rate during his first term and shows no sign of slowing down.

The judges who are positioning themselves for that moment know the terrain. Their opinions zero in on subjects that resonate with Trump’s base, like immigration and cultural disputes, where the federal courts have become a central battleground. Every emphasis in these rulings carries intent. Conservative legal organizations that helped vet Trump’s earlier nominees are tracking this body of work and refining informal shortlists for the next opening. None of this means that a vacancy will happen, but it sure seems like judges are expecting it. Perhaps they know more than we do? It’s very possible.

And, should a vacancy take place this year, there’s very little that Democrats can do to stop it. The elimination of the judicial filibuster removed any real pressure on a Trump nominee to appeal to senators across the aisle. Republican presidents can now prioritize ideological conviction over bipartisan palatability, and judges angling for a nomination understand that calculus perfectly. As for the midterms, while it seems likely that Republicans will hold the Senate, it’s still very much a coin flip at this point. Hopefully, Trump will get the opportunity to secure at least one more seat on the Supreme Court while he still can.

Losing Alito or Thomas will be difficult, but securing a conservative majority for another generation is critical. I have no idea what will happen, but when a growing cohort of conservative judges is crafting opinions designed to get attention, it tells me they sense something is in the air. I’m starting to think that Trump’s next Supreme Court pick may come sooner than most people expect, because the competition for that spot is already well underway.

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Anyone seen Fauci lately?

• COVID-19 Was Spread Intentionally on Multiple Continents (Korsgaard)

The COVID-19 pandemic is long over. The headlines have shifted to a relentless cycle of bloody invasions and political scandals. It is very tempting to file the years of lockdowns, vaccine tyranny, and assaults on freedom into a folder of “unfortunate history” and never open it again. Most have. But the victims and a few researchers continue to ask questions and demand answers.


How many victims were there? Using U.N. population data, I have calculated that the pandemic years were associated with 20.5 million excess deaths. However, the total “growth loss” was a staggering 32 million people, as fewer babies were born than projected. This makes the pandemic comparable to World War I, which incurred a cost of 15 to 22 million deaths. But while historians have meticulously documented every bullet and bayonet of the Great War, the origin of the pandemic still remains a mystery.

First, we were fed a narrative about the novel coronavirus having a natural origin. For good reasons, many suspected that this was a limited hangout. Then came the second story: catastrophic incompetence—careless Chinese scientists allowed the virus to escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the rest is history. Unlike the narrative of a natural origin, there was some circumstantial evidence supporting the incompetence hypothesis, and many accepted it and moved on.

In my new book, The New September 11th: Solving the COVID-19 Pandemic, I present evidence that the virus was indeed made in a lab, but it did not leak by accident. Instead, suppressed genomic and epidemiological evidence strongly suggests that the virus was released on different continents within months of one another.

What is some of that evidence? In the book, I rigorously analyze all the data and systematically dismantle the false narratives, misdirections, and cover-ups by both Beijing and Washington. To provide the full context in an article is impossible, which is why I wrote the book. However, I will now explain the most important evidence in simple terms and in as few words as possible.

In late December 2019, molecular biologists identified and sequenced the coronavirus for the first time in Wuhan. The strain was young—meaning that it had only circulated for a few weeks [1]. Whether a lab leak or a spillover event at the wet market gave rise to the virus, they are both single-point origin hypotheses: the idea that the virus emerged in one location before spreading across the globe [..]

If the single-point origin holds water, every variant found across the globe is a direct descendant of the original parental strain in Wuhan. But this is not the case. Independent research groups from Italy, Brazil, Morocco, Angola, France, and others have conducted their own investigations into archived biological samples, identifying old strains of the virus long before it had even emerged in Wuhan. This is evidence of multiple viral introductions, a scenario that I have named the Parallel Release in Multiple Environments (P.R.I.M.E.) hypothesis. Here is a brief summary of one of the studies:

While the pandemic was well underway, researchers at the University of Milan began a retrospective search for the virus within their archives [2]. They were prompted by previous studies that had identified the virus before the official timeline and a mysterious increase in a rash now recognized as a COVID-19 symptom. Knowing that pre-pandemic research is a highly controversial matter, the researchers took extreme precautions to avoid cross-contamination and false positives. They, for instance, used 183 control samples (which never turned positive) and performed every stage of the study in physically separate laboratories in a facility that was free from the coronavirus.

Shockingly, multiple pre-pandemic samples were positive for RNA and/or antibodies. The earliest case dated back to September 12, 2019—an eight-month-old boy from Milan whose urine and serum samples were positive for the spike protein and two types of antibodies. This is long before the virus emerged in Wuhan. The researchers also sequenced the genetic material and confirmed that nine of their patients had indeed been infected with the novel coronavirus in 2019. Most shockingly, the strains were old, not young as they were in Wuhan months later. A technique called molecular clock analysis showed that the virus present in Italy had been circulating since mid-summer 2019.

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https://twitter.com/cryptogoos/status/2062056663709004178?s=20 https://twitter.com/CharlesMullins2/status/2062041643679989874?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 3 2026

Jun 032026
 
 June 3, 2026  Posted by at 9:42 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  33 Responses »


Samuel Melton Fisher Asleep 1902


• Iran Ends Negotiations With US, Doubling Down on Terrorism (Salgado)
• Iran Denies Progress Despite Hasty Lebanon Truce (ZH)
• Trump: It’s ‘Fake News’ That Iran & US Stopped Speaking Days Ago (ZH)
• Trump Pulls Back Before the Fund Becomes the Story (David Manney)
• This Crisis Could Make or Break Türkiye (Sadygzade)
• This Is The Dangerous Myth Holding America Hostage (Bordachev)
• Europe Has “Serious, Really Serious Problems” If US Cuts Oil Exports (ZH)
• Interventionism Undermined Growth In The UK & Canada (Lacalle)
• Iran Decides to Take Matters in Hand (Paul Craig Roberts)
• The Israelization of the United States Military Is Proceeding (Philip Giraldi)
• Letitia James Sues Trump Admin Over $1 Billion Deal To Stop Offshore Wind (JTN)
• A “View from the East Wing”: Jill Biden’s Fantasy Book Tour (Turley)
• So, That’s Why Jill Biden’s Book Is Coming Out Now (Matt Vespa)
• Mamdani Announces Possible Transfer of Housing to Tenants (Turley)

 


 

https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2061872222638105083?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2061841598649180172?s=20 https://twitter.com/DRPOOLQ17/status/2061800780248600683?s=20

 


 


Iran can be in 2 different quantum states at once.

• Iran Ends Negotiations With US, Doubling Down on Terrorism (Salgado)

The genocidal Islamic regime of Iran has finally cut off negotiations with the United States, in a move that President Donald Trump indicated he did not anticipate, but which he says he is prepared to address as necessary.


The reported sudden end of the farce that the Iranian regime was willing to make peace came just after the regime fired on American troops in Kuwait on Sunday evening. On Monday morning, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi brazenly accused the United States and Israel of ceasefire violations, primarily because Israel is reacting in self-defense to Hezbollah strikes. But the reality is that the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah have not stopped violating the ceasefire ever since it was announced. Araghchi’s statement appears to have been a little more than a justification for cutting off negotiations, and he evidently assumes that leftist Western politicians and media will repeat his lies without fact-checking.

The president had seemed, as usual, optimistic about the progress of negotiations on Sunday evening. “Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us,” Trump insisted on TruthSocial, blaming both Democrats and members of his own party for giving him too much advice. “Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end – It always does!” Trump added. It is not completely clear what he meant by that, as the Iranian regime and all fundamentalist Islamic jihad dictatorships with which America has dealt have always violated every deal or simply refused deals altogether. In any case, Trump told NBC News on Monday that Iranian officials had not informed him about the cutoff of negotiations, but he wasn’t too worried either way.

I think we’ve been talking too much if you want to know the truth. I think going silent would be very good, and that could be for a long time, Trump said during an NBC News interview. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to go and start dropping bombs all over there. We’ll just go silent. We’ll keep the blockade”. He added, “I think I can wait as long as they want. They’re losing a fortune.”

It is not clear how long such a stalemate can continue, driving up gas prices, before it is too problematic for Republicans going into the midterms. Swiftly destroying the rest of Iran’s top leadership might not be the choice the American government wants to take, but it is likely the only effective one. The Iranian mullahs will never make peace with the “great Satan,” America, much as we want peace.

The Iranian regime fired on U.S. targets again on Sunday. On June 1, U.S. Central Command posted, Last night at 11 p.m. ET, U.S. forces successfully intercepted two Iranian ballistic missiles targeting American forces based in Kuwait. These missiles were immediately defeated and no American personnel were harmed. U.S. Central Command remains vigilant and will continue to protect our forces from Iranian aggression while supporting the ongoing ceasefire.

Read more …

Wasting away time. That way you can’t lose.

• Iran Denies Progress Despite Hasty Lebanon Truce (ZH)

State media has belatedly responded to Trump’s Monday claim that talks between the US and Iran are back on. Trump has even said Tuesday that he expects an agreement for an extended ceasefire to take place “over the next week” – along with the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.


“An informed source says that the exchange of messages between Iran and the US has been stopped for at least a few days for what is called the initial memorandum of understanding between Tehran and Washington,” Fars reports. So this is Iran in effect saying ‘not so fast’ – as it seeks to ‘hold the cards’ and maintain some leverage. Trump has not indicated a willingness to resume bombing the Islamic Republic, but his patience has seemed to be wearing thin over the last several days, as the White House is boxed in to only choosing among several ‘bad options’ in the wake of launching a war of choice 95 days ago.

Oil spikes on the negative news from Tehran, extends: And more confirmation via newswires: “An Iranian source says there is currently no message exchange with the U.S., contradicting claims of ongoing progress. The source reports talks on an initial understanding have stalled for several days. It also noted Iran’s last communication with Washington concerned Lebanon and drew international attention, despite President Trump stating negotiations are advancing rapidly.

Latest on the Lebanon front: “American sources for AI Hadath: Proposal for a 60-day plan during which Israel withdraws gradually from southern Lebanon”: AI Hadath reports.n”Negotiations propose the deployment of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL in southern Lebanon after Israel’s withdrawal.” “Lebanon seeks to resolve Hezbollah’s weapons file politically, but after Israel’s complete withdrawal.”

Lebanon Fighting Persists Amid Nominal Ceasefire
Various regional and international reports have documented serious ongoing fighting in Lebanon, despite President Trump the day prior having declared that the shooting will cease and that Hezbollah and Israel were forging a limited ceasefire. Trump had said of both sides that “they agreed that all shooting will stop” – after Iran announcing it had suspended peace talks with the US over Israeli military action in Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did affirm he would adhere to the agreement, and reports say that planned new airstrikes on Beirut were called off, but he also warned the attacks on the capital would go ahead “if Hezbollah does not stop attacking our cities and civilians” – and that forces in the south would continue operating.

BBC has freshly written that “While the ceasefire appears to be largely holding, there was further violence overnight.” The same report details: Hezbollah said its fighters had targeted Israeli tanks in the southern Lebanese towns of Haddatha and Bayada with missiles and shells. The Israeli military said it had intercepted two projectiles that had been fired from Lebanon in the early hours of Tuesday. No injuries have been reported.Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Israeli strikes on several southern areas and said a “very violent” explosion from a large-scale demolition rocked the town of Debbine.

Tuesday has witnessed some ongoing attacks on south Lebanon, as well as Hezbollah drone attacks on Israeli troop positions, wounding some. According to some of the latest from Al Jazeera: Israeli forces have carried out multiple air raids on the city of Nabatieh, one of the largest in southern Lebanon, our colleagues on the ground report. The city, a strategic hub for Hezbollah, has been encircled by Israeli forces in recent days as troops continue pushing north.

Israeli attacks were also reported across the wider Nabatieh district as Israel deepens its occupation of surrounding areas. Drones hit the towns of Kafr Sir and Aabba, while a strike targeted the road leading to Houmine al-Fawqa. The outskirts of Yahmour al-Shaqif were also hit.

There’s also been a lot of explosions in the southern city of Tyre, with Israeli jets active in the airspace above on Tuesday. And rescuers have recovered six bodies from another town, with Lebanese civil defense agency having said in a statement: “Since yesterday evening and continuing until this morning … personnel have been carrying out search and rescue operations in a residential building that was targeted in the town of Marwaniyah – Sidon district.”

Read more …

Iran talks about one inch at a time with many miles to go.

• Trump: It’s ‘Fake News’ That Iran & US Stopped Speaking Days Ago (ZH)

President Trump in a fresh Truth Social post has again insisted that Washington and Tehran are talking again. “The conversations between us have been going on continuously… where they lead, one never knows, but as I told Iran, ‘It’s time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal.'”


Throughout the morning Secretary of State Marco Rubio was fielding questions on Capitol Hill. He too insisted that talks are ongoing, despite a Tuesday Iranian denial. He claimed the regime is ‘fragmented’ and because of this, back-and-forth messaging is extremely slow-going. “Iranian people would make a deal tomorrow if it were up to them,” Rubio said. “The Supreme Leader and the IRGC are a bit more immune to pressures.”

He also generally acknowledged that Iran has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and then said this justified the US naval blockade of Iranian ports in turn. There was also this interesting exchange when he echoed Trump’s line that the war is actually ‘over’ at this point…Hawks like Ted Cruz want to know of any other regime change tactics going on…

A potential new nuclear framework regarding Iran was also a central topic to Tuesday’s Congressional testimony:

Big if true, there is still too much smoke and noise:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that Iran has agreed to discuss previously off-limits aspects of its nuclear program, raising hopes that ongoing negotiations could pave the way for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a broader diplomatic breakthrough. Speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the State Department’s budget request, Rubio said: “We are in talks… There is the prospect before us, which could happen today, it could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, that for the first time, certainly in my memory, they have agreed to negotiate aspects of their nuclear program.”

He said the U.S. hopes such negotiations could lead to a broader understanding that would include the reopening of the strategic waterway. “We’re hopeful that something like that could happen, in which the straits would reopen, we would enter into a period of negotiations on very specific topics, delineated negotiations, in the hope of reaching an outcome that’s acceptable to us and something they would be able to do as well,” he said. The above was spoken with a few too many caveats… “which could happen today, it could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week…”

Rubio in the hot seat over Iran war:

Read more …

“Pulling back from a politically vulnerable fund doesn’t mean retreating from the fight. It keeps the focus where it belongs.”

• Trump Pulls Back Before the Fund Becomes the Story (David Manney)

Axios is reporting that President Donald Trump’s administration appears ready to drop the proposed $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund, and the move may prove smart. The concern behind the fund remains real: Federal power did get used as a political weapon, and Americans deserve answers, names, records, hearings, firings, and prosecutions where evidence supports them. From Just the News. The Trump administration is reportedly planning to cancel plans to create a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund” amid bipartisan backlash, Axios reported, citing “two senior administration officials.”


The Department of Justice announced the fund as part of a settlement to President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns by contractor Charles Littlejohn, who pleaded guilty. Originally intended as a fund to allow the victims of alleged political weaponization by the Biden DOJ, the fund drew backlash from Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike over concerns it could be used to enrich Trump allies. Yet even a well-intended remedy can become a political trap when critics get to define it before victims ever get heard.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the fund on May 19 and described it as a process for people harmed by lawfare and government weaponization. The Department of Justice said the settlement would create a path for claims tied to political targeting. The purpose makes sense. People crushed by selective prosecution, federal pressure, or political intimidation shouldn’t have to absorb the damage quietly while the officials who caused it retire with pensions and book deals. The trouble came from the structure, not the principle.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema temporarily blocked the fund on May 29 after a challenger argued the program lacked legal authority and could allow poorly supervised payouts. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams also reopened Trump’s IRS case to examine the settlement behind it. bThose moves didn’t prove the fund was wrong; they did prove the plan had become vulnerable, and vulnerability in Washington has a way of swallowing the original purpose.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and other Republicans questioned the fund’s broad reach. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) asked Blanche for more transparency. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) attacked the fund as corrupt and promised a fight. Schumer’s outrage was predictable, but Republican caution deserved attention because it showed how easily the fund could shift the debate away from weaponized government and toward the mechanics of compensation. From the Associated Press.

Senate Republicans who are returning to Washington on Monday say they won’t have the votes to pass the Homeland Security spending bill until the White House works with them to place parameters on a new $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to compensate Trump’s allies. But Trump has shown little interest in doing so, even after a judge temporarily halted any payouts.It’s unclear how they will settle the dispute.

The Trump administration is “going to have to come up with some suggestions and ideas,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said before the Senate left town on May 21. Thune, of South Dakota, said that the settlement money — some of which could potentially go to Trump supporters who beat police and attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — “just makes everything way harder than it should be.”

The impasse over the “anti-weaponization” fund could be an inflection point as Republicans try to keep their majority in this year’s elections and advance their agenda. Trump’s campaign year push to defeat GOP lawmakers who he sees as disloyal, including some of Thune’s most reliable Republican votes in the narrow 53-47 Senate, has only added to the tension. Trump has a stronger lane available: investigate the abuses, release the records, put officials under oath, let inspectors general dig, let prosecutors bring cases where the facts meet the law, and fire federal employees who misused power.

FBI Director Kash Patel can keep weaponizing concerns near the center of bureau reform, and Blanche can pursue accountability without giving opponents a clean opening to call the whole effort a payout scheme. Trump’s opponents want the argument to move away from FBI abuse, IRS misconduct, selective prosecution, and federal retaliation. A $1.776 billion fund makes that easier for them; when every hearing could become a fight over “payouts,” every victim could get buried under questions about eligibility, favored allies, and who approved the checks. Trump doesn’t need to carry extra weight into a fight he can win with documents, witnesses, sworn testimony, and the record left behind from the Biden years.

Victims of weaponized government deserve justice, and a future compensation process may still deserve consideration if Congress builds it with clear limits, public oversight, and narrow rules. For now, the better path runs through exposure and accountability; Congress can hold hearings, agencies can release files, prosecutors can pursue charges, and judges can review misconduct. The Trump administration has many lawful ways to prove that federal power punished enemies and protected friends. Pulling back from a politically vulnerable fund doesn’t mean retreating from the fight. It keeps the focus where it belongs.

Read more …

Erdogan simply arrests his opponents.

• This Crisis Could Make or Break Türkiye (Sadygzade)

Türkiye’s domestic political landscape has entered a phase in which judicial decisions, intra-party struggles and strategic calculations by the authorities are becoming increasingly intertwined.


The arrest of Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul from the center-left opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), in 2025 and the subsequent court decision to remove Ozgur Ozel from the leadership of the CHP and transfer control of the party back to its previous leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu represent two connected episodes within a broader political process. They suggest that the Turkish political system is preparing for a period of heightened uncertainty, in which future elections will be seen not merely as a routine electoral procedure, but as a contest over whether the system which has been shaped over the past two decades will be preserved or revised.

A rival in Istanbul
Imamoglu was detained on March 19, 2025 on charges of corruption and abuse of office, and was later arrested. The timing was especially significant, since the CHP was preparing to name its candidate for a future presidential race, and Imamoglu was widely viewed as the most likely figure to be nominated. By that moment, his political weight had already moved far beyond municipal politics. After his victory in Istanbul, he had become one of the most recognizable figures in the opposition and a potential national rival to Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Istanbul has always been exceptionally important in Turkish politics, being the country’s economic center, a symbol of political legitimacy and the place where Erdogan’s own national career first took shape. The rise of Imamoglu therefore meant the emergence of an opposition figure capable of weaponizing urban discontent, the demand for economic normalization and expectations of institutional renewal. His arrest moved political competition from the sphere of electoral rivalry into the sphere of legal and administrative control.

Destabilizing the opposition
The current court decision regarding Ozgur Ozel should be seen as a continuation of the same strategy. The judicial removal of Ozel from the leadership of the CHP (over alleged issues regarding the legitimacy of the party congress and procedural violations) and the transfer of control to Kemal Kilicdaroglu effectively sets the country’s main opposition force back to its previous configuration.

Ozel took over the CHP after Kilicdaroglu’s defeat in the 2023 presidential election and became a symbol of the party’s attempt at renewal. Under his leadership, the party achieved major gains in the 2024 municipal elections, demonstrating that the opposition could not only criticize the government, but also expand its electoral base. The return of Kilicdaroglu objectively alters the balance inside the opposition, damaging its ability to preserve mobilization before the next electoral cycle.

Preserving decades of work
A restrained analysis of this situation requires attention not only to the interests of the authorities, but also to the bigger picture of a state operating in a complex external and internal environment. Judging by its recent steps, the Turkish leadership is seeking to preserve control over a political direction it considers strategically important. Over the past two decades, Türkiye has significantly transformed its position in the international system. It has become a more autonomous regional actor, strengthened its defense industry, expanded its military presence in neighboring regions and used foreign policy more actively as an instrument of national positioning.

For the current leadership, a change of power would mean the risk of revising the entire trajectory built under Erdogan. This includes the presidential system, foreign policy autonomy, the defense industry, policy in the Eastern Mediterranean, and relations with Russia, the West, the Middle East and the Caucasus. The authorities therefore seek to minimize the possibility of a sharp political turn at a time when the regional environment is becoming increasingly unstable.

Read more …

“Washington’s global supremacy has become its own tar pit”.

• This Is The Dangerous Myth Holding America Hostage (Bordachev)

The United States is caught in a trap of its own making. It wants to preserve its unique position in world politics, while at the same time freeing itself from the growing burden that this position imposes. Yet Washington hasn’t found any way to do so except by insisting, ever more loudly, on its own superiority so the result is that America clings more tightly to the very role it should have consciously begun to abandon long ago.


There’s an old story from ‘Uncle Remus’s Tales’, the famous collection by the American writer Joel Chandler Harris, in which Br’er Fox sets a black doll made of tar and turpentine by the roadside to trap Br’er Rabbit. The rabbit greets the doll, mistakes its silence for rudeness, grows angry and strikes it. His paw sticks so he strikes again, and the other paw sticks and the more furiously he fights, the more completely he is trapped. This is increasingly what American policy looks like in its struggle to preserve hegemony. The US has become stuck to its own global role. It wants to escape the costs of maintaining that role, but every attempt to do so only entangles it further. In trying to defend the “tar baby” of global primacy, Washington is forced into ventures that are costly militarily and for its reputation.

The latest example is the unprovoked attack by the US and Israel on Iran. Washington would clearly prefer not to be dragged into a wider Middle Eastern crisis, yet it has once again acted in a way that makes such entanglement more likely. It wants the privileges of hegemony without the liabilities, but the two cannot be separated. In its struggle with this tar-covered scarecrow, the US damages not only its obvious rivals, Russia and China, but the wider international order. At the center of that order stands the UN system and the institutions built after the Second World War. These structures have long served Western interests, but they also provided a degree of predictability. Now they are being undermined by the very power that once claimed to defend them.

Russia, China and many other states view this process with mixed feelings. None has an interest in a sudden collapse of American power, still less in the collapse of the American state itself because for a century, the United States has been a central factor in global development and the great diplomatic game. Its abrupt disappearance would create not freedom, but rather chaos. At the same time, it’s obvious that America’s struggle to preserve hegemony is weakening it but this process can’t simply be reversed. The United States is trying to reformat its global presence because it no longer has the resources to sustain the model of engagement that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century.

Its economic model shows little sign of being capable of the transformation needed to restore the “golden years” of global leadership. Appeals to modern technology, however loudly advertised, look more like temporary devices to avoid deeper change than a serious renewal of American power. Russia, China and many others therefore watch America’s internal difficulties with a certain satisfaction. They expect that the gradual weakening of the US position will eventually make it possible to speak with Washington on more equal terms and to formalize a fairer world order.

Read more …

“When you’re out of something, it’s it. That’s it. It’s over… it’s instantaneous.”

• Europe Has “Serious, Really Serious Problems” If US Cuts Oil Exports (ZH)

Last night, the Abaxx Markets’ Jeff Currie and Veriten’s Arjun Murti joined Real Vision’s Ash Bennington for a ZeroHedge Debate on what the oil market is getting wrong. Surprise surprise… the EU is not looking good. But the U.S. may be in trouble too. Currie doubled down on his reserves-to-run-dry-by-July call. They each gave their outlook on structural supply constraints that existed before the Hormuz debacle, whether the latest ‘ceasefire’ can be trusted, and where the price is headed and how quickly it’s headed there. Despite signs of relief in the Mid-East, many signs still read bullish oil (and thus bearish cost of living).


Currie’s July 4th Doomer Call
Currie on his recent warning that global oil inventories could run into serious shortages as early as July: “There’s a misnomer that the eight billion barrels of oil that you see in storage around the world is all usable,” he said, noting that fuel is not homogenous (jet, diesel, gasoline, etc.) and that 8 billion is not actually that much… “Every single energy analyst says sometime in that July, August is when you get into pretty serious problems.”

The current calm in prices, Currie said, reflects seasonal demand weakness rather than a genuine easing of supply constraints. “Why you haven’t seen this? We’re in the seasonal low of demand,” he explained. “April and May it goes down like this, and then June it just goes straight up five million barrels a day.” Murti agreed that shortages are likely to emerge region by region and product by product… where one country runs out of jet fuel, another gasoline. He added that developing Asia appears particularly vulnerable while Europe remains heavily exposed after years of energy underinvestment.

Asked how long it takes for shortages to be felt once inventories are exhausted: “When you’re out of something, it’s it. That’s it. It’s over… it’s instantaneous.”

Turns out Exxon agrees with Jeff…

Which Countries Will Feel The Most Pain?
According to Murti: China looks good, rest of Asia… not so much. EU not great. America too complacent but likely OK. “Europe might be able to avoid shortage by the fact that they’re still rich enough to outbid those less fortunate Asian countries for the cargoes that you have… blase attitude on the part of Americans, American investors, even American politicians, about how serious of an issue this is… we’re not going to face shortages like the 70s, but go tell that to the people of you know Malaysia and Pakistan.”

According to Currie: Asia will be fine thanks to China “taking care of its neighbors” but Europe is screwed. “Europe is the one that’s the most exposed, and the only reason they don’t have problems is that the United States is exporting everything they have to Europe right now…” And while China has been building up inventory, “Europe, on the other hand, didn’t invest in any brown. They got serious problems, really serious, problems when the Americans don’t export to them.”

Read more …

”Bureaucrats always believe that interventionism did not work because there was not enough of it.”

• Interventionism Undermined Growth In The UK & Canada (Lacalle)

Governments are terrible at picking winners and even worse at choosing losers. Net zero and interventionist “Keynesian” policies in Canada and the UK have proven that government intervention has created a worse outcome than anyone would have expected. The result is higher costs, distorted incentives, and weakened productivity growth, with increased dependency on fossil fuels to attend to peak demand, exactly what Austrian economists predicted. What has been sold as a recipe for prosperity and “green growth” has in practice eroded affordability while failing to deliver stronger, sustainable expansion.


It is not surprising to see that the world’s examples of green interventionism, the UK and Canada, have become economic failures. Years ago, some argued that these policies needed time to prove their success. Now, it is not even debatable that the stagnation and recession in the UK and Canada are self-inflicted. Net zero in Canada and the UK is not a single policy but an entire regime of targets, regulations, limits, subsidies, and new bureaucratic requirements. The Canadian federal plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 combines rising carbon taxes, prescriptive regulations, technology mandates, and public investment schemes intended to steer capital away from fossil fuels and into politically selected “green” projects.

In the UK, the government’s “Net Zero Growth Plan” is also built on regulatory limits, spending commitments, and industrial policy designed to phase out conventional energy and reshape entire sectors through top-down planning. This is a classic example of interventionism. The state attempts to override market price signals and entrepreneurial judgment to engineer a politically preferred energy and industrial structure and achieves the opposite of what it wants to deliver.

Rather than relying on decentralized knowledge, competition, technology, and creative destruction, dispersed among millions of consumers and firms, net zero regimes assume that politicians and regulators know exactly which technologies should win, what the “right” energy mix ought to be, and how fast the transition should occur. In an open market, prices and profits coordinate production across time, and entrepreneurs interpret prices as signals about real scarcities and consumer preferences. However, net-zero policies deliberately tamper with these signals.

Carbon taxes, subsidies, and regulatory mandates change relative prices not because underlying preferences or scarcities changed but because policymakers decided that certain activities should be penalized and others subsidized. All this is justified by a completely ideological and unreliable assumption of externality costs, where governments present themselves as the ones that know precisely what those alleged externality costs are and try to push a pricing signal imposed through ideology, creating enormous distortions that, ultimately, end benefiting the “old” and “loser” industries.

Governments are not worried about the failure of these policies. Bureaucrats always believe that interventionism did not work because there was not enough of it. Therefore, they impose additional burdens and regulations while portraying themselves as the solution to the inflation and stagnation problems they have caused.

In both Canada and the UK, this has pushed vast amounts of capital into projects that are unprofitable and can only subsist due to policy support rather than genuine market demand. “Green industrial strategies” crowd out investment in other sectors, especially in traditional energy and manufacturing, even when those sectors still deliver higher value at lower cost to consumers. Austrian theory predicts that politicized credit and subsidies will generate malinvestment: projects that look viable under distorted interest rates and prices but which fail to cover their costs once the policy support is withdrawn or the fiscal burden becomes unsustainable.

Canadian long-run productivity growth has fallen from annual rates above 3% in the postwar decades to less than 1% since 2000, despite repeated waves of policy activism and “pro-productivity” rhetoric. Chronic underinvestment in business capital and weak technological progress as key drivers of this decline, suggesting that the policy mix has not created an environment for genuine, bottom-up innovation. The more that investment decisions depend on regulatory favor and subsidy access, the less they depend on entrepreneurial assessment of consumer wants and long-term profitability.

Net zero has also harmed affordability in exactly the way Austrian economists would expect when governments interfere with relative prices. Carbon pricing, renewable mandates, and restrictions on fossil-fuel projects increase energy costs directly by making reliable sources of power more expensive or scarce. These higher input costs then cascade through the economy to transport, food, housing, and manufactured goods, eroding real wages and living standards. [..] .

Read more …

There’s no shortagee of Americans who see iran winning.

• Iran Decides to Take Matters in Hand (Paul Craig Roberts)

As I finished writing the article below, Iran decided to take matters out of the hands of Trump and Netanyahu. The decision was a consequence of Netanyahu’s order to the American-provided Israeli Air Force to commence the bombing of civilian residential areas of Beirut, Lebanon, and warning the residents to flee their soon to be ruined homes. The Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon has again been halted by the Hezbollah militia, the third time the Israeli Army has been stopped by a mere militia.


Frustrated at Israel’s impotence on the ground, Netanyahu decided to take it out on citizens in Lebanon’s capital further north distant from the battlefield where the Hezbollah militia stopped the Israeli attack. Thanks to Washington, Israel makes up for its inability to perform on the ground with its American Air Force, which its opponents of choice do not have.When defeated on the ground, Israel bombs civilians. The only thing the IDF is good for is murdering women and children.

The Iranians told Netanyahu that Iran’s Armed Forces will not tolerate any more Israeli barbarism in Lebanon and Israel had best evacuate its own cities. Netanyahu quickly backed down on his planned bombing of civilian housing in Beirut suburbs. Trump, who emerges each day as ever more a pathological liar tried to cover up the Iranian defeat of Washington and Israel by claiming to have convinced Hezbollah to stop embarrassing Israel by stopping their advance in southern Lebanon. There is zero chance that Hezbollah will cede southern Lebanon to Israel.

Now that the stupid Israelis assassinated all of the Western influenced Iranians, and they are out of the picture, Persia is re-emerging. Iran, not Israel or the US, is the regional power in the Middle East. Iran withstood a joint US-Israeli attack and forced the two defeated enemies to ask for a cease fire. It was a mistake for Iran to grant one. But the Iranians have recognized their mistake and have recovered from it.

Destruction awaits Israel if the Satanic Zionists pursue the war, and destruction will be the fate of the corrupt Persian Gulf States that sold out Islam to Israel. American prestige in the Middle East is at its end. Iran prevailed alone, without any help from the pusillanimous leaders of Russia and China, “leaders” afraid of their own shadow.

Despite the earth-shaking development of Iran’s ultimatum to Israel and by implication to Trump, I am leaving the article as I wrote it, because it shows the extent to which the two-bit-punk United States is dishonored by the total subservience to Israel of the Tump regime, the US Congress, Israeli-owned presstitutes, Christian Zionists, and cowards afraid of the Israel Lobby.

 

 

Israel Has Blocked Trump’s Exit from the War with Iran – Paul Craig Roberts

Israeli Security Minister Ben-Gvir declared that Israel ‘Will Not Allow’ Trump to Make a Peace Deal With Iran, because the Zionist agenda “is an endless and wide regional war” to achieve Greater Israel. Ben-Gvir was good to his word. He escalated Israel’s violation of the US-Iranian ceasefire by bombing Lebanese civilians and, thereby, forced Iran to pull out of the talks. Iran’s state media reported:

“Given the continuation of the Zionist regime’s crimes in Lebanon, and considering that Lebanon was among the preconditions of the ceasefire, which has now been violated on all fronts … the Iranian negotiating team is suspending talks.” Trump, being the Israeli puppet that he is, actually provided the weapons Israel used to violate the agreement, thereby forcing Iran out of the ceasefire. Instead of being angry with Netanyahu, Trump said he is happy the peace talks are over. Washington, Trump says, will wait out the Iranians. Trump overlooks the possibility that the Iranians will finish off US presence in the Middle East.

Clearly, Israel is running America’s policy in the Middle East while they are integrating the US military into Israel’s and eliminating Israeli critics in the US Congress. There are no Israeli critics in the Trump regime. Only total subservience to Israel.

Read more …

And PCR has found a kindred spirit:

“We now know why Israel had Trump remove Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie from Congress.”

• The Israelization of the United States Military Is Proceeding (Philip Giraldi)

Congress is considering passing a bill that will give Americans serving in the Israeli army US government provided full benefits like education, jobs and medical care just as if they had been serving in the United States military. Indeed, the legislation currently working its way through Congress would, for the first time in American history, treat service in a foreign army both legally and in practice as equivalent to service in the US armed forces — but only where that foreign army is Israeli. House Resolution 8445, sponsored by Republican Congressmen Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania and Max Miller of Ohio, would amend existing legislation so that Americans who enlist in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) are treated “in the same manner as service in the uniformed services” of the US.

Not surprisingly, many of the “Americans” involved are also dual national Israeli citizens. If the changes come into effect the result will be to considerably and uniquely narrow the gap between Israel and the US in terms of rights and benefits but with benefits going only in one direction, i.e. to serve Israeli interests and with the US taxpayer paying the bill!“In addition to that, the most recent US government gift to Israel sponsored by the United States House of Representatives, a misnomer as the House is actually the Knesset West, is the national Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2027 released on May 13th. Section 224 of the House version of the Act entitled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative” integrates “US-Israeli military research and development, co-production of weapons systems, licensing agreements, AI, directed energy, data integration, and missile defense.”

It creates the framework for “bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of US-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation.” The result is to completely connect the functionality of the US military with that of the Israeli military. The implementation of the agreement would arguably do more to irreversibly link the US military to the Israeli military than the $200 billion in military assistance Israel has received from the United States since its founding in 1948. “Critics note how Section 224 would combine the US and Israeli defense sectors in many areas particularly vital to the battlefields of the future, including autonomous systems and cyberwarfare.

It would also greatly increase Israeli influence over the US beyond what it already has through the Israel Lobby and its dominance of the mainstream media. It would enable Israel to expand or start new co-production facilities like it already has in a number of states, giving the Israeli government additional leverage through providing jobs in the US, thereby securing friends in Congress whose districts are affected. The result could well be a White House backed by Congress that is even more prone to go to war based on the Eretz “Greater” Israel fantasies of people like Netanyahu and his insane Security Chief Itamar Ben-Gvir.

“A persistently pro-Zionist Congress has accomplished this shift in the relationship quietly, almost secretly. Though it has been done clearly channeling through the White House and Netanyahu’s leadership, it has been obtained without the knowledge and consent of the American people to whom the US government is allegedly responsible. And, of course, all the integration expenses will be borne by the US taxpayer. Interestingly, of course, it should also be noted that the integration of the US military with that of Israel comes at a time when the American public is expressing unprecedented levels of distrust in and dislike of the Israeli government. That is perhaps no coincidence as Netanyahu seeks to create unbreakable legal and administrative ties between the two countries though with little in the way of obligations on the part of Israel.”

We now know why Israel had Trump remove Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie from Congress. Their opposition would have made the American public aware of the takeover of America by Israel.

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“Climate goals”.

• Letitia James Sues Trump Admin Over $1 Billion Deal To Stop Offshore Wind (JTN)

New York Attorney General Letitia James is leading a coalition of blue states in a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its $1 billion deal to end an offshore wind project. The Interior Department announced in March that it would pay nearly $1 billion to the French energy-and-petroleum company TotalEnergies to shift its investments in offshore wind to oil and gas infrastructure. Additionally, the company will invest in the development of offshore oil and shale gas production.


In exchange for the investments, the federal government agreed to terminate offshore wind leases off the coasts of North Carolina and New York and reimburse the company for the loss of those leases, which are worth approximately $928.3 million. James’ lawsuit argues that the deal will harm the plaintiff states’ economies, their energy grids and the states’ climate goals, the Associated Press reported. The complaint was filed in District Court for the District of Columbia and names Trump administration officials, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

The lawsuit asks the federal judge to vacate the lease cancellation and settlement agreement with TotalEnergies’ subsidiary, Attentive Energy. State attorneys general from Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

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“..Biden famously declared at the time that her husband was brilliant in the debate, and denied he was showing signs of mental decline.”

• A “View from the East Wing”: Jill Biden’s Fantasy Book Tour (Turley)

Jill Biden’s book is not even out yet — and she’s already trying to get it displayed on both the fiction and the non-fiction shelves. From her husband’s mental decline to the pardoning of her son, the former first lady has moved from the historical to the fanciful. Thomas Jefferson once wrote that “honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom” — but if her promotional interviews are any measure, that chapter appears to be entirely missing from “View from the East Wing: A Memoir.” Last week Biden faced a torrent of criticism, including from Democrats like her former spokesperson, over her claim to CBS News that she thought her husband’s debate meltdown meant he might have been suffering a stroke.


The interviewer didn’t mention the fact that Biden famously declared at the time that her husband was brilliant in the debate, and denied he was showing signs of mental decline. Now, Jill Biden is rewriting the history of one of the most infamous lies Joe Biden ever spun. While running for office, Biden and his staff repeatedly insisted that he would never pardon son Hunter Biden under any circumstances. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre became indignant and mocked reporters who continued to ask about a pardon after the then-president had repeatedly promised not to do so. Now Jill is saying the pardon was the obvious and right thing to do.

After all, she insisted, “Then the Justice Department changed. And I think that the process was not fair to Hunter.” “When Trump was elected,” she added, “we knew that he would target Hunter.” Just one problem: It was her husband’s Justice Department, and two different panels of jurors, who convicted Hunter. Indeed, even juries in the Bidens’ home state of Delaware and the heavily Democratic state of California declared him guilty. The only pending matter was his sentencing before the same judges that President Biden assured us would be allowed to resolve the cases. Indeed, even after those convictions, the Biden administration declared that the president would not break his promise and pardon his son.

Presidents have long waited until the final days of their terms to grant controversial or self-serving pardons — like Bill Clinton’s pardon of his own brother. However, none but Joe Biden had made the denial of such a pardon an issue in his presidential campaign, and none had repeatedly denied any possibility of it. Yet Jill Biden’s new claim shows the Bidens view the public as chumps and dupes who will blindly accept anything that the establishment gives them. “I truly supported it,” she now insists, because “we just could not let our son go to jail on a charge that no one would go, I mean, no one has ever gone to jail for.”That is also demonstrably untrue.

Read more …

The family wants/needs money.

• So, That’s Why Jill Biden’s Book Is Coming Out Now (Matt Vespa)

Former First Lady Jill Biden is creating issues for Democrats with her book about her time in the White House. No one wants to hear it, as the couple has yet to accept responsibility for their part in their party’s crushing defeat by Donald Trump in 2024. The most loyal Biden allies at the White House aren’t happy with this work; some even call it a web of lies.


Like the Biden White House, this book tour hasn’t shed much light on the inner workings of this failed presidency. It’s still a guarded effort, with Jill avoiding tough issues like her husband’s declining health, which was obvious toward the end of his disastrous run at 1600. She isn’t open about what happened on debate night or her husband’s mental decline, though there’s an interesting detail about how Kamala Harris influenced Joe’s decision on an endorsement when he dropped out. So, why did she write this book?

First, it’s tradition—a book of some sort was going to happen. But former MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin noted the most obvious reason: they need money. Hunter Biden isn’t doing his government access stuff anymore after that got exposed, so this family, which has numerous members and hordes of grandchildren, needs to keep raking in the dough: And when it comes time to plug the book, Jill really wasn’t enthusiastic about it, so they know this thing is a grenade.

Read more …

Feels like East Germany 1955.

• Mamdani Announces Possible Transfer of Housing to Tenants (Turley)

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised in his inaugural address to introduce New Yorkers to “the warmth of collectivism.” It now appears landlords will likely to be the first to feel the heat. This week, Mamdani revealed an effort to transfer properties to tenants and non-profit groups. Mamdani announced that “through our new citywide campaign, Fix the City, we will focus on the worst landlords in New York City.” For landlords, it has been clear that the fix was in for some time. Mamdani faced criticism for his appointment of Cea Weaver as the new director of the Office to Protect Tenants.


She previously called for efforts to “impoverish the white middle-class” and called homeownership “racist” while demanding the seizure of private property. Videos of Weaver echoed thread-worn socialist mantras that are the signature of the Mamdani Administration. “I think the reality is, that for centuries we’ve really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good,” she said. “And transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently and it will mean that families — especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well — are going to have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have.”

Weaver famously tweeted out her beliefs about private property, which are apparently widely shared in the Mamdani administration: “Private property, including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of White supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.” Other socialists on the national level have pursued the same policies to target landlords. In pushing national legislation, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) joined fellow Democrats in calling for the passage of the HELP Act to “crack down” on some evictions and bar the use of evictions on credit reports. Pressley has declared that “evictions are an act of policy violence.” Mamdani insists that he will be targeting “the worst landlords in New York City.”

Yet, who constitutes the “worst landlords” could prove a relative notion to the ardent socialist. Mamdani proposes to transfer their properties to “responsible stewards,” including tenants and nonprofits. In his 112-page report, Mamdani is again pushing to unleash his “Block by Block agenda for expanded rent controls, promising not to exempt landlords from Rent Guidelines Board limits. He and his allies have previously heralded Cuba and South Africa as models for policy changes. Mamdani faces a considerable challenge in fulfilling his pledge to build 200,000 new affordable homes, with an additional 200,000 stabilized units over the next decade. There is reportedly only a 1.4 percent rental vacancy rate, with 100,000 New Yorkers sleeping in shelters each night.

Rent controls have generally been a disaster, reducing landlords’ ability to make improvements to their properties. They cannot recoup those investments due to rental limits as costs, particularly insurance, skyrocket. The result is a type of planned failure. As landlords postpone improvements, they are often cited by the city in housing hearings. When those findings and fines increase, the landlords risk being declared “negligent” and subject to a transfer due to unpaid citations. There is no argument that the worst landlords warrant the loss of their properties. But transferring such properties to tenants or non-profit groups is a new and costly form of subsidy.

Ordinarily, delinquent properties can be sold on the free market to pay off outstanding debts. That allows neglected properties to be put to the most profitable use, which in turn generates more taxes and jobs for the city. If these properties go to non-profits or tenants, that can further reduce the city’s tax revenues. More importantly, neither tenants nor nonprofit organizations have a proven track record of maintaining properties without substantial city subsidies. It is a mirage created by activists, hiding the true cost to taxpayers. Mamdani continues to pursue policies that will suppress, not surge, new construction. His administration is requiring construction companies to pay a minimum of $40 per hour for city-funded affordable housing, which will further discourage investors.

He announced a $22 billion subsidy for housing costs, with 25 percent going to the New York City Housing Authority. These increased costs will likely grow as fixed budgetary items for the city. Although it is economically dubious, it is politically dynamite. Much of Mamdani’s support comes from young people who have no memory of or experience with the failures of socialist policies in the twentieth century. He simply promises things like free buses or city-run grocery stores as if they can be supported by free money without addressing their true costs.

His grocery stores show the same economic sleight of hand. The city is planning to spend $30 million to create the first store — four times what such stores normally cost. On top of that cost, it was discovered that the city had already appropriated $25 million for the improvement of the site. That is $55 million for a site that will not go on the market for the highest bidders, but rather be operated by the city at a loss.

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https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2061862911568421263?s=20 https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2061815682786808185?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle May 27 2026

May 272026
 
 May 27, 2026  Posted by at 9:58 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  27 Responses »


Andy Warhol Mick Jagger 1975


• Iranian Enriched Uranium Stockpile To Be ‘Destroyed’ – Trump (RT)
• It’s a Time for Choosing II: Do You Trust Trump With Iran — or Not (Pinsker)
• Ted Cruz Is Right to Demand Guardrails on DOJ’s Weaponization Fund (Manney)
• Dan Goldman Fights to Keep the Rage — and His Career — Alive (Turley)
• Here’s Why Many Western Leaders’ Approval Ratings Are Tanking (Amar)
• Mamdani Plans to Begin Seizing and Redistributing Private Property (Bolt)
• Mamdani Did the Right Thing on Crime (Stephen Green)
• Paxton Crushes Cornyn In Stunning Texas Senate Upset (ZH)
• Key Biden DOJ Official Raised Red Flags About FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid (JTN)
• Joe Biden Sues DOJ To Stop Release Of Audio Recordings (JTN)
• Pam Bondi Battlies Thyroid Cancer, Trump Gives Her Advisory Role on AI (CTH)
• Heads Exploded When Vox Published This Global Warming Report (Stephen Green)

 


 

https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2059443660631216143?s=20 https://twitter.com/GOP_is_Gutless/status/2058987122518905259?s=20 https://twitter.com/ivan_8848/status/2059295314507350291?s=20 https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/2059344808716509554?s=20

 


 


For the first time in what seems to be a long time, the focus on Iran wanes a bit among news- and opinion makers. They will be back.

• Iranian Enriched Uranium Stockpile To Be ‘Destroyed’ – Trump (RT)

US President Donald Trump has outlined his preferred options for disposing of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile as negotiators meet for high-stakes talks in Qatar. The US has demanded that Iran completely dismantle its nuclear program, while Tehran insists that uranium enrichment is its sovereign right. Iranian officials have denied seeking to develop nuclear weapons. “The Enriched Uranium (Nuclear Dust!) will either be immediately turned over to the United States to be brought home and destroyed or, preferably, in conjunction and coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran, destroyed in place or at another acceptable location, with the Atomic Energy Commission, or its equivalent, witnessing this process and event,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday evening.


On Sunday, CBS News, citing a senior US official, reported that Iran had agreed “in principle” to dispose of its enriched uranium. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei, however, said on Monday that the negotiations were focused on ending the armed conflict with the US. “At this stage, we are not discussing nuclear issues,” he said. The sides are expected to discuss reopening the Strait of Hormuz and potentially unfreezing Iranian assets. According to media reports, the two sides are close to extending the truce announced on April 8 by another 60 days.

Axios and Al Arabiya reported that the draft agreement to be discussed in Doha includes a commitment to negotiate the fate of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile over a 60-day period. Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on Friday that Iran would “not compromise on its rights” as a sovereign nation. Iranian officials said ahead of the talks that the US needed to rebuild trust after launching airstrikes on Iran in late February, shortly after a round of Omani-mediated negotiations.

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We’re losing patience with war. That does not appear to be the smartest move.

• It’s a Time for Choosing II: Do You Trust Trump With Iran — or Not (Pinsker)

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) proudly supports term limits for Supreme Court justices. “The public’s trust in the Supreme Court has plummeted,” he announced in a press release. “Extreme conservatives on the Court have stripped away Americans’ fundamental rights. Term limits and a binding code of ethics will rebalance the Court and rebuild confidence in our institutions.” Not just Supreme Court justices: In 2017, Khanna also introduced legislation to limit congressional terms to 12 years. “Enacting term limits will give more voices the opportunity to serve in Congress and bring fresh ideas and new energy to Capitol Hill,” he said. “Being a member of Congress needn’t be a lifetime gig, but instead more people should have the chance to work in public service.”


Oh, by the way, in 2026, Khanna will be running for reelection in Congress yet again — the ninth time(!) he’s run since 2004. (His reelection campaign will be exceptionally well funded, too: Out of all the congressmen in D.C., so far he’s raised the fourth most money.) And on his official website, the very first priority that Khanna listed is: “Banning PAC and lobbyist money.” So yeah, clearly not all politicians deserve to be trusted! In fact, a cynic might argue that no politician should be trusted — that the nature of this profession is incompatible with trust. And maybe that’s fair: Eventually, every politician will break your heart. (At least, it sure seems that way.)

But I’m not a cynic. I’m a stone cold, unrepentant, dyed-in-the-wool realist. Instead of arguing with reality, I prefer to work within it. And the reality is, if you adopt the philosophy of “Don’t trust anyone,” the cost is too high: You throw out the baby with the bath water. Yes, you avoid being stabbed in the back, but you lose a lot of good stuff, too. So trust your spouse. Trust your kids. Trust your friends and family. Trust your faith. Trust your country. Life is lonely and miserable if you can’t trust anyone! Just don’t trust blindly — and reserve your trust for the people who’ve proven they deserve it.

Which brings us to President Donald Trump and this on-again, off-again, still-being-negotiated conclusion to the war in Iran. We’ve gone from demanding unconditional surrender to shuffling U.S. diplomats in and out of Pakistan, patiently waiting for the Iranians to capitulate. Is Trump’s strategy wise? Or would it be smarter to amp up the attacks? Only time will tell. But in the short term, it’s created a colossal PR headache for the White House, because the status quo is a political loser: Nobody’s happy with it!

The hawks hate the optics of the Iranian mullahs sitting in the perceptual driver’s seat — thumbing their nose at Uncle Sam, spurning peace deals, and mocking American might. (There’s also a growing fear that the president will cut bait and bail, deciding the juice ain’t worth the squeeze.) But President Trump is unconcerned with the hawks, because they’re in the minority. They might whine and moan, but at least they’re invested in an American victory. That, at a minimum, puts them on Trump’s side.

Not so with the doves. Statistically, they’re the much bigger group. They don’t want America to succeed, because victory validates the decision to attack: It’ll mean Trump was right and they were wrong. So, until victory is 100% undeniable, they’re going to wage a PR war to position it as a horrible, terrible, expensive catastrophe. (With the help of the mainstream media, of course.) Unfortunately, the current status quo is the perfect environment for such a PR campaign to prosper.

For some doves, their motives are purely partisan: Politics is a zero-sum game, and when Trump wins, they lose. (And besides, if Trump is “literally Hitler,” then by definition, everything he does is evil anyway. No point being on Hitler’s side.) Sadly, that’s most of today’s Democrats. Even if we discovered an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs being actively constructed in Tehran — alongside ballistic missiles capable of reaching American soil — the Dems still wouldn’t have supported the Iran War, because their constituents hate Donald Trump more than they hate anything else on this planet. Including nuclear annihilation and the “Death to America” mullahs.

There’s a slightly different calculus at work within the anti-war segments of the GOP. One splinter group hates those war-obsessed “neocons” (especially the ones with Jewish-sounding names) and wants them discredited ASAP. Others hate Israel more than any other country on the planet — including Iran — and simply won’t support a U.S. war when Israel is an ally. nFortunately, the Groyper-aligned right — with self-appointed spokesmen like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Thomas Massie, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes — represent a teeny-tiny sliver of the overall GOP. They’re the modern version of trans kids: We hear about ‘em all the time, but their actual numbers are minuscule.

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There’s never been anything like it. But it’s needed. Ask Liz Cheney. Who should be in jail for it.

• Ted Cruz Is Right to Demand Guardrails on DOJ’s Weaponization Fund (Manney)

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has the right instinct on the Department of Justice’s new $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund. The idea behind the fund deserves a fair hearing; Americans who were targeted by abusive federal power should have some path toward relief, especially after years of lectures from the same political class pretending government weaponization only exists when Democrats campaign on it. Still, a good idea turns rotten fast once Washington gets control of the checkbook.


President Donald Trump’s administration created the fund as part of a settlement connected to Trump’s lawsuit over the leak of his tax records. The agreement gives Trump and his family a formal apology but no monetary payout. The fund would compensate Americans claiming abuse, with a five-member commission expected to handle claims. On paper, relief for real victims sounds defensible. In practice, however, loose language and weak oversight make almost any large federal fund look like an invitation to mischief.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the fund before senators and argued the process would help people hurt by politicized investigations or prosecutions. Blanche also didn’t rule out potential claims from people tied to Jan. 6 cases, including applicants who may argue the government unfairly treated them. Cruz and other Republicans had reason to press him hard: a program built to correct abuse can’t become a fog bank where eligibility rules appear after the money starts moving.

Cruz described the closed-door Republican meeting with Blanche as close to a revolt, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) acknowledged members had real questions about how the fund would work. From CBS News. “Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said a two-hour meeting Thursday with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche about the Justice Department’s new “anti-weaponization fund” was “one of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate.” “There were fireworks at an epic level,” Cruz said Friday on his podcast. “Fiery does not begin to cut it.”

Blanche was dispatched to the Capitol to try and convince skeptical Republican lawmakers to drop their opposition to the nearly $1.8 billion fund to pay people who claim they were politically persecuted. The announcement of the fund — part of a settlement to resolve President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS — came as senators prepared to vote on a reconciliation package to fund border security and immigration enforcement through the end of Mr. Trump’s term. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also questioned the need for the fund, while Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) separately demanded answers from DOJ about the money, eligibility, oversight, and taxpayer protection.

None of those concerns undermine the fight against weaponized government; they strengthen it by forcing the administration to build a process the public and Congress understand. The White House and DOJ should welcome strict guardrails instead of treating them like betrayal. Setting a strong and legal foundation now becomes critical.

Define who qualifies
Require sworn documentation
Bar payouts for violent conduct
Publish regular reports without exposing private victims
Create an appeals process
Keep commissioners independent from campaign politics
Protect whistleblowers
Build audit trails before the first dollar leaves Treasury.

A fund created to remedy political abuse should never rely on political discretion as its operating system. As if on cue, Democrats already call the fund corrupt, and their outrage has a familiar theatrical quality. From the Independent. Democrats have also sharply condemned the proposal. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., wrote in a letter to Blanche on Wednesday that “the notion of the federal government doling out compensation to rioters” is “absurd and offensive.”

On Thursday, Reps. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., introduced bipartisan legislation that would prohibit federal funds from being used for the program. Many of them showed far less curiosity when federal power ran against conservatives, pro-life activists, parents at school board meetings, Trump associates, and others who believed the system hand-picked sides. Their hypocrisy doesn’t erase the need for discipline. A Republican administration shouldn’t answer double standards by creating a new system critics can attack fairly as sloppy, secretive, or self-serving.

[..] Cruz’s warning gives the administration a chance to fix the weak spots before enemies define the entire effort. Trump ran against government weaponization for good reason: millions of Americans believe federal agencies lost neutrality and punished disfavored targets. A fund for victims serves justice only if it avoids favoritism, vague standards, and backroom handling. Cruz isn’t trying to kill the mission; he’s trying to keep it from turning swampy before the ink dries.

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“He has made himself known to the establishment as someone willing to enthusiastically do those things that repel others..”

• Dan Goldman Fights to Keep the Rage — and His Career — Alive (Turley)

Rep. Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) is fast becoming the Marie Antoinette of New York politics. As Democratic socialists rage against the privileged elite and promise sweeping welfare programs, Goldman is doubling down on promises of more impeachments and investigations. The ultimate establishment candidate is floundering. He is reportedly over 20 points behind his Mamdini-endorsed opponent, housing advocate and former Comptroller Brad Lander. It appears that the “let-them-eat impeachments” is not resonating with his constituents.


While Goldman is trying to fight off the challenge from the left with some pocket-book pitches, he is sticking to the narrative that got him elected a few years ago. In an “age of rage,” Goldman has excelled, pushing unstepped on, unadulterated rage. Since his entry into politics, he has run on what was viewed as the sure winner in New York politics: obsessive, unending attacks on Trump. Goldman made sure that no one was more enraged at all things Trump, all the time. In this campaign, Goldman has returned to the same theme of promising new investigations and impeachments.

Goldman claimed recently on MSNOW that he will lead any impeachment of Trump. (“Jamie Raskin and I will be leading investigations into Trump’s corruption and all cabinet officials”). Even as his polls showed him trailing Lander, he was promising this week that he had yet another basis to impeach Trump over his $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” a settlement fund that is expected to go to people investigated and prosecuted over the Jan. 6th riot. Some of us have criticized the creation of the fund as irregular and lacking congressional consultation. That is not to say that Trump is not right about the violation over the leaking of his taxes or the abuses that occurred after January 6th.

In an interview with CBS News, Justice Department official Michael Sherwin declared that they wanted to send a message with the harsh treatment of defendants “to ensure that there was shock and awe.” The result was excessive measures against some who were simply present at the protest or did not engage in any violence. Despite my objections to how the fund was created, it is neither illegal nor impeachable in my view. These settlement funds have long been left to the discretion of the Justice Department and past Administrations have made generous settlements with politically aligned groups. However, the race in the 10th District may answer a more important question than another impeachment frenzy in Congress.

The question is whether Goldman and other candidates can secure another term on rage alone. We will soon know whether Goldman’s “let them eat impeachments” pitch can override the bread-and-butter policies of Lander or Mamdani. It is not that anger has lost its cache, but the subject has changed as socialism sweeps over the Democratic Party, particularly in New York. In this “eat-the-rich” environment, Goldman is hardly a natural fit in modern Democratic politics. He is no “one percenter,” mind you. He is the guy the one percenter looks on as privileged and entitled. As emphasized by Lander in his campaign, Goldman inherited his vast wealth as heir to the Levi Strauss family and is worth more than $200 million.

He reportedly has at least three luxury homes in Atlantic Beach on Long Island, Manhattan, and Water Mill in the Hamptons. He seems to be the perfect example of the super-wealthy denounced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she insisted that “you just can’t earn” a billion dollars. In Goldman’s case, he was born into such wealth. Goldman is not the antagonist, but the embodiment, of the socialist scourge. To be fair to Goldman, he hasn’t focused on being an average Joe with shared life experiences. He has made himself known to the establishment as someone willing to enthusiastically do those things that repel others.

Read more …

“The difference between ideology and citizens’ lived experience is becoming explosive ..”

By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory

• Here’s Why Many Western Leaders’ Approval Ratings Are Tanking (Amar)

Every political and social order comes in two flavors: What its small elite and the minority exploiting it to the full want everyone to believe, and the reality that most of its members actually live in. The two never match, but this mismatch need not be a big problem. However, if the difference becomes too great and too obvious for too long, no order can continue unchanged.None of the above is news. Keen observers have long understood that things get shaky when a majority loses their belief in – or at least passive acceptance of – the prevalent ideology (in the original meaning of the term, namely, as the elite’s imaginative story about reality, keeping the non-elites compliant).


In such a situation, things will change, but it is hard to predict how, exactly. An acute ideology-reality mismatch can lead to rebellion and, if the latter succeeds, revolution. Yet it can also make the elites ramp up their indoctrination or become more punitive, adding more direct compulsion to keep those below in line. There is always also the option of going to war with enemies abroad – real or, much more likely, invented – to distract from disunity at home. Finally, all of the above can happen in a messy sequence, or even at the same time.

Despite differences and tensions, the West does constitute some form of political and social order. In its elites’ ideology, as spread by their compliant mainstream media, it is a fairy-tale realm of political and economic freedom, combining representative democracy with free markets, the rule of law, individualism, and superior “values” to make the best of all possible worlds. In reality, obviously, it’s a dark zone of capitalist oligarchy with increasingly authoritarian tendencies. Not the Hobbits’ cozy Shire; rather Sauron’s domain under construction.

Markets, for one thing, are not “free,” but routinely and crassly gamed by insiders. Currently for instance, both the beginning of the criminal Israeli-US war against Iran and deliberately timed, repeated rumors about peace have facilitated manipulative trades worth billions of dollars. The September 11, 2001 attacks can be considered the evil Big Bang of our current iteration of mass manipulation, authoritarian power grabs in the name of “emergency” response, permanent warfare, and lying so intense it is sometimes hard to remember there is a truth. As the rebellious US ex-MAGA conservative Tucker Carlson has just reminded us, 9/11 was also accompanied – and preceded – by trading, for which the description “highly suspicious” is an understatement.

Democratic political representation and freedom of thought and speech are, at best, if not outright deceptions, then myths. That is, a messy hodgepodge of scraps of reality and large doses of invention. The rare scraps of reality are now diminishing ever further. Concerning freedom, Britain under the widely hated Starmer regime, for instance, is a Zionist police state. It goes further than smearing and suppressing any action on behalf of the victims of Israel’s crimes, including genocide, as ”antisemitism”; it also condemns any statements of public solidarity with the victims. There is no rule of law worthy of the name: perfectly legitimate speech is prohibited as “terrorist,” the police harass political dissidents as well as the courts and their procedures.

These themselves are unreliable (ask Julian Assange), and are brazenly bent out of shape to produce unfair trials and punitive sentences. Regarding representation, take Germany, for instance: It now has a breathtakingly, historically unpopular government that is only even in place because the last election saw widespread and statistically bizarre miscounts which together acted – very un-randomly – to conveniently eliminate a whole new-left party (the BSW), and thus its voters, from parliament.

The German new right (AfD) and its voters, meanwhile, are openly threatened with unconstitutional punishment if they dare succeed too much: vote too much AfD and your kid’s high school diploma will be treated like dirt. Yes, that crude; that really is the current level of shamelessness among Germany’s self-radicalizing Centrists.

Even the most conformist inhabitants of the West, moreover, cannot close their eyes anymore to the empirical fact that conspiracies are all too real and exert great, heinous influence by vicious means. You cannot have both your masses soundly believing in the myth of fair popular representation and an Epstein scandal; it is proof of the massive over-representation of a very particular set of interests, and even foreign states, through networks of subversion and blackmail. The system may survive at first, but its base will be undermined by mass frustration and cynicism.

Today, the states of the West, in short, has much in common, and most of it is terrible. That is why we are observing one big trend across it now: In the words of the Wall Street Journal – not usually known for subversive dissidence – “Europeans are fed up and taking it out on their leaders.” Polls show massive discontent across NATO-EU Europe. And not only polls but real elections, too: Britain’s Starmer regime has just received a horrific drubbing in local elections that may well mark the impending end of the UK’s dysfunctional and unfair two-party system.

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All your base are belong to us.

• Mamdani Plans to Begin Seizing and Redistributing Private Property (Bolt)

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani kicked off his plan to “fix” the city’s affordability crisis with his official housing policy agenda, titled “Block by Block,” under which one of the first priorities is to allow the government to seize property from owners deemed “negligent” and redistribute it to so-called “responsible stewards,” a category that includes anyone from land trusts, nonprofits, or even tenants themselves.


“Through our new citywide campaign, Fix the City, we will focus on the worst landlords in New York City,” Mamdani announced. “When necessary, we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers. And for buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we will work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards. Stewards that include community land trusts, non-profits, or even the tenants themselves.”

In other words, despite Mamdani’s claims that this time his own version of socialism will be different, it appears to be heading down the same familiar path, one that students of history expected upon Mamdani’s victory. Government redistribution of private property, however, is not the only pillar of Mamdani’s “Block by Block” agenda. He has also vowed to fast-track the construction of low-income and government-subsidized housing, while promising to impose price controls on those units that would limit rent to just a quarter of a tenant’s income.

Mamdani ended his “Block by Block” agenda announcement with a unifying, though ironic, speech, praising the city for what it is known for: its iconic skyscrapers, bridges, and museums. Yet those achievements were made possible not because of politicians like Mamdani, but in spite of them, driven largely by private industry and capitalists. Today, Mamdani’s own agenda still depends on the very economic forces he blasts daily, relying on private wealth to help fund his socialist policy vision.

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“.. and the Left’s Reaction Is Priceless ..”

• Mamdani Did the Right Thing on Crime (Stephen Green)

What do you call it when a mayor does the right thing concerning policing, resulting in tangible results for his city’s most vulnerable? Well, this is New York City, and the mayor is an avowed socialist, so you have to call it “mounting frustration” from so-called reform advocates and the people who voted for him. And you people wonder why I drink. Anyway, there’s a fascinating — and perhaps unintentionally hilarious — report by Elizabeth Kim in today’s Gothamist describing a “surge of police officers into neighborhoods of color with high crime,” and the resulting hissy fit thrown by the city’s professional lefties.


There’s even been a “spike in subway arrests and summonses,” among other dreaded “broken windows”-style policing leading to “Courts so backlogged that officials had to temporarily reopen an emergency overnight shift.” Harry Anderson, call your office. Kim also mentioned that “at least three people… died in NYPD custody after being arrested for low-level offenses,” but since she didn’t go into any details, I’m forced to assume that these were George Floyd-type incidents where drug abusers expired due to drug abuse, not police action.

After the huge St.-George-Floyd/BLM/COVID crime spike, New Yorkers enjoyed an almost unparalleled reduction in crime — particularly murder, shootings, robberies, and so-called “lifestyle” offenses like turnstile jumping. And the last thing Mamdani supporters can tolerate is more of the Giuliani-era broken-windows policing that helped create it. That Gothamist report lamented the “mounting frustration among some criminal justice reform advocates and people who voted for Mamdani could come to a head this summer as NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch plans to ‘flood the zone’ this summer with up to 3,800 officers in high-crime areas, including public housing complexes and subway stations.”

“Tisch has repeatedly said the city is not using broken windows policing,” according to Kim, but those “flood the zone” tactics say otherwise. Likewise, Mamdani spokesman Sam Raskin “disputed the notion that Mamdani campaigned on a promise to reduce policing of low-level offenses,” according to the paper. And all I can say is: Good for him then. I suspect that New Yorkers will suffer enough under the Mamdani administration without having to deal with a return to Bill de Blasio-era policing methods. Or it could be, as the Gothamist hinted, that Mamdani is flooding the zone due to “the global spotlight for the World Cup,” coming in June.

In the meantime, however, enjoy not getting shot at. This might be my favorite line from the entire Gothamist report: “Criminal justice advocates like [Justice Committee deputy director Yul-san] Liem argue that crackdowns on low-level offenses lead to a revolving door of arrests by failing to address the root causes like mental illness, homelessness and substance abuse.” Don’t you worry, gentle reader, the Justice Committee has a plan to address those root causes that involves paying themselves lots of other people’s money to help the mentally ill and/or drug addicted to continue pooping in the streets.

Seriously, take a look at the group’s Staff page and tell me which one of these preferred-pronouns social champions has ever actually gotten anything done in the real world. Liem, for their part, is listed as a “she/her they/them” who is “making art as part of New York City’s social and racial justice movements.” So with apologies to Stanley Kubrick, “You can’t produce results here, gentlemen — this is the public sector!”

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All you need to do is take a picture with Trump.

• Paxton Crushes Cornyn In Stunning Texas Senate Upset (ZH)

In a brutal repudiation of the GOP old guard, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton crushed four-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican Senate runoff Tuesday night, winning by a commanding margin of roughly 63% to 37%. The victory marks one of the biggest primary upsets in modern Texas political history. Cornyn, a powerful Senate insider and former Majority Whip, was unceremoniously dumped by his own party’s voters after more than two decades in Washington. Paxton, the hard-charging conservative known for his fierce battles with the Biden administration and loyalty to Donald Trump, declared victory and wasted no time thanking the base.


“Texas has spoken loud and clear,” Paxton said in his victory speech. “We’re done with business as usual.” The race turned decisively after Trump endorsed Paxton just days before early voting ended. That seal of approval from the former president mobilized the MAGA base and proved once again that Trump remains the undisputed kingmaker in Republican primaries. Cornyn led the initial March 3 primary with about 42% of the vote, but failed to clear 50%, forcing a runoff against Paxton, who took 41%. The contest quickly turned into a bloodbath, with both sides dumping tens of millions into attack ads.

Paxton hammered Cornyn as out-of-touch with Texas values and too cozy with the Washington establishment. Cornyn fired back, portraying Paxton as ethically compromised and a liability heading into the general election. But in the end, Texas Republicans chose the fighter over the dealmaker. The Paxton-Cornyn showdown wasn’t the only fireworks in Texas Tuesday night. In the race to replace Paxton as Attorney General, conservative state Sen. Mayes Middleton defeated U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, setting up a strong favorite to hold the powerful post in November.

Democrats also saw some action, with state Rep. James Talarico emerging as their Senate nominee. He’ll now face the daunting task of trying to flip deep-red Texas in November against the polarizing Paxton. Paxton’s win is the latest sign that the Republican Party continues its sharp rightward shift. Traditional, institutional conservatives like Cornyn are increasingly being shown the door in favor of Trump-aligned warriors willing to fight the culture wars and challenge the status quo.

For national Republicans, the result is a double-edged sword. While the seat remains heavily favored to stay red in November, Paxton’s baggage and combative style could force the party to spend serious cash defending what should have been a safe hold. Democrats are already licking their chops, viewing Paxton as far more beatable than the polished Cornyn. But in a state that hasn’t elected a statewide Democrat in nearly 30 years, their path to victory remains steep.

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Who will Blanche nail for this?

• Key Biden DOJ Official Raised Red Flags About FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid (JTN)

A recently disclosed email shows that top Garland associates raised the issue of declassification before the morning raid. Although the memo requested that lawyers check whether Trump had the authority to declassify documents, Garland personally approved the August 2022 raid, which included searching Melania Trump’s underwear drawers. top Biden Justice Department official and key ally of then-Attorney General Merrick Garland raised legal “concerns” about the FBI’s raid on Mar-Lago, warning that then-former President Donald Trump may have actually declassified the records seized by agents, a newly-unearthed email obtained by Just the News shows.


Patty Stemler, a decades-long DOJ veteran who was reportedly picked by Garland in 2022 to help consult on Trump-related cases, sent an email just two days after the bureau’s Aug. 8, 2022 raid of Trump’s Florida resort home, where Stemler said she had “a few concerns.” Stemler sent the email to Sophia Brill, a future Biden White House lawyer and then an attorney inside DOJ’s National Security Division, which played a central role in this anti-Trump inquiry.The memo was recently discovered by the Justice Department as part of its investigation into the weaponization of federal law enforcement.

“I didn’t know about this search in advance, but I have been worrying about it ever since and worrying more now,” Stemler wrote to Brill on Aug. 10, 2022. “Doesn’t Trump maintain that he had the authority to declassify documents while he was still President? “Has anyone in NSD or OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] looked at that? I know we have procedures for declassifying, but is the President as Commander in Chief bound by those procedures? We also have procedures for granting pardons, but the President doesn’t have to follow them,” she added. Garland has said he “personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant” for the FBI’s unprecedented raid of Mar-a-Lago back in early August 2022.

Her warnings are now the second showing federal law enforcement’s unease with the unprecedented raid on Mar-a-Lago. Previously, FBI Director Kash Patel provided Congress evidence that agents did not believe they had not met the legal standard of probable cause required for the raid but proceeded anyway. Trump’s office told Just the News in mid-August 2022 that the materials with classified markings which the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate had actually been declassified under a “standing order” while he was president that allowed him to take sensitive materials to the White House residence at night to continue his work.

“The very fact that these documents were present at Mar-a-Lago means they couldn’t have been classified,” the former president’s office stated at the time. “As we can all relate to, everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time. American presidents are no different. President Trump, in order to prepare for work the next day, often took documents, including classified documents from the Oval Office to the residence.

Trump’s office added back in August 2022: “He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken into the residence were deemed to be declassified. The power to classify and declassify documents rests solely with the President of the United States. The idea that some paper-pushing bureaucrat, with classification authority delegated BY THE PRESIDENT, needs to approve of declassification is absurd.” Stemler appeared to be concerned with exactly that scenario, her email states. “I don’t know if we intend to charge anyone with respect to the classified documents seized yesterday, but if we disclose that we found X classified documents before we seek an indictment, will that trench on any fair trial rights or violate the ethical obligations of a prosecutor?” she wrote.

“I seem to recall that a prosecutor has some leeway to inform the public that we have arrested the serial killer and seized from his home evidence that ties him to the murders for the purpose of reassuring the public that they are now safe. But aren’t there ethical limits on what a prosecutor can say otherwise? I think this came up when Ashcroft was AG — post 9/11. Liza Collery drafted something to get him out of trouble. Let me see if I can find that.”

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No idea how Joe is doing, but I doubt it’s him who’s suing anyone.

• Joe Biden Sues DOJ To Stop Release Of Audio Recordings (JTN)

Former President Joe Biden sued the Justice Department Tuesday to block the release of recordings and transcripts from interviews he gave to a ghostwriter for his 2017 memoir, which were included in a special counsel probe regarding his handling of classified materials after he served as vice president. The lawsuit comes ahead of the department’s planned June 15 release of the materials to the House Judiciary Committee and the conservative Heritage Foundation, which requested the information under the Freedom of Information Act, per Reuters.


The Heritage Foundation requested the material after they were used in then-Special Counsel Robert Hur’s 2023 investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents, for which Hur ultimately declined to bring charges Hur determined Biden’s memory lapses would make it hard to prove he acted willfully.

The lawsuit, which is related to private conversations the former president had with his biographer in 2016 and 2017, asks the Washington, D.C., court to declare the committee’s request pretextual and invalid, and permanently bar the release of the records. The recordings were part of Biden’s 2017 memoir in which he detailed his decision to pursue the presidency while his eldest son Beau fought brain cancer.

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Prayers for a full recovery.

• Pam Bondi Battlies Thyroid Cancer, Trump Gives Her Advisory Role on AI (CTH)

Apparently, former Attorney General Pam Bondi has been battling thyroid cancer since her departure from Main Justice. Axios is reporting today that President Trump has appointed Bondi to an advisory committee role on artificial intelligence. [Axios via MSM] – “President Trump has appointed former Attorney General Pam Bondi to an advisory committee focused on AI policy, Axios has learned. Driving the news: Bondi, whom Trump ousted as AG last month, will be on the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).


The panel is chaired by former White House AI adviser David Sacks and White House science adviser Michael Kratsios. It also includes more than a dozen tech executives, including Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. What we’re hearing: Bondi will be charged with facilitating coordination between the government and the tech titans on the panel.What they’re saying: “Pam has been an enormously valuable asset to the president’s team, and I’m thrilled for her and for all of us that she’s going to remain involved in confronting some of the most important issues the administration faces,” Vice President JD Vance said in a statement.

Bondi will also serve in a newly established advisory role on national infrastructure. Between the lines: Bondi was diagnosed with thyroid cancer shortly after departing the Justice Department, according to a source. She underwent treatment and is recovering.That is terrible news. Prayers for a full recovery.

Heavenly Father, we come before You with prayer. We pray for the power of Your Holy Spirit to bring healing and restoration to the body of Pam Bondi. We beg Your divine touch to remain upon her, bringing her comfort, strength and healing to both her physical and spiritual life. Lord of mercy, we pray that You will grant Mrs. Bondi a peace in recovery that surpasses understanding. May Your loving presence surround her and those she loves, removing fear, anxiety or doubt.

We ask that You extend a powerful embrace upon her, as we accept that You are with her in every step of this healing process. Father who guides all that is known, it is You alone who controls very cell, tissue, and organ in our body. Through You miraculous healing and wholeness is possible. May Your power flow through her, restoring her health and vitality. In Jesus name we pray. ~ Amen

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And we throw in the graph once more as well. You been had! It’s not terribly warm at all.

Now stop it!

• Heads Exploded When Vox Published This Global Warming Report (Stephen Green)

“Climate change’s worst-case scenario is officially canceled,” young adult infotainment site Vox finally admitted this weekend, causing progressive heads to explode, from the writing staff to its readership. “You’ve probably never heard of the term ‘RCP 8.5’ — the highest-emission scenario used by climate scientists to project the planet’s future,” Vox’s Bryan Walsh reported. “But if you’ve read about climate change, you’ve seen the numbers and nightmarish outcomes it produced: 4°C of warming by 2100, sometimes 5°C, sea level rising multiple feet, parts of the planet too hot for humans.” Scary stuff, right? Wrong.


Even though “those numbers shaped a decade and a half of climate journalism,” Walsh continued, he “didn’t always know — and didn’t always communicate — that the scenario behind the most apocalyptic, attention-getting findings was largely an attempt to imagine how bad things could get, not a true forecast.” Let’s pause here a moment to contemplate what Walsh just admitted.Walsh: Now says he was ignorant about climate change numbers, despite being an expert for Time magazine. Ignorant, except when he “didn’t always communicate” what he did know. Which was that climate change “findings” were imaginary. Scare tactics, if you will. Now Walsh says, “The world that RCP 8.5 assumed will never arrive.” Mea culpa, much?

No, not nearly enough. “RCP 8.5 was as much a climate journalism story as it was a climate science one,” Walsh now says, in the exact same paragraph that ends with “In 2017, the writer David Wallace-Wells published ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ in New York magazine. It was probably the most widely read piece of climate journalism of the last decade, and it was built almost entirely on RCP 8.5 projections.” Translation: The Climate Scare was a narrative first, science second. If that. Of course, it’s been weeks since Longtime Sharp VodkaPundit readers learned what Vox finally admitted, thanks to this item from May 5: It’s Official: The Climate Scam Was a Scam All Along.

From that column: “The new IPCC framework [that ditches 8.5] actually dates back to 2021, but is only now becoming “news” because a bunch of slow-moving pieces have finally lined up. That’s just how science works. But Pielke’s analysis is a week old, and the only way I learned about it was thanks to a Toby Young post on X — he’s editor-in-chief of the UK’s Daily Sceptic — that PJ Media’s own Charlie Martin found. Why, it’s almost as though the mainstream media doesn’t want to cover stories like this one. So kudos, I guess, to Vox for finally coming clean, even if it took a full three weeks after VodkaPundit readers got the news, and a month after Roger Pielke’s excellent analysis went live.

But Vox still has to Vox. So instead of asking how or why basically the entire news industry peddled a narrative instead of science — while vacillating as Walsh did between ignorance or “not always communicating” the truth, Vox readers got more political twaddle about President Donald Trump in the penultimate paragraph. “The entire point of climate scenarios like RCP 8.5 was that there was no one certain future for climate change,” Walsh concluded, “only multiple possible futures.” Then why did writers like Walsh and publications like Vox assure readers that the end of the world was nigh, right up until they couldn’t get away with it any longer?

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https://twitter.com/pete_rizzo_/status/2059366780804481312?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle May 14 2026

May 142026
 
 May 14, 2026  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Nicolai Dubovskov Hushing (Calm Before the Storm) 1890


• Bessent’s “Suffocating” Iranian Regime Strategy Materializes (ZH)
• Trump, Xi, and the Taiwan Test (David Manney)
• Trump Must Look Over His Shoulder for the Rest of His Life (Athena Thorne)
• Zelensky’s Alleged Cocaine Use ‘An Open Secret’ – Former Spokeswoman (RT)
• Zelensky’s ex-Spokeswoman Added To State-linked ‘Kill List’ (RT)
• ‘Zelensky Thrives On War, Why Would He End It?’: Former Press Secretary (RT)
• Biden FBI Secretly Set Up Trump To Be Indicted After He Leaves Office (JTN)
• EU Targets France’s Jordan Bardella As His Anti-Migration Party Surges (RMX)
• Von der Leyen’s Power Grab Angers EU Officials – Bloomberg (RT)
• Kathy Hochul Caves to Mamdani, Will Bail Out Socialist NYC (Margolis)
• CIA Went Rogue, Raided Tulsi’s Office to Seize Papers (Catherine Salgado)
• No, The CIA Did Not Raid DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s Office (CTH)
• Datacenters, The AI Race and American Politics (CTH)
• Marc Elias Raises Power to Eliminate the Virginia Government (Turley)

 


 

https://twitter.com/Chicago1Ray/status/2054231808368160941?s=20 https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2054247524660019593?s=20 https://twitter.com/warDaniel47/status/2054473146967769291?s=20

 


 


Not much mews this morning, from either Iran or China. Not for public consumption.

• Bessent’s “Suffocating” Iranian Regime Strategy Materializes (ZH)

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s description of “suffocating” the Iranian regime through economic and financial pressure, whether via sanctions or the US military blockade of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoint, now appears to be showing up in the data. New geospatial intelligence indicates that Iran’s main crude export terminal has gone quiet, while a separate report suggests seaborne oil exports have effectively been halted for the past month.


The first report comes from Bloomberg, which cited European satellite imagery showing a massive bottleneck developing at Iran’s energy complex: no ocean-going tankers at Kharg Island, the country’s main export terminal, on May 8, 9, and 11. This marks the longest stretch in no crude tanker loadings since the US-Iran conflict began nearly three months ago.

Iran continued loading crude throughout the early weeks of the war, using tankers as floating storage after the US Navy effectively blocked ships from exiting the Hormuz chokepoint in mid-April, creating a massive energy bottleneck for Tehran. bAt the end of last week, we reported that a massive oil leak spanning dozens of square miles of water was spotted off Kharg Island. This was based on open-source satellite imagery.”The slick appears visually consistent with oil,” said Leon Moreland, a researcher at the Conflict and Environment Observatory, to Reuters. He believes it covers an area of approximately 45 square km (nearly 18 sq miles).

While it’s unclear what may have caused it, or the extent of possible damage to Kharg Island’s infrastructure or possibly docked tankers, the island has been attacked by US aerial forces in the recent past.If Kharg Island remains idle and storage capacity reaches its limit, Iran could be forced into deeper oil production cuts.”To our best knowledge, Iran hasn’t successfully exported any crude oil by sea over the past 28 days. Some refined products managed to escape because US OFAC did not slap sanctions on those tankers,” research firm Tanker Trackers wrote on X.

This very development would support Bessent’s claims: “We are running a marathon over the past 12 months, and now we are sprinting toward the finish. They are not able to pay their soldiers. This is a real economic blockade.”Ten days ago, Bessent forecasted that Iran’s oil industry may need to start shutting in wells “in the next week” as the country’s crude storage is “rapidly filling up.””Their oil infrastructure is starting to creak,” he said. “It hasn’t been maintained again because of our decades-long sanctions against them.”

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“..which claims Taiwan as its territory despite never having ruled it for even a day.”

• Trump, Xi, and the Taiwan Test (David Manney)

President Donald Trump’s trip to China places Taiwan back where Beijing always wants it: under pressure, under scrutiny, and under threat. Taiwan President Lai Ching-te isn’t watching this meeting like a man checking diplomatic weather; he’s watching it like the leader of a free island that China keeps trying to isolate, intimidate, and eventually absorb. China’s leaders understand ceremony, leverage, and timing. They also smell weakness when there’s blood in the water, which is why I vividly remember the 2021 Alaska meeting and how it hangs around this story like smoke in a conference room.


You remember that Anchorage meeting, right? When Antony Blinken, then secretary of state, and Jake Sullivan, then national security advisor, sat across from Yang Jiechi, then China’s top foreign policy official, and Wang Yi, then China’s foreign minister and state councilor. China’s opening remarks turned into a public scolding, and the Biden team looked stunned as Beijing delivered a lecture in front of the cameras. Reading the archives is downright infuriating.

DIRECTOR YANG: On the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year, President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden had a phone conversation. The two presidents agreed to step up communication, manage differences, and expand cooperation between our two countries. We are having this dialogue today to follow up on the common understanding of the two presidents reached during their phone conversation. And having this dialogue is, in fact, a decision made by the two presidents. So for the people of the two countries and the world, they’re hoping to see practical outcomes coming out of our dialogue.

And with Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan, they are an inalienable part of China’s territory. China is firmly opposed to U.S. interference in China’s internal affairs. We have expressed our staunch opposition to such interference and we will take firm actions in response.

On human rights, we hope that the United States will do better on human rights. China has made steady progress in human rights and the fact is that there are many problems within the United States regarding human rights, which is admitted by the U.S. itself as well. The United States has also said that countries can’t rely on force in today’s world to resolve the challenges we face. And it is a failure to use various means to topple the so-called “authoritarian” states. And the challenges facing the United States in human rights are deep-seated. They did not just emerge over the past four years, such as Black Lives Matter. It did not come up only recently. So we do hope that for our two countries, it’s important that we manage our respective affairs well instead of deflecting the blame on somebody else in this world.

Nobody should pretend one meeting defines an entire foreign policy, but bad first impressions travel far in adversarial capitals. Beijing learned something from that day, or at least thought it did. Trump isn’t walking into that room as a president trying to prove he belongs on the world stage. Xi Jinping, China’s president and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, knows that. Beijing may still test him, because testing American presidents ranks somewhere between doctrine and habit in Chinese statecraft.

The question is whether Xi believes Trump wants a public deal so badly that Taiwan becomes a bargaining chip. Taiwan has reason to care because every vague sentence, every pause, and every carefully softened word echoes across the Taiwan Strait. Calling Taiwan “Taiwan” doesn’t insult China by itself; American officials use its name constantly because the United States maintains unofficial relations with Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act while recognizing Beijing as China’s government. As Fox News reports, there’s a great deal of speculation involved in this meeting.

The de facto independent nation of 23 million people has spent decades living under threat from the Chinese Communist Party, which claims Taiwan as its territory despite never having ruled it for even a day. Observers here warn that Xi may try to offer Trump a deal: cooperation on tariffs, fentanyl, U.S. business access, or global flashpoints like Iran and Ukraine in exchange for Trump accepting a larger Chinese role in Taiwan’s future. Taiwan’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu recently told Bloomberg News, “What we are the most afraid is to put Taiwan on the menu of the talk between Xi Jinping and President Trump.”

Huang Kwei-bo, a professor in National Chengchi University’s Department of Diplomacy, told Fox News Digital that Taiwan shouldn’t assume nothing will change. “Taiwan shouldn’t rule out the possibility that the United States and mainland China could reach an understanding behind the scenes, agreeing to reduce arms sales to Taiwan, or become less active in helping us meaningfully participate in international space,” he said. Beijing objects when language treats Taiwan as a separate sovereign state or moves toward formal recognition. China’s government insists Taiwan belongs to China, while the U.S. has long maintained a deliberately careful policy built around the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances.

Taiwan lives inside that careful wording every day.

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Trump indicated he knows this, by saying (paraphrased)” “I know life.”

• Trump Must Look Over His Shoulder for the Rest of His Life (Athena Thorne)

History is rife with examples of tyrannical movements that never end their hunt for their ideological enemies.b In 1989, Iran’s then-Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie. Rushdie was forced to remain under police protection or in hiding after that. Thirty-three years later, when he thought he could safely give an academic lecture in the United States, a 24-year-old fanatic nearly killed him in a knife attack, costing him the use of an eye and a hand. It’s noteworthy that the assailant was born almost a decade after the fatwa was declared.


In 1917, it wasn’t enough that the Bolsheviks had killed the Czar and his entire family and most of the Whites and had all of Russia under their control. The Soviet secret police sent hit squads after those who had fled abroad, disrupting their communities and killing their leaders. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to this day actively tracks and targets its citizens abroad, who have fled its authoritarian government, as part of its extensive policy of transnational repression. You get the idea: There is not enough time or distance to dissuade hateful ideologues from devoting themselves to the destruction of their perceived enemies.

Thus, the blinding pathological hatred the left has cultivated against Donald Trump will not simply dissipate once the man retires from office. So long as he lives, they will try to jail, bankrupt, destroy, and/or literally murder him. In some of the historical cases I cited above, it is true that just because someone is out of a leadership position, that doesn’t mean he is no longer a threat to the opposition. Barack Obama comes readily to mind as an example of someone who continues to work behind the scenes against our duly elected present-day leadership. But in Trump’s situation, it wouldn’t matter if he fully retired to Mar-a-Lago and spent his remaining years painting stones and seashells and displaying them on Lucite stands or something equally as innocuous. The leftists’ burning, seething, pathological hatred of the man himself will never abate.

They 100% will prosecute him again. Right now, every minute of every day, operatives within and around the federal and blue states’ governments are building cases and preserving — maybe even manufacturing — “evidence” for the zealous lawfare to come. In just one example, Just the News obtained documentation of Democrat operatives putting “special counsel” Jack Smith’s weaponized attack into storage so they could bring it out again the next time they have a Dem in the White House:

“In the final weeks of Joe Biden’s presidency, FBI agents tied to Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation memorialized anew their belief that President Donald Trump broke the law in contesting the 2020 election and secretly arranged to preserve their evidence until 2030 in memos that raise alarm they could revive their prosecution after Trump leaves office.

The FBI memos and emails closing out the controversial Arctic Frost investigation – obtained by Just the News – show the bureau chose not to relinquish the evidence it gathered after Smith went to court to dismiss charges against Trump, even though that is the normal practice for agents. Instead, they created a preservation order keeping the evidence in FBI custody for two years after Trump’s second term ends, claiming it was necessary to do so because of ongoing litigation, the memos show.

FBI emails and memos obtained by Just the News dating back to early 2025 show how the FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors who had been working on the criminal prosecutions aimed at Trump and his allies worked to close the 2020 election-related case against the incoming president, while also seemingly leaving open the door for the criminal case to be revived once Trump leaves office and a Democrat again holds the reins at the Justice Department.

Now multiply that by every partisan leftist with a hint of authority, from Deep Staters to governors and attorneys general to local district attorneys and dogcatchers, even now building their “cases” against the sitting president, smug in the knowledge that their fellow travelers on the bench will wave it through, their state will pay for it, and their hate-addled juries will seal the deal. I wish for Trump’s own sake that he would use this time to liquidate all of his assets in commie-run locales and feather his nest in Free Florida, where he can spend his remaining years in relative peace and safety. But he’s Trump, and the last thing he’ll ever do is run from a fight.

And even if he did — even if he pulled up stakes and circumscribed his life to within the Florida state line — he would still never be safe from the lunatic would-be assassin army the left has ginned up. I redirect your attention to the example cited above: Hadi Matar, the Islamist assailant who wasn’t even alive when Rushdie was first targeted by Iran’s fatwa. The left’s maniacal Trump hatred is far more widespread and intense, and leftists will doubtless spend the coming decades inculcating their children in it.

Thank God, past presidents are entitled to Secret Service protection for life. And thank God, Trump is wealthy enough to pay for his own security and that of his family members (because the leftist evil knows no bounds). Democrats have also revealed they will go after anyone who did business with Trump in the private or public sector, so all-consuming is their enmity, and I don’t even know what to say to that. This is reason #3,856 why we must do everything in our power to prevent these monsters from ever being in a position to harm their perceived enemies again. It’s also why every one of us has a responsibility to watch over President Trump the rest of his days, in gratitude for the historical service he has rendered our beloved country.

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“Yulia Mendel claims that her former boss wanted Goebbels-style propaganda in Ukraine..”

• Zelensky’s Alleged Cocaine Use ‘An Open Secret’ – Former Spokeswoman (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s alleged drug use is “an open secret,” former spokeswoman Yulia Mendel has claimed on the Tucker Carlson Show. Allegations of drug use first surfaced during the 2019 presidential election campaign, in which Zelensky defeated Petro Poroshenko. Zelensky, a former actor, dismissed the claims as slander at the time, and both candidates underwent tests for alcohol and drugs. Mendel worked for Zelensky from 2019 to 2021 and has since become highly critical of her former boss. In an interview released on Monday, Carlson asked whether Zelensky used drugs, to which Mendel replied: “This is an open secret.”


“The thing is that I’ve never seen him taking drugs. However, [while] writing my book, I met a lot of people who confirmed that they saw him taking drugs in different clubs. Only one saw him taking drugs in 2021,” she claimed. Mendel added that she learned about an alleged “supplier” from a person working at Kvartal 95 Studio, the entertainment company Zelensky co-founded in the 2000s. “Zelensky’s former press secretary alleges he urged subordinates to carry out ‘propaganda like Goebbels’ Yulia Mendel claims that after a drop in ratings in 2019, the Narcofuhrer ordered his PR team to improve his image, pointing to the effectiveness of Nazi Germany’s propaganda… pic.twitter.com/k6s7xpuE8V— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) May 12, 2026[..]

All these people are talking about cocaine, yes,” Mendel said, adding that before interviews, Zelensky had a habit of spending 15 minutes in the bathroom and emerging as a “different person.” Mendel described her former boss as being obsessed with his public image at home and abroad. She claimed that at one point, Zelensky told her: “I need Goebbels propaganda, I need thousands of talking heads,” referring to Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Mendel also accused Zelensky of sending critics, including journalists, to the front line as punishment. Political opponents, including Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko, have frequently accused Zelensky of abuse of power. Last year, US President Donald Trump called Zelensky – whose presidential term expired in 2024 – a dictator for refusing to call a new presidential election. Zelensky has argued that elections are prohibited under martial law and that a permanent ceasefire with Russia would be required before a new election can be held.

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Yermak was arrested overnight. Not long ago, he was either Zelensky’s right-hand man or his most likely successor.

• Zelensky’s ex-Spokeswoman Added To State-linked ‘Kill List’ (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky’s former spokesperson, Yulia Mendel, has been added to a Ukrainian state-linked ‘kill list’ for telling American journalist Tucker Carlson of rampant cocaine abuse in the corridors of power in Kiev and the desire of a corrupt elite to prolong the conflict with Russia. Mendel worked with Zelensky for two years during which time she says she witnessed him change from peacemaker to propagator of war. The list is run by the Mirotvorets website, which has been linked to Ukrainian security services and is notorious for publishing the addresses and personal details of anyone remotely deemed an enemy of the Ukrainian state, including Russian journalists, some of whom were subsequently assassinated.


The website has accused Mendel of “humanitarian aggression against Ukraine, spreading “narratives of Russian propaganda, calling for Ukraine‘s “capitulation“, and indirectly taking part in information-psychological special operations allegedly run by Russia. Mirotvorets cited Mendel telling Carlson that the Ukrainian delegation at talks in Istanbul in 2022 was ready to agree to “all of Russia’s demands” in order to stop the fighting, but that Kiev was pressured by the US and UK to continue the conflict and that Zelensky is now “one of the main obstacles to peace.” It also cited Mendel’s comments that Ukraine is “on the verge of disappearing,” and showing signs of “unhealthy nationalism.”

Mendel, who served as Zelensky’s press secretary from 2019 to 2021, has in recent months become an outspoken critic of her former boss. In the interview she leveled a series of allegations of corruption and drug use, calling Zelensky a “dictator” who has grown “detached from reality.” She also described Zelensky and his former chief of staff Andrey Yermak as “malicious and extremely paranoid narcissists,” saying their relationship had turned into a “symbiosis.”

Launched in 2014 as a nominally independent project, Mirotvorets has targeted a wide range of international figures, including Tucker Carlson, Hollywood director Woody Allen, Russian hockey star Alexander Ovechkin, and US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Russian officials have condemned the site as extremist. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has described it as a hit list targeting individuals Kiev allegedly wants to “eliminate.”

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“Mendel described her former boss as a “dictator” who has grown “detached from reality” and employed “thousands of talking heads”..

• ‘Zelensky Thrives On War, Why Would He End It?’: Former Press Secretary (RT)

Yulia Mendel has accused her former boss of seeking to prolong the conflict with Russia to “get more money” Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is prolonging his country’s conflict with Russia in order to enrich himself and his associates in his cabinet, former spokeswoman Yulia Mendel has claimed in an interview with Tucker Carlson. Mendel, Zelensky’s press secretary from 2019 to 2021, launched a series of stinging allegations of corruption and drug use as Andrey Yermak, Zelensky’s former influential chief of staff, was named a suspect in a money laundering case.


Zelensky’s longtime former business partner, Timur Mindich, fled the country last year to avoid arrest in connection with another major corruption scandal involving energy-sector kickbacks that has seen several other close associates of the Ukrainian leader placed under suspicion. In an episode of the Tucker Carlson Show released on Monday, Mendel described her former boss as a “dictator” who has grown “detached from reality” and employed “thousands of talking heads” to craft a favorable image both at home and abroad.

“He is one of the biggest obstacles to peace today,” Mendel said, accusing Zelensky of being “behind many schemes of money laundering” that have rocked Ukraine in recent years. “There are a lot of people in his government who want peace. [Zelensky] is going to come up with any condition, he is going to change his positions all the time just to prolong this war and to get more money,” Mendel said, arguing that ending the conflict would be “political suicide” for Zelensky. When Carlson suggested that Ukraine cannot defeat Russia in a war of attrition, Mendel replied: “I think it’s obvious to Zelensky, too. But he thrives on this war. Why would he end it?”

Mendel claimed that Ukraine came close to reaching a deal with Russia twice in 2022, but was pressured by the US and UK to continue the conflict. The Kremlin accused the West of helping derail peace talks in Istanbul four years ago, which Zelensky denied. Zelensky, whose presidential term expired in 2024, has refused to hold new elections, citing martial law. The move has been criticized by both US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mendel, citing an unnamed insider, claimed that secret polls commissioned by the Ukrainian government show Zelensky is “unelectable” if he runs again.

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“Arctic Frost memos suggest: Jack Smith’s team primed their criminal case against Donald Trump to resume once his presidency ends.”

• Biden FBI Secretly Set Up Trump To Be Indicted After He Leaves Office (JTN)

In the final weeks of Joe Biden’s presidency, FBI agents tied to Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation memorialized anew their belief that President Donald Trump broke the law in contesting the 2020 election and secretly arranged to preserve their evidence until 2030 in memos that raise alarm they could revive their prosecution after Trump leaves office.


The FBI memos and emails closing out the controversial Arctic Frost investigation – obtained by Just the News – show the bureau chose not to relinquish the evidence it gathered after Smith went to court to dismiss charges against Trump, even though that is the normal practice for agents. Instead, they created a preservation order keeping the evidence in FBI custody for two years after Trump’s second term ends, claiming it was necessary to do so because of ongoing litigation, the memos show.

FBI emails and memos obtained by Just the News dating back to early 2025 show how the FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors who had been working on the criminal prosecutions aimed at Trump and his allies worked to close the 2020 election-related case against the incoming president, while also seemingly leaving open the door for the criminal case to be revived once Trump leaves office and a Democrat again holds the reins at the Justice Department.

“The American people deserve to know how this egregious weaponization of power to target political opponents and President Trump happened inside an institution meant to protect them,” FBI Director Kash Patel told Just the News. “We shut down the weaponized CR-15 squad, and we are going to keep following the facts until there is full accountability. The FBI exists to protect the country, not to preserve political prosecutions for a future administration.”

Following Trump’s victory in November 2024 over Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Smith sought to dismiss his case against Trump “without prejudice” – leaving open the possibility that the charges could be refiled in the future. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, pointed to the Office of Legal Counsel’s position that a sitting president could not be prosecuted by his own DOJ and granted Smith’s request to dismiss the case without prejudice.

One of the key “Case Closing” documents obtained by Just the News – originating from the FBI’s Washington Field Office’s CR-15 team – was dated a couple of weeks into Trump’s second term, on February 5, 2025, when many holdover FBI agents and leaders were still in place. The newly-released closing document from early 2025 repeated the extensive claims of criminality against Trump, which had been pursued by Smith and the bureau, and it sought to retain all of the evidence for a half decade until at least February 2030, when Trump would be a former president once more and thus when the DOJ guidance prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president would no longer be in force.

The document was titled “Arctic Frost – Election Law Matters – Sensitive Investigative Matter” and its synopsis was “To Document the Closing of Captioned Investigation.” The listed enclosures buttressing the document were a “Deputy Special Counsel Concurrence” and the “Retention of Evidence Approval.” The FBI record states, “This Electronic Communication seeks approval to close the captioned full Sensitive Investigative Matter investigation” and argued that “because this was a SIM opened by a Field Office and involved a presidential candidate, the same level of approval required to open the investigation is also required to close the investigation.”

Evidence released last year showed that then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and then-FBI Director Christopher Wray signed off on the launch of the Arctic Frost inquiry into Trump related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Garland also quickly said he “personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant” for the FBI’s unprecedented raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022. The Biden White House was also directly linked to the classified documents investigation into Trump, despite its denials, previously-released records show.

“The approval roles on this closing EC match those of the opening EC and, as such, Washington Field Office is seeking approval up to and including the Director of the FBI to close this investigation,” the newly released FBI document said. The document included a “Summary of the Results of the Investigation” into Trump, which had been pursued by Smith and the FBI, arguing that “the captioned FBI investigation was opened based on specific and articulable facts and circumstances that individuals affiliated with Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. (the ‘Trump Campaign’) engaged in activity that violated federal law.”

The FBI memo alleged that “the investigation revealed that when Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office. With various co-conspirators, Trump launched a series of plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.”

The bureau record also alleged that “Trump and his co-conspirators used knowingly false claims of election fraud in furtherance of three conspiracies: 1) a conspiracy to interfere with the federal government function by which the nation collects and counts election results, which is set forth in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act; 2) a conspiracy to obstruct the official proceeding in which Congress certifies the legitimate results of the presidential election; and 3) a conspiracy against the rights of millions of Americans to vote and have their votes counted.”

The section on the “Disposition of Evidence” related to Smith’s anti-Trump investigation argued that “this investigation is subject to a litigation hold and is on the freeze list; as a result, no evidence can be returned or destroyed and must be retained.”

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It’s Marine Le Pen’s party. Democracy was born in france, and it died there too.

• EU Targets France’s Jordan Bardella As His Anti-Migration Party Surges (RMX)

Last week, reports that the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) is investigating France’s right-wing, anti-migration party National Rally (RN) for misallocation of EU funds made the rounds. At its core, the case involves a complaint filed last December by the association AC!! Anti-Corruption with the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) in Paris. These allegations have already been contested by RN, but the party must also now face scrutiny from Brussels, as the funds involved include EU money. The charge is that the National Rally misused the funds by allocating money received for media training for its leader, Jordan Bardella, not for his work as an MEP, but with the aim of helping him to prepare for France’s 2027 presidential election. Other members of the party have also been named in connection with the same charge.


Bardella posted on X that the investigation is not news and certainly nothing new for the party, labeling the charges as politically motivated slander. “We have absolutely nothing to reproach ourselves for. The association behind the complaint is a self-proclaimed far-left organization, whose aggressive statements leave little doubt as to their intentions. I filed a complaint several weeks ago for slanderous denunciation,” he wrote, while assuring that he and his party would fully cooperate with the EPPO. National Rally has been in the top spot in recent polling, despite its former leader, Marine Le Pen, having been sidelined by a similar case last year.

She is appealing that decision, but for now has made it clear that Bardella will run on the RN ticket for president.The party’s popularity, with or without Le Pen, cannot be a surprise to its rivals, given the sle w of issues France has been suffering from due to its policy of mass immigration and lax deportation: Elderly rape, minor prostitution, failing education, robberies, violent rape, concerns over sharia law, and murder. As the mother of 18-year-old Théo, who was stabbed to death by a Senegalese migrant who ended up avoiding prison, said: “You can kill in France with impunity.”

Meanwhile, the media and the left prefer not to draw attention to the link between increased migration and violence. And yet, a new website and real estate browser extension for Chrome is offering data on immigration levels, insecurity, and Islamization rates of neighborhoods for prospective buyers in the latest sign that the French public is highly concerned about record-breaking numbers of immigrants. According to a recent ifop poll, 60 percent of French believe there is “a replacement of the French population by non-European populations, mainly from the African continent.” The same poll found that 66 percent see it as a bad development. Only 9 percent noted it as good.

This is a major factor why the National Rally has been surging in the polls, and why left-wing parties and activist organizations will do anything to bring them down — first targeting Le Pen and now Bardella. Other party politicians and staff members have been implicated in both cases. Such efforts are not unique to France, with efforts ongoing for years over in Germany to bring down the anti-migration AfD party, which has also seen a massive rise in popularity. With reports indicating France is spending over €2 billion a year on housing and healthcare for asylum seekers and illegal migrants, RN’s rivals will need more than accusations of misappropriated funds to stop voters from exercising their desire for change.

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The European Commission chief is “obsessed” with proving she’s in charge, diplomats and officials have complained ..

• Von der Leyen’s Power Grab Angers EU Officials – Bloomberg (RT)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has tightened her control over the EU’s executive branch to the point where the bloc’s leaders and diplomats now view her as too powerful, according to a Bloomberg report.In power since 2019, von der Leyen has rebuilt the European Commission in her image and become “the face of Europe,” Bloomberg wrote on Tuesday. She has spearheaded the EU’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, authored its hyper-belligerent policies toward Russia, and negotiated its trade deals with US President Donald Trump.


However, EU officials told the US news outlet that she’s “obsessed with demonstrating that she’s in charge,” and “is constantly jumping into the middle of the latest crisis, even when it’s outside her remit,” all while neglecting her core mission of strengthening the economy. A draft internal market strategy compiled by Commission Vice President Stephane Sejourne, for example, has sat neglected on her desk since November, Bloomberg claimed. Von der Leyen only showed the document to member states and the European Parliament days before its publication last month, making deliberation effectively impossible.

A similar scenario played out last year when von der Leyen shared the EU’s long-term budget with her fellow commissioners at the last minute, angering member states who were being asked to cough up a record €2 trillion ($2.4 trillion) with no consultation. Germany immediately rejected the budget, and lawmakers from von der Leyen’s CDU party met to demand additional checks on her power. Business leaders, meanwhile, have demanded that she act to improve the bloc’s competitiveness, but Bloomberg’s sources say their concerns rarely filter through to her “tight-knit” and “micromanaged” group of advisers.

Von der Leyen was handed a second stint at the helm of the commission in 2024, and has spent this second term in office dramatically centralizing power in Brussels. She began her term by appointing her team of 26 commissioners without running the list past the European Parliament first, proposed the establishment of an intelligence agency under her control last year – snatching this responsibility away from Kaja Kallas’ diplomatic arm of the EU – and has pushed for the creation of a “two-speed” EU, in which smaller blocs of countries could make policy decisions without the unanimous support of all 27 member states.

Von der Leyen has also moved to end the EU’s unanimity requirement on matters of foreign policy, arguing that the commission’s proposals should be passed with a simple majority vote. With regard to the bloc’s Ukraine policies, removing unanimity would eliminate the veto powers exercised by former Hungarian Prime Minister and war critic Viktor Orban, and undermine the neutrality of countries such as Austria and Ireland.

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It will require Trump.

• Kathy Hochul Caves to Mamdani, Will Bail Out Socialist NYC (Margolis)

Not long ago, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to handle his own mess. Now she’s writing him a $4 billion check to bail him out. Mamdani had barely settled into Gracie Mansion before he discovered what socialists always find out: Eventually, you run out of other people’s money. His grand campaign promises — you know: free this, universal that — ran headlong into the reality that New York City couldn’t afford all the things Mamdani had campaigned on. So, Mamdani went looking to Albany for a bailout. And, originally, Hochul said no.


“The mayor and City Council need to work together, identify savings, and close the remaining gap,” a Hochul spokesperson said last month. As a resident of New York State (I’ll accept your condolences), I was thrilled. But apparently, a lot can change in a few weeks, especially when polls show the race for governor is tightening. On Tuesday, Gov. Hochul and Mayor Mamdani announced a sweeping new state funding package. The press release made it sound like a wonderful thing: Governor Hochul, in partnership with the state legislature, has secured an additional $4 billion in gap-closing support, bringing the total new state assistance to nearly $8 billion over two years.

With this latest agreement, the Mamdani Administration will officially close the more than $12 billion deficit it inherited from the previous administration, stabilizing the City’s finances while advancing investments that make New York more affordable for working people. These new investments build on the $1.5 billion in assistance announced in the Governor’s 30-day amendments in February and funding for universal childcare.”The announcement was dressed up in the usual Albany language about affordability and working families, with Hochul declaring it “a results-driven, responsible partnership.” That’s one way to describe it.

Something changed between Hochul’s stern message last month and Tuesday’s joint press conference — and nobody’s saying what it was. One can only imagine what kind of secret deal was reached to convince Hochul to reverse course so completely. My best guess? Mamdani promised to support her reelection campaign and hit the trail with her. A $4 billion commitment is an awfully expensive favor to do for free, and you better believe Hochul is getting something for it.

Both sides were eager to perform for the cameras. “Governor Hochul and I share a belief that government works best when we work together on behalf of the people we serve,” Mamdani said. He added that he and Hochul had “partnered through every step of this process to protect the fiscal health of our city” and called her commitment to securing New York City’s future something “working people can afford.” Because working people must live within their means, not the government.

Hochul, meanwhile, insisted she’d been committed “from day one” to New York City’s success, arguing a strong city strengthens the state as a whole. She framed the deal as delivering “free universal child care,” investments in education, public safety, and infrastructure, and the resources needed to keep critical services running. Touching stuff. It would be more convincing if she hadn’t spent weeks telling Mamdani to figure it out himself.

Not everyone in New York is buying the Kumbaya routine. Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman went right for the jugular. “Kathy Hochul just committed the largest daylight robbery in New York history, looting $4 billion from your family’s grocery and rent budget to bankroll Zohran Mamdani’s socialist experiment,” Blakeman said in a statement. He’s not wrong. I pay taxes in New York, and now I’m going to be covering for Mamdani’s socialist campaign promises. Hochul may think this will strengthen her position as she seeks another term in office, but how many people in New York State really want to be bailing out New York City?

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Did they?

• CIA Went Rogue, Raided Tulsi’s Office to Seize Papers (Catherine Salgado)

A breaking news alert from Fox News, apparently confirmed by a Republican congresswoman, states that the Central Intelligence Agency went rogue, raiding the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to seize files. It seems from the Fox News report that the CIA seized the files just now, though a whistleblower from the agency who testified to Congress today referred to the wrongful seizure of files in his testimony. It is therefore not clear if the raid occurred today or before the testimony, or if there was more than one seizure. In either case, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is giving the CIA 24 hours to return the files in question or face consequences.


The CIA was allegedly after the files on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the MK-Ultra human experimentation scandal. The story on the raid is developing but seems to be legitimate, and illustrates the need for drastic cuts in our Deep State. Donald Trump cannot hope to prevent such egregious acts by merely replacing top leadership. The majority of employees at the CIA and FBI worked there during the Biden-era weaponization of justice and believe they are not accountable to Trump or We the People.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard was reportedly in the process of declassifying the JFK and MK-ULTRA files, and it seems the CIA gave us indirect confirmation that there is something in those files that they desperately do not want anyone to know. The problem is that we don’t know if they will be able to destroy the files or not before the Trump administration can get them back. If the raid just occurred and did not happen previously in the last couple of days, it is interesting to note that President Trump was out of the country in China, and therefore unable to be present personally to deal with the situation. Hopefully, Vice President Vance is on the job.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) promptly issued a warning to the CIA, as you can see below, evidently providing confirmation of the raid: “The CIA has 24 hours to return the documents to Tulsi Gabbard’s office or else I will make a motion to issue a subpoena. These documents have been requested by Congress. @DNIGabbard @CIADirector https://t.co/Y5lMw8AYK5 — Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) May 13, 2026”. CIA Director John Ratcliffe has not yet commented on the allegations, so he has not been able to clarify any timeline for when the raid happened. Gabbard has also not commented publicly.

The Hindustan Times referred to the allegations made by alleged whistleblower James Erdman: At Wednesday’s hearing before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Erdman alleged that the CIA seized files related to the controversial human experimentation program, MKUltra, as well as the assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr, from the office of Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Erdman said that the files were about to be processed for declassification – a long-standing public demand – when the CIA swooped in and seized the files.

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Or not. “Good grief. I cannot believe people actually believed this story as presented ..”

• No, The CIA Did Not Raid DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s Office (CTH)

Good grief. I cannot believe people actually believed this story as presented. Yes, the CIA is sketchy; however, no, the CIA did not raid the office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, taking boxes of JFK and MK Ultra files. Oliva Coleman is Tulsi Gabbard’s spokesperson. The story is fake news.


Was there friction and opposition within the CIA to DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s office, yes. However, John Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard have been working together for almost a year to address the Machiavellian network that operates in the shadows, and they have had remarkable success.

It’s highly likely former CIA embeds were doing some unauthorized surveillance of DNI Gabbard as she came into office. Obviously, she was a threat to their position and influence. However, through a methodical approach at addressing the politically motivated embeds within the entire Intelligence Community, including the CIA, DNI Gabbard has been successful in eliminating most of the corrupt actors. CIA Director John Ratcliffe would never authorize or allow anything like what was being framed in that outlandish story. It simply did not happen.

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Everyone seems to agree datacenters will soon be in space (orbital).

• Datacenters, The AI Race and American Politics (CTH)

There is an increased public discussion about the race to build datacenters in the USA that are part of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race for superiority. There are multiple facets within the discussion and some things to consider that might not be at the forefront, yet. Overall, there is a global race to build the best AI system that is not dissimilar to the nuclear arms race. Arguably the use of AI as a weapon is one possibility; while the second aspect surrounds strategic economic power.


The USA is poised very favorably in this AI race due to the advanced tech industry in America and recent national security moves made by President Trump in the tech sector surrounding strategic critical minerals and domestic chip production. However, no one is quite sure where China is in their AI development and last year’s explosive revelation around China’s “Deepseek” model shocked the U.S. tech industry due to its advanced intelligence prowess. With China and the USA both in this AI race, and the need for massive investment in datacenters to do the processing needed for an artificial intelligence brain of such significant capacity, there is a sense of urgency in the tech industry that is surfacing around the country.

Simultaneously, with datacenters becoming more controversial, suddenly the geopolitical intelligence operations enter the picture. Currently, it is well accepted inside the tech industry that part of China’s strategy against the USA in this AI race is to slow down American system development. As a consequence, it is beginning to surface that Beijing may be funding voices inside the USA to rally against the building of datacenters. Essentially, China funding voices, real or artificially boosted influence operations, to amplify domestic opposition to the datacenters.

Anytime the intelligence operations become part of a domestic issue that has national security implications, things get opaque, cloudy and muddy pretty quick. Is datacenter opposition organic – actual citizens and communities pushing back against the development in their towns and/or cities or is the opposition to the datacenters a form of foreign influence operation? These questions become challenging to answer, and discernment becomes very critical. The truth might even be a combination depending on the localized opposition and/or regional importance. One thing is very clear, building the world’s leading AI system is being rushed with an urgency similar to atomic bomb development.

Here’s a great example of that type of question. Today Gallup released a poll showing 72 percent of Americans are opposed to building AI datacenters in their area. [POLLING HERE]

[Note the date]

The topline sounds pretty straightforward right? 7 in 10 Americans oppose “the construction of a data center in their area to support artificial intelligence technology.” That’s the polled result. Indeed, this poll is being cited in numerous media articles now emphasizing opposition to the datacenters.However, put on your discernment cap and look at it closely. Notice the date of the poll, “March 2-18, 2026.” Why did Gallup wait two months to release the results of a poll on May 13, 2026?

Did the date of release today have something to do with the timing of President Trump taking a list of key U.S. tech and finance leaders to Beijing to confront China on exactly this AI issue? …. Or was it coincidental? This is where you have to make up your own mind as to whether this Gallup poll is an organic outcome, an organically timed release, on an issue that just happens to be at the heart of the geopolitical negotiations currently underway in Beijing between the USA and China. Or was there some kind of influence operation around it?

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“.. as Benjamin Franklin warned us and now Elias has reminded us, we must fight to keep this Republic.”

• Marc Elias Raises Power to Eliminate the Virginia Government (Turley)

Democratic lawyer Marc Elias appears to believe that Democrats do not need to stop at simply sacking and packing the Virginia Supreme Court in response to the adverse ruling on the radical gerrymandering plan. Elias reminded Democrats that they could eliminate the entire Virginia government under the state constitution. The demand for radical action was prompted by the Virginia justices, including one appointed by then-Democratic governor Mark Warner, who found the Democratic effort unconstitutional. It does not matter that leading Democrats, including Gov. Abigail Spanberger, also believed that the Democrats could be found in violation of the state constitution in pushing forward with the controversial effort to virtually extinguished Republican representation in the purple state.


The adverse decision has resulted in the same demands for radical institutional changes from some of the same voices pledging to pack the United States Supreme Court once they retake power, to guarantee they never lose it again. Elias responded to the loss by invoking language from Article I of the Virginia Constitution itself: “whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.” That is his response to a well-reasoned decision of unconstitutionality of a redistricting plan. We can scrap the entire Virginia government.

It is another example of the “by any means necessary” culture of the left today. There is no institution or value that is sacred. This is why I recently wrote about the rise of “the new Jacobins” in my book Rage and the Republic, lawyers and law professors rationalizing the trashing of the Constitution and our institutions to achieve their political goals. Elias has long been controversial for his tactics. It was Elias who was the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign when it secretly funded the infamous Steele dossier and pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was later indicted but acquitted).

Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement in the Steele Dossier. When journalists discovered after the election that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the Steele dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie, they were reportedly stonewalled. The campaign was ultimately sanctioned by the Federal Election Commission for the subterfuge. New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said at the time that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman later wrote that “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

Elias’s group later unsuccessfully led efforts to challenge Democratic electoral losses. In Maryland, Elias’s team supported another abusive gerrymandering scheme that a court found not only violated Maryland law but the state constitution’s equal protection, free speech and free elections clauses. The court found that the map “subverts the will of those governed.” One media site accused Elias and his group of “making millions off gerrymandering efforts” while publicly denouncing Republican gerrymandering. In 2024, Elias’s legal team was also accused of pushing “to bar third-party presidential candidates — including Cornel West — from swing state ballots where they might siphon votes from the Democratic nominee [Kamala Harris].”

Likewise, the New York Times reported that Elias’s firm’s work “on behalf of a Soros-funded PAC in Texas…was opposed by a left-leaning election watchdog as undermining laws intended to limit the influence of major donors.” His group’s work for New York redistricting was ridiculed as not only ignoring the express will of the voters and also effectively negating the votes of Republican voters.

In 2024, the Chief Judge of the Western District of Wisconsin criticized the Elias Law Group for one of its challenges. Judge James Peterson (an Obama appointee) said that the argument “simply does not make any sense.” Now, Elias is reminding Virginians that they can respond to an opposing court decision by eliminating some or all of the Virginia state government.

It is the logic of the Jacobin. As discussed in my book, the Framers sought to prevent democracy from becoming mobocracy by rejecting more direct democratic powers. They tried to temper the passions of democracy in moments like this. There is nothing new about these voices, like that of Elias, in fueling radical impulses. They are the same voices and arguments that has long been heard in this country. We have long rejected them and this year will celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Independence. However, as Benjamin Franklin warned us and now Elias has reminded us, we must fight to keep this Republic.

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https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2054162172456960145?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 27 2026

Apr 272026
 
 April 27, 2026  Posted by at 8:52 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  36 Responses »


Jusepe de Ribera A philosopher holding a mirror 1630


• Unhinged Conspiracy Theory About WHCA Dinner Trump Murder Attempt (Margolis)
• Trump Dodges Another Gunman, Unbowed But Grounded: Not Going To Deter Me (JTN)
• Assassin Identified as Cole Tomas Allen (31), from Torrance, California (CTH)
• President Trump Holds a Press Conference Following Another Murder Attempt (CTH)
• We Now Know Who the WHCA Dinner Shooter Was Targeting (Margolis)
• ‘You’re Horrible People’: President Trump Torches Norah O’Donnell (Margolis)
• After 2027 There Will Be No Going Back – Elon Musk (X)
• Macron Laments That US Is Not A Reliable Partner (RT)
• How The US Engineered Its Own Failure In Cuba (RT)
• US Failed To Extract Iran’s Enriched Uranium – Analyst To RT (RT)
• Zelensky Likely ‘Directly Involved In Corruption’ – EU-Funded Anti-Graft NGO (RT)
• NYC Mayor Mamdani Attempts To Defuse Info War Against Ken Griffin (ZH)
• RFK Jr. Blasts “Abhorrent” Assisted Suicide (MN)

 


 

https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2048121842402013298?s=20 https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2048128724512473142?s=20 https://twitter.com/WellsJorda89710/status/2048188693278576717?s=20 https://twitter.com/_Qstormrider/status/2048026069282746699?s=20

 


 


Yeah, we know people want him dead, and/or don’t believe a word he says.

Then you got all these people who simply deny that it was real. And that, I don’t get.

Who say that the Trump people just made it all up. That they did that in 2024 just like now.

Their idea is Trump is so unpopular today that me must make up fake assassination attempts just so people will like him.

And that, I don’t get.

• Unhinged Conspiracy Theory About WHCA Dinner Trump Murder Attempt (Margolis)

On Saturday night, a gunman opened fire in the Washington Hilton just as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was underway. A Secret Service agent was struck but protected by body armor. Thankfully, no attendees were reported injured. Secret Service agents quickly evacuated President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and House Speaker Mike Johnson to safety. The shooter was neutralized and detained. Before the smoke even cleared, the left was trying to push a politically convenient narrative.

https://twitter.com/SarahIronside6/status/2048204632288084107

The shooter has been identified as Cole Allen, 31, of Torrance, Calif., and he has confessed to authorities that his intended target was Trump administration officials.

Yup. This is what they’re running with. By their estimation, the Trump administration recruited some California leftist with a paper trail to stage a fake assassination attempt to boost his approval ratings and to use it as a pretext to justify the White House ballroom that is already being built. None of this is new, of course. The same strategy was used after the 2024 Butler, Pa., assassination attempt. Many on the left believe it was staged to help Trump win reelection.

Calling it staged is the easiest escape hatch. It lets them skip the uncomfortable conversation about what years of dehumanizing rhetoric against Trump and his allies actually produce. That’s what this conspiracy theory is really about. The left would rather invent an elaborate White House psyop than ask themselves a simple, honest question about the world they’ve helped create.

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Very long article. Get your background!

• Trump Dodges Another Gunman, Unbowed But Grounded: Not Going To Deter Me (JTN)

President Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts during the 2024 election, and Saturday night he was whisked away again from another lethal threat when a heavily armed gunman briefly breached a security checkpoint at one of Washington’s most famous black-tie galas and exchanged gunfire before being subdued by the Secret Service. bBut Trump would not recoil. First he wanted to return to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner before it was canceled, hoping to send a signal to a nation gripped by political vitriol and shaken by recent assassinations — from Charlie Kirk to Minnesota legislators – that “sick people” cannot “change the fabric” of the United States.


Then he quickly posted on social media a photo of the gunman – a 31-year-old from California armed with a shotgun, a handgun and knives. The image showed him handcuffed and stripped to his waist after his attack was foiled. There was no accident in the message: a failed shooter laid prostate, face-down and now harmless on the ground. “This thug that attacked our Constitution, they seem to think he was a lone wolf, and I feel that too” Trump said. “My impression is he was a lone wolf, whack job. … These are crazy people, and they have to be dealt with.”

Prosecutors within hours had already charged the man with multiple federal felonies as they tore through every aspect of his life, trying to figure how he got from Torrance, Calif., to the nation’s capital and booked a room at the glitzy hotel and what motivated him. Being president “is a very dangerous profession. … I can’t imagine that there is any profession that is more dangerous,” a matter-of-fact Trump told reporters at an extraordinary White House news conference where he and reporters were still clad in their tuxedos and gowns from the interrupted gala. Having cheated death more than once, Trump wants America to know he is unbowed and that the best way to react to harrowing political violence is to repudiate it, punish it and then stay the course.

“I want to live because I want to make this country great,” the president said at one point, brushing away a question about personal safety. At another point, he added: “It’s not going to deter me from winning the war in Iran.” bThe incident left a Secret Service officer injured, shot at point-blank range with a bullet that remarkably embedded in his protective vest. And it left journalists normally antagonistic to the president thankful that everyone left the abbreviated gala alive.=President Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts during the 2024 election, and Saturday night he was whisked away again from another lethal threat when a heavily armed gunman briefly breached a security checkpoint at one of Washington’s most famous black-tie galas and exchanged gunfire before being subdued by the Secret Service.

But Trump would not recoil. First he wanted to return to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner before it was canceled, hoping to send a signal to a nation gripped by political vitriol and shaken by recent assassinations — from Charlie Kirk to Minnesota legislators – that “sick people” cannot “change the fabric” of the United States.= Then he quickly posted on social media a photo of the gunman – a 31-year-old from California armed with a shotgun, a handgun and knives. The image showed him handcuffed and stripped to his waist after his attack was foiled. There was no accident in the message: a failed shooter laid prostate, face-down and now harmless on the ground.

“This thug that attacked our Constitution, they seem to think he was a lone wolf, and I feel that too” Trump said. “My impression is he was a lone wolf, whack job. … These are crazy people, and they have to be dealt with.” Prosecutors within hours had already charged the man with multiple federal felonies as they tore through every aspect of his life, trying to figure how he got from Torrance, Calif., to the nation’s capital and booked a room at the glitzy hotel and what motivated him.

Being president “is a very dangerous profession. … I can’t imagine that there is any profession that is more dangerous,” a matter-of-fact Trump told reporters at an extraordinary White House news conference where he and reporters were still clad in their tuxedos and gowns from the interrupted gala. bHaving cheated death more than once, Trump wants America to know he is unbowed and that the best way to react to harrowing political violence is to repudiate it, punish it and then stay the course. “I want to live because I want to make this country great,” the president said at one point, brushing away a question about personal safety. At another point, he added: “It’s not going to deter me from winning the war in Iran.”

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Assassin? But nobody died!

• Assassin Identified as Cole Tomas Allen (31), from Torrance, California (CTH)

The gunman who attempted to gain entry to the White House Correspondents Association dinner has been identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, a schoolteacher from Torrance, California. A registered Democrat who donated to Kamala Harris campaign.Cole Tomas Allen Engineering at Cal Tech 2013 – 2017, a master’s degree in computer science 2025.


Early reports suggest the shooter was a guest of the Washington hotel and assembled a long rifle prior to making entry to the venue. According to local police, the suspect was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and several knives. The suspect was not struck by gunfire. One of the Secret Service Agents was shot during the gunfire.

Avriana F. Allen, 27, of Washington, D.C., is the sister of Cole Tomas Allen, the 31-year-old Torrance, California teacher identified by authorities as the suspect in the April 25, 2026, shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Public records confirm the sibling relationship through shared mother Kathleen A. Allen and prior family address in Torrance. {source} Full press briefing from law enforcement is below.


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Pick one.

• President Trump Holds a Press Conference Following Another Murder Attempt (CTH)

President Trump will be holding a press briefing from the Brady Room following another failed assassination attempt in Washington DC. The shooter is in custody.

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Not from this article we don’t, but we do know.

The suspect has a Master’s in computer something, so he’s no fool.

Ergo1, if he says he wanted someone anyone from the entourage, he wouldn’t have tried it at the Dinner.

Because it’s so much harder to do anytinng that Trump is at, Secret Service numbers are crazy.

Ergo2: he was after Trump.

• We Now Know Who the WHCA Dinner Shooter Was Targeting (Margolis)

Almost immediately after the shooting during Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton, the left was trying to spin a narrative. The implication spread quickly: Trump’s rhetoric against the media had poisoned the atmosphere, and one of his supporters must have shown up to target journalists. It was an absurd theory, but they went with it.


The shooter has now been identified as 31-year-old schoolteacher Cole Allen of Torrance, Calif., who sprinted past security checkpoints inside the hotel armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and two knives. He never made it into the ballroom. Gunfire was exchanged during the incident, but Allen was not hit, and police arrested him. A Secret Service agent was struck but was wearing protective gear. No other injuries were confirmed among the attendees. The media, on the other hand, seemed almost reluctant to state the obvious: that this was another assassination attempt.

That kind of studied ambiguity has a purpose — it keeps a preferred storyline alive just long enough to spread on social media to undermine the facts. Anyone with common sense could see where the evidence was pointing. The president and his entire cabinet were at that dinner. The shooter rushed the entrance armed to the teeth. Sure enough, subsequent law enforcement leaks and reporting confirmed what common sense already suggested. Cole Allen told law enforcement he intended to target Trump administration officials at the event.

Cole Allen, the suspect in the shooting outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, told law enforcement following his arrest that he wanted to shoot Trump administration officials, two sources told CBS News. The suspect didn’t specifically say he was targeting President Trump, just “administration officials,” a law enforcement source said.Others reported the same thing. The liberal media’s reluctance to accept this was telling. Every hedge, every “we shouldn’t assume,” every pivot to Trump’s media rhetoric served the same function — to delay the truth long enough for the desired narrative to calcify in the public mind.

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The attention is on the perp, not the president.

• ‘You’re Horrible People’: President Trump Torches Norah O’Donnell (Margolis)

President Donald Trump sat down with Norah O’Donnell for a 60 Minutes interview… and let’s just say that things got really uncomfortable for O’Donnell when the subject of the manifesto written by the man who attempted to assassinate Trump and other administration officials at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner Saturday night came up. O’Donnell read aloud from the document, citing the shooter’s apparent motive: “Administration officials, they are targets.” Then she kept going, reading the gunman’s claim that he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” She asked Trump for his reaction.


He had one. “Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you’re — you’re horrible people. Horrible people,” Trump said. Trump didn’t flinch. He looked straight at her and said what a lot of people watching were probably thinking — that a major news anchor choosing to amplify a would-be assassin’s smears against the sitting president on national television is, at minimum, a choice worth examining. O’Donnell pressed forward anyway, asking whether Trump believed the manifesto’s insults were directed at him personally. “I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.” She tried to interject. He kept going, saying: “I’m not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person. I got associated with old stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated.”

Then Trump turned the tables in a way that O’Donnell wasn’t prepared for. He noted that the people most associated with Jeffrey Epstein aren’t exactly on his side of the aisle. “Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let’s say, Epstein or other things. But I said to myself, ‘You know, I’ll do this interview, and they’ll probably…’ I read the manifesto. You know, he’s a sick person. But you should be ashamed of yourself reading that, because I’m not any of those things.” O’Donnell tried to justify it, arguing these were simply “the gunman’s words.” Trump cut through that framing without missing a beat. “You shouldn’t be reading that on 60 Minutes,” he said. “You’re a disgrace, but go ahead. Let’s finish the interview.”

She pushed on anyway, starting to reference something else from the manifesto. Trump stopped her again: “You’re disgraceful.” A man just tried to kill the president — and several other administration officials — at what’s supposed to be a lighthearted Washington tradition. And 60 Minutes’ idea of journalism in the aftermath is to have its anchor read the shooter’s unhinged accusations against Trump on air, word for word, and ask him to respond to them. It doesn’t shock me at all that Trump knew O’Donnell would go there because the mainstream media and the Democratic Party are the source of all the lies and bogus allegations that radicalized the shooter to do what he did in the first place. Whether CBS considers that good television or good journalism is, at this point, a distinction without much of a difference.

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“.. the generation born after 2000 has an attention span of just eight seconds. Musk called this cultural Alzheimer’s.“

• After 2027 There Will Be No Going Back – Elon Musk (X)

In an interview with Lex Friedman, Musk said that after 2027 there would be no going back. When the reporter clarified what he meant, Musk paused for almost a minute, then added: “It’s not a catastrophe, it’s a transition.” Analysts have identified three themes that he has been particularly vocal about: autonomous intelligence, loss of meaning, and energy dependency. Everything he predicted is already happening.


The first sign is the collapse of attention. Musk said that people will stop thinking long-term. The planning horizon has shrunk from 30 years to three; people don’t build, they just innovate. MIT research shows that the generation born after 2000 has an attention span of just eight seconds. Musk called this cultural Alzheimer’s. The second sign is artificial intelligence, which will no longer be subordinate. Musk said: “When the system starts correcting the person, and not the other way around, linear logic will end.” Algorithms already control our attention, choice of partners, food and thoughts. This will not be a revolt of machines, but a silent loss of freedom of choice.

The third sign is the energy dependence of civilization. People are increasingly unable to survive without electricity for even a single day. When energy becomes currency, its control will become power. Musk believes that by 2027, the relationship between people and energy will surpass everything, and everything that is not autonomous will disappear. There is only one way out: a return to meaning. “Technology is stronger than us, but not smarter. As long as we have goals, we are not algorithms,” Musk repeated. He added: “We must learn to be human before systems start doing everything for us and controlling us.

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“The international order is “jeopardized” by the larger global powers, the French president has said..” He lost to Le Pen, he’s a goner. But he’s a Rothschild goner.

• Macron Laments That US Is Not A Reliable Partner (RT)

US allies are no longer sure that Washington is a “reliable” partner, French President Emmanuel Macron has said. Speaking during an informal summit in Athens on Friday alongside Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Macron was asked whether Europe was “becoming a bit irrelevant” given the various conflicts around the globe, including the war against Iran. “Everybody sees that the number one power, the US, could be an ally for certain countries, but this ally is not so much certain… and nobody is totally sure if this alliance is reliable,” the French president said, arguing that this makes the EU appear as a more stable alternative.


“We used to live in an international order, and this international order is jeopardized by the two big powers,” he added. The growing divide between European NATO nations and Washington has worsened since the US and Israeli attacked Iran in late February, with US President Donald Trump repeatedly criticizing bloc members over their reluctance to join the war. Tensions were already elevated due to Trump’s continued threats to annex Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark. Differing visions for the future of the Ukraine conflict have further widened the transatlantic rift.

Since returning to the White House in 2025, Trump has launched a broad diplomatic initiative to end the hostilities and has insisted that European nations take on the full financial and military burden of supporting Kiev. However, the UK and the EU have consistently attempted to torpedo the peace talks by injecting proposals which Moscow has condemned as deliberately unacceptable. Washington is trying to shift the burden of “containing Russia” onto its allies in Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week. The broader Western goal is to “preserve and renew their hegemony,” but as their relative power on the international stage declines, internal frictions in the West are intensifying, he added.

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60-odd years ago.

• How The US Engineered Its Own Failure In Cuba (RT)

Special operations can fail for many reasons – from a tragic accident to a lack of information or a hasty decision. And the costs of such mistakes range from the sullen faces of officials and predatory reporters at the door, to the worst outcome – hundreds of victims. There is an old proverb that all intelligence agents should be taught: “For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost.”


The moral is that the smallest omissions can lead to fatal consequences. But the most common reason why military operations fail – the phrase that should be etched above the gates of hell – might well be the motto, “That’s good enough.” Plans based on the assumption that the enemy is deaf, blind, and stupid fail time and time again, yet intelligence agencies continue to build their strategies upon this shaky foundation.

One of the textbook examples of such a failure was the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961. This CIA-initiated attempt to swiftly eliminate the communist regime in Cuba turned into a bloody disaster on the battlefield and a complete political failure.

The end of a client state
On January 1, 1959, socialist rebels led by Fidel Castro overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. The subsequent reality of life in Cuba proved difficult, and opinions on Castro’s rule were decidedly mixed. However, in 1959, the revolution signified liberation from a hated, deeply corrupt, brutal dictatorship that treated its citizens with disdain. Few mourned the departure of Batista, who fled the country with $300 million.

Initially, Castro didn’t intend to engage in a hostile confrontation with the West. However, his reforms took on a distinctly socialist character. He casually confiscated assets belonging to American and other Western citizens and nationalized land, industries, and enterprises. The Cuban Electric Company owned by an American holding company was seized, as was property belonging to the United Fruit Company, an American agricultural giant.

Under Batista, the United States had dominated the Cuban economy and owned nearly all industries. Politically, the American ambassador wielded as much, if not more, power than the official leader of Cuba. The island effectively functioned as a colony; the companies owned everything but bore no responsibility for anything. Batista, ruling the country with their blessing and support, cared only for his own comfort and wealth, and even collaborated directly with the mafia and engaged in gambling enterprises.

By the time relations between the US and Cuba soured completely, Castro had nationalized over 500 American private companies. Astute US politicians recognized the underlying issues; in a speech addressing the Cuban crisis, John F. Kennedy bluntly acknowledged that the puppet regime had driven Cubans to the brink. The primary cause of the Cuban revolution, he argued, was the dictator and his cohorts, whose actions ricocheted back against the US as the nation that had armed and politically supported Batista.

Castro frequently reminded the public of Washington’s dark role in the affair, but the United States could not restore relations with Cuba after the widespread confiscation of American assets. Castro’s attempts to establish relations with the US failed. Then US President Dwight Eisenhower refused to meet with him, while then Vice President Richard Nixon seemed more interested in testing the waters than seriously negotiating with Castro.

Meanwhile, the US had a track record of orchestrating coups in countries it deemed unfriendly. For example, in 1954, with help from United Fruit, a coup was carried out in Guatemala; following it, a dictatorship was established there. A similar strategy was being considered for Cuba.

The shadow war begins
Initially, the Americans sought to weaken Cuba through a trade embargo that began with oil and later expanded to sugar. In response, Castro initiated yet another wave of expropriations of American-owned businesses. The Eisenhower administration retaliated by banning all exports to Cuba. In turn, Castro nationalized everything he could, offering compensation in the form of Cuban bonds.

At the same time, a secret struggle between intelligence services unfolded, which quickly turned brutal. In March 1960, the cargo ship La Coubre, carrying weapons and ammunition purchased from Belgium, exploded in Havana’s port, causing massive casualties. The explosion occurred inside the ship and is believed to have been an act of sabotage. Unsurprisingly, Castro blamed the US for this incident, and the CIA’s involvement remains plausible. In effect, these actions pushed Cuba to align with the USSR, and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev eagerly offered support to Cuba.

As tensions mounted, it became clear that backing from Moscow would be essential. Cuba was already subjected to bombings from light aircraft piloted by Cuban exiles. They flew out of Florida and targeted Cuban plantations and businesses. However, the US didn’t intend to stop at that.

CIA Director Allen Dulles began planning for Castro’s physical elimination and the overthrow of the Cuban government. His deputy, CIA officer Richard Bissell, took on the direct management of the operation aimed at replacing Castro with a “more acceptable” regime. The details were being developed by the same team that had orchestrated the Guatemalan coup. One key condition set by Eisenhower was “plausible deniability” – concealing America’s role in the operation.

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Good story. Is there proof?

• US Failed To Extract Iran’s Enriched Uranium – Analyst To RT (RT)

The US rescue operation inside Iran earlier this month was actually a botched attempt by Washington to seize Tehran’s enriched uranium, geostrategic analyst Christopher Helali has said. He gave an exclusive interview to RT on Saturday from a site outside the city of Isfahan where the Iranian authorities displayed the wreckage of American aircraft destroyed in the area on April 3-5. Washington confirmed the loss of two MC-130J Hercules transport planes, four MH-6 Little Bird helicopters, an A-10 Thunderbolt and an MQ-9 Reaper drone during what US President Donald Trump called “one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in US History” to recover the pilot of an F-15E Strike Eagle, which had been downed by Iran.


Helali insisted that the rescue mission was just a cover up for “an enrichment uranium extraction operation by the US special forces.”“ The scale of destruction of all of the equipment left behind showed that this was a major operation – probably weeks and months in planning – and clearly it absolutely failed,” he said.Another proof that the Americans were after the enriched uranium is that “a passport of a mechanical engineer specializing in nuclear technology… capable of dealing with radioactive material” was found within the wreckage, the analyst added.

He filmed himself with the debris of the US aircraft, which he said included “multiple parts of different MC-130s… and the Little Birds – those small helicopters that are used in special operations.” Judging by the footage, the display attracted thousands of visitors, who carried Iranian national flags and chanted anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans. “The people have gathered here to celebrate the defeat of the US in this operation and overall Iran’s victory so far in this ongoing war of aggression,” Helali said. Among those who gathered, “the feeling is one of energy, one of resilience, one of dignity, and clearly the people are coming out in full force to show their support for their country,” he stressed.

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I tells ya, they want to give him a Nobel prize.

And they will. It’s about the only power Europe has left.

• Zelensky Likely ‘Directly Involved In Corruption’ – EU-Funded Anti-Graft NGO (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has likely participated in embezzlement involving the country’s top officials, Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC), has claimed. Kiev has been rocked by several corruption scandals in the last few years, with the most notable occurring in November 2025 when anti-graft agencies uncovered a $100 million kickback scheme at the state nuclear operator Energoatom.


The investigation implicated Timur Mindich, a close associate of Zelensky, as the mastermind of the criminal operation. The scandal led to the resignations of several high-ranking officials, including the Ukrainian leader’s influential chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, and Energy Minister German Galushchenko, who was later arrested. In her interview with Ukrainska Pravda last week, Kaleniuk said that there is “a high probability” that Zelensky was “directly involved” in corruption, despite him repeatedly denying any knowledge of any schemes by members of his government.

“All of his closest friends and most likely he himself built homes for themselves” since he came to power, the head of the Ukrainian NGO, which has been around since 2012 and receives funding from the EU and US, stressed. She also warned that Zelensky could be planning another attack on the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) in an attempt to shield himself from a possible investigation.

“The anti-corruption bodies that are doing their job can stop doing their job at any moment,” Kaleniuk warned. The Ukrainian leader already tried putting NABU and SAPO under his control last summer, but was forced to reverse course after backlash from Kiev’s foreign backers and protests in the streets. Despite the ongoing corruption scandals, the EU approved another €90 billion ($106 billion) for Ukraine on Thursday, with the European Council saying that it would begin disbursements “as soon as possible” in the second quarter of 2026.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharov insisted previously that the US and EU, which “coddled” Zelensky, should share the responsibility for the corruption in Ukraine. She suggested separately that the Ukrainian leader uses the “corrupt deal” that he has with Western politicians to “blackmail” them into continuing support for Kiev in the conflict with Moscow.

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“.. pulling back or even halting a $6 billion redevelopment of 350 Park Avenue, which would create “6,000 highly paid construction jobs and support the creation of more than 15,000 permanent jobs in Midtown New York.”

• NYC Mayor Mamdani Attempts To Defuse Info War Against Ken Griffin (ZH)

Citadel’s Ken Griffin should have absolutely zero tolerance for far-left New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In a recent promotional video, Mamdani attempted to turn the billionaire’s Manhattan penthouse into political ammunition for his tax-the-wealthy, anti-capitalist crusade to fund socialist experiments through a proposed pied-à-terre tax. For Griffin and Citadel, alarm bells should be ringing because these unhinged Marxists in City Hall will attempt to ruin the Citadel brand through an information war and create years of political headaches.


An internal message from Citadel’s COO to employees, likely leaked to The Wall Street Journal earlier last week, appears to have been a warning shot to Mamdani and his Marxist pals that Griffin has had enough of their political games. In a true ‘FAFO’ moment, CCO Gerald Beeson bashed Mamdani for the political stunt: “It is shameful that he used Ken’s name as the example of those who supposedly aren’t carrying their fair share of the burdens associated with New York City’s often costly and wasteful spending.” Beeson warned that further political games risk Citadel pulling back or even halting a $6 billion redevelopment of 350 Park Avenue, which would create “6,000 highly paid construction jobs and support the creation of more than 15,000 permanent jobs in Midtown New York.”

Why Mamdani’s team of socialists decided to launch an info war operation against Griffin and Citadel is a very good question, and it appears not to have been well thought out. Griffin holds some unique cards. He can easily cancel the 350 Park Avenue redevelopment plan and stage a Chicago-style exodus, much like he did several years ago when Citadel moved to Florida. This move would certaintly rattle Wall Street. This reality is likely dawning on Mamdani’s team, as the mayor on Friday insisted his push for a new tax on pricey second homes isn’t “motivated by any one individual.”

Bloomberg described Mamdani’s action on Friday as “trying to defuse” the “Griffin blowback” that went viral earlier in the week. Another outlet, Crain’s New York Business, also pointed out, “The mayor is now softening his tone and says he is open to meeting with the Florida billionaire.” Griffin should have zero tolerance for NYC’s Marxist mayor. The risk has already materialized that these unhinged politicians would wage an information war to ruin the Citadel brand, which could easily escalate into paid protests and fuel broader public hostility. So why take the abuse, Ken? Remember how easy it was to leave Chicago for Florida?

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“.. turning a once-free nation into a cautionary tale ..”

• RFK Jr. Blasts “Abhorrent” Assisted Suicide (MN)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a blunt warning to lawmakers this week: Canada’s rush to expand assisted suicide is turning a once-free nation into a cautionary tale the United States must reject outright. Testifying before the Senate Finance Committee and Senate HELP Committee, Kennedy forcefully condemned the program known as Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). “I think those laws are abhorrent,” he said. Pointing directly to the results north of the border, he added, “And we just see in Canada today, I think the number one cause of death is assisted suicide.”


Kennedy made clear the policy doesn’t stop at personal choice. “And as you say, it targets people with disabilities and people who are struggling in their lives,” he stated. He tied the issue to America’s broader standing in the world: “I don’t think we can be a moral society; we can’t be a moral authority around the globe if that becomes institutionalized throughout our society.”

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2047024285139534134

The comments come as Canada’s experiment spirals. The country is on track to surpass 100,000 assisted deaths before MAID’s 10th anniversary this summer, as noted in a recent New York Post report. As of 2024, the total already stood at 76,475 — more Canadians killed through the program than died in World War II. Government-assisted suicide is also spreading like wildfire across the West, often sold as compassion but delivering cost-cutting convenience for cash-strapped socialist healthcare systems. In the Netherlands, euthanasia now accounts for 6 percent of all deaths and the share is rising every year. I

n 2025 alone, 10,341 people died by euthanasia. While most were over 70 with physical illnesses like cancer or heart disease, the cases included 499 dementia patients and 278 listed under vague “other reasons.” One case involved a patient aged between 12-18. Dutch experts are now urging caution for anyone under 25, warning that young brains are still developing and highly susceptible to external pressure and online influence. Canada’s program began in 2016 limited to terminal cases. Within a year, officials were openly discussing how it could save over $130 million annually in medical costs. Expansions followed: mental illness is scheduled to qualify starting in 2027, and discussions continue about “mature minors” as young as 12.

https://twitter.com/RMXnews/status/2036921678337384776

Belgium and the Netherlands already allow child euthanasia. England, Wales, and Scotland are now pushing similar legislation modeled on Canada’s original law. The results speak for themselves. In Canada, one in every 20 deaths is now government-assisted suicide. Proponents promised rare, tightly controlled cases. Reality delivered a bureaucratic death machine that quietly expanded to the disabled, the depressed, and the financially burdensome. Kennedy offered lawmakers a clear path forward. “I am happy to work with you in whatever way we can,” he said, signaling openness to bipartisan efforts to protect vulnerable Americans from the same slope.

Another recent case captured the human cost in Spain, where a 25-year-old woman paralyzed after a horrific gang rape was euthanized despite her parents’ desperate legal fight: Spanish bishops called it what it is: “Euthanasia and assisted suicide are not medical acts, but deliberate interruptions of the bond of care, and represent a social defeat when presented as a response to human suffering.”They stressed that “the dignity of the human person does not depend on their state of health… but rather is an intrinsic value that must be recognized, protected and helped in all circumstances.”The message is simple: when life hurts, the answer is not state-sponsored death but real care, real treatment, and real hope. Canada and Europe are showing the West what happens when governments treat citizens as budget line items rather than sacred individuals.

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