Marco Rubio Archives - The Automatic Earth

https://twitter.com/ConstitustionX/status/2083425860418457672?s=20 https://twitter.com/JimFergusonUK/status/2083459438984245427?s=20 https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2083634392061161770?s=20

“…To Reopen Hormuz After Call With Saudi Crown Prince..”

• Trump Says “Perimeters Of A Deal Reached” With Iran (ZH)

The past few days have been tense. Although no US strikes were launched from Friday night into Saturday morning and the Gulf region remained quiet early Sunday, anticipation surrounding President Trump’s next move is keeping energy traders and Gulf governments on edge. The big concern is that another round of strikes could trigger a wider regional conflict, particularly as the Iranian-backed Houthis have reactivated offensive operations in the southern Red Sea in recent weeks.

The Trump administration and Department of War may pursue de-escalation from here after Trump wrote on Truth Social late Saturday night: “We have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.”

That de-esclation pathway was followed by a new signal early Sudnay from Saudi Press Agency, Saudi Arabia’s official state news agency, stating that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman held a call with President Trump, discussing the “necessity of prioritizing dialogue to de-escalate tensions and the importance of exerting all possible efforts to achieve a truce that paves the way for diplomatic solutions that yield positive results for preserving the security and stability of the region and prevent it from being drawn into a wider conflict whose repercussions would affect regional and international security and stability.”
The MbS-Trump call was first reported by Axios, which got the scoop on Saturday evening: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke to President Trump on Saturday and expressed concern over his plans for massive new strikes against Iran, according to two U.S. officials and a third source with knowledge of the call. . . .
Such an attack could lead to an unprecedented escalation in the five-month war, which has repeatedly paused as Trump opened the door to negotiations — only to resume when those diplomatic efforts failed. Iran has threatened to retaliate by launching attacks against energy and infrastructure facilities in Israel and the Gulf countries The Saudis expressed concern and asked for clarity about the plan of action,” one U.S. official told Axios.
A second source with knowledge of the call said MBS urged Trump to de-escalate and refrain from launching the strikes. Why the MBS-Trump conversation matters is that Saudi Arabia remains one of Washington’s top Gulf region allies. Riyadh has heavily influenced Trump’s Iran policy at previous inflection points and appears to have exerted similar influence in delaying or narrowing the next phase of US military action.

Paul Craig Roberts. Calls Trump Zionist. I don’t think he fits the definition. For Mamdani perhaps, but for PCR?

The whole headline is nonsense too, of course. We’re losing ourselves.

• Zionist Trump Regime Looks for New Reasons to Escalate Attacks on Iran (PCR)

The New York Times and other of the whore media are reporting cyber attacks on US water systems in 7 states including Minnesota and Michigan. The attacks are attributed to Iran, although “Officials cautioned that they had not definitively determined that Iran was responsible for the attack.” So why report it? Is it news before it happens? It is not certain, but in my opinion likely, that this is disinformation being fed to the presstitutes by the Trump Zionist regime in order to justify more and more risky attacks on Iran. As we all know, Netanyahu has a firm hold on Trump and that is what Netanyahu wants.

American patriots seem inclined to believe that America is always under attack by some designated enemy. The George W. Bush Zionist regime even attributed “weapons of mass destruction” to Iraq, a total impossibility, in order to justify a US invasion in the interests of Greater Israel. As General Wesley Clark said “seven countries in five years.” Moreover, why would Iran, which attacks military, not civilian, targets, focus on water systems? It seems their cyberattacks would, like their military attacks, be focused on military infrastructure.
But assume Iran is behind the attacks on US water systems, keep in mind that Iranian civilian infrastructure and civilian residential areas continue to be targets of Zionist Trump’s attacks on Iran. So, if Iran is attacking US water systems, the cause is Trump’s attacks on Iran’s civilian infrastructure. So, before you get all hot under the collar about Iran, get hot under the collar because of Zionist Trump who is using America for Israel’ benefit. Americans have no right to complain about others attacking us in kind.

Someone organized this. Did israel do it?

• A Two-State Solution for Spain? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Israel is celebrating the overrunning of the Spanish city of Ceuta by 60,000 African immigrant-invaders, an invasion force larger than 50% of the city’s population. As in Jean Raspail’s Camp of the Saints, there was no Spanish force present to defend Spain.

The idiotic Spanish Supreme Court invited the invasion by ruling that the government did not have the authority to evict, and apparently prevent, the entry, of 60,000 invaders without having each of the 60,000 invaders’ “human rights” case heard in court. The imbecilic Spanish prime minister sent 60 troops to “help the police.” As RT reports: “Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez refused to declare a national emergency, but sent a token force of 60 troops.” What good are 60 soldiers against 60,000 invaders? In former times when European ethnicities had confidence in themselves, the Spanish PM would be hanging from the nearest lamp post. The prime minister sacrificed Spaniards to Immigrant-invaders.
Europe is upset, because once the invaders establish themselves in Spain they will continue to enter and spread themselves throughout Europe. “Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, and Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker all calling for Spain’s exclusion from the EU’s Schengen borderless travel zone.” But in Israeli circles the reaction was jubilation. More success destroying the weak-willed, weak-minded gentile Europeans who have no sense of ethnic survival, just as Jean Raspail described. The immigrant-invaders into white ethnic civilization are overthrowing it and leaving Israel supreme.
Among the many, Israeli journalist Edy Cohen celebrated the victory against the gentile enemy that once expelled the Jews from Spain because of their financial exploitation of Spanish citizens: “Don’t be surprised if in a few years those same young people who stormed Ceuta are the ones taking to the streets of Madrid and Barcelona shouting the new slogan. He who invites the destruction of the Jewish state suddenly discovers that destruction can also start in his own home.” Centuries later. Jews don’t forget.
“Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir joined in the mockery, congratulating the moronic prime minister of Spain “for his profound commitment to welcoming immigration and ‘human diversity’.” “Ben-Gvir, who has called for the destruction of Lebanon, the execution of Palestinian prisoners, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war, called on Sanchez to go further and aid in the depopulation of Gaza.” Not a word from Israel’s puppet, President Trump, who is so weak, despite his laughable blustering, that he, the President of the United States, is not capable of standing up to Netanyahu.
Later reports allege that Spanish military forces eventually showed up and that the immigrant-invaders voluntarily returned to Morocco. Who really knows? Given the total unreliability of the news, we have no way of knowing. What does seem to be completely clear is that no European ethnicity has the confidence to defend its existence. Every white country is committed to its total destruction by its own government and white liberals. Any white ethnic who wants to know his future needs only to read Jean Raspail’s Camp of the Saints.

”The Ceuta migrant surge was sold as a border panic. The harder question is who benefited from lighting the fuse.”

• Regarding The Causes of The Ceuta Migrant Surge, Look Who’s Gloating (Amar)

The recent burst of illegal migration into Spain’s Moroccan exclave of Ceuta was, above all, a sensational media event produced for political effect. It will have lasting consequences, but not in terms of who ended up where: Of the about 50,000 migrants who suddenly, as if on command, stormed Ceuta by land and sea, almost all quickly went back to Morocco. According to the EU’s home affairs commissioner, not a single Ceuta-crasher made it to the European mainland.

In that sense, the whole thing might as well not have happened. Apocalyptic fantasies of Ceuta turning into a wide open gate to the rest of fortress Europe were always, at best, silly: no, you can’t just travel on into Spain from there or to British Gibraltar, for that matter.
Worse, there have been many deliberate attempts at political profiteering by spreading panic. All through the West, figures from across the political spectrum did not miss a beat trying to exploit the Ceuta emergency: In America, President Donald Trump – under pressure from his self-imposed fiasco in Iran – spoke of a “catastrophe” for Spain and predicted even worse to come in the US if voters dare abandon his Republicans in the upcoming midterms. Elon Musk, richest oligarchs in the world, shared a fragment of the not-so-subtly Zionist horror epic “World War Z” to compare the migrants to Zombies.

Meanwhile in NATO-EU Europe, Italy’s leadership under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni staged some grand, irrelevant theater about the country’s perfectly unaffected borders, while making sour sounds about Schengen this and Schengen that. Not to be outdone, in France the Rassemblement National’s number two Jordan Bardella charged with equal absurdity that Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and his liberal policies had “opened the doors of Europe.”
While especially strident, the EU’s new right was representative of almost everyone else: 22 governments signed a letter “implicitly criticizing” Spain rather than show solidarity with a fellow-EU member. Spain, meanwhile, is not prepared to meekly submit to this intra-Western hazing session. Sanchez has called out international reactions “driven by prejudice, fake news, ignorance or political interest.”
None of the above means that this fresh and unprecedentedly massive – five or six times as large as previous peaks, according to the Wall Street Journal – Ceuta crisis wasn’t real. Indeed, it was real enough to leave at least 67 casualties behind, namely, those migrants who did not manage to breach the Spanish border fortifications and drowned or were crushed to death. They, however, have met with little interest and no human compassion. Clearly, under Western eyes they are negligible. Western mainstream media and politicians have treated their lives as if they hardly mattered. Almost as if they were, say, Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank, killed, robbed, and displaced by Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Which brings us to an especially intriguing aspect of this manufactured panic: Curiously, Israel’s UN representative Danny Danon has felt it is his job to go after Spain as well. “Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy,” he declared, adding “maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.”
Ceuta and its sister exclave Melilla really are odd historical remnants, no doubt. But to hear an official representative of Israel, a genocidal settler colony led by an indicted war criminal, go on about colonialism is rich. But then, that is Danon’s default style: aggressive, shameless, and dirty.
More serious is the fact that Israel’s UN ambassador has chosen to make this statement when social media are already abuzz with theories pointing to Israel as somehow behind – if not necessarily alone – the storming of Ceuta. In essence, the idea is that the Zionist apartheid state and its international networks have found a way to pay Spain back for its far from perfect but – in NATO-EU Europe – unusual solidarity with Israel’s Palestinian victims.
No wonder that many Spanish observers, including the Minister of Transport, believe Israel’s involvement is real in this assault on Spain’s territorial integrity and standing within the EU. Indeed, Danon’s comment was so revealing that Israel’s ambassador to Spain, Dana Ehrlich, went into damage control mode, posting that Israel’s UN representative does not represent the position of the Israeli government. Make it make sense.
[..] The likeliest explanation for the Ceuta assault and its lethal consequences may well be a combination of factors. Yet the real question is not simply which causes contributed to this fatal outcome, but whether they came together spontaneously or by design. Was there a trigger or a catalyst? If there is one thing the genocide in Gaza should have taught everybody then it is that when Israel announces a crime, it will follow through and commit it. With that in mind, it is naïve to rule out the very real possibility that Ceuta was an Israeli psy-op against Spain, at the cost of dozens of lives no one in Europe seems to care about.

But that’s what they publicly declare…

“One Ceuta resident posted that around 50,000 invaders remained, the city was collapsed, and the official numbers were pure spin.”

• NO, The Invaders Have Not All Just ‘Gone Home’ (MN)

Spanish authorities and their leftist allies are pushing the line that the tens of thousands of migrants who stormed Ceuta have mostly “gone home.” The claim is pure fantasy. Fresh video from the streets shows the city still under siege, with invaders assaulting facilities, smashing graves, clashing with locals, and turning a Spanish enclave into a no-go zone. This is the same dangerous mass migration reality that open-borders ideologues keep denying, even as the evidence piles up in real time.

The official narrative landed hard on Friday. Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares declared that “the practical totality of those who entered Ceuta have already returned to Morocco.” The Spanish Embassy in the UK amplified the message, insisting almost everyone was gone, that no one could reach the mainland without ID checks, and that Schengen integrity remained fully guaranteed.b The Guardia Civil’s own association posted that Ceuta was “breathing again,” with returns advancing little by little and normality returning thanks to security forces.
Locals on the ground immediately called it a lie. One Ceuta resident posted that around 50,000 invaders remained, the city was collapsed, and the official numbers were pure spin. Video filmed that same afternoon showed streets still packed, nothing like the “most have left” story. [..] Just days earlier, we documented the initial invasion and the subsequent rampage through homes and streets. The claim that the crisis simply evaporated overnight collapses under the weight of the footage still circulating.
While Madrid spun the returns, Moroccan migrants were filmed storming a public asylum centre in Ceuta. The CETI facility came under direct assault as the government continued insisting order had been restored. Elsewhere, invaders smashed Christian graves and hurled the broken pieces at Spanish citizens. Locals fought back with whatever they could grab while police and military presence remained inadequate.
https://twitter.com/mattvanswol/status/2083277425287242146?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2083277425287242146%7Ctwgr%5Ec6f49120ef6451b8882d2102b3804e621e984e77%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmodernity.news%2F2026%2F08%2F01%2Fno-the-invaders-have-not-all-just-gone-home%2F
Knives came out in the open. Migrants stabbed one another in the streets while Spanish residents stayed locked indoors, prisoners in their own city of roughly 80,000 people now overrun. Cars belonging to locals were attacked simply for driving past and showing dissatisfaction. Grocery stores had to be fenced off and guarded by police to stop looting by the hungry crowds.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/2083168989715243281?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2083168989715243281%7Ctwgr%5Ec6f49120ef6451b8882d2102b3804e621e984e77%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmodernity.news%2F2026%2F08%2F01%2Fno-the-invaders-have-not-all-just-gone-home%2F
Vehicles burned at the border as the surge continued. Groups of military-age men, far from the “families and refugees” talking point, were filmed taking escalators and moving through the city with the swagger of occupation rather than desperation.

Muslim Invaders Turned Ceuta Into a THIRD WORLD Hellscape in 24 Hours

What was paradise just yesterday now looks like the country these criminals left.

Import the third world, become the third world. pic.twitter.com/nCYzGygMBO
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 31, 2026

Daniel Lacalle is a Spanish voice. Appropriate.

• Ceuta and the Collapse of Sánchez’s Pro-Migration Experiment (Daniel Lacalle)

The new migration crisis in Ceuta is not an isolated episode or a simple border emergency. It is the result of a deeply irresponsible and damaging political and economic model. Sanchez boasts about aggregate growth while destroying cohesion, productivity, net real income per capita, and institutions. Spain is not an example of growth, migrant integration, or cohesion. It is a statistical mirage juiced by population increase and a fiscal time bomb. It has taken a migration crisis for the European Union to wake up.

Illegal immigration is not a stroke of fate or a recipe for growth and for shoring up public finances; it is a strategy of control and demolition of the nation from within, with the aim of creating a dependent, captive underclass, buying votes by altering demographics and shifting onto future generations the enormous cost to the state of a population increase whose net contribution to public accounts is overwhelmingly negative.
Spain was presented by progressives as a model of migrant integration. It was never true, and now it has become a full- blown crisis. The uncontrolled wave of illegal immigration is the direct result of the socialist government‘s policies: mass regularizations, subsidies, and the constant message that illegal migration pays.
For years, Spain has attracted uncontrolled inflows with promises of regularization and public transfers, while Brussels looked the other way because headline GDP grew and the statistics looked inclusive. However, the cost is enormous and borne by Spanish workers and taxpayers and, increasingly, by the entire European Union. Its elite tolerated Spain’s destructive policies as long as aggregate GDP was fattened, even in the face of the clear warning sign that GDP per capita was stagnating and pressure on public services and social unrest were rising.
The Sanchez government and its coalition have imposed unprecedented regularization processes, presenting them as a model for Europe and explicitly linking them to GDP increases and the supposed sustainability of the welfare state. This was a major deception. Regularized illegal immigration does not make pensions more sustainable; quite the opposite, because its net contribution to public accounts is unquestionably negative, as all studies on the matter show. Meanwhile, the government inflates aggregate GDP, but GDP per capita, net real wages, productivity, and the real effective employment rate remain stagnant.
The Spanish government has presented itself to the world with an openly pro immigration stance, at odds with decisions taken by the European Union itself. However, the Commission and the EU remained silent in the face of the assault on institutions, corruption, and the disaster of migration policy. European institutions bear responsibility because they supported and amplified S·nchez s destructive, extensive migration policy, presenting it as if it were inclusive. They ignored the evidence that Spain s numbers are poor once you look beyond headline GDP.
Stagnant GDP per capita: the IMF’s own estimates show that Spain’s GDP per capita will grow by just 1% a year between 2018 and 2027, exactly the same as the euro area average. Falling net real wages: under Sanchez they have fallen by almost 3%.Real unemployment: 3.7 million real unemployed, including inactive workers registered with the SEPE and 792,341 inactive permanent intermittent workers. The number of effectively unemployed has barely improved since 2019.
Zero fiscal consolidation: the net debt of the public administrations under the Excessive Deficit Procedure has risen to a record 1.6 trillion, while the total liabilities of the public sector have increased by more than half a trillion to 2.2 trillion. Debt to GDP and the deficit only appear to improve because the denominator is being doped with immigration and inflation above the euro area average. An unsustainable Social Security system: Snchez has multiplied Social Security’s debt, and the system needs a bailout every year from a state that is already in deficit. Immigration is not going to reduce that enormous hole; it increases it, as its net contribution is mostly negative.
All the data on the Spanish economy show weakness, statistical illusions, and severe imbalances, but the European Union and the Commission preferred to remain silent, buy the official propaganda, and cling to a doped aggregate GDP. The same thing they did with Greece between 2004 and 2007.
[..] It is not a mistake; it is a power strategy. Sánchez seeks to create a captive underclass, dependent on subsidies and papers, that will vote for him in the future and shift the social consequences and the bill onto taxpayers. While the government sinks under corruption scandals and loses social support, it tries to cling to power by dismantling Spain and its institutions and importing the future voters it is losing today.
Sánchez is not governing Spain; he is dismantling it in an attempt to cling to power. That is the big lie of Sánchez’s “rocket,” bloating up instead of truly growing.
It seemed Elon Musk was on to Sánchez early on. After the prime minister defended his amnesty plan in April, Musk wrote on X, “Dirty Sánchez is guilty of high treason.”

Dirty Sánchez is guilty of high treason
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2026

Sánchez responded cheekily at the time, “Mars can wait. Humanity can’t.”

Mars can wait. Humanity can’t. https://t.co/Oc4qAYtd3f
— Pedro Sánchez (@sanchezcastejon) January 29, 2026

Why would she try to prove him wrong? He’s read it all. Can’t win that one.

“I’ve actually read the science,” he said. “You don’t want to come back here and debate the science.”

• RFK Jr. Steamrolled Dana Bash Over Fauci’s COVID Lies (Matt Margolis)

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. obliterated CNN’s Dana Bash during a fiery interview Sunday morning on State of the Union, and it was brutal. The segment aired as measles outbreaks tore through several states, with public health officials warning that unvaccinated communities were fueling the spread of the disease to levels not seen in decades. Those outbreaks trace back to Joe Biden’s presidency, when his administration allowed millions of illegal immigrants to pour across the southern border and bring diseases like measles back into communities that had all but wiped them out.

Bash spent much of the interview pushing Kennedy to look “into the camera” and tell parents to vaccinate their kids against measles. Kennedy did it. He said exactly what she wanted him to say. Then Bash kept going, and the interview went off the rails. The conversation curdled into a fight over how the media treated skeptics and anyone who dared question the Biden administration’s COVID-era public health guidance during the pandemic. Bash opened with an accusation. “You are the HHS secretary, and you are talking about things that lead to vaccine hesitancy in this country,” she said. “And it’s something that causes problems for people when there is not anything.”
Kennedy wasn’t having it. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “Do you see your job as ending vaccine hesitancy or do you see your job as telling the truth to the American people?” Bash insisted her job was telling the truth. “There is study after study after study,” she said. “It’s one of the most studied things out there in science.” Kennedy pounced. “You’re repeating it like a parrot,” he said, twice for emphasis. Bash shot back, “So are you.” Kennedy wasn’t buying it. “I’ve actually read the science,” he said. “You don’t want to come back here and debate the science.”
From there, Kennedy dismantled the premise CNN built its entire segment on: that trusting government “experts” is the same thing as trusting the truth. “All you know how to do is repeat things that people told you and say, trust the experts,” he said. “That’s what you did during COVID. Now we know that Anthony Fauci, who was the ‘expert,’ was lying about everything, about masks, about social distancing, about natural immunity, about the transmission from the vaccine, about the source of COVID. He was lying, and you were punishing people for not trusting the experts. And now you’re rolling out the ‘experts’ again to talk about something that you have no personal knowledge of.”
Bash tried to defend herself. “That is my job, to talk to people,” she said. Kennedy wasn’t finished. “Your job is to tell the truth to the American people,” he replied.

.@SecKennedy NUKES @DanaBashCNN:

"I'm not debating this with you."

"Of course you won't. All you know how to do is repeat things that people told you and say, 'Trust the experts!' That's what you did during Covid. Now we know that Anthony Fauci, who was the 'expert,' was… pic.twitter.com/IVRLJfDSZ6
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 2, 2026

If Bash thought she could lob a bunch of accusations against Kennedy and he would take it quietly, she was sorely mistaken. Kennedy didn’t dodge a single question. He turned every one of them into an indictment of a press corps that spent years demanding blind obedience and calling it science.

The entire video.

“Defending Fauci, Censorship, Govt Fraud and Weaponizing Viruses.. “

• CNN’s Dana Bash Beclowns Herself During Confrontation with RFK Jr (CTH)

CNN propagandist Dana Bash had a full mask down episode today while trying to deny the truth about COVID-19 (all aspects) and defend Anthony Fauci (who she frequently text with according to Fauci’s diary).

HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr was not going to allow CNN to fraudulently present nonsense claims under the guise of “settled science,” and he pushed back hard against her claims. At one point Bash notes she didn’t want to litigate the COVID-19 outcomes and RFK Jr appropriately pushed back saying the experiences need to be relitigated because Americans were censored, shut down, lied to and had liberty destroyed by a political health system devoid from science.
Things became even more heated as Bash was staring at the multi-page talking points prepared for her by corporate advertisers and Kennedy was systematically destroying them. Bash doubled, tripled and quadrupled down with the manipulative and combative questioning, ultimately removing any facade of journalism in the process.

That question apparently is: ‘why have your views changed so dramatically in the past two years, and/or are you just playing a role.‘

• Rubio Discusses Global Challenges and Hints At the Never Asked Question (CTH)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat down with Fox News Lara Trump for an extensive discussion on his role and responsibilities in the Trump administration. In the second segment, Rubio actually touched on something many have been curious about regarding his changed perspectives and positions. It is still annoying that no one has ever asked him directly, ‘why have your views changed so dramatically in the past two years, and/or are you just playing a role.‘ The two video segments and transcript are below:

[Transcript] – QUESTION: Secretary, great to have you back. Thank you so much.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Glad to be back. It’s been a while.
QUESTION: Yeah. There’s so much to talk about, but I want to start with Cuba.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah.
QUESTION: This has been of particular interest to the State Department right now. You guys released a 100-page report on Cuba, calling it, “The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” And this report talks about the fact that Cuba’s goal essentially is to erase the United States from the Earth. It also details a Cuban spy network that’s been undermining American interests. How did we get to a place where Cuba has become so much of a threat – it feels like again – to the United States?
SECRETARY RUBIO: I think for those who have followed the issue of Cuba, this is not unfamiliar to us. But to the average American, you see Cuba, a small country 90 miles off our shores, nine and a half million people population. But people forget that when it comes to things like espionage and influence operations, they actually are an influence and espionage superpower. If you look at the history of espionage in the United States, Cuba is the only country that consistently has implanted and embedded spies in our system without even paying them.
We had an ambassador, a U.S. ambassador, who ended up being a Cuban spy and was recently convicted. We’ve had them penetrate the highest levels of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Ana Belén Montes was one of the single biggest intelligence failures on the part of the United States and one of the biggest penetrations we ever had in our system.
So – and then on the influence front, if you look all throughout Latin America, every communist left-wing insurgency that’s destabilized governments across the region, every single one of them over the last 40, 50 years has found its support, its help, in many cases its birth, from a Cuban influence operation. So, it was an important report just to highlight the role they play in our country, a very negative role.
QUESTION: The report also links Cuban influence to the rise in Antifa, the riots that we saw in 2020, as well as the surge of radical activism that we’ve seen all over these college campuses. To the average person, those things, I think, feel generally organic, but it turns out there are a lot of different powers – Cuba being one of them – that are influencing all of these things day to day.
SECRETARY RUBIO: It’s the same network of protesters around the country. They were the same people you saw on the streets burning things in 2020. They then flip it around and they become the pro-Hamas protesters, then they flip it around and within 48 hours of Maduro’s arrest have preprinted signs outside the courthouse demanding his release. And then they’re out there doing the ICE stuff, attacking ICE agents.
There’s nothing organic about it. It is funded, it is organized, and Cuba is a part of that network, and in some cases a critical part of that network. And it’s a network they will weaponize against us, and they talk about it openly, about how they will use that network to pressure American policymakers – not just here in the United States, like Code Pink, but all over the world.
QUESTION: Critics of this report, of course, are saying, oh, well, these are scare tactics to potentially justify some U.S. military action against Cuba. It sounds like this is something we should take seriously, and this report sounds very real.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Everything in there is factual. And frankly, I don’t think they can dispute it. People can argue that we shouldn’t do with it, and I know there are plenty of people in American academia – and frankly in American press – that sympathize with the Cuban regime and have for a very long time. Part of it is motivated by their anti-Americanism, and part of it is motivated by ideological affinity. There are plenty – there are enough people in key nodes of our society, including professors, but frankly, in the past we’ve seen people within our own government, that sympathize with the Cuban regime. It’s the way they get spies without paying them. But it doesn’t mean we can ignore this threat.
Put aside for a moment my history, the fact that I’m Cuban American, the fact that I grew up in Miami. This is 90 miles from our shores. A failed state 90 miles from our shores that happens to be aligned with adversaries to the United States is a national security threat to our country.

“She asked if he goes right to sleep, and he said no, because when you’re working for Trump, who seemingly rarely sleeps, it’s impossible to do that.”

• What Does He Do on a Day Off? Marco Rubio Gets Personal (Sarah Anderson)

Marco Rubio appeared on Lara Trump’s Fox News’ My View with Lara Trump on Saturday night, and I’ll admit that I almost didn’t watch the entire interview. It started with his generic answers to the same old questions.

But Lara is, in my opinion, very good at what she does. When she interviews someone like our dear secretary of state, she doesn’t just ask about Iran and China and Venezuela, she asks him about, well, him. She wants to know about the person behind the news. I love that — it breaks up the monotony of geopolitical situations that he can’t really talk about in full publicly, and it gives us a little glimpse into how he’s handling all of these new-ish roles he’s taken on, after we’ve known him as Senator Rubio for so many years.
On Saturday night, he talked family, football, days off, and even that meme the internet just can’t seem to get enough of, and it was a nice refreshing change of pace, so I thought I’d share some of the details. Lara started by asking how he has changed through all of his many political seasons of life — senator, presidential candidate, secretary of state — and how he thinks the American people perceive him. He gave an answer that I think most of us who have reached middle age can relate to:
“You asked me if you’ve changed. I think everybody – you go through life, right? And as you go through life you learn new things, you see things you hadn’t seen before, you hear things you haven’t heard before. Certainly, I am a different person at 55 than I was at 25 or even 35 because I have 20 and 30 years of experience in between – in life and in work – that inform that.
I think at your core you always want to remain the same person, though, right? And that is what are your priorities in life and what are the values that sort of drive you to do what you do, and I hope that hasn’t changed. And by the way, the world changes too. There are things that are true today that weren’t true 10 years ago. So, I think that’s true for all of us, not just me.”
She also brought up his famous meme that I think everyone is familiar with at this point. As it turns out, Rubio says he hated the initial picture of him sitting on the sofa in the Oval Office, all slumped over, that inspired the meme. He said if you sit there without a pillow behind you, you sink. He said he doesn’t keep up with the meme that closely, but people love to show it to him, and he does think it’s funny.
https://twitter.com/A1Policy/status/2083733216775610484?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2083733216775610484%7Ctwgr%5E86cb41d7d8f1ad0ebc2930ef7ea6bc9884f94aa4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F08%2F02%2Fwhat-does-he-do-on-a-day-off-marco-rubio-gets-personal-n4955714
On balancing life as the busiest man in the Donald Trump administration with being a husband and father of four, he said it’s actually not that difficult. His children are 26, 24, 21, and 18, and the youngest just graduated high school, so they’re off focusing on careers, furthering their education, and enjoying their own lives. He said because the kids are all grown up, it also makes it easier to spend more time with his wife. “So, it’s the second phase of that relationship, I guess, after all these years,” he said.
So, what does Secretary Rubio do when he finally goes home at night? She asked if he goes right to sleep, and he said no, because when you’re working for Trump, who seemingly rarely sleeps, it’s impossible to do that. He also said it’s good to take some time to do something to disconnect completely from his job, like watch a movie or a sporting event. But he also admits that the “world doesn’t wait for you” in this role, and that plans to do something as simple as watch a movie is often disrupted.
“It’s harder – it was a lot easier to do that when you’re a senator,” he said. “It’s much harder when you’re in this role and in this job, because the world isn’t going to stop and wait for you. Like, you may have made a plan tonight to watch a movie, but in the middle of that movie something blows up somewhere in the world, and you’ve got to know about it and you may have to do something about it. So, it’s harder, but it’s not forever, and it’s fulfilling to be in that role.”
Finally, Lara asked him what he would do if he could have a full week off without anyone having access to him. If you’re familiar with Rubio, his answer probably won’t surprise you. “If I had a full week off, I’d be wondering what was going on,” he said, proving why he’s exactly the right person for his job. “I’m being honest, and maybe that’ll change when I’m out of this job.”
But if he could stop the world for a minute and ensure nothing happens? “Well, my wife’s going to hate this answer, but I’d love to sit down and watch, like, every college football game starting at noon Eastern until one – when the West Coast games end at 2:00 a.m. our time Eastern. I’d love to be able to do that at least one weekend. I doubt I’ll be able to do that anytime soon.”

SECRETARY RUBIO on if he had a week off: “My wife is going to hate this answer, but I’d love to sit down and watch every college football game.” pic.twitter.com/gV1sZgfzU5
— Department of State (@StateDept) August 2, 2026

It’s the stuff football fans’ dreams are made of. Rubio is, of course, a huge Florida Gators and Miami Dolphins fan, and I hope he gets to watch at least a few games this fall.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But let’s also not forget our past. You can’t very well bypass all Jewish lawyers in a place where half the lawyers are Jewish.

• In Mamdani’s New York, It’s 1933 All Over Again (Robert Spencer)

New York City’s Marxist Muslim Mayor Zohran Mamdani acted quickly, once he moved into Gracie Mansion, to demonstrate that his venomous anti-Israel campaign rhetoric was not just an appeal to the Democrat Party’s growing and aggressive hard-left faction. On his very first day in office, he revoked the city’s International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance framework for combating antisemitism. It’s easy to see why Mamdani would not have wanted to be committed to combating antisemitism: he was busy stirring it up. On July 21, Mamdani falsely accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a war criminal and carrying out a genocide of “Palestinians.”

Two days later, a Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” stabbed an identifiably Jewish man who was leaving Jewish services. Nor was that an isolated incident. The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday that “Mamdani’s own police commissioner reported hate crimes up nearly 12% citywide, with 55% targeting Jews, who represent about 10% of the city’s population.” More recently, despite being mayor of the city with the second-largest Jewish population in the world, he has conspicuously left all Jewish lawyers off the city’s 18-member Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary.
Jews comprise fully half of the city’s lawyers, but Mamdani didn’t see fit to appoint even one Jewish lawyer to the body that vets and recommends candidates for positions on the city’s courts. The systematic ignoring of the city’s Jewish lawyers will do nothing but contribute to their sidelining within their own profession. Algemeiner reported Tuesday that “a coalition of Jewish legal organizations condemned the appointments, arguing that the omission excludes one of New York’s largest religious and ethnic communities from an influential body responsible for shaping the city’s judiciary.”
The coalition also noted that Mamdani’s snubbing of the Jewish lawyers was just one aspect of “‘a troubling pattern’ that has left many Jewish New Yorkers feeling increasingly marginalized.” That pattern includes not only Mamdani’s rejection of “the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism,” but also “the omission of Jewish neighborhoods from an administration map highlighting immigrant enclaves.”
What’s next? Maybe organized boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses. The BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement announced a week after Mamdani took office that it welcomed Mamdani’s “revocation of the anti-BDS Executive Order issued last month by the previous mayor.” The executive order that Mamdani revoked “prevented any mayoral agencies or appointees from doing business with vendors and organizations complying with international law by holding genocidal Israel accountable.” That is, the city was prevented from doing business with entities that boycotted Israel, but no longer.
There are precedents. On April 1, 1933, Adolf Hitler’s newly-minted National Socialist dictatorship in Germany ordered a one-day boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. Six days later, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Service excluded Jews from positions as university professors and government officials. There quickly followed laws that barred Jews from serving as physicians and teachers, as well as, in a foreshadowing of Mamdani’s choices for the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary, lawyers and judges.
Attorney Eli Albrecht wrote Wednesday that “lawyers need to know the holocaust did not begin with camps. It began when Jews were removed from institutions – above all, legal institutions. Judges stripped of their robes. Lawyers disbarred. Then, when law-groups were Judenrein, they codified laws that made discrimination systematic and ‘legal.’ First, you remove the Jews from the institutions. Then, Jews can be discriminated against without representation.” He declared: “In NYC, there is a concerted effort to disappear Jews from public life and leadership. No one on the Left is speaking out. If this discrimination was happening to any other group, the chorus would be deafening.”
Of course no one on the left is speaking out. Patriots and lovers of freedom, however, can and must do so. For in National Socialist Germany, the harassment and persecution of the Jews did not end with their being barred from certain professions; on the contrary, at that point, it was just beginning. If Mamdani is doing all this now, what will he be doing in five years, or ten? (Those who complacently think he will be voted out after one term should remember that socialism often arrives through the ballot box, but never, ever leaves that way.) And while he has started with the Jews, against whom will he turn next?

Pardons don’t cover bankruptcy.

• Hunter Biden Claims Family is Broke in Defaulting on $17 Million Bill (Turley)

Hunter Biden is no Van Gogh. In addition to having both ears, Hunter’s work has generally been panned beyond an enabling media following. However, he claims he is also a starving artist. The problem appears to be that, as predicted years ago, his sales dried up in the influence-peddling market once his father left office. Now, his lawyers want him to cough up $17 million that he owes them. Hunter says that not only is he broke, but so is his family.

In a deposition in ongoing litigation with the law firm Winston Taylor, Hunter claimed an inability to pay the $17 million he owes his lawyers for representing him in criminal prosecutions, congressional investigations, and civil lawsuits. Hunter claimed under oath that “I don’t own anything of any value other than — and I don’t know the value of it — my paintings which I painted myself. So that’s it. And I don’t even have any other assets at all, stocks, bonds, anything like that, savings accounts.” He also added, “My family doesn’t have any money, and it’s not their debt anyway.”

The statement about his family is curious, since Joe and Jill Biden recently received numerous book contracts and were thought to be worth millions. However, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Joe Biden is struggling with $800,000 in debt and, ironically, increased property taxes in his blue state of Delaware on his $2.7 million home. (Moving to Florida like many fleeing blue state taxes is not a viable option for the Bidens).
Worse yet, no one wants Biden to do speeches and appearances, cutting off a lucrative post-presidency income. Not only is Biden obviously diminished in his ability to give a speech, but many Democrats blame him for the reelection of Trump by clinging to power despite his obvious deteriorating mental and physical condition. Of course, the former president still rakes in more than $400,000 a year in government pensions. Yet, in the end, Hunter is correct. It is not their debt unless they signed as guarantors on any debt.
Hunter continues to be the darling of the media with podcasts and interviews, including some who have called for him to run for president. He has lived in mansions and luxurious hotels for much of his life. However, that lifestyle was subsidized by wealthy Democratic donors and friends. What is impressive is how Hunter could burn through millions accrued from alleged influence peddling and shady deals. Notably, Fox News reports that the law firm, which is known for representing Democratic figures, has tried to connect Biden with donors to help him cover his legal bills, without success. With his father out of power, no one is willing to bankroll his lifestyle or buy his art.
Gone are the former swaggering threats that Hunter could make to shake down foreign figures. There was a time when he only needed to pick up a phone and send a text message like the one to a Chinese businessman, openly threatening Joe Biden’s displeasure if money is not sent to them immediately. In the WhatsApp message, Hunter stated:
“I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the Chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”
No one is answering now. Hunter insisted that he is now virtually destitute: “I don’t have any assets. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a phone.” Even his recent dubious award of $1.7 million in a defamation case was immediately claimed by the law firm, though that award can and should be appealed.
Hunter has written extensively on his struggle with drugs and alcohol. It is a great achievement to have overcome those addictions. Yet, the accounts would be more compelling if he did not unleash a scorched-earth campaign against critics when he was sober. He sued or threatened to sue a wide array of people to try to muscle them into silence. I was one of those threatened with a defamation lawsuit by his friend and sponsor Kevin Morris for writing about their curious relationship.
Hunter gamed the system on his crimes and was ultimately rescued from prison only by his father breaking his repeated public promise not to pardon his son. Yet, Hunter is likely to live well as a ward of the privileged class. He remains the toast of the town for the left, a type of foul-mouthed prophet who claims to have been liberated by his own excesses. For those of us who have long been critics of his antics, it remains a bit too familiar. Hunter makes even being broke look like a grift.

“..possessing the humility to recognize that some power should never be wielded at all.”

• J.R.R. Tolkien, the Atomic Bomb, and the Perils of Power (Miltimore)

On Aug. 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, instantly killing tens of thousands and marking the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare. Three days later, a second bomb, “Fat Man,” was dropped on Nagasaki. Within days, Japan surrendered, bringing World War II to an end. For most Americans, the bombings were greeted with celebration. Polls at the time revealed that nearly 70 percent of Americans said the bombing was a “good thing,” while just 17 percent said it was a “bad thing.”

In some respects, this is no surprise. Thanks to the bomb, the war was over. Japan, the nation that had blindsided the United States at Pearl Harbor nearly four years earlier, had finally been brought to its knees, forced to surrender unconditionally. Watching these events unfold from England, a professor of Anglo-Saxon literature saw something very different.

‘Utter Folly’
In 1945, J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor of Old English at Oxford and author of “The Hobbit” (1937), a book that would eventually become one of the most influential works of fantasy literature ever written. Having served as a British Army officer in the trenches of World War I, Tolkien understood firsthand the horrors of modern warfare. Perhaps because of this, he recoiled upon learning of a new weapon that could destroy entire cities. “The news today about ‘Atomic bombs’ is so horrifying one is stunned,” he wrote to his son Christopher. “The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world!”
Tolkien was no pacifist, and he recognized that U.S. President Harry Truman’s decision to drop this new superweapon might have a silver lining. “Japan ought to cave in,” he admitted. But even as he acknowledged the bomb’s immediate military value, Tolkien feared its long-term consequences. Humanity had crossed a threshold from which there would be no return. “Such explosives in men’s hands,” he wrote, “while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope ’this will ensure peace.’”
On ‘Babel-Builders’
Today, discussions over the atomic bomb usually involve whether it was morally justified to drop it on Japan. Unlike in 1945, Americans are very much split on the matter. Recent polling shows 35 percent say the bombings were justified, while 31 percent say they were not. The fact that a full one-third of Americans say they’re not sure if the bombing was the right thing shows how morally complicated the matter is. (If you doubt this, consider that General Dwight Eisenhower and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy opposed dropping the bomb on moral grounds and because they doubted its military necessity.)
What is less often asked is whether the bomb should have been developed at all. The question is easy to dismiss. After all, Nazi Germany launched its own nuclear research program in April 1939. Had the Allies declined to pursue the bomb, they might have handed history’s most destructive weapon to Adolf Hitler. There is also a philosophical hurdle. Science has long been celebrated as the engine of human progress. To oppose a scientific breakthrough on ethical grounds has a whiff of Luddism—a kind of rejection of progress itself.
Tolkien, once again, saw things differently. Though admitting “we’re all in God’s hands” now, he offered a word of caution about humanity’s growing faith in its own power. “He does not look kindly on Babel-builders,” he told Christopher. By invoking the famous Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel, in which God confused and scattered the nations for attempting to reach the heavens, Tolkien was warning against a perennial temptation: placing human ingenuity and knowledge above moral wisdom. The theme of man’s lust for knowledge and power would be developed in his next literary masterpiece.
‘An Allegory of Our Own Time’
In 1942, as the Manhattan Project was beginning in the United States, Tolkien was developing the core narrative of what would become “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first volume of his “The Lord of the Rings” epic.Though the book would not be published until 1954, Tolkien spent much of the 1940s writing and revising the manuscript. The story follows a fellowship of nine companions who embark on a perilous quest to destroy the One Ring, a weapon of immense power that threatens to destroy all of Middle-earth.
The Ring is so powerful that no one—not even the heroes of the story—should possess it. Indeed, Tolkien’s wisest and bravest characters all reject it. The wizard Gandalf refuses the Ring when it is offered to him. The elf queen Galadriel does the same. Aragorn, whose ancestor was killed after being corrupted by the Ring, is wary of its power and never seeks it.
Meanwhile, those who desire the Ring or attempt to wield its power—Boromir, Sauron, and Gollum—are ultimately destroyed by it. The One Ring has rightly been interpreted as a metaphor for power; after all, Tolkien himself called it the “Ring of Power.” But in a 1947 letter to his publisher, he put a finer point on the idea. “You can make the Ring an allegory of our own time, if you like,” he wrote, “an allegory of the inevitable fate that awaits all attempts to defeat evil power by power.”
These words help explain why Tolkien viewed the atomic bomb with such horror. It was a weapon created to “defeat evil power” through overwhelming force. In Tolkien’s view, the danger was not simply the weapon itself, but the modern faith in power and the belief that it could be controlled by those who possessed it. Tolkien’s line about “Babel-builders” and “lunatic physicists” could give the impression that he rejected science. He did not. He was simply recognizing the limits of science. The fantasy writer, a devout Catholic, understood that even though scientists could unlock the power of the atom, they could not fix humanity.
By 1945, it had become apparent that moral wisdom and scientific progress do not necessarily advance at the same pace. If the Great War and the horrors of the Soviet Union in the 1930s had not made this clear, the military destruction of the 1940s and the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945 did. Humanity had acquired unprecedented power without acquiring the corresponding wisdom to restrain it. For Tolkien, this was the great danger of the modern age. Man was learning to harness the forces of nature even as he slid comfortably toward its oldest sins: pride, envy, and the lust for power.
None of this is to say the Ring of Power is an allegory for nuclear weapons. It is not. Tolkien himself made that quite clear in a BBC interview in the 1960s.Yet a central lesson of his literary masterpiece is that some forms of power are simply too great for humans to possess. Perhaps, then, the greatest virtue is not seeking out people who can wield great power wisely, but in possessing the humility to recognize that some power should never be wielded at all.

https://twitter.com/FarmGirlCarrie/status/2083387792269414476?s=20 https://twitter.com/Tironianae/status/2083652865202033034?s=20 https://twitter.com/BasilTheGreat/status/2083810019053584617?s=20

The CCP is THE #1 external threat to the United States of America. https://t.co/lojlzTXhIt
— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) August 1, 2026

https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/2084030292256497995?s=20

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Debt Rattle July 29 2026

Jul 292026

July 29, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:08 am Finance Tagged with: AI, complacency, Cuba, Fauci, Mamdani, Marco Rubio, Pickaxe Mountain, Rand Paul, RFK jr, Zelensly 56 Responses »

Johannes Vermeer Woman in Blue Reading a Letter 1662-3

• War Pause Holds, Trump Vows To Destroy Pickaxe Mountain If No Deal (ZH)

• Mediators Say US-Iran ‘Close’ To ‘Resurrecting’ Failed MoU Deal (ZH)

• US Forces Block Attempted Iranian Surprise Attack (Catherine Salgado)

• New British Defense Secretary: Europe “Shaken Out Of Complacency” By Trump (ET)

• Zelenskyy Says Ukraine Intends to Build Drone and Missile Factory in UK (CTH)

• Cuba Falling: A Lot Happened Last Week. Let’s Talk About It (Sarah Anderson)

• NYC: Begun, the Class War Has (Stephen Green)

• The Future of Artificial Intelligence Is a Choice, Not an Inevitability (Dornik)

• This Fauci Diary Entry Will Cause Your Blood to Boil (Matt Vespa)

• Rand Paul Releases Files of Serious Manipulation of COVID-19 Info (CTH)

• RFK Jr. Reveals the COVID Vaccine Secret Fauci Hid From Americans (Margolis)

https://twitter.com/TVNewsNow/status/2081870166606954953?s=20 https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2081934073006522766?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2081882207208063423?s=20

“Trump has on Tuesday reiterated to Fox News that Iran understands it will never have a nuclear, and reaffirmed that the two sides are talking.”

• War Pause Holds, Trump Vows To Destroy Pickaxe Mountain If No Deal (ZH)

US-Iran attacks have remained paused, and oil prices have extended their declines, as President Trump has claimed Tehran and Washington are now having “very friendly talks” while at the same time suggesting negotiations might not be prolonged. “We are in very deep talks with Iran. If they don’t work out, we will go back to very strong military action,” Trump told Axios, as we highlighted previously.

But possibly the most promising development in terms of an off-ramp is that Oman has presented Iran with a plan backed by Gulf states to manage the Strait of Hormuz.This would reportedly include including collecting voluntary fees for using it, according to sources who spoke to Reuters Tuesday. The report notes that “The plan could serve as a basis to end the disruption to trade through the strait caused by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.”

However, this also to some degree represents the stalemated situation going back to square one, given the United States has consistently and vehemently opposed any fees being collected that would go to Iran. An immediate response from Tehran on the proposal has not been forthcoming, and talks could drag on for days related to the Oman plan. Already Tehran is adding some strict conditions regarding frozen or seized Iranian assets abroad, per Bloomberg citing state media:
“Any company or country that receives funds from Iranian assets will not be allowed to pass through the strait,” semi-official Tasnim news agency cites a spokesman for Iran s central military command as saying in response to recent US proposal.
Reuters provides more detail in the following: “The system would be analogous to one in place on Asia’s Strait of Malacca, where Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore ask ships to pay voluntary contributions to fund navigation, environmental protection and search-and-rescue operations.” “The Western diplomat compared it to a voluntary carbon tax for flights, where anyone buying a plane ticket can choose to tick a box if they want to pay to offset their emissions,” the report adds.
The Wall Street Journal has said this represents a “glimmer of hope” as fighting has halted since last Friday: A U.S. official and mediators said Iran and Oman were still far apart on some issues, including whether to charge fees for transit. But both sides said there was progress, marking the first glimmer of hope for diplomacy since President Trump ordered a new round of military strikes on Iran more than two weeks ago in response to Tehran firing on commercial vessels in the strait.
…The goal of the Iran-Oman talks is to agree on which route vessels can take through the 22-mile-wide strait. Conflict erupted earlier this month after the U.S. began guiding ships through the strait by hugging the Omani coast, while Iran wants vessels to cross through its territory.
In the meantime President Trump had laid out Monday while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One his view that there’s “plenty of time” to deal with Iran and that “we are talking right now..” He laid out that while “there’s a good chance that something could happen,” it remains that If not, “we go back to doing what we were doing two days ago.” Trump has on Tuesday reiterated to Fox News that Iran understands it will never have a nuclear, and reaffirmed that the two sides are talking.

.@POTUS on Iran's Pickaxe Mountain: "We have the greatest cameras in the world focused on [it]… I know exactly what's going on at Pickaxe, it's not a big problem. We took out their nuclear sites, and we'll have to take out Pickaxe if we don't make a deal. If we don't make a… pic.twitter.com/PMdXaBkDvu
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 28, 2026

Feels like dancing. But not together. Not the same dance.

• Mediators Say US-Iran ‘Close’ To ‘Resurrecting’ Failed MoU Deal (ZH)

Update(11:35ET): Here we go again… despite no evident change in war posturing on either side, and despite shipping traffic still largely at a complete standstill in the Strait of Hormuz, Fox News is out with claims that the failed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) could be ‘resurrected’… bringing us back to the ‘deal is close’ constant headlines of earlier this summer (though of course the sides were never in reality close – and simply returned to a wider bombing campaign)…

“Mediators of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East believe the U.S. and Iran are close to a deal that would resurrect the failed memorandum of understanding, according to The Times of Israel,” Fox writes, based on the earlier Israeli media article. Negotiators from Pakistan, Egypt and Qatar have been haggling over an Oman-proposed Strait of Hormuz management plan. It will involve fee-collection and is backed by the Gulf states, supposedly. The timing of all of this interesting given Trump is currently hosting Netanyahu at the White House. More from Fox:
Iran and Oman — both of which are situated on the Strait of Hormuz — have reportedly signed off on the proposal advanced by the mediators.The two sources said the White House was waiting to make a decision until after President Donald Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday. Meanwhile…
JMIC: DATA INDICATES ZERO TANKERS IN EITHER DIRECTION OF HORMUZ
Still, the return to deal ‘optimism’ has pushed oil prices down further – which is perhaps the entire point of US officials anonymously hyping that a deal is ‘close’ once again.

“Khamenei’s regime..”? We don’t even know if the guy is alive. Stop saying that.

• US Forces Block Attempted Iranian Surprise Attack (Catherine Salgado)

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) troops thwarted an attempted surprise attack from the terrorist Iranian regime as Tehran doubles down on “death to America.” CENTCOM posted an update on X Tuesday afternoon. “At 5:45 p.m. ET today, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces launched multiple ballistic missiles from Iran in an attempted surprise attack on U.S. forces based in the Middle East. All Iranian missiles were successfully intercepted. U.S. forces remain vigilant and at a high state of readiness,” it apprised the public. Both American and Saudi forces are now conducting strikes on Iranian targets.

In fact, CENTCOM issued a press release on Tuesday about the U.S. and Saudi efforts to eliminate Tehran-tied terrorists in Iraq, where different factions and ethnic groups either enthusiastically support or bitterly resent the Iranian regime. The Iran-backed Iraqi jihadis were gunning for American troops and Saudi infrastructure. U.S. and Saudi fighter aircraft struck multiple terrorist logistics and weapons sites across eastern Iraq in a strong response to over 30 IRGC-directed aerial drone attacks in the last 72 hours. The unwarranted attacks against U.S. forces were not successful.
From February through April 2026, there were more than 600 attempted attacks on U.S. citizens and facilities by Iran-aligned terrorist militias in Iraq. This is why the U.S. will eventually have to take out the Iranian regime altogether, or we’ll never have peace. The Iranian regime is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, with more reach and proxies even than the Qatari dictatorship.
President Donald Trump periodically threatens total destruction of the Iranian regime. If he really has that firepower, why not do it? It will save lives and a great many years of such ineffective back-and-forth as we’re still experiencing. Four Americans died as a result of Iranian strikes this month. We don’t want any more casualties.Iranian leadership continues to bribe potential assassins for Trump while threatening dire deeds. For example, on Sunday, we had the following message from the supreme leader of Iran (or whoever is running his account):

Today, as the nations of the world have grown weary of the tyranny and oppression of the US government and the criminal Zionists, who are the destroyers of lives and generations, there remains no path forward except jihad and resistance.
— Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei (@MKhamenei_ir) July 26, 2026

And a few days before:

The Great Satan – the criminal US – has now realized that the continuation of its trouble-free, domineering presence in the region is nothing but a naive fantasy.
— Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei (@MKhamenei_ir) July 19, 2026

Khamenei’s regime just executed several more freedom protesters.

BREAKING:

The Islamic regime in Iran carried out a public execution by hanging today in Isfahan.

Amirhossein Safari, Abolfazl Sepahi and Alireza Sepahi were murdered by the regime for taking part in the massive street protests against the regime in January this year pic.twitter.com/4kQlTRO7Gd
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 28, 2026

The Tehran terrorists are demonically vicious.

Yeah yeah, flatter Trump.

• New British Defense Secretary: Europe “Shaken Out Of Complacency” By Trump (ET)

New British Defence Secretary Wes Streeting

Newly appointed British Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said on July 26 that Europe will one day thank U.S. President Donald Trump for “shaking us out of our complacency” on defense spending Speaking to British broadcaster Sky News, Streeting said that he genuinely believes when this period of history is written, Europe will thank President Trump for shaking us out of our complacency and forcing us to stand on our own two feet and end the period of overreliance on the United States for defense.

Former Health Secretary Streeting was appointed to the defense role on July 20 by the new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham after he reshuffled the Cabinet following the resignation of his predecessor Keir Starmer. What he’s said about Europe isn t unique to President Trump, the MAGA movement or the Republican Party. This has been a long-standing grain of U.S. frustration with Europe under Democratic and Republican presidents, Streeting said, adding that in the world we live in, it is right that we can act to secure ourselves.
Trump has repeatedly called on the UK and other European countries to spend more on defense and become less reliant on the United States for the continent s security. The push for NATO allies to do more to secure their own defenses came as the United States reoriented its defense and security priorities. Asked if he trusts Trump, Streeting said, “I don’t know him, but I do trust the United States,” adding that in his first week in the role he has had “a unique insight into just how close and integral that relationship [between the UK and the United States] is when it comes to defense and security.”
Discussing his conversation with U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Streeting said he was “clear that we’ve not supported offensive action in Iran and we won’t support offensive action [in] Iran,” but added that there are “plenty of things that we can and should do together when it comes to securing the Strait of Hormuz.” Streeting’s predecessor but one, John Healey, who now has the role of chancellor of the exchequer, the UK’s equivalent to treasury secretary, resigned his post last month in protest over the previous government’s reluctance to adequately fund defense spending, in a move that contributed to Starmer’s eventual downfall.
Healey announced his resignation in a highly critical public letter posted on X, in which he accused Starmer and the Treasury of being “unable” and “unwilling” to “commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats.” Burnham, in one of his first interviews since becoming prime minister, told the BBC he was “absolutely committed” to what was promised to NATO partners. The UK has pledged to spend 3.5 percent of GDP on defense by 2035, in line with a new NATO target.
Burnham said that when he appointed Healey to be chancellor he was “very aware of what he had said about the critical importance of defense spending and the position that he had taken about that.” “The first challenge facing us both is to ensure that the defense investment plan is fully funded and that’s the thing that’s right in front of us and we need to work that through as we go towards the budget later this year.” Burnham also stated that he would be prepared to publicly disagree with Trump if British and American interests didn’t align but added that he had had a good first exchange with the president, finding him to be “really warm.”
Trump, discussing his phone call with Burnham in a July 20 post on Truth Social, said he had a “very good conversation” with the new British prime minister. “We discussed many subjects, including the outstanding relationship we have had with the UK. We will be meeting in the not too distant future for topics of mutual interest,” Trump said, adding that Burnham “has got a big job ahead of him, but he will be able to do it and, of course, the U.S.A. will be there to help!” He added that they discussed “North Sea Oil, Trade, the Military Alliance, Demining of the Hormuz Strait, and many other topics,” and said the call “went very well.”

In all they do, there is one purpose: bring Trump/US in to the war. They would love for Russia to bomb Portsmouth. How could Trump say no?

• Zelenskyy Says Ukraine Intends to Build Drone and Missile Factory in UK (CTH)

Watching carefully what Volodymyr Zelenskyy says, with an overlay of his contacts and travel itinerary, it appears the next phase in Ukraine weapon production will be to build missile and long-range drones outside Ukraine. That is to say outside the reach of proactive Russian attack. Zelenskyy travelled to Portsmouth, U.K., today for a meeting with newly installed Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Instead of meeting in London, the two met at a military base in Portsmouth, where 200 Ukrainian soldiers are currently completing maritime exercises.

In an interview with Sky News just before departing for the meeting, Zelenskyy noted the intention to use U.K. factories. In mentioning a joint U.K-Ukraine “drone deal,” Zelenskyy noted [15:32video] “I want to build a big factory in Britain, while offering new technologies and sharing with our partners.“I don’t think Zelenskyy was supposed to say that out loud.Zelenskyy noted the challenges for the U.K effort to support him essentially boils down to “money, intelligence and technology.”
With the EU providing Zelenskyy with funds from the seized Russian sovereign fund; essentially loans with no payback provisions as forfeiture of the fund is intended to be wrapped into any peace negotiation with Russia; Zelenskyy is positioning Ukraine to spend the EU (Russian) funds in the U.K to manufacture authorized Patriot Missiles, U.K Storm Shadow missiles and drones to expand the conflict with Russia. One thing is abundantly clear from the action over the past few weeks, Ukraine and EU/NATO are fully intending to expand the conflict with Russia and, if possible, pull the Iran conflict into the European dynamic. That’s why Ukraine attacked the Iranian vessels recently.
(You may need to use a VPN to watch this interview as the content was suddenly limited after it was on YouTube for a few hours. I suspect the note I made above is directly related to this content control.)

“LONDON — Andy Burnham pledged a “close partnership” between the U.K. and Ukraine Monday after Volodymyr Zelenskyy became the first world leader to meet Britain’s new prime minister. In a show of support, the pair toured a military base in Portsmouth, where 200 Ukrainian soldiers are currently completing maritime exercises. Burnham said his meeting with the Ukrainian leader was “warm” and that he intends to visit the country soon. “We will build this and we will work through the different issues that President Zelenskyy has, many of which we’ve gone into today,” Burnham said.
The meeting came as Britain announced it would share intellectual property to help Kyiv’s war effort. The new prime minister announced that the U.K. will share its “Stone Cloak” electronic warfare system — devices attached to drones to help them evade detection — helping Ukraine to produce the technology on a mass scale. (read more)

Trump and Rubio won’t invade Cuba.

” You’re talking about a system that’s been in place since 1959. You talk about a country that’s suffered tremendously because of poor leadership and a bad economic model. You’re talking about a regime that’s survived all these years because they had a foreign sponsor, be it the Soviet Union or Hugo Chávez. They don’t have that anymore..”

• Cuba Falling: A Lot Happened Last Week. Let’s Talk About It (Sarah Anderson)

There’s been a lot going on with Cuba over the last week, and I promise you that every single day last week, I sat down to write about it, but my mind wandered onto the next shiny object — to Venezuela or El Salvador or Costa Rica or Nicaragua or the Georgia governor’s race. I’ve admitted in the past that I’m a little bored with all of it, and I feel like the way Iran has played out has distracted the Donald Trump administration from working toward liberating the Caribbean nation from the Castro regime and 67 years of communism.

The truth is it’s a complicated process. This isn’t Venezuela. We likely won’t have a clean and tidy(-ish) ending to the regime. You can’t just take out one guy, neutralize his cronies, cut off their revenue stream, and start over with Marco Rubio in charge. The Cuban regime is older, more decentralized, and designed to withstand such moves. The power lies within the Communist Party, the military’s economic empire (GAESA), and a deep security apparatus.
There’s also the media problem. The number of MSM fake news stories from anonymous sources about Cuba is exhausting, and it drives me insane how many prominent people report on them or share them as if they are fact. For example, for a while, there was this idea that the Trump administration’s goal for liberating Cuba was the end of this year. It was fun to buy into, and I didn’t find it all that outlandish pre-Iran, but Rubio put a stop to that kind of talk last week when speaking to the press.
“No, look, guys, global affairs are not like – we’re not a miniseries, like, you get in three episodes and it’s over,” he said. “I mean, global affairs are difficult. You’re talking about a system that’s been in place since 1959. You talk about a country that’s suffered tremendously because of poor leadership and a bad economic model. You’re talking about a regime that’s survived all these years because they had a foreign sponsor, be it the Soviet Union or Hugo Chávez. They don’t have that anymore. So it’s – these are complex things that take time, and obviously we’re prepared to do what we can do to effectuate a positive change in Cuba because it directly impacts our national security.”
He added: “It’s a failed state. But I’ve never laid out any timeline as to what change would look like or when it would happen. I wish it was tomorrow because they deserve it; the people of Cuba deserve a better future.” One thing Rubio did confirm — and Trump has hinted at this in the past — is that this is his project. “I work on this issue more than anybody else,” he said, and I think that’s fairly obvious. That said, let’s get to the news. The actual, factual, verifiable news.
The Big State Department Report
The biggest Cuba-related news from last week was the 100-page report from the State Department called “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” I haven’t reported on it yet for two reasons. One, I wanted to read it myself. Two, I’d already reported on some of it over the last year, so I felt like it wasn’t quite the bombshell the State Department wanted it to be. However, I’ve come around to realizing that it’s a good report because it centralizes the information in one location, it helps build a case against the regime for whatever comes next from Trump and Rubio, and it supports the administration’s current anti-far-left terrorism stance and actions it plans to take against it.
So I’m going to hit some highlights here. You can skim them or check out the entire report yourself. The report paints Cuba as what it is. Rather than calling it a failed dictatorship, it’s an ideological threat to the United States, as well as a threat to our national security. Rather than relying on military action against the U.S., it has used irregular warfare to infiltrate, including espionage, infiltration of U.S. institutions, recruitment of American activists, providing a safe haven for terrorists, and creating or supporting ideological networks designed to turn segments of American society against the U.S. government and system.
And not just in the United States, but in other Latin American countries as well — it’s trained groups that helped lead to the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua in 1979; supported Puerto Rican terror groups like FALN and Macheteros; and created alliances with Hugo Chávez. I’ve written about this in the past, but before he got into politics, Nicolás Maduro barely had a high school education. His only formal schooling was a year in Havana at Fidel Castro’s commie training camp.
Cuba essentially had spies within the U.S. government, like Ana Belén Montes, a senior Pentagon analyst, or Victor Manuel Rocha, a U.S. diplomat who was arrested in 2023 after working as an agent for Cuba for over 40 years. The regime especially liked to push black extremists, supported groups like the Black Panthers, and granted asylum to many black criminals, like Assata Shakur. It highlights the Venceremos Brigade, which has brought at least 10,000 U.S. citizens to Cuba since 1969 to identify potential activists, build relationships, and strengthen radical organizations.
It also highlights the Cuban Institute of Friendship with Peoples (ICAP), which has a presence in 150 countries and direct ties to Cuban intelligence, as well as the National Network on Cuba, which is connected to groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, Communist Party USA, Code Pink, and the National Lawyers Guild. It also says that Cuba is a meeting point for countries and groups hostile to the U.S., like Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Palestinian Marxist organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah-linked networks, and members of Iran’s Axis of Resistance.

“Taxpayers will subsidize Big Grocery to help put mom & pop bodegas out of business, and make the city’s poorest residents more dependent on Big Government than ever.”

• NYC: Begun, the Class War Has (Stephen Green)

Socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan for city-owned grocery stores came into sharper focus on Monday after he announced the stores would have prices 30% “below typical retail prices” on a “core basket of goods.”“No exceptions, no gimmicks,” Mamdani promised Monday at a Campaign Against Hunger event in East New York. Spoiler: There’s no hunger to speak of in NYC. Poverty remains a leading indicator of obesity. Guess where Mamdani plans to build his first 30%-under-retail city-run grocery store.

Or I could just tell you. The first Bane Grocers (I made up the name) will open next year in The Peninsula in Hunts Point, in the South Bronx. The plan is to open four more, one in each borough’s poorest neighborhood.The really fun part is that bodegas are particularly dense in the city’s poorer neighborhoods, serving areas that big grocery stores would rather not. These are mom and pop operations getting by on razor-thin profit margins of about 2%. The solution to the city’s problem with its abundant and efficient grocery supply system (yes, you read that correctly) is to introduce city-run stores to undercut the abundant and efficient bodegas in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
Despite their small size, bodegas operate just like any other grocery or convenience store. They sell staples at maybe a breakeven price, hoping shoppers will splurge on higher-markup items like Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs cereal for the kids and a liter of Coke. They don’t make enough money to stay in business selling quarter gallons of milk. What happens to bodegas when customers start going to Bane’s because they can get that same quart of milk for $1.20 or so instead of $1.75? For starters, the bodegas can devote less precious fridge space to milk, or stop selling it altogether. Then maybe they watch those boxes of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs gather dust.
“The only reason to shop at a city-run store — which, if they’re like anything else the city runs, will be poorly managed and with customer service moving at Glacier Speed — is if they undercut the competition with subsidized prices,” I predicted just three weeks ago. That’s when the New York Post talked to bodega owners who claimed that Julie Su, Mamdani’s deputy mayor for “economic justice,” was demanding to know what their best-selling items were, and what their markup was.
If selling staples at 30% under market price puts bodegas out of business, Mamdani may very well engineer an actual problem — a scarcity of small local grocers. Less selection, too, as South Bronx shoppers find themselves having to make the longer trip to city-run Bane’s.If you’ve ever been to a state-run liquor store, you don’t need me to tell you about state-run selections. You’ll be allowed to choose from what they think you should choose from. The New York Post interviewed locals who had “questions about how the discount would work, what few items they’d have to choose from, and how much it would cost taxpayers to subsidize the lefty mayor’s scheme.”
But this is maybe my favorite part of Monday’s sharp focus. While the city will own Bane Grocers, the city won’t run it. Instead, as the Post reported, Mamdani “put out a request for proposals to private grocery chains to run the stores, asking potential bidders to estimate the figure themselves through an annual ‘Affordability Payment’ to cover the losses from selling below retail prices.” Translation: Taxpayers will subsidize Big Grocery to help put mom & pop bodegas out of business, and make the city’s poorest residents more dependent on Big Government than ever. “In the end, it all costs more, and you get less,” Juan Carlos Santiago — a refugee from Communist Cuba — told the paper about the life he escaped. “Thank God, here you can go to another store. Thank God!” But for how much longer?

So far I’m not terribly impressed with articles about the future of artificial intelligence.

• The Future of Artificial Intelligence Is a Choice, Not an Inevitability (Dornik)

I have developed something of a reputation as the “anti-AI guy,” primarily because I refuse to join the technological priesthood in singing hymns to artificial intelligence while a handful of billionaires quietly purchase the printing press, the library, the factory, the surveillance camera, the public square, and eventually the human brain. In this new AI-dominated era, even simply asking who controls the machinery is considered an impolite interruption during the worship service.

I am not opposed to artificial intelligence as a technological tool. AI can help doctors identify disease, assist disabled people, accelerate scientific research, automate administrative work, strengthen cybersecurity, improve education, and dramatically expand the capabilities of entrepreneurs and creators. I use technology, I build technology, and I understand its extraordinary potential. My objection concerns the weaponization of AI, the centralization of its ownership, and the political and economic system that many of its most influential advocates openly describe as its destination.
The inevitability argument has become Silicon Valley’s favorite method of avoiding accountability. We are told that AI will eliminate most jobs, replace human decision-making, connect our brains to computers, monitor our behavior, restructure capitalism, and require some form of universal government income. Then, after announcing this revolutionary demolition of human society, its architects shrug and tell us that none of it can be stopped. One must admire the efficiency of building the bulldozer, choosing the building, starting the engine, and then explaining that demolition is simply a force of nature.
Elon Musk told the VivaTech conference in 2024 that, in a “benign scenario,” probably none of us would have a job. He predicted a “universal high income,” an abundance of goods and services, and a world in which the central human question becomes whether life retains meaning when computers and robots can perform everything better than we can. This is an extraordinarily revealing admission because Musk recognizes the problem of meaning while continuing to promote the economic conditions that would produce it. His imagined future bears a remarkable resemblance to WALL-E, except the floating chairs with screens would be replaced by brain-chip implants.
Musk has described Neuralink’s long-term purpose as creating a high-bandwidth brain interface through which human beings could become “symbiotic with AI.” Neuralink’s immediate medical work, including helping people with paralysis control computers, is genuinely promising and deserves recognition. The broader transhumanist ambition raises an entirely different category of questions. Once human thought becomes technologically accessible, the issues of privacy, consent, ownership, manipulation, security, and government access are no longer theoretical. They become constitutional emergencies taking place inside the human skull.
Sam Altman has been equally explicit about the economic transformation he expects. In his essay “Moore’s Law for Everything,” Altman wrote that the technological revolution would be “unstoppable,” that power would shift further from labor toward capital, and that society would require drastic policies to distribute the wealth created by AI. His proposed American Equity Fund would tax companies and privately held land, then distribute annual payments to citizens. The language is dressed in entrepreneurial optimism, but the governing premise is unmistakable: the productive economy will belong to an increasingly concentrated class of capital owners while the public receives a politically administered dividend.
Bill Gates has expressed the inevitability argument with unusual clarity. Writing about the development of powerful technology, Gates said that if he possessed a magic button that could slow development for several decades, he might press it, but “that button doesn’t exist.” He concluded that these technologies will be created regardless of what any individual or company does, driven by competition among nations, corporations, and individuals seeking profit, power, glory, and leadership. Gates has also suggested that AI could reduce the workweek as machines produce more goods and services with less human labor.
Larry Ellison has offered perhaps the most honest preview of how AI centralization could affect civil liberty. During Oracle’s 2024 Financial Analyst Meeting, Ellison described AI systems processing information from police body cameras, vehicle cameras, doorbell cameras, drones, and other recording devices. He predicted that “citizens will be on their best behavior” because everything would be constantly recorded and reported. That sentence should be engraved above the entrance to every congressional hearing on artificial intelligence because it perfectly captures the managerial worldview behind the coming surveillance state. Freedom is apparently much safer once every citizen behaves as though an invisible parole officer is watching from the cloud.
Work carries moral meaning beyond the production of goods. Even before sin entered the world, God placed Adam in the garden “to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Work was part of human purpose before it became burdened by the Fall. The Bible never treats productive responsibility as an embarrassing defect that humanity must engineer out of existence. A society that strips millions of people of responsibility, discipline, contribution, and the dignity of providing for others will not automatically produce a nation of poets, philosophers, and volunteer gardeners. Human beings deprived of purpose frequently become anxious, addicted, isolated, and easily controlled.

“Fauci writes that the CIA had information from sources that the Chinese military had conducted unknown experiments in Wuhan, and that the CIA had information about a “super spreader” event in China in July 2020 in relation to “passage of a virus in a laboratory.”

• This Fauci Diary Entry Will Cause Your Blood to Boil (Matt Vespa)

Dr. Anthony Fauci was ‘America’s Doctor’ during the COVID pandemic. He’s now being exposed as an egotistical clown, which makes sense as the establishment press showered him with praise daily. When his science fiction was exposed, he said that people who attacked him were attacking science. That was the clue that something ugly was underneath, and now we have these diaries that paint this man as a psychopath. All bow before Lord God Fauci—nope.

The medical expert community should be ashamed for, among other things, engaging in this political effort to influence the 2020 election. And what a waste: Trump was elected again in 2024. With Fauci pardoned by brain-dead Joe Biden, his testimony tomorrow morning should be interesting since he can’t plead the Fifth so easily. Still, this journal entry, where he was briefed by the CIA about intercepted communications that might support the lab leak theory and then criticizes a CIA analyst for not understanding the science at his level, is truly disgusting. He’s a pretentious lefty in a lab coat, a Democrat with an MD, who spread nonsense while countless families suffered and many died alone. Bill Melugin has more:

NEW: Dr. Fauci writes in his diary that in June 2021, he received a (classified?) briefing from the CIA on the origins of COVID-19 while in a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) at NIH, and reveals that the CIA told him they had intercepted Chinese communications… pic.twitter.com/YksypDt0cM
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) July 28, 2026

Dr. Fauci writes in his diary that in June 2021, he received a (classified?) briefing from the CIA on the origins of COVID-19 while in a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) at NIH, and reveals that the CIA told him they had intercepted Chinese communications in Wuhan, including indications that the Chinese had transferred pangolin viruses from Beijing to Wuhan.
Additionally, Fauci writes that the CIA had information from sources that the Chinese military had conducted unknown experiments in Wuhan, and that the CIA had information about a “super spreader” event in China in July 2020 in relation to “passage of a virus in a laboratory.” Fauci writes that the CIA briefer, who he names, was “almost pathetic in her naivety and obvious lack of appreciation of any of the science of what she was talking about.”

A trip down memory lane:

Emails Show Dr. Fauci Bribed Scientists to Discredit the Lab Leak Theory:https://t.co/rtTEhQakKu

Dr. Fauci Suggested All Kinds of Limits on Churches, Refuses to Do the Same for Leftist Protests:https://t.co/hSVLhfFzGP

Fauci Demands Masking on…
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) July 27, 2026

The fireworks begin at 8:30 AM on Wednesday morning. Also, remember this nonsense, where Fauci bashed Republicans over the vaccine, then spoke to some black families, and they told him to get his COVID juices out of their faces.

Fauci literally said it out loud: “They’re Republicans, they don’t like to be told what to do and we gotta break that.”

This demon openly admitted the vaccine mandates were just a power move to break the people who wouldn’t roll over and obey.

Same exact shot he forced on… pic.twitter.com/zeDYwHtk7S
— Jack (@jackunheard) July 28, 2026

Never forget this brave American citizen that turned down getting a Covid vaccine and called out Fauci right to his face on camera.

I still want to buy this man a beer! pic.twitter.com/SHiExaeIvo
— Gain of Fauci (@DschlopesIsBack) July 28, 2026

“..,painting himself in somewhat of a god-like position and arbiter of all covid truth.”

• Rand Paul Releases Files of Serious Manipulation of COVID-19 Info (CTH)

Dr Anthony Fauci the White House Chief Medical Advisor during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak under Biden, and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022, has been subpoenaed to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this Wednesday, July 29, about his role and activity during the outbreak. Senator Rand Paul has long argued that Dr Fauci misled the nation, and indeed the entire world, on the origin of the COVID-19 outbreak, and attempted to coverup the man-made components to the SARS-CoV-2 that created massive medical, social and economic turmoil.

Anticipating the testimony, Senator Rand Paul has released a massive dataset of records from Anthony Fauci that includes a personal diary written by Fauci during the timeframe in question. [FAUCI FILES HERE] The personal notes and records of Fauci indicate a serious intention to control all elements of what took place during the COVID-19 outbreak; painting himself in somewhat of a god-like position and arbiter of all covid truth.
The records released by Senator Paul are exhaustive and paint a disturbing picture of a medical bureaucracy who believed they were more important than any elected official. Dr Fauci led that bureaucracy with visions of grandeur and an ego fed by a compliant media apparatus who consistently portrayed Fauci as the guardian of all medical truth.
The exact opposite of that altruistic narrative comes through in the details within the FAUCI FILES. “Fauci’s personal diary reveals that as early as January 31, 2020, he was told by top virologists that the virus’s furin cleavage site raised real doubts about a natural origin, with about half the scientists on that initial call believing it looked “constructed.” Despite this early private uncertainty, Fauci spent the following years publicly and confidently dismissing the lab leak theory while insisting the science was settled. The diary also documents his private frustration and defensiveness over gain-of-function funding questions tied to EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology — even as he told Congress under oath that no such research had occurred.” ~ Rand Paul
It appears that Rand Paul gained much of the information for his release from ODNI documents previously, discovered, researched and released to congress by DNI Tulsi Gabbard. It also seems like Acting DNI Bill Pulte continued to declassify and release the files. President Trump realized on April 23, 2020, that he had been misled by the small group within the medical bureaucracy. Dr Fauci noted in his diary….

“[we] will be loved by the people we care about“… Who exactly was that?
The scale of the fraud orchestrated by Anthony Fauci is jaw-dropping. All those so-called scientists, perched up high in their ivory towers, flapping their mouths to lecture and mock anyone who dared have an opinion on that massive gain-of-function experiment they unleashed. They were not doing science at all; they were stroking their own egos the entire time. The hearing on Wednesday is likely to be very explosive; however, in accordance with the strategy of Democrats and Communists in both the House and Senate, there is a distinct possibility they may not attend the hearing in an effort to diminish the sunlight.

“Fauci “had a pulmonary infarction, which is one of the adverse events that NIH, CDC and FDA said are expected from the vaccine. He never told anybody,” Kennedy said.”

• RFK Jr. Reveals the COVID Vaccine Secret Fauci Hid From Americans (Margolis)

For years, Dr. Anthony Fauci assured Americans that the COVID-19 vaccines were safe and effective. What he never mentioned, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is that he may have suffered one of those “rare” adverse events himself, and he hid it from the country while publicly insisting such injuries weren’t happening. Kennedy appeared on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle to discuss the newly released diary entries that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) made public, entries that document Fauci’s day-to-day life during the pandemic, on top of his disturbing obsession with himself and the power he wielded during the pandemic.

When Laura Ingraham asked whether there would be any accountability for the trillions of dollars lost, the ruined education of America’s children, and the shattered reputation of the public health establishment, Kennedy didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, and millions of people injured,” Kennedy said. “So he lied about masks, he lied about social distancing, he lied about the transmission, he lied about natural immunity, he lied about the capacity, as you just said, of the vaccine to prevent infection.”
Then came the bombshell. “He got vaccinated at a very, very public press conference in January of 2021,” Kennedy said, noting that five months later, the diary reveals, Fauci “had a pulmonary infarction, which is one of the adverse events that NIH, CDC and FDA said are expected from the vaccine.” “He never told anybody,” Kennedy said. “He got treated for it privately by the best doctors in America at the same time, he was telling everybody that was not an adverse event.”

RFK Jr. REVEALS Fauci Suffered the Exact Vaccine Injury He DENIED Was a Side Effect

After his very public COVID shot, Fauci suffered a pulmonary infarction — a known adverse event

He hid it, got elite private treatment, and told America it wasn’t a side effect.

Prosecute Fauci pic.twitter.com/44gOy2sNmG
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 28, 2026

Think about that for a second. The man who badgered every American into taking the shot, insisting it was perfectly safe, appears to have experienced one of the exact injuries his own agencies flagged, then quietly got elite private care while assuring the public that such reactions weren’t real. Ordinary Americans who reported similar problems got dismissed and mocked. Fauci got the best doctors in America.
The diary entries also reveal a man drunk on his own celebrity. Fauci mused that he could call himself the most famous and talked-about person in America without exaggerating. Kennedy said Fauci’s “focus was on promoting himself, on getting on TV and not doing public health.” While hospitals overflowed and small businesses died, “America’s doctor” was cataloging his own fame.
Kennedy knows firsthand what happened to anyone who challenged the Fauci narrative. Instagram suspended his account, a million followers and all, for supposed misinformation, including saying that COVID came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That claim has since gone from forbidden conspiracy theory to the leading explanation. The same fate awaited everyone else who questioned Fauci’s edicts. They got smeared as cranks while his assertions, which have since collapsed, went unchallenged by a compliant press.
We know firsthand here at PJ Media the risks that were involved in questioning the official narrative. We risked being censored and demonetized by Big Tech, which was coordinating with the Biden administration to control what the public knew.And what did we get from Fauci’s narcissism and drunken power? Kennedy pointed out that the United States recorded the highest COVID-19 mortality rate of any country in the world, about 3,000 deaths per million people. Under Fauci’s leadership, the wealthiest nation on Earth did worse than every other country.
He destroyed public trust in health agencies, and Kennedy argues the damage may never be undone. Of course, the legacy media deserves its share of the blame here. Kennedy described the press’s protection of Fauci as corrupt collaboration, and he’s right. We may have asked the hard questions, but the legacy media ran interference instead, torching their own credibility to shield “America’s Doctor.”
Fauci testifies before Congress on Wednesday about his diary and his handling of the pandemic. As PJ Media previously reported, if Fauci repeats his falsehoods under oath, he could face perjury prosecution.

Dr. Fauci's own diary, in his own words, shows he knew the lab leak theory was credible from the very first weeks of the pandemic. 10 of 12 scientists on his call believed deliberate insertion was possible. He wrote that the wet market was never the real source. Then he spent the…
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 27, 2026

pic.twitter.com/4Y7Lqog6Ky
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 27, 2026

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Debt Rattle July 20 2026

Jul 202026

July 20, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:02 am Finance Tagged with: communism, DSA, ICE, Mamdani, Marco Rubio, Netanyahu, new Soros, Roger Waters, secret nazis, Tom Homan 43 Responses »

Marlon Brando screentest 1951

• US-Iran Tit-For-Tat Spirals Towards Broader Conflict (ZH)

• Trump Has Just Weeks Left to Finish the Iran Conflict (Victor Davis Hanson)

• The DSA and the Myth of Scandinavian Socialism (Turley)

• DSA Using Vehicle of Democrat Party to Install Communist Government (CTH)

• Socialist Playbook: “Secret Nazis” Are Fine If They Advance Agenda (ZH)

• The “New Soros” Whose Street Cred Could Rise If Spain Blocks Extradition (ZH)

• UN Ambassador Throws Cold Water on Mamdani’s Plan to Arrest Netanyahu (Margolis)

• Is Trump Grooming Marco Rubio As His Successor? (Eric Florack)

• Ukraine Could Suffer Military Defeat – Senior Commander (RT)

• Both Russia and Iran Are At War, and Neither Knows It (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Roger Waters Calls Out West For Banning RT (RT)

• Trump Has Paid Carroll $5.62M, $83.3M Defamation Judgment Still Pending (JTN)

• Border Czar Tom Homan Discusses Value of ICE Body Cameras (CTH)

https://twitter.com/JFKJrResearch/status/2078545899240980590?s=20

🔥🇺🇸 BOOM!!! OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE STATEMENT: 10-Year Betrayal EXPOSED – Karoline Leavitt Confirms Obama Tried to Take Down Trump – IT WAS A COUP [VIDEO]

🔥🇺🇸 In a historic White House statement, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt exposes Barack Obama and top officials in a… pic.twitter.com/KoN6L0J6QA
— Trust In Trump 47🇺🇸 (@Trustintrump47) July 18, 2026

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2078561590534603152?s=20 https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/2078545569212244071?s=20

The US should know who they’re fighting: the Revolutionary Guard or the ayatollahs.

• US-Iran Tit-For-Tat Spirals Towards Broader Conflict (ZH)

The escalation pathway in the renewed tit-for-tat conflict between the US and Iran is becoming increasingly alarming and has been underway for eight days. US forces reportedly struck Qeshm Island and the southern Iranian cities of Shadegan, Sirik and Hajiabad, while Tehran retaliated with drone and missile attacks targeting US bases and critical infrastructure across Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, according to Bloomberg, citing Iranian state media.

The latest escalation could open the door for Israel to rejoin the fight. Itamar Ben Gvir, an Israeli security cabinet minister, told listeners on Israeli radio that he hoped President Trump would strike Iran hard. Iran’s latest attacks moved beyond military targets to now civilian infrastructure, which has been troubling. Kuwaiti Ministry of Electricity warned earlier today that its power and desalination plants have come under attack for the second straight day by Iranian projectiles.
https://twitter.com/AJENews/status/2078806014715961755?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2078806014715961755%7Ctwgr%5Ecb83079d195ed7b47d046250b9140292c8d21e46%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fus-iran-tit-tat-spirals-towards-broader-conflict
US Central Command described the latest US strikes as seeking to reduce Tehran’s offensive capabilities on the Strait of Hormuz that threaten commercial shipping and “swiftly punish” Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces behind the Jordan attack that killed two US soldiers and left another missing in action.

U.S. forces pound Iran for the eighth straight night as CENTCOM releases new footage following Iranian missile and drone attacks on a U.S. base in Jordan that killed two U.S. service members. A third remains missing.

CENTCOM says forces "successfully hit Iranian military coastal… pic.twitter.com/0jc8TZBzdo
— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 19, 2026

By now, the interim ceasefire deal signed by the US and Iran is in flames, as US forces have renewed their blockade of Iranian ports and the Trump team has tightened sanctions on Tehran’s oil exports…

“.. and then go home and say to our allies Iran is now mostly inert. They have no air force. You in the Gulf, you have 600 combat frontline aircraft. You have missiles. You have missile defense. ..”

• Trump Has Just Weeks Left to Finish the Iran Conflict (Victor Davis Hanson)

We’re approaching 140 days since we first attacked Iran on Feb. 28 of this year. And we only really had … people call this a war, but it’s basically 40 days of actual bombing, tit for tat, followed by 100 days of negotiations interspliced with some tit-for-tat exchanges of missiles and drones. But for the most part, we have negotiated. Now, we know the strategy of both sides. The strategy of our president was he wanted to stay in power, meaning he wanted to have control of Congress. Otherwise, his initiatives and agenda will be ossified if the Democrats take over the House. They will impeach him if they take over the House, and he’s protected against conviction by running the Senate.

But if he should lose the House or Senate, in other words, if things would blow up, he would be in deep trouble. So, his point was always to make sure that Iran did not have the ability to produce a nuclear weapon and did not have the ability to launch missiles all over the Gulf and did not have the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz. But the negotiations interrupted that cycle in which Iran also had a strategy, and their strategy was, “If we can drag this conflict out and punctuate it with missile launches and ride out the retaliations, which would be proportional or symmetric, we can run the clock out all the way to the midterms.
“If we do, the Democrats will take over the House of Representatives, and maybe they will not allot money to continue Trump’s war. And more importantly, maybe this will be the start of a new government in 2028, and we’ll be home free as we were with [Joe] Biden and [Barack] Obama.” So, that was their strategy: Drag it out, drag it out. Who won? Well, we’ll see about the denouement, but for now, Iran has been able to survive because we stopped full-scale fighting almost 100 days ago, and these tit-for-tats have been ineffectual in the sense they have not stopped the missile barrages to the Gulf states, and they have not given us control over the Strait of Hormuz, and we do not have control of the enriched uranium.
So, where are we now? We still have the same pressures on Donald Trump. We’ve got less than four months now until the midterms, but the economic news has been surprisingly good. Inflation, at a per-month rate, is at a historical low almost, and unemployment is about 4.2. GDP is strong at 2.3, 2.4. The stock market is high. The full effect of tax cuts and greater energy production and deregulation are starting to be felt, along with foreign investment. So, Trump thinks that, along with the redistricting and the Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering, he might have a chance to upset the historical reality that 39 of the last 41 midterms have gone to the out party. So, he still thinks he has a chance, and he still wants to conclude operations and go home, and the Iranians know that.
So, where are we now? I think we can see what he’s doing. The last four days he’s had very, very strong strikes. Some of his critics have said on the right, “Well, you’re hitting all of these dock works and these small mosquito fleets and the fuel for missiles. “Why didn’t we do that earlier?” Well, we didn’t do it earlier because we were negotiating and we were measured and proportionate. And to deal with the Iranians now, you have to be unmeasured and disproportionate.
So, what we are seeing now is a full-scale effort to destroy all of their military abilities. And that would mean going to the factories, the industrial complex that makes these missiles, find where their launchers are, find their drone fields, clear the corridor near the strait of all of their anti-aircraft ability, their missiles, their drones, and their small fleet of vestigial boats that they use to mine the strait and attack tankers. Clear it all out. Do this for a week or two weeks and then stop and see if they want to concede. If they do not want to concede, then I think you would have another week of dual-use targeting.
And that would mean they were going to bring in the B-2s and hit Pickaxe Mountain, seal the areas under suspicion of harboring enriched uranium, hit the bridges, hit some of the power grid, and then go home and say to our allies Iran is now mostly inert. They have no air force. You in the Gulf, you have 600 combat frontline aircraft. You have missiles. You have missile defense. You can defend yourself from an inert Iran. You Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans, Taiwanese, you all want to use the Strait. We don’t. But we’ve cleaned it out now, and all you have to do is send a couple of vessels each.
And under our leadership, we always have forces in the Persian Gulf. We have frigates. We have a carrier that rotates in and out. We will help you organize the ability and the willpower to keep the Strait open.

“.. the Scandinavian socialism myth is so enticing that I expect Scandinavians must wonder where they can also find it.”

• The DSA and the Myth of Scandinavian Socialism (Turley)

In 2015, the Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen observed, “I know that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy. Likewise, Social Democratic Minister of Finance Kjell Olof Feldt stated: “That whole thing with democratic socialism was absolutely impossible. It just didn’t work.”

As I discuss, these countries are not only committed to capitalism but also ranked among the most free-market economies in the world. These countries are also very different from the United States: “When socialism was tried in larger nations in Europe, such as France under FranAois Mitterrand, it failed, and capitalist measures had to be restored. In 2025, the populations of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are approximately 5.9 million, 10.6 million, and 5.6 million smaller than many American states. “
The DSA and the American left, including many in the media, continue to sell the public a bill of goods on the success of Scandinavian socialism. Ironically, it is the type of disinformation that the left often cites to justify greater censorship. Despite denials from these very countries, socialists in the United States continue to spread this false claim that there is a socialist paradise over the ocean where collectivists labor in picturesque Nordic fishing villages.
The promulgation of such myths is a central feature of Marxism. Lenin stressed that “we must not confine ourselves exclusively to propaganda in the narrow sense of the word.” Stalin likewise warned that “If our Party propaganda for some reason or other goes lame…then our entire state and Party work must inevitably languish.”
The fact is that socialism has repeatedly failed throughout history. The only way to get a people to embrace it is to rewrite that history. That is precisely what we see not only in the United States, but in the recent claims of incoming British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who condemned the privatization policies of Margaret Thatcher: “The country surrendered control of the essentials — housing, water, energy, transport — and left people exposed to higher costs.” What he does not mention is that she followed the collapse of socialist policies under Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1977–78 during the so-called “winter of discontent,” which I also discuss in the book.
Chevalier is a true believer who has praised Marxism and the concept of “seizing the means of production.” She won her primary despite comments bragging about her using the American flag to wipe her hands and criticizing the dating of white women as Black and Arab men “Fetishizing ugly colonizer women.”
Given that history, the adoption of the Scandinavian socialism myth is par for the course. Like Zohran Mamdani, she is rallying young, disillusioned, college-educated voters who are told that their struggles stem from the failures of the free market. Instead, they are offered free stuff and the illusion of an economic nirvana where lattes and Pilates are virtually costless.
Indeed, the Scandinavian socialism myth is so enticing that I expect Scandinavians must wonder where they can also find it.

“Martha MacCallum Interviews DSA Co-Chairman Gustavo Gordillo …”

• DSA Using Vehicle of Democrat Party to Install Communist Government (CTH)

This is a very alarming conversation to be taking place in modern America. Alas, all things political have devolved into this current stage where Communism is represented by young voters as the preferred manner of government. Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) Co-Chair Gustavo Gordillo, having previously outlined that attachment to the Democrat party is only purposeful as a vehicle to gain political power, discusses the end game of DSA for installing communism within the United States. The DSA platform is disturbing, but generally in alignment with the Bernie Sanders and AOC model.

(1) Eliminate the United States Senate as a legislative body. (2) The House of Representatives then selects the President and Supreme Court justices. (3) All illegal aliens are given citizenship and amnesty. (4) All border enforcement is halted; there are no more USA boundaries. (5) The Dept of War (Defense) is dissolved completely. (6) The government, now controlled by the House of Representatives, determines who can have wealth – and how much. (7) Climate Change is the legislative priority – no more fossil fuel use.
Gustavo Gordillo’s family fled Peru due to a communist revolution. In the video below Martha MacCallum challenges DSA Chair Gordillo to explain how the DSA platform is expected to work. Gordillo explains the immediate DSA demand to control housing (govt), control food distribution (grocery stores), give free daycare for children, and create affordability for lower income citizens/aliens by taking the wealth from the high-income earners and giving the wealth to the lower income group.

“White DSA Member Inadvertently Exposes Socialist Playbook: “Secret Nazis” Are Fine If They Advance Agenda.”

• Socialist Playbook: “Secret Nazis” Are Fine If They Advance Agenda (ZH)

Far-left podcaster and Democratic Socialists of America member Emma Vigeland appeared to inadvertently expose the far-left movement’s ends-justify-the-means political calculus: Even a “secret Nazi” would be acceptable if the candidate advanced a national socialist agenda. Vigeland, a former field reporter, producer, and commentator for The Young Turks and identified as a DSA member, also co-hosts The Majority Report with Sam Seder. She explained on a separate Vox podcast that she doesn’t care if a progressive or socialist candidate has “Nazi” skeletons in their closet.

“I am wary of over-focusing on an individual’s personal character over their platform. You know, I’ve said this before. I don’t really care if say like Bernie Sanders or AOC go home and they’re a secret Nazi, but they go out and they vote for the right things. Like we’re talking about politician,” the DSA member said earlier this month.Vox host Astead Herndon was astonished by Vigeland’s remarks, and asked: “You don’t care?”

DSA's Emma Vigeland says she “doesn’t care” if the candidates she supports are "secret Nazis" as long as they vote for their extremist agenda. pic.twitter.com/ukjBuKvGgW
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) July 16, 2026

Why is anyone surprised anymore? This comes after the political collapse of DSA’s Graham Platner, who had a large “Totenkopf” tattoo- a symbol associated with the Nazi SS.
https://twitter.com/RyanSaavedra/status/1980745151393001747?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1980745151393001747%7Ctwgr%5E9d6d4d943d47f4bb4542c0c3e819119dfabdbbea%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fwhite-dsa-member-inadvertently-exposes-socialist-playbook-secret-nazis-are-fine-if-they
What the internet had to say:

I'm confused. Who are the nazis? Is it the MAGA? or is it the DSA? The nazis were "National Socialists" that was the name. So the DSA are the nazis, right?
— Igg-norancesbliss (@IgnatzDeZoobnar) July 16, 2026
[..] DSA’s nation-killing agenda to collapse America:

The DSA is such a liability for the Democratic Party that a prominent Bill Clinton insider took the time to write up a Wall Street Journal op-ed that said: “Lawmakers, law-enforcement agencies and journalists should investigate the DSA to see if it is being funded by foreign governments and interests.”

“.. the communist centimillionaire and heir to the Cox media fortune..”

• The “New Soros” Whose Street Cred Could Rise If Spain Blocks Extradition (ZH)

The federal government is well underway with a multiagency and multinational effort to combat the alarming rise of far-left revolutionaries. This was most evident on Thursday, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed delegations from 65 countries. Meanwhile, Jim “Fergie” Chambers, the communist centimillionaire and heir to the Cox media fortune, is apparently “one step closer to extradition” on federal charges linked to “international money laundering… with the intent to provide material support and resources to foreign terrorist organizations.”

Chambers is a major funder of America’s radical Left and has been described by pro-Palestinian activist Laith Marouf as “the new Soros.” Marouf warned that Chambers could gain significantly more influence and “street cred” if Spain refuses to extradite him to the U.S. City Journal investigative analyst Stu Smith provided additional color on Marouf’s recent conversation, offering readers a clearer view of the major financiers and influence networks operating across the radical Left:

As left-wing activists demand “Freedom for Fergie,” Laith Marouf is refusing to join them. Marouf says he opposes Chambers’s extradition to the United States but warns that an unsuccessful prosecution could merely give the multimillionaire more “street cred.” Citing conversations he claims to have had with current and former intelligence agents, including Syrian and Spanish sources, Marouf alleges that Chambers has been positioned as “the new Soros” and is using his fortune to capture radical English-language media around the world. “He basically bought all the landscape of progressive media and is funding all of them,” Marouf said, alleging that Chambers’s donations allow him to influence those outlets’ political positions.
Marouf also accused Chambers of threatening his life and attempting to destroy his reputation. He said he does not wish imprisonment or death on Chambers, but he will not join those demanding his release. “I will sit on the side as an observer, watching the game of the American white elite beating each other up.” Marouf argues that Chambers is using inherited “blood money” to purchase credibility within the Palestine movement. “No, I don’t want Palestine in his mouth,” he said. “I don’t want Palestine to be associated with Fergie Cox.”
The broader Left has largely rallied behind Chambers, leaving Marouf as a rare dissenting voice. His definition of “progressive media” is unclear, but his broader warning about Chambers buying influence across the radical English-language media sphere rings true. And if Spain refuses extradition, Marouf may be right that the ordeal will only give Chambers more “street cred.”
https://twitter.com/thestustustudio/status/2077744491776102460?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2077744491776102460%7Ctwgr%5E89719d8257eb651d0ca597f094364650d04c681b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fmeet-new-soros-whose-street-cred-could-rise-if-spain-blocks-extradition
Smith has previously noted, “Chambers is one of the main funders of America’s radical Left. His money has flowed to a host of projects in the ‘anti-imperialism’ organizing space,” adding, “Chambers claims that he and Singham are effectively the two primary financiers of the US radical Left.” Despite this, the two have apparently been at loggerheads—a conflict that has now gone public.”
https://twitter.com/thestustustudio/status/2059018248478146896?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2059018248478146896%7Ctwgr%5E89719d8257eb651d0ca597f094364650d04c681b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fmeet-new-soros-whose-street-cred-could-rise-if-spain-blocks-extradition
Following Rubio’s “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism” at the State Department on Thursday, where he addressed delegations from 65 countries on combating far-left extremism, the signal is clear: The Trump administration is positioning for a broader fight against transnational Marxist revolutionary networks, reminiscent of the Western counter-subversion campaigns waged seven decades ago.

You’d almost wish he tried. But in realty, it’s just about scoring cheap points.

• UN Ambassador Throws Cold Water on Mamdani’s Plan to Arrest Netanyahu (Margolis)

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants everyone to believe he’s holding all the legal cards this September, threatening to have the NYPD slap handcuffs on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the moment he sets foot in Manhattan. The problem is that he can’t. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz wasted no time shredding Mamdani’s threat, making clear the mayor has no power to detain a foreign head of government protected under longstanding international agreements. “Mayor Mamdani. Here’s why your threat to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu in New York City during UN General Assembly is not going to happen,” Waltz said.

Waltz then walked through exactly why Mamdani’s fantasy falls apart. “The United States is not party to the Rome Statute that underlies the International Criminal Court. The UN Headquarters Agreement grants diplomatic protections to visiting heads of government. Head-of-state immunity applies, and federal authority trumps any local mayor’s wishes,” he said. So, contrary to Mamdani’s ego and rabid antisemitism, a big-city mayor doesn’t get to override federal law, international treaties, and diplomatic immunity because he dislikes a foreign leader’s foreign policy.
Netanyahu is expected to visit New York in early September for the UN General Assembly, and Israeli officials are just as unimpressed with Mamdani’s posturing as their American counterparts. Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, turned the tables on Mamdani entirely. “If anyone should be arrested, it is New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani,” Danon said. Danon didn’t stop there, accusing Mamdani of abandoning his actual job to chase headlines at Israel’s expense. “Mamdani is failing to govern New York. Instead of focusing on his responsibilities as mayor and confronting the rising wave of antisemitism in his city, he has chosen to incite hostility and generate headlines by attacking the State of Israel,” Danon said.
Danon made clear none of Mamdani’s chest-thumping changes anything. “It will not change a thing. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will come to New York, address the United Nations General Assembly with pride and stand before the world to state Israel’s truth and its unwavering right to defend its citizens,” he said. Mamdani isn’t backing down, even though he admits he might not have the authority to do what he’s promising. He told The New York Times his administration is still examining whether New York City has any legal basis to detain Netanyahu at all.
“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said, echoing the same talking point he leaned on throughout his mayoral campaign. He went further, calling Netanyahu “a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court,” and claiming that view is shared by “many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years.” Mamdani admitted he doesn’t actually know if he can order the NYPD to arrest a foreign head of government, saying he’s “in an active conversation” with the city’s Law Department. He insisted, though, that he wouldn’t invent new legal authority out of thin air. “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do, but we won’t be writing our own laws to that end,” Mamdani said.
How noble of him. Netanyahu has brushed off Mamdani’s threats before and shown no sign of altering his travel plans. He’s also accused Mamdani of siding with Hamas, the terrorist group whose October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel started the war Mamdani keeps invoking to justify his crusade.

He doesn’t have to.

“A decade ago, he’d have been a lousy fit to carry Trump’s coalition forward. Today, he fits the part.”

• Is Trump Grooming Marco Rubio As His Successor? (Eric Florack)

I’ve been watching the relationship between President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio lately, mostly due to a long string of commentary, both in my feeds and in my mailbox. Several people in recent days have started asking the same question: Is Trump grooming Rubio as his successor? My hip-shot response would be: Meh…. I wouldn’t object if that was the case. Rubio certainly seems a credible candidate. But, let me say up front—I have my doubts that’s a conscious choice on Trump’s part. But I get why people are asking. Let’s dive in.

Here’s the thing: this examination says as much about Trump’s leadership style as it does about Rubio. And Trump’s leadership style calls to mind a line from General George S. Patton: “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” It seems to me that Trump sings harmony with Patton on that one. Unlike most presidents, he doesn’t micromanage. Instead, he:
• Sets broad objectives — “secure the border,” “get a better trade deal,” “end this war” — and skips the tactical playbook.
• Hands trusted advisers real latitude to execute.
• Obsesses over outcomes and how they play in public.
• Steps in personally only when something becomes politically or personally important to him.
Former Cabinet officials and aides tell the same story: Trump wants competing viewpoints on the table, picks a lane from the choices given, and then expects his team to drive in it. He’s not the guy poring over hundred-page policy memos or running agencies from the weeds. Never has been. So let’s look at what’s actually going on between Trump and Rubio. A few things stand out:
• Rubio’s portfolio keeps growing. As secretary of State, he’s literally everywhere on foreign policy, and Trump keeps handing him the delicate diplomatic assignments nobody else gets. Give someone enough rope, and people start measuring him for a crown.
• The relationship has thawed considerably. Remember 2016? Trump spent that primary calling him “Little Marco” and making it personal. Fast forward to today, and the two have built something that actually works. Trump praises Rubio’s performance far more than he knocks it — that, alone, is a genuine rarity in Trump World.
• Rubio has evolved. He’s shed the establishment-conservative label and rebuilt himself as an America First guy on immigration, China, trade, and national security. A decade ago, he’d have been a lousy fit to carry Trump’s coalition forward. Today, he fits the part.
• The succession question isn’t going away for at least a year and a half. Trump can’t run again; the Constitution says so, which means Republicans are already scanning the bench for an heir. Any Cabinet member with a high enough profile gets viewed through that lens whether they like it or not. Certainly Rubio qualifies on that point.
All of that said—I’m still skeptical this is a deliberate succession play on Trump’s part, at least not yet. Is it possible that Trump’s quietly positioning Rubio? Sure. The evidence fits that story just fine. Give a guy the State Department, hand him the hard diplomatic assignments, praise him publicly more than you criticize him — do that long enough, and of course people start drawing a line from Point A to Point B labeled “heir apparent.”
But here’s what that theory conveniently ignores: Trump doesn’t tend to groom people. He uses their abilities toward his own policy ends. He never has cared much for legacy-building or dynasty-planning — the man barely plans past next week’s news cycle, let alone the 2028 primary. To my mind, what actually explains the Rubio relationship is far less cinematic than a “Lion in Winter” style succession plot. In Rubio, Trump has found someone competent, someone who executes without whining, someone who doesn’t leak to the Washington Post the moment his feelings get hurt. That’s it. That’s the whole story. In Trump World, that alone is enough to earn a guy the keys to half the foreign policy apparatus.
And there’s a simpler explanation still sitting on the table, one nobody seems to want to entertain: maybe Trump just hasn’t decided. Maybe, indeed, probably, he doesn’t see the need to. After all, presidents aren’t obligated to anoint a successor, and Trump in particular has never operated on anyone’s timetable but his own. The trust he’s placed in Rubio could, down the road, calcify into something more deliberate — a real endorsement, a real torch-passing. But “could eventually” isn’t “is now.” Until Trump says the word himself, or until Rubio starts acting like a man measuring the Oval Office drapes, the rest of us are just reading tea leaves and calling it political science.
I’ll believe the succession theory when I see it. Right now, all I see is a president who found a guy who gets the job done. To the degree that qualifies Rubio for being the next POTUS, well, that stands on its own. Trump seems willing to allow the primary process to work that one out.

“The army is becoming increasingly ineffective as it suppresses initiative and downplays failures, Sergey Sobko has warned”.

• Ukraine Could Suffer Military Defeat – Senior Commander (RT)

Ukraine could suffer defeat in the conflict with Russia, as the military command structure is growing increasingly rigid and ineffective, Brigadier General Sergey Sobko warns. His remarks were echoed earlier by former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, who was controversially relieved of his post by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky earlier this week – which triggered mass protests across Ukraine. In a post on Facebook on Friday, Sobko, the chief of staff of the 11th Army Corps, wrote that the Ukrainian military is in urgent need of reform, “otherwise we may be defeated.”

“Professional discussion is often perceived as disloyalty, and initiative as a threat,” he said, adding that this tendency has discouraged commanders from “taking risks for the sake of success.” Sobko also suggested that commanders are being promoted based on “personal loyalty” to their superiors, as opposed to competence and professionalism. He also called out what he described as a growing trend within the Ukrainian military toward micromanagement and downplaying failures in reports.
Sobko’s criticisms echo those made by former defense chief Fedorov. In the wake of his dismissal earlier this week, the 35-year-old technocrat confirmed that he was at loggerheads with Ukraine’s top military commander, Aleksandr Syrsky, whom he accused of blocking his efforts to modernize the army and make it more technology-oriented. At a press conference on Thursday, the former minister said, “we faced a complete blockage of all our initiatives.” He also claimed that Syrsky made an ultimatum to Zelensky, demanding that Fedorov be removed from office.
On Friday, the Financial Times, citing anonymous sources, also reported that Fedorov’s push to make corruption-plagued procurement procedures in the defense sector more transparent did not sit well with the top brass either. The firing of the defense minister, which came as part of a broader government reshuffle, has sparked protests in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities. Apart from demands that the defense chief be reinstated, some demonstrators have also called for Syrsky’s dismissal. The FT quoted an unnamed senior Ukrainian defense official as saying,
“Syrsky hasn’t got a sense of how he’s going to win,” and that his “theory of victory is simply to hold out as long as you can and mobilize more people.” In a separate piece on Saturday, the FT, citing an anonymous senior official in Zelensky’s administration, claimed that the Ukrainian leader is considering firing Syrsky. According to the outlet, Zelensky is consulting military commanders over the weekend, looking for a potential replacement. Over the course of the conflict, Syrsky has earned the nickname ‘the Butcher’ for his perceived willingness to disregard heavy casualties.

PCR doesn’t move.

• Both Russia and Iran Are At War, and Neither Knows It (Paul Craig Roberts)

Russia is at war with Washington and Europe, a war that has vastly widened, but Putin thinks Russia is engaged in a Special Military Operation confined to the battlefront in Donbas. Iran is at war, an existential war, with Satanic Israel, but the Iranian leadership thinks they are responding to an American “illegal military intervention.” All of Iran’s invective, threats, and vows are directed at Satanic America. Not a word about Satanic Israel, the cause of the conflict. America is just Israel’s proxy, as Ukraine is the West’s proxy against Russia. As neither Russia nor Iran understand that they are engaged in existential wars, neither has a war plan to achieve victory.

Iran’s policy is to inconvenience the American empire with an oil shortage and vows to escalate Iran’s tits to America’s tats. Russia’s policy is called TiT–Trust in Trump. John Helmer reports that the instructed Russian media and foreign policy analysts, who I suspect are financed by oligarchs, believe what they have invented as “the Anchorage spirit” has “given Russia a lot” by removing the US from direct participation in the conflict.
The implied hopes are in vain. What Trump has done is to turn over to Europe the arming of Ukraine with high-tech drones made in Germany that Ukraine, with US guidance and targeting information, is using to severely impact Russian oil production and refining, and to target and kill Russian civilians. Thus, the West has taken the war home to Russia. Currently, there is severe gasoline rationing in Crimea and long lines in some other Russian locations, and currently according to reports Russia is importing gasoline and diesel fuel from India. As for “trusting in Trump,” there are reports that Trump is considering allowing Zelensky to produce the US Patriot and Tomahawk missiles in Ukraine to provide more long-range weapons for strikes deep into Russia.
Russians have fled their summer holiday in Crimea where drone attacks are an everyday occurrence. St. Petersburg was under attack during the recent international meeting in the city, and Moscow’s mayor just reported that Ukraine, a.k.a., the West, launched 1,900 drones targeting Moscow in the past week. Russia is having to use its munitions to protect its capital, not to attack the enemy.
Putin, who insists that the conflict is limited to Donbas, refers to the increasingly successful attacks deep inside Russia as “terrorist actions.” Thus, Putin refuses to acknowledge them as acts of war, which relieves him of responsibility to do what Russian war doctrine requires. For example, Russian war doctrine at a minimum requires Russia to destroy the site of the German production of drones for Ukraine. In actually, Russian war doctrine requires a devastating nuclear attack on the United States. But as Washington knows that there is no threat from pusillanimous Putin, Washington knows Putin will not comply with Russia’s war doctrine. Putin proved this when he dismissed Washington’s attack on Russia’s strategic bomber force and on his home in an assassination attempt as merely “terrorist actions.”
Among the consequences of Putin’s denial of reality is the joining of NATO by Scandinavian countries that previously remained neutral, and the change in long-standing policy of Finland and Latvia to host on their territory on Russia’s border American nuclear weapons. So, it is clear as day, it is indisputable, that Putin’s idiotic pretense that Russia is not really at war, only involved in a Special Military Operation in Donbas, is leaving Russia exposed to a much wider war. The Russian media and oligarch-sponsored “experts” describe the rising threat to Russia as a “successful negotiation.”
The Iranians, who had an equally strong upper hand as the Russians, have also thrown away their advantage. Once the Iranian government on the verge of total victory threw their victory away by rescuing their enemies from defeat by agreeing to a ceasefire, Iran left the door open for future conflict. Ayatollah Khamenei stated: “The enemy must not sense any sign of weakness from us.” But it is signs of weakness that Iran sends.
Iran sits on its butt and permits American attacks, some of which are devastating on civilian infrastructure and civilian lives. Only then does Iran respond with disabling attacks on Washington’s bases in the Persian Gulf oil Sheikdoms and Jordan. This is nonsensical. A country that realized it was at war, would strike and wipe out the enemy bases from which it would be attacked. Not sit there and suffer the damage, as if it needs an excuse to respond.
But Iran only responds, after suffering destruction, to attacks. Iran has no war plan to defeat its enemies. This is a failure of Iranian leadership. And Russia’s is the same. The unwillingness of the two attacked countries to deal with reality is leading to two large wars.

“The Pink Floyd co-founder has also slammed UK and EU elites for openly pushing for war with Russia..”

• Roger Waters Calls Out West For Banning RT (RT)

Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has lambasted Western governments for pushing for war with Russia and banning RT in order to freely disseminate the warmongering “propaganda of the ruling class.” Appearing on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, published on Friday, Waters expressed dismay that “some people in the governments of the United States of America, and the UK, and the European Union are making blood-curdling, bloodthirsty noises about” a potential military conflict with Russia. The Pink Floyd co-founder noted that EU nations, including Germany, are rapidly increasing their military spending and funneling taxpayers’ money “into a big piggy bank in order to fight the Russians.”

“The Russians don’t want to invade Europe. What are they talking about?” he said, arguing that certain interest groups may be paying Western politicians to promote warmongering narratives and thereby justify outsized military expenditure. Instead of antagonizing Moscow and silencing voices that challenge Western “propaganda,” the musician-turned-activist said that “we have to be cooperating with the Russians.” “It sort of breaks my heart that I can’t watch RT anymore. ‘Cause it’s banned. You can’t watch Russia Today,” he said, recounting how the Russian broadcaster was taken off the air across much of the West following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022.
“So we live in a very difficult time where it may be, unless you, with your audience – or me with my tiny voice – can join with our brothers and sisters and pull together the ordinary working people all over the globe, and we can make the voice of the choir so loud that we can drown out the propaganda of the ruling class,” he said. Waters has long been a critic of Western military support for Ukraine, telling RIA Novosti last November that officials in the UK and the EU “don’t make any pretense that they care about” ordinary Ukrainians. Their endgame is to use the “corrupt Nazis” in Kiev, who will then “help them strip the country of all its assets and stuff the money into their pockets,” the musician said at the time.

Legal disgrace.

• Trump Has Paid Carroll $5.62M, $83.3M Defamation Judgment Still Pending (JTN)

Supreme Court filings this week confirm that E. Jean Carroll has received roughly $5.62 million from President Donald Trump after the justices late last month declined to hear his appeal of the civil judgment in the case. But the court’s action resolves just one chapter of the long-running legal battle – leaving a separate $83.3 million defamation judgment pending. Trump is expected to ask the high court to review that case, which his attorneys argue raises broader questions concerning presidential immunity and the scope of official presidential speech.

The high court’s June 29 ruling, revealed Tuesday in the filings, is connected to the 2023 civil court verdict in which Trump was found liable for sexually abusing Carroll, a writer, in the mid-1990s and defaming her after she publicly accused him. The court’s ruling also left the civil court verdict intact and clears the way for Carroll to collect the judgment, plus accrued interest, after years of litigation.
Allegations and Civil Trials
Carroll, a longtime advice columnist, first publicly accused Trump in 2019 of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan during the mid-1990s. The allegation appeared in an excerpt from her memoir published by New York Magazine. Trump denied the accusation, saying he had never assaulted Carroll and describing her claims as a “hoax” and politically motivated.
Carroll subsequently filed two civil lawsuits.
The first, filed in 2019, alleged Trump defamed her by denying the assault and accusing her of fabricating the allegations. The second, filed in 2022 under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, included a battery claim based on the alleged sexual assault and additional defamation claims. During the 2023 trial, jurors heard testimony from Carroll, several corroborating witnesses, and two other women who accused Trump of similar misconduct. Prosecutors also introduced the 2005 Access Hollywood recording in which Trump described grabbing women without their consent.
The jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, although it rejected Carroll’s rape claim under New York’s legal definition in effect at the time. Jurors awarded Carroll $2 million for the sexual abuse claim and $3 million for defamation. In a separate trial in January 2024, another jury awarded Carroll the $83.3 million after concluding that Trump continued to defame her through statements made after the first verdict.
Supreme Court Declines Review Trump appealed the $5 million judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, arguing that the trial court improperly admitted testimony from other accusers and the Access Hollywood recording. After the Second Circuit affirmed the verdict, Trump petitioned the Supreme Court for review in November 2025. The justices considered the petition during their June 25, 2026, conference before denying certiorari four days later without comment or recorded dissent. Because the high court declined review, the Second Circuit’s decision remains in effect.
Trump’s attorneys later filed a petition for rehearing, arguing that the Court should reconsider the case because a forthcoming petition challenging the separate $83.3 million judgment may present presidential immunity issues under Trump v. United States (2024). Rehearing petitions are rarely granted. Following the Supreme Court’s denial, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered the release of the escrowed funds. Despite emergency efforts by Trump’s attorneys to delay payment, the judgment was ultimately satisfied.
Trump Continues to Denounce the Cases
Throughout the litigation, Trump has been unyielding in his public statements. He has repeatedly called Carroll a “liar,” dismissed the allegations as fabricated for book sales or political gain, and portrayed the entire process as election interference and “weaponization” of the justice system. On Truth Social and in interviews, he has labeled the cases “hoaxes,” “con jobs,” and part of a pattern of politically motivated attacks. Even after the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump vowed to continue fighting, framing it as resistance against what he calls Democrat-funded lawfare. His spokesperson echoed these sentiments, declaring that “the American People stand with President Trump” in demanding an end to such cases.
The $83 Million Judgment Remains on Appeal
Although Carroll has now collected the $5 million judgment, the larger $83.3 million award remains under appellate review. The Second Circuit affirmed that judgment earlier this year, and Trump is expected to file a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court. His attorneys are expected to argue that statements made while he was president are protected by presidential immunity or should be treated as official conduct under the Westfall Act. Enforcement of the larger judgment has been stayed after Trump posted a bond securing the award while his appeal proceeds.
Whether the Supreme Court agrees to hear the second case remains uncertain. Some legal observers have suggested that immunity questions could present a more substantial issue for review than the evidentiary challenges raised in the first appeal, while others note that the Court’s refusal to hear the earlier case may signal reluctance to revisit the litigation. For now, the Supreme Court’s denial leaves the first judgment final while the parties continue to litigate the remaining appeal. The Carroll cases remain among the most closely watched civil proceedings involving President Trump, touching on questions of defamation law, presidential immunity, and the limits of civil liability for public officials.

“.. members of Congress saying ICE isn’t a real law enforcement agency. I think that- I actually think that emboldens some people to say, “I’m not going to comply with ICE.”

• Border Czar Tom Homan Discusses Value of ICE Body Cameras (CTH)

The worst thing to ever happen to the reputation of black culture in America was the introduction of police body cameras to highlight the behavior of African Americans to the world. Frequent travelers will note that foreign discussions no longer include curious questions about racism in America. With black Americans putting themselves on full cultural display, the world now understands the connection between black culture and antisocial behavior.

The same concept applies to ICE officers wearing body cameras. As each incident unfolds, people can see the severity of the antagonism faced by the law enforcement officers doing what the overwhelming majority want to see done. Deport all illegal aliens, cancel all H1Bs and put Americans first! WATCH:

[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: And we’re back with President Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan. Welcome back to Face the Nation.
TOM HOMAN: Thanks for having me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mr. Homan, we saw that two immigrants were shot in the span of a week. There was that one in Maine that was fatal just days after another one in Houston. We also saw that man fleeing agents in Florida who then was struck and killed by a tractor trailer. I know you’ve been trying to keep the department out of the headlines ever since that streak in Minnesota that was deadly. How do you respond to those who say what’s happening now looks like very little has changed?
TOM HOMAN: Well, you know, first of all, we’ll wait and see what the investigations- how they play out, right? Because, you know, I don’t want to get ahead of investigations on who’s at fault, what exactly happened. Because we all know when the investigations happen, there’s going to be cell phone video, there may be city cameras, and of course, then you got witness statements and affidavits from the officer, and- and witnesses. So, we got to let the investigations play out. So, I don’t want to really comment on investigation themselves, but you know, I think, you know, Markwayne Mullin, you know, took some action, and in concern of the safety of the agents and- and how we do operations, and- and that’s why he did that, you know, that- that- that pause on- on enforcement on vehicle stops.
But you know, I- my concern is I’ve never- I’ve done this since 1984. My concern is I think a lot of the rhetoric that you see every day, especially in sanctuary cities, and at these protests that- resist, members of Congress saying ICE isn’t a real law enforcement agency. I think that- I actually think that emboldens some people to say, “I’m not going to comply with ICE.” And I think no matter what people think of ICE, no matter what you think of immigration law, you should always comply with law enforcement.[..]

Doubling human life expectancy

Easy predictions pic.twitter.com/zFUqwOKAW9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 18, 2026

Elon Musk just said the blind will see better than anyone with working eyes. That’s not optimism. That’s a spec sheet.

Musk: “And then over time, I think you get to higher resolution than human eyes.”

Not restoring vision. Making it obsolete. Human eyes peaked millions of years… pic.twitter.com/qL5dLAnIuU
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) July 19, 2026

A Tesla owner slept overnight in his Model X Plaid during a brutal 40°C heat wave in Austria. The car kept the cabin at 20°C for 8 hours and used only 12% battery.

Camp Mode is one of Tesla’s most underrated features. pic.twitter.com/K59aRge7bo
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) July 19, 2026

https://twitter.com/Yerocode0/status/2078464147432300625?s=20

Our co-founder, @EvaVlaar, praised and defended @elonmusk in the European Parliament for saving freedom of speech in Europe.

“Do you really think Elon Musk will bow down to Ursula von der Leyen? I don’t think so!” pic.twitter.com/KvnT0UIRVU
— Save Europe Act (@SaveEuropeAct) July 18, 2026

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Debt Rattle July 18 2026

Jul 182026

July 18, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: ICE, International Criminal Court, IRGC, James Carville, Marco Rubio, President's Speech 20 Responses »

René Magritte The Art of Conversation 1963

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

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

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

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

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

• Acceleration (James Howard Kunstler)

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

• Why ICE Shootings Are Usually Justified (ZH)

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

• Musk Buys Florida-Based Energy Company (ET)

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

• The Trump Caesarship (Paul Craig Roberts)

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

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/2077958024916783570?s=20

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

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

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

Convoluted. Complicated.

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

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

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

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

Until Syria intercepted it along the way.

Inside were hundreds of drones, missiles, and components…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Acceleration (James Howard Kunstler)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Why ICE Shootings Are Usually Justified (ZH)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Musk Buys Florida-Based Energy Company (ET)

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

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

Russia has guardrails. Also financially.

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

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

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

Is the US Senate like the Roman Senate?

• The Trump Caesarship (Paul Craig Roberts)

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

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

From Corruption “R” Us.

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

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

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

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

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

The silicon.

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

All of it runs on chips none of them produce.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Debt Rattle June 4 2026

Jun 042026

June 4, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:37 am Finance Tagged with: Alabama, COVID-19, Iran, IRGC, Mamdani, Marco Rubio, SpaceX, Supreme Court, supreme leader, Trump, Ukraiobe 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

A former World Bank president has sounded the alarm, revealing that the Federal Reserve has lost over a trillion dollars—and counting—turning it into nothing more than a massive hedge fund for the rich and powerful.

He claims the Fed is borrowing money from banks at 5.4%… pic.twitter.com/eMznmUbM1f
— illuminatibot (@iluminatibot) June 2, 2026

“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.”

“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.

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…

Our Armed Forces are conducting self-defense strikes on sites the U.S. is permitted to use to attack civilian shipping and violate the ceasefire.

Any hostile act will be met with an immediate, decisive response. What sanctions and war failed to achieve won't be won with more war pic.twitter.com/CwjULJ6PeI
— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) June 3, 2026

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.

Kuwait's civil aviation authority confirmed Iranian drones and missiles hit the T1 terminal at Kuwait International Airport. Several people were injured and the building sustained severe damage. Commercial flights have been halted. https://t.co/fbFhjSofIY pic.twitter.com/zOz83Ba6cy
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 3, 2026

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.”

“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.

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:

SECRETARY RUBIO: "Why is she leaving? I'm going to answer her questions. Oh, I got it. Well, thank you for coming." pic.twitter.com/ayG1qc3EYs
— Department of State (@StateDept) June 3, 2026

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.”

SECRETARY RUBIO: "It's complex. This has been going on since O.J. had Isotoners." pic.twitter.com/uhMk1RYyfs
— Department of State (@StateDept) June 3, 2026

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

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.

Sec. Rubio with the perfect response after Democrat Sen. Van Hollen says:

"There is no evidence that Cuba is engaged in state-sponsored terrorism. Did you find new evidence?" pic.twitter.com/Ex1OSzOfXP
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) June 2, 2026

” 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.

“.. 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.

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.

“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.

“..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.

“..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.

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.

JENSEN HUANG WAS ASKED WHO IS USING AI BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD

His answer wasn't OpenAI. It wasn't Google. It wasn't even Nvidia itself.

Here's what he said on CNBC:

"Nobody uses AI better than Meta."

He explained that Meta went from a classical recommender… pic.twitter.com/kdkG9ptxOU
— WOLF (@WOLF_Financial) June 2, 2026

Did you know that official police policy requires them to be racist against Whites? It is deeply wrong and must change NOW. pic.twitter.com/ekLbHsRV1r
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 2, 2026

https://twitter.com/cryptogoos/status/2062056663709004178?s=20 https://twitter.com/CharlesMullins2/status/2062041643679989874?s=20

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Debt Rattle May 30 2026

May 302026

May 30, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:55 am Finance Tagged with: $250 bill, climate hoax, final determination, gold bars, high treason, Kennedy Center, Marco Rubio, Ofcom, pusillanimous, radioactive, SpaceX 21 Responses »

Andy Warhol Grace Kelly 1984

• President Trump Updates on “Final Determination” of Iran Negotiations (CTH)

• Iran Clarifies Deal ‘Not Finalized’ Amid Lack Of Trust (ZH)

• Trump in Situation Room for ‘final Determination’ on Iran deal (JTN)

• Trump and Rubio Finally Go After Brazil’s Narco-Terrorists (Sarah Anderson)

• Go Marco! It’s Your Birthday! (Anderson)

• The Left Is Trying to Make Trump Radioactive — and It’s Failing (Tim O’Brien)

• SpaceX Reportedly Lowers IPO Valuation Target (ZH)

• How Much Longer Will Russians Tolerate Putin-the-Pusillanimous? (PCR)

• Has President Trump Committed High Treason? (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Like a Naked Emperor (James Howard Kunstler)

• British Ofcom Probes Trump Interview Calling Climate Change a “Hoax” (Turley)

• Judge Orders Trump’s Name to Be Removed From Kennedy Center (Sarah Anderson)

• US Government Prepares To Print $250 Note Featuring Trump’s Face (BBC)

https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/2060064173774803099?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2060067457235132814?s=20

Soros will NOT be happy about this…

Secretary Bessent states that a major probe into Antifa’s Billionaire funders is underway

“There’s substantial progress…we’re going to have a LOT to report”

IRS Form 990 rules mean nonprofits can no longer hide their ‘cash to riot’ schemes pic.twitter.com/k7HWPMHVgX
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) May 28, 2026

https://twitter.com/LightOnLiberty/status/2059829613082161341?s=20

Peter Doocy says President Trump doubled down on not caring about the midterms in his upcoming interview with Lara Trump.

Scott Bessent called it the mark of a true statesman because of his core belief on stopping Iran from getting a nuke.

DOOCY: “And so we don’t know what has… pic.twitter.com/MuiAZbka2s
— Overton (@overton_news) May 28, 2026

“The Arab states, not Israel, are 100% behind the Trump administration effort on this issue.”

• President Trump Updates on “Final Determination” of Iran Negotiations (CTH)

President Trump updates through his Truth Social account on the current status of negotiations for an agreement with Iran.

PRESIDENT TRUMP – “Iran must agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb. The Hormuz Strait must be immediately open, no tolls, for unrestricted shipping traffic, in both directions. All water mines (bombs), if any, will be terminated (we have removed, through detonation, numerous such mines with our great underwater mine sweepers. Iran will complete the immediate removal and/or detonation of any mines that are left, which will not be many!).
Ships caught in the Strait due to our amazing and unprecedented Naval Blockade, which will now be lifted, may start the process of “heading home!” Say HELLO to your wives, husbands, parents, and families from me, your favorite President! The enriched material, sometimes referred to as “Nuclear Dust,” which is buried deep underground with virtually collapsed mountains, caused by our powerful B2 Bomber attack 11 months ago, sitting on top of it, will be unearthed by the United States (which, it is agreed, is the only Country, along with China, with the mechanical capability of doing so!), in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED.
No money will be exchanged, until further notice. Other items, of far less importance, have been agreed to. I will be meeting now, in the Situation Room, to make a final determination. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” ~ President Donald J Trump
Newt Gingrich also notes one of the most important facets that continues to be missed by most of the American punditry who discuss the situation. The Arab states, not Israel, are 100% behind the Trump administration effort on this issue.
Newt Gingrich: “After spending this week reviewing the Iranian war I am now convinced President Trump is on the edge of an historic victory. The real breakthrough for me came as I reviewed President Trump’s decisions and maneuvers not from the standpoint of American unilateralism but from the standpoint of the leader of a remarkable historic coalition, the largest coalition ever put together in the modern Middle East.
Everyone understands that Israel is an important ally. What is little discussed is the depth of support from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region. It has to be sobering for the Iranian dictatorship to realize that it does not have a single ally willing to challenge the American naval blockade. Slowly, gradually, timidly, our European allies are lining up to help with the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. A great deal of President Trump’s maneuvers against Iran make sense once he is seen as a coalition leader and not just as a unilateral American President.
I spent a lot of the last couple weeks reviewing kinetic options including wining the battle of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz and if necessary using the shocking and shattering level of force President Nixon and Secretary Kissinger used against Hanoi and Haiphong in Christmas 1972 (which both leaders believed convinced the North Vietnamese to agree to a truce and the freeing of American POWs). If this were a unilateral American campaign I could enthusiastically support a more aggressive kinetic campaign. However it is also clear it would shatter the coalition because our Arab allies are convinced Iran could still do enormous damage to their oil fields and infrastructure.
Coalitions are inherently slower than unilateral campaigns. However coalitions ultimately bring vastly more power to the fight. I am as frustrated as everyone else by the pace of talking with the dictatorship but having reviewed the correlation of forces and the options available to the coalition on one side and the Iranian religiously motivated dictatorship on the other I am prepared to assert that President Trump’s coalition leadership (something almost none of his critics want to acknowledge) is within reach of an enormous historic victory. And if the Iranian dictatorship ultimately proves it is hopelessly committed to a suicidal position there will be plenty of time for a kinetic campaign of enormous power and effectiveness. Either way we are on the edge of an astonishing victory for our values and for a safer Middle East.” (source)

The more Iran threatens, the weaker it is.

• Iran Clarifies Deal ‘Not Finalized’ Amid Lack Of Trust (ZH)

Iran’s Tasnim reports Friday that the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is not yet finalized, and that Thursday’s flurry of Western media headlines about an agreement finally being reached were inaccurate. “The text is not finalized yet and the account in Western media is not precise,” a fresh statement indicates. Official confirmation will be announced if it does get to the point of being finalized, Tasnim notes. The report cited an Iranian official to say that “the text of the possible memorandum of understanding has had changes over the past few days.”

The warring sides are attempting to lock in a 60-day extended ceasefire, during which time they will get back to the table – and that’s when finer details like how to address Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium will be dealt with. It is now day 91, and according to the latest Friday: Iranian Parliament Speaker and top negotiator Ghalibaf says: “We have no trust in guarantees or words.” Late Thursday, US Vice President J.D. Vance indicated that President Trump has not approved, at a moment Washington is insisting the nuclear issue be more front and center as part of the MOU.
However, the Iranians have consistently said their nuclear program is not up for negotiation toward ending the war – but that it is something that can be talked about once the conflict closes. According to a summary of the latest on the stalled MOU from an Al Jazeera correspondent: Diplomatic efforts to preserve the ceasefire between the United States and Iran have continued behind the scenes, with officials signaling progress towards a framework that could open the door to formal negotiations after weeks of conflict and disruption across the Gulf and beyond. Despite the optimism, questions remain over the timing and scope of any agreement.
Iranian media reports suggested discussions are continuing and that key details have yet to be finalized, while both sides continue to navigate sensitive issues, including Iran’s nuclear program and security in the Gulf.

One of the newest and most surprising elements of the Iran peace draft deal is a proposed investment fund for Iran — reportedly $300 billion.

Iran originally framed this as reparations for war damage (which it estimates at $300B–$1T). The U.S. side is rebranding it as an… pic.twitter.com/zdrgCiacfH
— Clash Report (@clashreport) May 29, 2026

What has become clear is that US and international media reports have consistently proven premature, too out front, thinly sourced, and ultimately inaccurate in their generally optimistic claims of a deal being ‘finalized’ or else ‘imminent’. In the meantime, Iran’s ongoing threats of an escalated, protracted war happen to be very clear: The Revolutionary Guards said any renewed conflict would spread “far beyond the region,” threatening “crushing blows” and “utter ruin” in places opponents “cannot even imagine.” The warnings come after a war that saw Iran target US bases, Israeli cities and critical infrastructure in Gulf Arab states, while effectively shutting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and triggering a global energy shock.
The Islamic Republic has also been touting new “tools” to use against its enemies, per CNN: Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that any future retaliation would “feature many more surprises,” while Iran’s military threatened to open “new fronts” using “new tools.” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator, said the armed forces had used the ceasefire period to rebuild their capabilities “at the highest level.”
Some pundits fear that such references to “new fronts” could mean either the closure of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea, or even the possibility of missiles reaching Europe. Umud Shokri, an energy strategist at George Mason University, has explained in a statement, “A simultaneous crisis in Bab al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz would be far more serious, potentially affecting both Red Sea trade and Persian Gulf energy flows, which would raise oil prices, freight rates, and inflationary pressure worldwide.”

Trump’s conditions are well known.

• Trump in Situation Room for ‘final Determination’ on Iran deal (JTN)

President Donald Trump is in the Situation Room to make a final decision on the Iran deal amid a reported 60-day ceasefire extension. Trump reiterated his core demands that Iran abandon its nuclear ambitions and open the Strait of Hormuz in a Truth Social post. “Iran must agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb. The Hormuz Strait must be immediately open, no tolls, for unrestricted shipping traffic, in both directions,” he posted. “All water mines (bombs), if any, will be terminated (we have removed, through detonation, numerous such mines with our great underwater mine sweepers.”

“Iran will complete the immediate removal and/or detonation of any mines that are left, which will not be many!). Ships caught in the Strait due to our amazing and unprecedented Naval Blockade, which will now be lifted, may start the process of ‘heading home!'” he added. Trump also insisted that Iran would have to hand over its remaining nuclear material for destruction under the watch of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The war began in late February with joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The conflict has been in a nominal ceasefire for weeks, despite the occasional flare up of live-fire exchanges.

Lula.

• Trump and Rubio Finally Go After Brazil’s Narco-Terrorists (Sarah Anderson)

The State Department announced on Thursday that the United States is designating Brazil’s two most powerful criminal organizations — Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV) — as both Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs) and Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). All I can say is that it’s about time. There have been rumors that Marco Rubio would do this for a while now, but he’s finally following through.

“CV and PCC are two of the most violent criminal organizations in Brazil,” Rubio said today in a statement (I’d add in the whole world, not just Brazil). “Together, they command thousands of members and have orchestrated brutal attacks against Brazilian police officers, public officials, and civilians. Their influence and illicit networks extend far beyond Brazil’s borders, across our region and into our country.” So, just who are these narco-terrorists? Here’s what I wrote about them earlier this month:
Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV) are the two largest and most influential criminal organizations in Brazil, though they operate internationally. Both were born in prisons as self-protection groups in the 1990s, and today, they are some of the biggest drug and arms trafficking organizations in the world. There are tens of thousands of members, and they terrorize Brazilian civilians and have taken over entire towns. From beheadings to bombings and other mass attacks, they use terrorist-style tactics to control territory and instill fear.
Not only have they taken over entire parts of Brazil, but they’ve bled over the borders into countries like Bolivia, Paraguay, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Chile. They also operate in the United States and parts of Europe and the Middle East, according to the São Paulo Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Today, they recruit new members in prisons, and these aren’t your average street criminals. They run parallel states inside prisons and in parts of Brazil, often corrupting officials. They massacre their rivals, and they make billions through crimes like trafficking, money laundering, and extortion. They also help fuel the drug crisis in our country, contributing to the cocaine and fentanyl that show up on our streets each year. In Brazil specifically, these groups have even infiltrated legitimate businesses in fields like agriculture, real estate, and construction.
The Donald Trump administration has been using the SDGT and FTO designations quite successfully, almost from day one, to target narco-terrorism and working to dismantle and capture the leaders of Mexican cartels and other regional organized crime groups, like Tren de Aragua and MS-13. The designations prevent anyone in the U.S. from providing resources or support for that group, among other things, which curbs financing, isolates these criminal organizations internationally, and heightens public awareness. As we’ve seen over the past year, once we take the lead on these things, other aligned countries in the Western Hemisphere often follow suit.
It also puts pressure on Brazilian institutions and businesses to stop playing nice with these groups, including the country’s little anti-Trump dictator, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But don’t hold your breath on that one. What makes the timing of these designations even more interesting is that Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, met with Trump at the White House earlier this week. Trump and the elder Bolsonaro are, of course, good friends, and with presidential elections in Brazil looming in October, the younger Bolsonaro is currently the right-wing candidate leading the polls and the candidate who is most likely able to stop the old socialist Lula from serving a fourth term. Having a like-minded partner in Brazil would be huge for both of our countries.
After their meeting in the Oval Office, Flávio held a press conference stating that he asked Trump personally to designate PCC and CV as terrorist groups. It looks like the president and Rubio listened. The senator and presidential candidate was welcomed warmly upon returning home from the U.S. by the people who are ready to pull their country away from the socialism and organized crime that have plagued it for years, following the lead of other countries in Central and South America in recent months.
By making the designation, Trump and Rubio essentially handed Flávio and Brazil’s opposition some support ahead of the elections. Meanwhile, old Lula refuses to condemn these groups because, well, sovereignty or something. Lula’s party has long refused to take a hardline stance on national security, preferring to shout about imperialism than actually help its own citizens who are living under the threats of these narco-terrorists. There is also the idea that high-profile members of Lula’s “Workers’ Party” are some of the officials who have been corrupted by the PCC and CV, but that’s a story for another day. .

“Marco Rubio is really, really, really popular with Republicans.”

• Go Marco! It’s Your Birthday! (Anderson)

Today, Thursday, May 28, is Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s 55th birthday. I hadn’t planned on marking the occasion, but everyone else in the media and politics seems to be, and our managing editor Chris Queen jokingly suggested I join them. And if you’ve been reading my articles for the last year and a half, you know I never pass up a chance to say good things about the most popular man in the Republican Party. Oh yeah, it’s true. Even CNN admits it.

According to the network’s poll analyst, Harry Enten, earlier this week, “Marco Rubio is really, really, really popular with Republicans.” The only Republican currently polling more popular is Donald Trump himself. He added, “His chances to be the Republican nominee in 2028 are up like a rocket taking off from Cape Canaveral.” Enten was referring to favorability odds from Kalshi, which showed Rubio with an 11% chance of becoming the GOP nominee in January — that number has jumped to 30% in May. According to Quinnipiac, Rubio also has the highest approval rating of any cabinet member at 40%, but Vice President JD Vance is not far behind at 39%. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth follows at 34%, and FBI Director Kash Patel is at 30%.
Other polls show Rubio and Vance neck and neck for a 2028 primary. Emerson College, for example, has Vance with 36% support of Republican voters, while Rubio is close behind with about 35%. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley each have 5%. Around 15% are undecided. What’s notable about that, however, is the shift. In February, the same poll showed Vance with a whopping 52% of support and Rubio with just 20%. I suppose being favored to become the most powerful man in the world, a position you’ve been working toward most of your life, is one of the best birthday presents a guy can receive, but we’re still a good ways out from that, so I’m going to shut up about 2028 now. Let’s get through the midterms first.
On a personal note, I’d like to say that if it wasn’t for Rubio, I wouldn’t know nearly as much about Latin American politics as I do, nor would I have the career that I have. So, I’m forever grateful for that and do hope he has the best of days. Anyway, this wasn’t meant to be a serious post. Let’s just wish a “Happy Birthday” to our dear Secretary of State. Now, enjoy these X posts: A couple of weeks ago, I wrote: The Secretary of State Is Cool, and the MSM Is Having a Meltdown Over It. The State Department showcased that “cool” factor in a birthday video today:

Happy Birthday, Mr. Secretary. pic.twitter.com/Nwun9geB5Z
— Department of State (@StateDept) May 28, 2026

Looks like some White House staff threw him a little party:
https://twitter.com/MargoMartin47/status/2060049666129981656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2060049666129981656%7Ctwgr%5E12a5c638971ab9b7a20d2f57d63a16f77bbf6ce2%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F05%2F28%2Fgo-marco-its-your-birthday-and-youre-the-most-popular-man-in-the-gop-n4953339
Lots of members of Congress have wished Rubio a happy birthday, but this post from Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) was my favorite. I told Chris that they look like an overly enthusiastic couple who is ready to sell you a timeshare.
https://twitter.com/RepKatCammack/status/2060090909824368777?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2060090909824368777%7Ctwgr%5E12a5c638971ab9b7a20d2f57d63a16f77bbf6ce2%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F05%2F28%2Fgo-marco-its-your-birthday-and-youre-the-most-popular-man-in-the-gop-n4953339
Of course, we couldn’t let the day pass without the meme:
https://twitter.com/TheRicanMemes/status/2060035087681372282?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2060035087681372282%7Ctwgr%5E12a5c638971ab9b7a20d2f57d63a16f77bbf6ce2%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F05%2F28%2Fgo-marco-its-your-birthday-and-youre-the-most-popular-man-in-the-gop-n4953339

I don’t understand how Milli Vanilli is part of this.

• The Left Is Trying to Make Trump Radioactive — and It’s Failing (Tim O’Brien)

What do NFL quarterback Jaxson Dart and the Great American State Fair event in Washington, D.C., have in common? Two things right off the top: first, President Donald Trump’s support; and second, that both are current targets of the left’s strategy to make everything Trump touches radioactive. We all know the drill by now. Trump does something. The left acts like he committed a capital offense. The media and all of the various institutions of the left, including the judiciary, all do their part to try to create the perception that Trump is ruining things.

We’ve all seen how activist judges, the news media, and mobilized “anti-ICE” groups have waged a campaign to frame Trump’s enforcement of immigration law as though it were a crime in and of itself. But wait, there’s more. The left had a conniption over the White House ballroom project. It got a judge to halt construction, and now it’s trying to blame Trump for the mess it is intentionally creating. The left even tried to do the same thing on Trump’s repairs to the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool. There is nothing the left would like more than to create a mess throughout Washington that would last at least through 2026 and America’s 250th anniversary celebrations. Instead of coming together as Americans to celebrate our history, the left wants to ruin this once-in-a-lifetime event and blame Trump for what it is doing.
Last week, New York Giants QB Dart was asked to introduce the president of the United States at a New York event, and the left immediately seized on it as yet another opportunity to make something Trump touched radioactive. Its methodology is simple. After Trump does the thing – in this case, speak – the left attacks anyone who shared the stage with the president. It’s an old-fashioned pressure campaign. Squeeze the people who, optically, appear not to hate Trump. If the left can “convict” you of not hating the president, it will smear you as someone who presumably supports everything the man has ever done, everything he’s ever said, and everything the left has made up about him. All of it.
Then they go to anyone associated with someone like Dart to see if they still support Dart. In his case, it could be teammates, coaches, sponsors, or even agents. In terms of character assassination, it’s all-out war for the left. Take no prisoners. The goal is to get anyone who may have been even temporarily associated with Trump to come out and publicly apologize or distance themselves from the president. The sports media immediately took the lead on creating controversy around Dart’s introduction of Trump at that event, pestering people throughout the Giants organization about it — so much so that Dart had to explain his side of the story during a team meeting. Keep in mind, an NFL player introducing the president is neither controversial nor something that should be controversial. If it is, it’s because the controversy was manufactured
Giants linebacker Abdul Carter took the bait and commented on social media, “Thought this s##t was AI, what we doing man.” Carter had no idea that he himself was a victim of leftist manipulation when he posted this. That said, not long after his post, he followed up by saying he talked to Dart, man-to-man, and it’s all good. So, is this sort of thing having the left’s desired effect?
https://twitter.com/PamelaHensley22/status/2058618537359409386?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2058618537359409386%7Ctwgr%5E517a7dc4d0b01979419c9930a612d453e00dfe3a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Ftim-o-brien%2F2026%2F05%2F28%2Fthe-left-is-trying-to-make-trump-radioactive-and-its-failing-n4953358
Apparently not. Carter may have taken the bait, but the public is not. Politically, Trump-endorsed candidates have been killing it in the primaries by huge margins, indicating that the country is still way into Trump — more than the media would ever have you believe. nAnd so, we’re now about to go full steam into a summer of America 250 celebrations. What could go wrong, right? You have to know going in that the left has plans to destroy anything and everything related to it. Which brings me to that Great American State Fair planned for Washington in June. A bunch of musical artists had been lined up to perform at the event. People like C+C Music Factory, Flo Rida, Vanilla Ice, Bret Michaels, the Commodores, Martina McBride, and Milli Vanilli.
Right on cue, after already committing to perform at the event, some of the acts are pulling out. We can only guess that it’s the result of someone getting to them — reaching out to pressure them into cancelling. I mean, they already knew Trump is the president, and as president, he’s the host of the anniversary festivities. This was not a surprise. They already knew the event will be in the heart of the most political town in the country. And yet, McBride decides to drop out at this stage of the game, citing “partisanship” as her concern. Really? Is celebrating America with the president now a partisan thing?

pic.twitter.com/Ono3zPi54Z
— Martina McBride (@martinamcbride) May 29, 2026

$3 triilion or $4 trillion, who cares?

• SpaceX Reportedly Lowers IPO Valuation Target (ZH)

SpaceX is targeting a valuation of at least $1.8 trillion in its upcoming initial public offering, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. This is below an earlier goal of more than $2 trillion. In practice, the initial IPO valuation target is a marketing range, not a final number. Therefore, any valuation shifts ahead of the trading day would not be unusual. This suggests advisers are calibrating the deal to what investors are willing to absorb, especially given the massive proposed raise of up to $75 billion.

The target is settling lower after consultations with advisers and investors, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn’t public. Details of an IPO, such as size and valuation, are typically adjusted ahead of pricing based on feedback from stakeholders, the people said. SpaceX is seeking to raise as much as $75 billion, people familiar with the matter have said, which would make it the biggest IPO of all time. -BBG
The May 21 SpaceX S-1 filing revealed that Elon Musk’s space company is much more than a reusable-rocket and satellite-internet company. It now encompasses AI services, infrastructure, orbital data centers, and a claimed $28.5 trillion total addressable market. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the IPO is set to price on June 11, with a June 12 debut. The stock is expected to list on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas under the t icker “SPCX.” Polymarket bets show a 90% chance that SpaceX’s market capitalization will be $1.8 trillion on the IPO date.

PCR doesn’t like Trump OR Putin. But Americans and Russians do, respectively.

• How Much Longer Will Russians Tolerate Putin-the-Pusillanimous? (PCR)

The Russians have paid with lives of soldiers and civilians and with sanctions and internet disruptions and airport closings and with humiliations for a conflict that has gone nowhere in 5 years. What is Putin’s purpose in creating a never-ending and ever-widening conflict that now takes place all over Russia with school children killed, oil facilities destroyed, airports disrupted. Air strikes on Russia now take place through NATO countries, and the war is widening with Europe preparing for war with Russia in three years.

Whatever Putin’s purpose it does not generate a picture of a great power. Indeed, Putin and Peskov and Kirill Dmitriev have made the Kremlin look like a wimp. In his latest denial that a decision has been made to finally use sufficient force to conclude the conflict in victory, Peskov at Putin’s direction declared: “We generally prefer to achieve our goals peacefully, by diplomatic means.” This is the Kremlin’s admission that Russians are dying for “diplomatic means.” Peskov added that Putin is looking forward to a new round of talks with Trump’s Jewish messengers, Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner. “As soon as they are ready, we will be glad to see them and we, indeed, wait for their arrival.”
The purpose of Peskov demonstrating the Kremlin’s subservience to Trump was to shutdown Foreign Minister Lavrov who had told US Secretary of State Rubio that the Kremlin had finally decided to get the conflict over with. Not so Peskov declared. Apparently, winning a war is not Russia’s way. It seems that yet again Putin-the-Pusillanimous will do nothing that upsets Trump and, therefore, that the pointless conflict that achieves only casualties while it widens into a general European war will continue.

PCR is not a fan.

• Has President Trump Committed High Treason? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Let’s examine the case.In the oath of office taken in the swearing in of a president, the about-to-be-president swears allegiance to the U.S. Constitution and promises to defend it against enemies at home and abroad. In other words, enemies of the Constitution are enemies of the United States. (Today the Constitution’s enemies includes university law schools in the United States.) If you asked what is the United States, some would say it is an idea; others would say it is a geographical territory. But these definitions apply to all countries and thus define none. The correct answer is that the United States is the Constitution.

The Constitution defines the form of government, the powers of the various branches, the distribution of powers between state governments and the federal government, the rights of citizens and the protection of those rights, and it defines the process of changing the Constitution, that is, of changing the United States. Without the Constitution the United States would be a different country. It is not an election that makes a person the president. It is the person’s vow to defend the United States by defending the Constitution. If an elected president refused the vow at the swearing in ceremony, he could not be confirmed in office as president. When a president-to-be swears an oath to the Constitution he swears an oath to the United States.
The most important parts of the Constitution are the Amendments, the Bill of Rights that had to be incorporated into the Constitution in order to gain its acceptance by all of the founding states. The Bill of Rights protects the citizens from government limiting their rights and committing violence or retribution against them for actions protected by the Constitution. The principle right is free speech. It is the First Amendment, because without free speech it is impossible for citizens to hold government accountable for violation of the other protections from, and limits on, government power. Trump’s affinity for Zionist Israel has led him into an act that violates his oath of office and possibly caused him to commit high treason against the United States.
Trump has created by executive order what in effect is a Sedition Act for Israel that prohibits United States citizens from using their First Amendment right to criticize Israel for the genocide of Palestine, the rape and torture of Palestinian prisoners, the destruction of Palestinian homes, villages, and olive groves by Israeli settlers who blatantly steal Palestinian land, assassinations of foreign leaders, undue influence over the U.S. legislative and executive branches, state governments, media, finance, and education, and wars of aggression against Middle Eastern countries. U.S. critics of Israel are not even permitted to complain about the Jewish Anti-defamation League’s slander, libel and defamation of them. For an American to complain of being defamed by Zionists is to risk punishment for anti-semitism.
To state it plainly, Trump and his acting attorney general have given priority to protecting Israel, a foreign government, over the First Amendment rights of U.S. citizens. Clearly, this means that Trump and his accommodating acting attorney general are serving a foreign interest by suspending without any right or authority to do so, the First Amendment rights guaranteed to U.S. citizens by the U.S. Constitution. This puts Trump at odds with his vow to protect the U.S. Constitution and invalidates his swearing-in as president of the United States. Trump has issued an edict that his obliging attorney general has accepted that subordinates the U.S. Constitution to Israel.
On May 19, the acting Attorney General of the United States issued this statement: “President Trump has made clear that this administration will not tolerate antisemitism [defined as any criticism of Israel and Jews], and the Department of Justice is committed to implement that directive. This national tour is an important step in ensuring communities across the country know the federal government stands ready to work with them to confront antisemitic threats, protect public safety, and uphold civil rights.”
Notice that according to Trump’s attorney general “upholding civil rights” means deep-sixing the First Amendment that protects U. S. Citizens’ free speach rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. As Trump and his attorney general have come out against the First Amendment, they have come out against the US Constiution and, thereby, against the United States. In other words, both seem to be guilty of high treason. For Trump and his attorney general to rule for Israel against American citizen’s First Amendment rights and the US Constitution that protects these rights calls into question who Trump and his attorney general represent.
It seems certain the President Trump’s willingness to sacrifice the U.S. Constitution to protecting Israel from words of criticism indicates that he has committed high treason in order to serve foreign interests, which would seem to make Trump an enemy of the U.S. Constitution and thereby an enemy of the United States. f my reasoning is correct, why shouldn’t President Trump be arrested and put on trial for high treason against the United States?Why did not Trump’s acting attorney general, who happens to be Trump’s personal defense attorney, warn Trump that he was stepping onto treasonous ground? Is a person who aids and abets the president in the possible commission of high treason fit to be attorney general of the United States?

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week’s first outside columnist, columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, contributor to the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times, and columnist for the main French and Italian newspapers, and for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles. He served in numerous academic appointments in US universities and was appointed to the William E. Simon Chair for Political Economy at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies where his colleagues were Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James R. Schlesinger (one of his former professors), and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Thomas Moorer. His article, “How the Law Was Lost,” was published in the January 1999 Cardozo Law Review.

The CIA sent $40 million in gold bars (303 bars) to his home. Let that sink in well. WTF?

“This story is not going away. The scale of the grift is spectacular and vivid — 303 gold bars! — like a Hollywood movie. Rush’s explanation of “work-related expenses” sounds preposterous.”

“The case has stunned national security observers and raised serious questions about the federal government’s security clearance and vetting systems. —Newsmax

• Like a Naked Emperor (James Howard Kunstler)

In the annals of Deep State WTF-ery, is there a stranger case than CIA officer David Rush turning up with $40-million in 303 one-kilogram gold bars, plus $2-million in cash, plus a stash of 30 mostly Rolex watches? Well, yeah, the stranger story is how the guy got hired by the CIA in the first place. Rush was arrested on Monday, May 18, by an FBI SWAT team at his home in Loudoun County, VA. Agents searched the house all day long and found the stash. Rush is currently charged with theft of public money and allegedly falsifying his military and academic credentials to obtain federal employment benefits, including roughly $77,000 in improper military leave pay. He’s scheduled to make a federal court appearance in Alexandria today.

Rush first applied for a job at the CIA in March 2006. He claimed to have a bachelor’s degree in math from Clemson University and a master’s from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He was rejected. He reapplied later that same year. Bumped again. He reapplied again in 2009, adding a new credential: that he’d been a US Navy test pilot and flight trainer. This time, he was hired.
Rush’s college credentials were found to be false, but it is unclear when that was discovered. Since he included them in his two earlier 2006 failed applications, why were they not flagged in his successful 2009 application? His claim of being a US Navy pilot was also found to be false (he was an information systems tech in his Navy service). The FBI affidavit unsealed recently details the pattern of lies across all applications.
Understand that CIA vetting procedures are supposed to be exceedingly rigorous. The process is stressful and invasive — many candidates drop out or are weeded out. The background check involves interviews with practically everybody who knows the applicant going back decades, his criminal history, work, financial history, education, military service. The applicant gets a polygraph exam. Even after getting hired, monitoring continues.
Rush was hired at the very start of the Obama admin; Leon Panetta was the newly appointed CIA Director. Wouldn’t you like to hear him ‘splain how David Rush managed to get hired? Was somebody smoothing his way in? Rush rose to become a senior executive service (SES) officer with a top-secret (TS/SCI) security clearance. His exact duties, the division he worked for, his day-to-day responsibilities have not been disclosed.
Rush allegedly requested the gold and foreign currency from the CIA for “work-related expenses” between November 2025 and March 2026. The agency later could not account for the assets or locate records explaining their official purpose. A search of a storage locker at CIA connected to Rush turned up only a small amount of the requisitioned cash.
“There is a whole process that we go through to get that money. I don’t just walk into the logistics office and say ‘Excuse me, I need $100,000 tomorrow.’ There is a form I have to fill out. It’s not a bank vault you walk into. It doesn’t work like that.” — Tracy Walder, 46, a former FBI special agent and CIA officer, quoted in The New York Post.
Wouldn’t you assume that some higher-up CIA officer would have to sign off on such a colossal requisition of gold and money? (And where does the CIA get so much gold on-demand?) Perhaps the very Director of the CIA approved it — which would be John Ratcliffe through 2025 up to right now. Doesn’t he have some ‘splainin’ to do? (Was Rush set-up? Was this a sting?)
Assuming Rush spent some period of time as an entry-level CIA employee, when did his rise to SES level happen? John Brennan became CIA Director in early 2013 (the start of Barack Obama’s second term). What were David Rush’s relations with John Brennan? Was Brennan his mentor? Does the gold stash have any connection with the current legal problems of John Brennan and other former high officials involved in the long-running “grand conspiracy” case about the attempted overthrow of a president?
You might imagine that Rush’s phone and computers were seized in the May 18th raid on his house — though it’s unlikely he used such conventional channels for black ops chatter. It’s conceivable, though, that any alt-communications of his were captured by the vast national security surveillance apparatus, and that DNI Tulsi Gabbard might have come across them this past year. How else might Director Ratcliffe have been tipped off?
This story is not going away. The scale of the grift is spectacular and vivid — 303 gold bars! — like a Hollywood movie. Rush’s explanation of “work-related expenses” sounds preposterous. If the requisitions were made serially, over several months, as appears, then the agency had more than one opportunity to review and question them.
Rush faked his entire back-story. How incompetent (or corrupt) are the agency’s past managers that he got away with it for so long? How many other gross fakers, rogues, grifters, and tools are embedded in the agency, and who are they really working for? The institutional embarrassment is monumental. Trust in the so-called Intel Community is at an all-time low. Indictments and trials are coming. This is the Deep State on parade like a naked emperor.

“I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.”

• British Ofcom Probes Trump Interview Calling Climate Change a “Hoax” (Turley)

I have been writing about the decline of free speech in the United Kingdom for years, including in my book The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. One of the most critical components of the British censorship system is Ofcom, the Office of Communications, which regulates the broadcasting, internet, telecommunications, and postal industries. The most recent controversy is detailed in the Telegraph, with Ofcom investigating GB News over the simple replaying of a Trump interview in which he called climate change a “hoax.” Ofcom is investigating GB News for failing to challenge Trump’s characterization, even though many people share his views on climate change.

It is a breathtaking demonstration of the censorship culture in the United Kingdom. World leaders make controversial statements in every interview. A free press allows the public to hear such viewpoints and reach their own conclusions on the merits of such arguments or policies. The debate over the climate change data continues to rage. The dates for dire predictions for massive environmental disasters, including those of Al Gore, have passed. Professor Guy McPherson received widespread press attention for his 2016 prediction that the entire human race would be wiped out by 2026. It appears that he is wrong.
Al Gore received the 2007 Peace Prize for his film The Inconvenient Truth as media, academic, and government censors attacked anyone questioning his data. His apocalyptic predictions have not borne out, and recent scientific papers have rejected the predictions found in the underlying studies. Gore predicted more frequent and stronger hurricanes, but some insist that global data reveal a slight decline in both frequency and intensity. Others argue that the number may be decreasing but the intensity is increasing. We have not seen the type of global hurricane disaster that Gore described in the movie. Critics point to NASA data to argue that the areas burned by wildfires have fallen by more than 25 percent over the past quarter of a century.
While the global population quadrupled in the last century, deaths from climate-related disasters have plummeted from the 1920s, when an average of nearly half a million people died annually from such events. Even the film’s famous use of polar bears has not panned out. Polar bear populations have more than doubled from around 12,000 in the 1960s to over 26,000 today. While some have contested those figures, it has certainly not resulted in the wipeout predicted by Gore. I believe that climate change is real, and there are other signs of more severe climate events, including flooding, that present real dangers for various countries. The point is not to say that it is all a hoax, but that reasonable people can disagree on this question.
That brings us back to the British censors. In the last two decades, free speech protections in the U.K. have been eviscerated and the government is doubling down on the criminalization of speech. The criminalization of speech has expanded exponentially as individuals and groups call the police to silence those who criticize them or advocate opposing views. bEven silent prayer or “toxic ideologies” can lead to arrest. Expressing concerns over Western cultural values is now treated as an admission of “right-wing ideology,” warranting investigation. A few years ago, a neo-Nazi living with his mother was found to have a room filled with hateful symbols and material.
Judge Peter Lodder dismissed free speech concerns over the defendant’s possessions with a truly Orwellian flourish: “I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.” Calling the defendant “a right-wing extremist,” Mr. Lodder said the contents of his room were evidence of “enthusiasm for this repulsive and toxic ideology.” The British people have become conditioned to censorship as different groups seek to silence those who express opposing viewpoints. The result is one of the most speech-phobic nations on Earth as offices like Ofcom fuel the fear of free speech.

It’s falling apart so he saves it.

• Judge Orders Trump’s Name to Be Removed From Kennedy Center (Sarah Anderson)

In today’s chapter of the never-ending lawfare against Donald Trump and the activist judiciary that loves to entertain it, we have some rulings from a federal judge on the changes made to the Kennedy Center. Just to recap, when Trump took office in 2025, he cleaned up the Kennedy Center board of trustees, appointing a more MAGA-friendly group of people who ultimately voted to rebrand it as the Trump-Kennedy Center. The goal was to honor the president and clean up a D.C. institution that had long been neglected and mismanaged by Democrats and allowed to go extremely woke, whether it was the progressive programming that appealed to only a small segment of the population or the overuse of pronouns in staff emails.

So Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) and a bunch of left-wing activists got all upset over it and sued, asking a judge to keep the original name: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Here’s more on that from Beatty’s attorney: “Can the Board of the Kennedy Center — in direct contradiction of the governing statutes — rename this sacred memorial to John F. Kennedy after President Donald J. Trump? The answer is, unequivocally, ‘no.’ By renaming the Center — in violation of the law — Defendants have breached the terms of the trust and their most basic fiduciary obligations as trustees. Shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Congress designated the Kennedy Center as the ‘sole national memorial to the late’ President in the nation’s capital.
The White House responded: “While the Democrats neglected the Trump-Kennedy Center for years, President Trump immediately stepped up to rescue and revitalize the institution. The newly named Trump-Kennedy Center proudly recognizes President Trump’s incredible contributions including strengthening its finances, leading major building upgrades, removing divisive woke programming and transforming it into a welcoming destination that everyone can enjoy under his leadership. Only deranged Democrats could oppose these efforts.
And today, Barack Obama-appointed judge Christopher R. Cooper responded, claiming the board’s decision to add Trump’s name was unlawful and ordered that it must be removed from the website and the building. He also blocked the Trump administration’s plans to close the center for two years for repairs beginning this summer.
On the name change, Cooper essentially said that Congress named it after JFK in 1964, and only Congress can change the name now. “The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” he wrote in his 94-page decision. The Trump administration has 14 days to make the changes. Funny, I thought the left was all about tearing down old statues… His declarations on the repairs are a little murkier. He called the board’s vote an “ill-informed and seemingly preordained decision.” Here’s more from Cooper:
“The trustees might have assessed the propriety of closure in a number of prudent ways. This was not one. However, the preliminary injunction will not prevent the Center from moving forward with the capital repair work it has planned, which the record demonstrates is sorely needed. Nor will it categorically prohibit the Board from closing the Center should it come to this decision anew after independently balancing its multiple obligations to the Center in a prudent fashion. ”
So essentially, he’s admitting that the place is falling apart and needs repairs, but you can’t close it to make them if that’s what Trump and his board want? How transparent can you be? Look, I couldn’t care less about the Kennedy Center or Trump-Kennedy Center or whatever you want to call it. Going to some show at an overly politicized elite playground in Washington, D.C., is not my idea of a good time. But this is getting tedious. I’m sick of these people wasting our tax dollars because they don’t like the president. And I’m especially sick of activist judges who refuse to do their actual jobs.

PRESIDENT TRUMP via Truth Social:– “Shockingly, a Judge appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, Christopher Cooper, ruled that The Kennedy Center, which was going to close in early July for largescale renovations and construction due to years of neglect, decay, and poor maintenance, and which was to be transformed by the Trump Administration into the Finest Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World, is not allowed to close for these renovations, which would not be possible to properly do without such a closure. Additionally, Judge Cooper ruled that the 36 Member Board of Trustees, which unanimously voted to add the name “TRUMP” onto the former Kennedy Center, making it The Trump Kennedy Center, did not have the right to do such an addition, and the name, “TRUMP,” must be removed.”
“The Kennedy Center has lost, over the years, prior to our getting involved a short while ago, Hundreds of Millions of Dollars — In some cases, including ridiculous construction jobs that were done, over 100 Million Dollars a year. I took great pride in taking over a losing Institution, and looked forward to making it into a Great and Prestigious WINNER for Washington, D.C., and indeed, the United States of America. Unfortunately, Judge Cooper and the Radical Left would rather see it DIE than have President Trump transform it into something that everyone could be proud of, much as I have done, in many cases, throughout my life, and recently, with all of the construction, renovations, and “fix ups” that we have completed with the Department of Interior on Waterfalls, Fountains, Monuments, and other things of Beauty that we have brought back to life in a now SAFE AND SECURE, after Record Setting Crime, Washington, D.C., which is thriving like, perhaps, never before!
Therefore, based on the fact that the Radical Left Democrats care more about opposing your favorite President, ME, than saving a dying Performing Arts Center, almost all of which lose large amounts of money throughout the Country, we are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it. Judge Cooper was given a presentation by leading Building and Construction Experts as to how structurally dangerous the Building is, with rotting beams, parking areas that are subject to collapse, and various other Life and Safety problems, in addition to the fact that it also needs a MAJOR renovation, from an aesthetic standpoint, but he was not “swayed,” and said he wants the Building to, incredibly, remain open and, therefore, dangerous.
Judge Cooper should be ashamed of himself! I cannot be involved with a situation where danger to the Public is allowed to flourish in plain and open sight. Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into “NEVER NEVER LAND.” There has never been a President of the United States who has been treated so unfairly by the Courts as I but, that’s OK, I will continue to do, what is considered to be, a great job for the wonderful people of our Country. I have instructed the Department of Commerce to make all necessary arrangements with Congress to allow a full and complete transfer of this Institution, giving them the responsibility for its Operation, Maintenance, and Management. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
~ President DONALD J. TRUMP

I doubt this is true.

• US Government Prepares To Print $250 Note Featuring Trump’s Face (BBC)

US President Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to print a new $250 bill that could feature a portrait of him, if lawmakers allow the move. Federal law bars printing US money with the image of a living person, but Trump allies in Congress have introduced legislation that would make an exception. A Treasury Department spokesperson told the BBC the agency “is conducting appropriate planning and due diligence” in response to the legislation. The lawmakers behind it said the bill amount would symbolise the country’s 250th anniversary this year. If approved, it will be the latest example by Trump and his allies to put his face, name, and likeness on national institutions and symbols.

Artistic concepts of the $250 bill have not been publicly released but designs have been requested by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP), a sub-agency of the Treasury that develops and produces US currency. The Washington Post first reported the Treasury Department’s plans. “Should this legislative mandate be signed into law, the BEP is moving proactively to produce a $250 commemorative note which will appropriately recognize the 250th Anniversary of our great nation,” the Treasury spokesperson said in a statement.

Trump’s signature is already set to appear on US paper notes as part of the nation’s semiquincentennial celebrations. The new legislation was introduced last year by US House Representative Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina. It would need approval from both the US House and Senate. When asked about a possible new bill during a White House briefing on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said “it’s all in the hands” of Congress and that, while his department was preparing in case the legislation passes, the Treasury would follow the law. He also said he did not “think there’s anything untoward” about having an image of the person in office during the country’s 250th anniversary on a bill marking the anniversary.
The move to create the $250 note could also break with a different federal law that specifies the denominations that can be produced. That law doesn’t include $250. US Senator Mark Warner, who sits on the Senate’s Committee on Banking, criticised the plans. “As Americans struggle with the rising cost of gas, groceries, housing, and health care, President Trump’s priorities for taxpayer dollars are completely detached from the challenges families face every day,” Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, said in a statement. “If this White House put even half as much energy into working to lower costs as it does into stoking the president’s ego, American families wouldn’t need that new $250 bill just to fill up their gas tanks.”
The $100 bill, featuring Benjamin Franklin, one of the US founding fathers, is the largest bill printed today. The US has previously issued larger notes including $500, $1000 and $10,000 notes but these were discontinued in 1969. They remain legal tender but not in circulation, as they are largely kept by private currency collectors. New currency notes typically take years to develop and involve a range of agencies including the Federal Reserve Board and the US Secret Service. The designs are also held in secret.
“Note designs are typically made public six to eight months ahead of time for global public education and cash handler education purposes,” according to the BEP. “To do so earlier would aid counterfeiters and cause confusion in the marketplace, lowering confidence in U.S. currency.” It is unclear if the notes could be printed in time for the 250th anniversary on 4 July. Since taking office last year, Trump and his allies have worked to put his face, name, and likeness on public buildings and US symbols. The Kennedy Center was renamed to include Trump’s name, and his portrait will feature on US passports. The presidential jet Air Force One is also being repainted in Trump’s preferred colours.

https://twitter.com/MJTruthUltra/status/2060166920947585341?s=20

Jensen Huang admitted that he missed Anthropic, and today it just closed at a $965 billion valuation (Save this).

As Jensen put it, he didn't deeply internalize how difficult it would be to build a foundation AI lab like Anthropic.

He assumed they could just raise from VCs like… https://t.co/bfoSfCerQC pic.twitter.com/IyaLAKg5Df
— Milk Road AI (@MilkRoadAI) May 28, 2026

https://twitter.com/AmericaPartyX/status/2060119297989726336?s=20 https://twitter.com/Bubblebathgirl/status/2059855993396138399?s=20 Hear her out: Quantum entanglement

Joe Rogan speechless after learning from NASA astrophysicist Michelle Thaller that aliens use “Quantum Entanglement” to travel instantaneously:

THALLER: “I don’t want your listeners to think I’m saying something stupid.”

ROGAN: “It’s not stupid. Quantum entanglement just means… pic.twitter.com/0DYaVGQhsO
— Joe Rogan Recaps (@JoeRoganRecaps) May 28, 2026

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Debt Rattle May 29 2026

May 292026

May 29, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:59 am Finance Tagged with: AI, Anti-Weaponization Fund, Bessent, cipher, Cuba, DOJ, E. Jean Carroll, Iran, Larry Fink, Marco Rubio, Newsom, Oman, Trump 34 Responses »

Andy Warhol Judy Garland 1978

• Oil Tumbles On Deal ‘Breakthrough’ As US-Iran Reportedly Reach MOU (ZH)

• Bessent Warns Oman On Hormuz Toll Scheme (ZH)

• DOJ is Not Investigating Trump Accuser, E. Jean Carroll (CTH)

• DOJ Digs Into E. Jean Carroll’s Possible Perjury (Athena Thorne)

• US DOJ Launches Criminal Investigation Into Trump Accuser E Jean Carroll (BBC)

• Why E. Jean Carroll Is Now the Subject of a DOJ Investigation (Matt Vespa)

• Who Was Really Behind E. Jean Carroll’s Bogus Allegations vs Trump (Margolis)

• The Imminent Democrat Party Civil War (Eric Florack)

• Cuba Falling: Desperate Times Call for Desperately Attacking Rubio (Anderson)

• Newsom Vows 100% Tax on Trump ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ Payouts (AmG)

• Judge Clears Trump’s Voter Citizenship Checks And Mail-in Voting (JTN)

• Larry Fink Demands Access to Americans’ Savings, Pension Funds to Bankroll AI (ZH)

• The Medieval Secrets Being Revealed By AI (BBC)

President Trump delivers one of the most heartfelt moments ever to take place in the White House Cabinet Room when he thanked outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard for her service.

The entire room ERUPTED into applause as Trump took nearly two minutes to praise her work.

TRUMP: “Before… pic.twitter.com/yQwvGRn8Sj
— Overton (@overton_news) May 27, 2026

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2059678446926573899?s=20

Trump is asked about the uranium, and he brings up Barack HUSSEIN Obama and the Iran Deal, again.

Trump is spoon-feeding it to us. He is hammering home the point that Obama knowingly paved the way for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.

Trump is preparing the public for TREASON! https://t.co/mXz7Nf4ltN
— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) May 27, 2026

Trump may have just pulled off the most important geopolitical move of the 21st century.

Most people still haven’t realized what’s happening in the Middle East.

This changes everything. pic.twitter.com/e3piXpaAoh
— Mike Steger (@stegerMG) May 27, 2026

At some point Trump will get tired of dancing the Persian Polka.

• Oil Tumbles On Deal ‘Breakthrough’ As US-Iran Reportedly Reach MOU (ZH)

Oil Tumbles on Reported MOU Breakthrough Per Barak Ravid: “U.S. and Iranian negotiators have reached an agreement on a 60-day memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire and launch negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, but President Trump has yet to give it his final approval,” two US officials have told Axios. This could be the hugest diplomatic breakthrough yet, after weeks of stalled talks, but it awaits President Trump’s. “U.S. officials said the deal terms were mostly agreed as of Tuesday, but both sides still needed to get approval from senior leadership,” Axios notes by way of caveat. According to some emerging details from the report:

The U.S. officials claimed the Iranians later came back and said they had the necessary approvals and were prepared to sign. Iran has not confirmed that. The U.S. negotiators briefed Trump on the details of the final deal and he asked to take a few days to think about it. “The president relayed to the mediators that he wants a couple of days to think about it,” a U.S. official said. Key question: is Iran’s high enriched nuclear material part of the MOU? This could put it in jeopardy. Oil tumbles on the headline…
Uranium Transfer to China?
According to Saudi state-funded Al Hadath, Pakistan will present to the US the “transfer of Iranian uranium to Beijing under international supervision.” The report seems unlikely, given it is also worded in such a way as to suggest the scheme originates with Pakistan, as a desperate attempt to keep stalled talks alive. Tehran has never indicated it would contemplate sending its enriched uranium stockpile abroad, even to a ‘friendly’ nation.
Iranian Launch on Kuwait
The government of Kuwait on Thursday has made clear it retains all rights to take measures to preserve its security, following a overnight Iranian missile strike. Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry further condemned the fresh missile and drone attacks on its territory as a serious escalation and “blatant violation of sovereignty and security.” The Iranian launch, which Tehran says targeted a US base in Kuwait, came in response to US bombardment of an Iranian drone base near the southern city of Bandar Abbas which occurred just prior.
In a new statement, US Central Command (CENTCOM) confirms that “At 10:17 p.m. ET on May 27, Iran launched a ballistic missile toward Kuwait that was successfully intercepted by Kuwaiti forces.” “This egregious ceasefire violation by the Iranian regime occurred hours after Iranian forces launched five one-way attack drones that posed a clear threat in and near the Strait of Hormuz,” the US military statement continued. “All drones were successfully intercepted by U.S. forces which also prevented a sixth drone launch from an Iranian ground control site in Bandar Abbas,” it added. “U.S. Central Command and regional partners remain vigilant and measured as we continue to defend our forces and interests from unjustified Iranian aggression.”
Additionally, the Gulf statement strongly condemned the fresh Iranian attack, with the head of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Jasem Mohamed Al-Budaiwi, denouncing it as follows: “The secretary-general pointed out that the continuation of these treacherous attacks is a flagrant violation of the principles of international law, the Charter of the United Nations, and the principles of good neighborliness.” The GCC statement added: “His excellency affirmed the GCC countries’ full support for the state of Kuwait in all measures it takes to preserve its security and stability, and the safety of its citizens and residents,”
A separate statement from Saudi-led Gulf allies further condemned the act of ‘terrorism’ – per Al Aljazeera: The United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have condemned a missile attack on a US airbase in Kuwait with only the UAE expressly naming Iran as responsible for the ‘terrorist’ attacks . In statements shared on social media, the foreign ministries of the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia said they consider the attack a flagrant violation of Kuwait‘s sovereignty, and expressed their countries’ full solidarity with Kuwait and support for all measures it takes to preserve its sovereignty, security and stability.
Two US-Iran Clashes Incidents This Week
This marks the second live-fire attack flare-up this week, after earlier Wednesday Iran fired drones on American and other foreign commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. “American F/A-18, F-16 and F-35 jet fighters shot down the drones, then the F/A-18s hit the ground-control unit before it could launch a fifth drone, one of the officials said,” The Wall Street Journal summarizes of that first incident. State TV released video of the ballistic missile launch targeting a US base in Kuwait:
https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/2059917542458576993
It seems that Iran is asserting some red lines through single, sporadic attacks, when it perceives a US military violation of its sovereignty. WSJ cites the following: The spokesman for the National Security Commission in Iran’s parliament said Trump’s unwillingness to acknowledge that the U.S. and Tehran were still at war was a sign of his weak negotiating position. “Diplomats should not let go of the enemy’s weak point and should impose maximum demands on them,” the spokesman said.
Currently, negotiations are still primarily stuck on the nuclear issue. President Trump has vowed not to let off sanctions pressure until Tehran agrees to dismantle its nuclear program by handing over highly enriched uranium to be transferred off its territory. Iranian officials say this simply will not happen, and that it would be tantamount to handing over the country’s sovereignty. Tehran has insisted the nuclear file must be dealt with after the war is over, and later on down the line.

Reports Mojtaba Khamenei Did Not Approve Deal – i24 @AmichaiStein1 https://t.co/cUVMLI3YDy pic.twitter.com/K1PiYumQLU
— LiveSquawk (@LiveSquawk) May 28, 2026

“No, the strait’s got to be opened to everybody, it’s international waters. Nobody’s going to control it. We’ll watch over it, but nobody’s going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation..”

• Bessent Warns Oman On Hormuz Toll Scheme (ZH)

On an official level at least, Oman remains a close strategic partner and key ally of the United States in the Middle East; however, that relationship has been severely strained this month amid apparent Iranian-Omani cooperation regarding a potential toll system for the Strait of Hormuz. This of course flies in the face of the US posture in the region. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is the latest top Trump admin official to chastize Oman: “The United States Government will not tolerate any effort to impose a tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz,” he said on X Thursday.

“Oman, in particular, should know that the U.S. Treasury will aggressively target any actors involved – directly or indirectly – in facilitating tolls for the Strait and any willing partners will be penalized,” Bessent continued. “All nations should reject outright any efforts by Iran to disrupt the free flow of commerce. Tehran’s days of terrorizing the region and the world are over. Starting a week ago, official ‘discussions’ between Oman and Iran were widely reported: Iran and Oman have discussed setting up a toll system to charge vessels transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, despite President Trump’s condemnation of charging fees to pass through the waterway.
“Iran and Oman must mobilize all their resources both to provide security services and to manage navigation in the most appropriate manner,” Iranian Ambassador to France Mohammad Amin-Nejad on Wednesday told Bloomberg News, which first reported the talks. Given the country’s geography, in the southeastern Arabian Peninsula, it is likely to play a key role in any final agreement or outcome, in terms of opening Hormuz back up to international maritime transit. Bessent is continuing the pressure campaign soon on the heels of President Trump in somewhat shocking and surprise remarks saying that Oman could come under American military attack if it doesn’t cooperate.
Trump said in the Oval and in front of cameras that the US would “blow up” Oman if it doesn’t “behave”. The serious threat was issued in response to a reporter’s question on whether the US would accept a short-term deal that involved Iran and Oman jointly controlling the Strait of Hormuz. “No, the strait’s got to be opened to everybody, it’s international waters. Nobody’s going to control it. We’ll watch over it, but nobody’s going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation,” Trump told reporters during a cabinet meeting. “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up. They understand that they’ll be fine,” the president then emphasized.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei sought to explain earlier this week: “There is no toll. We need to pay attention to the words we use. We’re not after money. Iran and Oman need to create protocols for the safe passage of ships, and this will be based on international laws.” But then came the catch: “It’s only natural that the services we provide, like navigation and the preservation of the ecosystem of the Strait, the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman will have costs. These should not be considered tolls. Iran and Oman are being responsible in our efforts and I hope we will reach a conclusion soon,” the spokesman said.

I was gathering all these stories, it looked good, everybody jumped on the story, and then Sundance says: none of it is true because “Media Source Changes Story “ You be the judge.

• DOJ is Not Investigating Trump Accuser, E. Jean Carroll (CTH)

CBS has rewritten their storyline as they now claim their “source” has reversed position. Originally, CBS claimed the U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois was investigating the mentally unstable E. Jean Carroll, the woman who falsely accused President Trump of rape sometime approximately 30 or 40-years ago, she’s not sure. Now CBS is reporting their source changed the story and the DOJ investigation is actually into the American Future Republic PAC, which is a non-profit run by Reid Hoffman, the man who funded the fraudulent political lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll. A substantive difference in narrative.

[..] Via CBS: On Wednesday evening, a source familiar with the matter told CBS News that the investigation was focused on whether Carroll had committed perjury during a deposition in connection with her civil lawsuits against Mr. Trump in which she alleged he had sexually abused and defamed her. On Thursday, however, that source followed up and said Carroll is not the target of the investigation, which is focused on funding that Hoffman’s nonprofit, American Future Republic, provided to help cover some of her legal team’s expenses.
[.. ] Carroll accused Mr. Trump of sexually abusing her in a New York City department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, and she published an account of the encounter in New York Magazine in 2019. Mr. Trump subsequently denied assaulting her and said Carroll wasn’ t his type. In 2019, Carroll sued Mr. Trump for defamation, but the case stalled in court. She then filed a second defamation lawsuit in 2022, adding a claim of rape under New York‘s Adult Survivors Act.
Carroll sued Mr. Trump in two civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual abuse and defamation. In 2023, a jury found Mr. Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation for comments he made in 2022. Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages. The New York Adult Survivors Act was written by NY legislature specifically to create a legal mechanism for E Jean Carroll to file the lawsuit.
The Adult Survivors Act (ASA) is a New York State law that created a one-year window, from November 24, 2022, to November 24, 2023, allowing adult survivors of sexual assault to file civil lawsuits even if the statute of limitations had expired. {source} The entire purpose of the ASA was to give Ms. Carroll a window to file the lawsuit against President Trump. Her lawsuit was the only one filed during the one-year window. That’s Lawfare in action.

For the same reason Mamdani can only be eleccted in New York, this is the only case vs Trump that he lost.

A script straight out of Law and Order.

• DOJ Digs Into E. Jean Carroll’s Possible Perjury (Athena Thorne)

After Donald Trump’s first term as president, during the egregious collective regime of “President” Joe Biden, the left’s legal brigades launched an unprecedented lawfare attack on their political target. In New York City, the prevailing tactic was to attack on the civil side. The reason for this was that the standard of proof is so much lower in a civil trial that victory was assured in a town with judges and juries as leftist as NYC’s.

The tactic was effective. In 2024, N.Y. Attorney General Letitia “Big Tish” James and Judge Arthur Engoron hit pay dirt with a nearly half-a-billion-dollar judgment against Trump for allegedly committing some sort of real estate fraud. A year later, an appeals court tossed the absurd monetary penalty but upheld the fraud finding, including a three-year ban on Trump family members from leading businesses in the state and other major inconveniences to the business powerhouse clan. Trump has turned to New York State’s highest court to overturn the remainder of the flimsy case.
Then there was the E. Jean Carroll rape fantasy (in my opinion — don’t sue me!) involving Trump. In 2019, Carroll released a memoir for some reason, even though I can’t say I’d ever heard of her before then. In it, she accused Trump of unleashing his unbridled lust on her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in either 1995 or 1996. Recall that at that time, Trump was a hugely popular celebrity tycoon in NYC, so it’s conceivable that a grasping nobody might fixate on him — especially an admitted rape fantasist like Carroll.
To publicize her otherwise completely unnoteworthy book, Carroll repeated her Trump fantasy claim in an excerpt in New York magazine. Trump said it never happened and that Carroll was a liar. She sued him for defamation, a suit that got a huge boost a couple years later when the state and a major donor stepped in to push validation of her underlying rape and assault claims. Recall that New York State deliberately suspended the statute of limitations for one year via New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which was conveniently active from Nov. 24, 2022, to Nov. 24, 2023. Carroll filed her suit within minutes of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D, natch) signing the Act into law. Why, it’s almost as if the whole thing was choreographed!
Recall also that LinkedIn co-founder and Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman pumped $7 million into the legal venture via his American Future Republic nonprofit, which gave the payola to Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, for fees and expenses. When the weaponized prosecution dust had settled, Trump had been found liable for unwanted kissing and digital violation but not rape, and for defamation, for calling Carroll a liar. Judgments against him totaled $83.3 million, because that’s a totally realistic assessment of how much money Carroll would have made, had Trump not defamed her.
Trump is now forced to appeal an otherwise mundane harassment case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to get a fair hearing. But meanwhile, there is a spicy new development. CNN is reporting (much to its chagrin, no doubt) that the DOJ is investigating whether Carroll lied under oath — perjured herself — during her quest to take down Orange Man Bad:The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine columnist who accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
The investigation is focused on whether Carroll committed perjury in testimony tied to her two civil lawsuits against the president – one alleging he sexually abused Carroll in a New York department store in the mid-1990s, and a second for defaming her when in 2019 he repeatedly denied the assault, said she wasn’t his type and claimed she made it up to boost sales of a book. Prosecutors’ theory hinges on a 2022 deposition statement by Carroll, 82, that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit, though it was later revealed that billionaire Reid Hoffman had paid some legal fees and expenses. The crux of the case looks like this:
Senior leaders at the Justice Department referred the investigation to federal prosecutors in Chicago, according to two sources familiar with the matter. While Carroll’s deposition took place in New York, one of the individuals who helped cover some of Carroll’s legal fees, Hoffman, has a nonprofit based in Chicago. Hoffman’s support of the case caught Trump’s attorneys off guard when it came to light on the eve of trial. In a 2022 videotaped deposition, Carroll told then-Trump attorney Alina Habba that no one else was paying for her legal fees. But two weeks before the trial Carroll’s attorneys informed the judge and Trump’s lawyers that they secured funding from Hoffman’s nonprofit.
[..] Anyone with eyes can see that the entire sorry episode should be flushed down the toilet, into the fetid sewer with the husks of other discredited lawfare attacks against Trump, where it belongs.If the Justice Department can prove that Carroll lied under oath — in addition to her lying that Trump raped her, when a New York jury found that he did not — then she is not a credible witness, and her false testimony against a historically great figure collapses.
Not to mention, Carroll herself could be in some trouble. Although there is no minimum required sentence, federal perjury conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 1621 carries up to five years in federal prison and/or a fine — typically up to $250,000 for individuals, but that could also be twice the gain/loss involved. Wouldn’t it be great if the DOJ could try the case somewhere as rigged to the right as NYC is to the left? How funny would it be if Carroll were stuck in the federal slammer for five years and owed $166.6 million?
I know, I know. That’s an absurd fantasy — even more absurd than imagining a billionaire playboy who could have any woman he wanted forced himself upon a flaky columnist in a department store dressing room.

Paid-for lawfare. Reid Hoffman.

• US DOJ Launches Criminal Investigation Into Trump Accuser E Jean Carroll (BBC)

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened a criminal investigation into writer E Jean Carroll, who accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault, CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, has reported. The investigation is looking into whether Carroll committed perjury in connection with civil cases she brought against Trump, the news outlet quotes sources as saying. Carroll, a former magazine columnist, accused Trump of sexual assault and defamation, and successfully sued him in two cases. Both judgements were upheld on appeal, but Trump has since asked the Supreme Court to overturn the first of them. He has denied the accusations. The BBC has contacted the DOJ and Carroll’s lawyer for comment.

In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual assault. He was also found liable for defamation for comments he made the previous year in a post on Truth Social. In that post, he denied Carroll’s claim that she had been attacked by him in the mid-1990s in a New York department store dressing room. A second lawsuit in 2024 found Trump again liable for defamation in connection with comments he made about Carroll in 2019, in which he accused her of making up the claims against him to sell a book. bTrump has appealed to the US Supreme Court to overturn the first judgement, for which he was ordered to pay $5m (£3.7m) to Carroll. He has also vowed to do the same with the other case, in which Carroll was awarded $83m.
The new criminal case is looking into whether Carroll lied when she said in a 2022 deposition that she received no outside funding for her civil lawsuit against Trump, a source told CBS. It was revealed in legal papers first filed by Trump’s lawyers in 2023 that the co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, had helped to pay for some of Carroll’s legal fees and expenses. The issue was brought up during the case’s appeal, and the court found that Carroll had “plausibly represented” in her deposition “that she had forgotten about the limited outside funding counsel obtained”.
The “additional discovery… showed that Ms Carroll simply was not involved in the matter of who was or was not funding her litigation costs,” the US Court of Appeals for the Second District continued in a 2024 ruling. The new investigation is being led by the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, one source told CBS. CNN, which first reported the story, reported that while Carroll’s deposition took place in New York, one of the individuals who helped cover some of Carroll’s legal fees, Hoffman, has a non-profit organisation based in Chicago.Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche, who personally represented Trump in the appeal cases against Carroll, is recused from the case, a source told CBS.

This may take the Supreme Court. New York as a whole is ferociously anti-Trump.

• Why E. Jean Carroll Is Now the Subject of a DOJ Investigation (Matt Vespa)

E. Jean Carroll is reportedly waiting for her money: President Trump owes her tens of millions in a civil suit he lost years ago, but he has appealed the verdict. He’s asking the Supreme Court to weigh in, his last stand, so to speak. However, Ms. Carroll, who’s never played with a full deck, has some trouble of her own on the horizon: a Justice Department investigation regarding a 2022 deposition. Apparently, she might have perjured herself (via CNN):
E Jean Carroll being investigated for crimes, as likely are entities or charities tied to Reid Hoffmann given that the investigation is being run out of Chicago.

Hoffmann funded Carroll’s Lawfare suit against President Trump.

So I’ll say something similar to what I just said… pic.twitter.com/dK88wjG1HL
— Jeff Clark (@JeffClarkUS) May 28, 2026

The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine columnist who accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The investigation is focused on whether Carroll committed perjury in testimony tied to her two civil lawsuits against the president – one alleging he sexually abused Carroll in a New York department store in the mid-1990s, and a second for defaming her when in 2019 he repeatedly denied the assault, said she wasn’t his type and claimed she made it up to boost sales of a book.
Prosecutors’ theory hinges on a 2022 deposition statement by Carroll, 82, that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit, though it was later revealed that billionaire Reid Hoffman had paid some legal fees and expenses. Carroll’s team declined to comment for this story. Attempts to reach Hoffman on Wednesday were unsuccessful.
Well, that’s quite a shocking development. This woman is one who said “rape was sexy,” which she mentioned during an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. She also said that she couldn’t wait to go on a shopping spree with her civil suit money back in 2024. She’s obsessed with the president and probably the person who most clearly exemplifies what it means to be Trump-deranged.

Rachel Maddow asks E. Jean Carroll what she's going to do with "Trump's money" to help "women's rights."

Carroll says she and Maddow will "go shopping, get completely new wardrobes, new shoes…Rachel, what do you want, penthouse?"

Her lawyer nervously says "that's a joke": pic.twitter.com/5LAx5xU5Uy
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) January 30, 2024

“Carroll, by then a certified celebrity of the anti-Trump resistance, attended a party at writer Molly Jong-Fast’s Manhattan home, a gathering the New York Times described as “Resistance Twitter come to life.”

• Who Was Really Behind E. Jean Carroll’s Bogus Allegations vs Trump (Margolis)

E. Jean Carroll’s rape allegations against President Donald Trump were never credible, and now she’s under investigation by the Department of Justice for perjury. Now, Byron York is digging into the case and has uncovered what could be the most elaborate political setup in history.

Trust me, the picture coming into focus is damning. Carroll has claimed, without any evidence, that Trump raped her sometime in 1995 or 1996. She can’t remember which year. Nothing about her allegations makes any sense. Are we supposed to believe that she simply stayed quiet about it through Trump’s rise to fame and politics, through his 2016 presidential run, and through the wave of #MeToo accusations that dominated the news cycle? Carroll said nothing about it for decades, and her stated reasons range from concern over her elderly Republican mother’s health to worries that speaking out might actually help Trump win key states.
Right. Sure. It wasn’t until 2019 that she came forward with her bizarre allegations. But she didn’t tell the police, she didn’t go to an elected official, or even to a journalist. She chose to disclose it in a book. Why? Because no other option would generate royalties. And Carroll had a history of grifting, too. Before the book even dropped, she was charging admission for her “Most Hideous Men in NYC Walking Tour,” a 90-minute #MeToo landmark stroll through Manhattan. The tour started at the Bergdorf Goodman entrance on 58th Street, which just so happens to be exactly where she claims she first encountered Trump the day of the alleged assault. She had been leading paying groups past that spot before she’d told the world what had supposedly happened there.
Now here’s where the origins of these allegations get genuinely interesting. Carroll, by then a certified celebrity of the anti-Trump resistance, attended a party at writer Molly Jong-Fast’s Manhattan home, a gathering the New York Times described as “Resistance Twitter come to life.” The guest list included George Conway, who apparently advised Carroll to sue Trump for defamation. The case got a critical boost when the New York legislature passed the Adult Survivors Act in 2022, which allowed sexual assault claims to be filed regardless of expired statutes of limitations. Carroll had helped advocate for the bill. The Act went into effect on November 24, 2022, and within hours, Carroll filed a second suit, this time adding a rape allegation in addition to defamation.
As PJ Media previously reported, tech billionaire Reid Hoffman, a virulently anti-Trump donor, bankrolled the whole operation. Yet Carroll testified under oath in October 2022 that no one was paying her legal fees, calling it “a contingency case.” It wasn’t until shortly before the trial that her own attorney wrote to Trump’s legal team admitting that Carroll had “recollected additional information” while preparing for testimony. Trump’s lawyers noted that the “belated disclosure” raised “significant concerns” about Carroll’s “bias and motive.”
Hoffman has some skeletons in his closet, too. In 2018, he had to apologize for funding a group that secretly mimicked Russian disinformation tactics to help a Democrat win an Alabama Senate seat.York’s reporting suggests that a criminal probe is now zeroing in on exactly these origins: the anti-Trump resistance party, the politically motivated lawyers, the billionaire backer, the conveniently timed legislation. What conservatives have been saying for years is now getting the scrutiny it deserves.

Fetterman.

• The Imminent Democrat Party Civil War (Eric Florack)

As I said yesterday about all of this: The Democrat party didn’t embrace Platner — it surrendered to him. He’s the last man standing in an organization that has spent years torching its own bench. And Sanders and Warren? Their loyalty isn’t principled — it’s a cold actuarial calculation. They know exactly what Platner is. They’ve run the numbers. Back him and watch the party bleed. Pull him and watch it hemorrhage. These people know that Platner is a suicide pill. They’re just haggling over the dosage. In the end, he’ll go down in flames. The question is, will sanity affect the Democrats after November? I doubt it.

Now, let’s be completely fair about this. Platner has apologized. He’d like you to know he’s evolved. He was going through a hard time. He was young. He was a different person — presumably briefly possessed by a demon who hated women, loved Hamas, and held strong opinions about gratuities, but that demon has since departed, leaving behind the real Graham Platner: the oyster-farming, Bernie-endorsed, $1.5-million-raising Graham Platner, who continues running on many of the same ideas as the demon he’s now trying to distance himself from. Growth! Mmmmph. Well, at least he’s fine-tuned his dance routine.
John Fetterman, meanwhile — a man who served as mayor of Braddock, Pa., nearly died of a stroke, came back to finish his Senate race, and votes with Democrats the overwhelming majority of the time — his own party has treated him like someone who showed up to Thanksgiving in a MAGA hat. His sin? Supporting Israel. Taking border security seriously. Refusing to perform the politically correct emotions on cue. The contrast I’m showing you here doesn’t need spin. It doesn’t need interpretation. It just needs a clear eye. It also needs someone to admit what they see. The Democratic Party leadership of 2026, meanwhile, will make enthusiastic, well-funded, celebrity-endorsed room for a candidate who blamed rape victims, praised terrorists, wore Nazi imagery, and aired his theories about Black people and tipping on Reddit.
But it has spent years signaling — loudly, consistently, personally — that a senator who occasionally wanders off the ideological reservation represents a source of genuine institutional shame. That his stroke is affecting his judgement. Must be because he doesn’t agree with the leadership. Let’s be real, here. This isn’t a party that temporarily lost its way. This is a party that examined its options and chose. Sanders and Warren didn’t miss the Platner stories. They read them, weighed them, and concluded: still our guy. That conclusion tells you more about the modern Democratic left than a thousand position papers ever could.
Maureen Galindo wanted to put Zionists in a castration camp. Voters rejected her Tuesday. The party leadership said nothing. Graham Platner praised Hamas, blamed rape victims, and tattooed a Nazi symbol on his body. He’s the Democratic Senate nominee — with the full-throated backing of progressive royalty and establishment leadership alike. After decades of the left calling anyone to the right of Fidel Castro a Nazi, isn’t it a bit more than passing strange that the Democrat leadership is fully embracing people whose only apparent problem with the guy wearing the funny mustache is that he didn’t finish the job? John Fetterman, meanwhile, bought a hoodie and changed his mind on a couple of issues. Guess which one they are embarrassed by and can’t forgive.
I have little doubt that, once the rank-and-file Democrat voters get hold of all of this, they will take to the voting booths on June 9 and dispatch this Platner creature, just as Texas voters dispatched Gallindo to the category of also-rans. But does the gap between the rank-and-file Democrat voters and the Democrat party leadership — the Democrat establishment, in other words — say anything about the party’s future, at least in the short term? Does it mark a gap between what the Democrat leadership and the voters want? Does it suggest, as I did in the headline of this piece, an upcoming civil war in the Democrat party?
Granted, some might consider calling Sanders and Warren “party leaders” a bit of a stretch. That’s understandable. But then, where are the Democrat leaders denouncing this nonsense? Where is Chuck Schumer? Where is Hakeem Jeffries? Clearly, neither one is offended enough to speak publicly on the subject. Will enough Democrat voters be annoyed enough to stand up against all this? Just as importantly, where does that leave the independent voters, watching all of this from the sidelines? You know — the people who went long for Trump and his coattails in ’24?
Thought of the Day: The people who fought and died in WWII were fighting real Nazis to give you the freedom to call everyone who isn’t a Democrat a Nazi. Meanwhile, the Democrats are warmly supporting people who spout Nazi rhetoric. Make sense to you?

“He also pointed out that Rubio wasn’t born in Cuba, which is rich coming from a guy who was born in Mexico. “

• Cuba Falling: Desperate Times Call for Desperately Attacking Rubio (Anderson)

You know they’re in desperate times when the Cuban regime starts sending its mouthy representatives to do interviews on Fox News of all places, hoping to reshape the narrative. The country’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez — and arguably the regime’s slickest mouthpiece — did just that earlier this week, and he went straight after his favorite punching bag: our dear Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Fun fact: Crooked and communist Latin American leaders love to hate on Rubio because he knows what they’re up to and he’s built a career on not being afraid to call them out. For example, last fall, Nicolás Maduro kept making public pleas to Donald Trump to ignore the secretary and listen to reason — that Rubio would put blood on his hands. Old Bruno’s been saying the same types of things for years, and he used this interview to pile on his previous rhetoric. He especially loves to point out that Rubio going after Cuba is some sort of “personal vendetta,” and I suppose, in a way, it is. But he doesn’t do it just because his parents and grandparents came from there. He does it on behalf the millions of Cubans who were driven away by or falsely imprisoned by or died at the hands of the regime.
Anyway, the Fox News interview was more of the same. Rodríguez accused Rubio of telling lie after lie, saying, “He continuously intends to deceive the public opinion in the U.S., the U.S. Congress, and the international community.” He also pointed out that Rubio wasn’t born in Cuba, which is rich coming from a guy who was born in Mexico.

Ironic, coming from regime stooge, Bruno Rodriguez, who was born in Mexico — not Cuba.
— Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (@RepCarlos) May 26, 2026

Rodríguez also complained about the recent charges brought against Raúl Castro (for his role in the murders of three Americans and one United States permanent resident in the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown of 1996), doing his best Claudia Sheinbaum impression, and asking: why do it after 30 years? Of course, Rubio is undeterred by any of this propagandistic chatter. During Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, the president asked the secretary to say a few words on Cuba. He didn’t say anything particularly new, just that we want what’s best for the Cuban people and that having a failed state so close to our shores is a threat to our national security. Agreed.

.@SecRubio: "We want something good for the Cuban people…Having a failed state 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States." pic.twitter.com/hUz8crMN3g
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 27, 2026

Rubio mentioned that “we’ll be talking to them. We’re working on it.” But Politico tells a different story. In an article published on Wednesday, it claims the “Pentagon puts building blocks in place for Cuba invasion.” The Pentagon has spent months positioning the troops and weapons needed for the U.S. to launch a military attack on Cuba — all it needs is a final go-ahead from Donald Trump The president has floated an invasion of the island after economic and political pressure failed to topple the Communist government. But the Navy’s built-up presence in the region — the largest in the world outside the Middle East — would allow the U.S. to act immediately.
These strategically placed assets set the table for military action, from a capture of Havana’s leadership much like the seizure of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, to a series of precision strikes. And they open the possibility that the U.S. throws itself into the third international conflict of the Trump administration. While some of Politico’s information comes from anonymous sources, some of it is verifiable, such as the fact that the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group is currently operating in the Caribbean and advanced American drones and surveillance aircraft have been circling the island nation for months.
Trump has been purposely vague about what will happen, when it will happen, how it will happen, and whether there will be military involvement or not. All we know is that he plans to make it happen — the fall of 67 years of “incompetent communism” as Rubio calls it — and he’s floated the idea of it happening after we’ve finished up in Iran. Whenever that might be… So, Politico doesn’t really know much more than anyone else right now. All I know is that the Cuban people can’t wait much longer. Their living situation has become increasingly critical in recent days. Infrastructure is crumbling, making power outages worse. And many of the people want the U.S. to intervene. This brave man stood on the rooftop of a building this week and waved a United States flag without a care about any trouble it could stir up with his commie overlords.

What punishment does he want for Liz Cheney?

• Newsom Vows 100% Tax on Trump ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ Payouts (AmG)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that his administration will seek to impose a 100 percent tax on any California residents who receive money from President Donald Trump’s newly created $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. Speaking to reporters, Newsom denounced the fund as a “slush fund” and pledged to block Californians from financially benefiting from it. “Anyone from California that receives any of those funds, we want to tax 100 percent of those proceeds,” Newsom said during a press conference. “He pardoned all of those folks that were beating up cops and absolved them, providing them 1.776 billion dollars,” Newsom said. “So not only do you get a pardon, you get rewarded. That’s why this is needed.”

The fund was established as part of Trump’s settlement with the Department of Justice stemming from his lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. Trump has described the program as restitution for Americans harmed by what he called politically motivated government actions during the Biden administration. Last week, Trump defended the fund as compensation for people “badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration.” Democrats in several blue states are now attempting to block recipients from keeping any payouts tied to the program.
In New York, Democratic Assemblyman Alex Bores introduced legislation that would similarly impose a 100 percent tax on recipients of the fund. State Sen. Mike Gianaris said Democrats in Albany are pushing to advance the measure before the legislative session ends next week. “There’s widespread, bipartisan agreement that this is baldfaced corruption at its worst and if we have the ability in New York to combat it by ensuring that none of this money benefits anyone in our state’s borders, I’d expect there’d be widespread support for that idea,” Gianaris said. Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey are also drafting similar legislation. State Sen. Andrew Zwicker called the proposal “a brilliant counter move to Trump’s corruption.”

IOW: back to normal.

• Judge Clears Trump Voter Citizenship Checks And Mail-in Voting Crackdown (JTN)

A federal judge on Thursday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to implement his executive order tightening mail-in voting, slapping down Democrats’ arguments for now that federal efforts to police voter rolls with citizenship checks was illegal. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointed jurist, ruled that Democrats failed to show they have standing at present to challenge the order or have suffered any harm that would warrant a preliminary injunction.

“Given that the Executive Order does not command Plaintiffs to do anything, and that no agency has yet acted pursuant to the Order in a way that could harm Plaintiffs, they have not suffered any harm at present,” the judge wrote.Nichols rejected several of the Democrats’ arguments that Trump’s executive order could disenfranchise millions of voters, including that creating state-by-state citizenship lists to check voter rolls would somehow be harmful, even if they were inaccurate.
“It remains speculative whether the State Citizenship Lists, if and when they are initially compiled, will contain inaccuracies,” he wrote. “Even if they contain initial inaccuracies, the Executive Order requires the adoption of procedures that will allow individuals to access and, if necessary, update or correct their information in the Lists.” The judge also rejected the notion that the federal government sending information to the states about voters would somehow violate voters’ privacy.
“Plaintiffs fail to demonstrate that such action—that is, the sharing of name, age, and residence information between and among government agencies, if already known to the federal government—would cause a harm sufficient to establish Article III standing,” he ruled.

AI requires ALL energy, and ALL money.

• Larry Fink Demands Access to Americans’ Savings, Pension Funds to Bankroll AI (ZH)

Current Sith overlord and aspirational emperor of the galaxy, just a few false flags and manufactured crises away from assuming the throne, Larry Fink, recently appeared at something billed as “National Skilled Trades Day,” hosted by Texas State Technical College in Waco to recruit the electricians he needs to complete the destruction of his AI Death Star. Via Houston Chronicle:

“With data centers booming across Texas and population growth continuing steadily, BlackRock is committing $30 million to train more than 12,000 Texas workers for electrical careers.…Formally announced Wednesday [May 6], National Skilled Trades Day, at an event hosted by Texas State Technical College in Waco. It comes as the state has assumed a central role in the nationwide race to construct data centers to support the growth of artificial intelligence and other data-heavy industries. “The scale of growth underway in Texas demands a workforce ready to build it,” said Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm, in a news release announcing the grants.
The state “sits at the center of America’s infrastructure and energy buildout,” noted BlackRock. Texas’ data center load could more than double by 2028, according to a January report from Bloom Energy, which would give the state about 30% of the United States data center market. The state could become the world’s largest data center market by 2030, according to a February report from JLL, which cited “plentiful land and energy” as a factor fueling Texas’s growth potential. Even before the surge in data center construction began, however, the state was facing a shortage of electricians and electrical workers driven by population growth and rising power demands.
The $30 million in funding for workforce training in Texas is part of the broader $100 million Future Builders initiative BlackRock announced in March, which aims to prepare 50,000 Americans for careers in various skilled trades. The nationwide initiative points to a growing demand for HVAC technicians, plumbers, and ironworkers as well as electricians, across the U.S.” In a portion of his comments, Fink, in need of “trillions” of dollars in capital for AI infrastructure by his own estimation, casually demanded that American workers, per a scheme he pitched as “growing with the United States,” have their pension and 401(k) funds redirected into AI investments.
If you don’t give him all of your retirement money to build his Panoptican Death Machine, Fink explains, Chinese communist robots will rape your daughter… or something. And wouldn’t you rather have your daughter raped, metaphorically, by Larry Fink?nThat’s the patriotic thing. “If we could get more and more Americans to think about growing with the United States, we will have far than enough money to invest in this [AI] infrastructure….The need for electrons is growing every day… If we’re going to be the leader in technology, which we are, if we’re going to be the leader in AI, which we presently are, it’s just going to require trillions of dollars of investments. And if we don’t invest in it, China will be the global leader in this….
To me this is not ‘whether,’ this is a must…. It translates into a more dynamic economy. We need the United States economy to grow at over 2%, we need the U.S. economy to grow at 3%, especially with the growing deficits the federal government has. And so, this money… is going to be coming from the private sector, from savings accounts, from pension accounts, from insurance companies and on and on and on. The whole world is in need of improving infrastructure.”

Blackrock CEO Larry Fink to American workers: Give us your pensions to invest in AI or else the Chinese will win pic.twitter.com/MchXFpRwjE
— Ben Bartee (@BenBartee) May 28, 2026

(Whatever PR firm trained Bill Gates to perform the same effeminate gesticulations and vocal intonations as Bill Gates in order to convey non-threateningness to retarded liberals who view any portrayal of masculinity as inherently toxic apparently also trained Larry Fink.)

Larry Fink: Helpful, altruistic, non-sociopathic nerd

"You wouldn't hit a man with glasses" pic.twitter.com/SCfbsyqQYG
— Armageddon Prose (@ArmageddonProse) May 28, 2026

Smarter than a man.

• The Medieval Secrets Being Revealed By AI (BBC)

Historic messages and documents obscured by incomprehensible ciphers can be found in libraries and archives all over the world. Artificial intelligence is helping historians crack open these mysterious texts. Deep in the archives of the Vatican library, a mysterious hand-written book, scrawled with strange symbols, had lain unread for more than 400 years. Its cryptic pages apparently concealed secret remedies “for affections of the human body”, according to some text scratched inside the cover. Such healing practices were kept under wraps at the time since they could attract suspicion or even accusations of witchcraft.

Known as the Borg cipher, the 408-page-long manuscript is mostly incomprehensible – coded using 34 obscure symbols with a few Roman letters and a front page written in Arabic. There was no known key to reveal what was encrypted. Some of the pages are also damaged due to their age, making the code even more challenging to read. But with the help of machine learning – a form of artificial intelligence – researchers were able to unravel the code. They discovered the text was filled with thousands of bizarre treatments such as drinking several glasses of high-quality red wine or fermenting a nutmeg in some dough to combat dysentery.
“It is like detective work where every symbol, pattern, and partial solution may bring us closer to someone’s secrets and to a lost historical world,” says Beáta Megyesi, a professor in computational linguistics at Stockholm University in Sweden, who was part of the team who decoded the text. Even with the help of AI, the process of unlocking the cipher key was painstaking. Now Megyesi and her colleagues are leading efforts to harness the power of AI to crack historic ciphers, potentially unlocking a wealth of coded information from the past that has previously been uncrackable. According to some estimates, around 1% of the material in archives and libraries around the world is fully or partially encrypted. Some of the earliest known ciphers date back to Ancient Greece and Rome.

The Borg cipher is thought to be around 400 years old and contains a mixture of strange cipher symbols and some Latin script on its 408 pages
(Credit: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)

Together, coded historic documents conceal diplomatic intelligence, the rituals of secret societies, medical knowledge, love affairs or everyday details that people wanted to keep secret. This is information currently missing from historical narratives. In some cases, decoding these documents has the potential to rewrite what we know about a famous individual or an entire period of history. (One recent cipher to do this were a collection of coded letters that were found to have been written by Mary Queen of Scots during her long imprisonment in England. They revealed her involvement in plots to regain her throne and her tense relationship with her son, James VI of Scotland and future King James I of England.)
Historic ciphers can be relatively simple: the Borg cipher, for example, uses a substitution cipher, meaning that each symbol was swapped with a single Roman letter to hide what was written. Others, however, can be difficult to unravel. In some cases, nothing is known about the original language the uncoded text was written in. Extra, meaningless symbols can also be inserted as a decoy to throw off anyone hoping to snoop on the text. In other cases, several signs can be used to represent the same letter.
This can mean a huge amount of work – often involving trial and error – to decode even a small amount of text. It took Cecile Pierrot, a cryptologist at the French National Institute for Computer Science Research (INRIA) in Nancy, France, and her colleagues six months to gradually unravel the key to a 500-year-old letter from Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, that had been written using 120 different cipher symbols across three pages. (The decrypted letter revealed Charles V – one of the most powerful men of his time – undone by fear of a plot to kill him. The king was terrified that an Italian mercenary warlord serving the French king, Francis I, was about to assassinate him.)

JOHN CLAUSER, 2022 PHYSICS NOBEL PRIZE WINNER:

"I can very confidently assert, there is no climate emergency.
As much as it may upset many people, my message is the planet is NOT in peril.

Atmospheric CO2 and methane have negligible effect on the climate.
The policies… pic.twitter.com/WsNaoeCByg
— Robin Monotti (@robinmonotti) May 27, 2026

Joe Rogan tells billionaire Marc Andreessen why Socialism is the ultimate scam that only benefits poor lazy people:

ROGAN: “It’s never worked ever.”

ANDREESSEN: “If I work twice as hard as you why should we both get an equal slice?”

ROGAN: “The beautiful thing about America is… pic.twitter.com/DzVENuXkPh
— Joe Rogan Recaps (@JoeRoganRecaps) May 27, 2026

Wow https://t.co/T6FlivYIiQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 27, 2026

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

Debt Rattle April 22 2026

Apr 222026

April 22, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 7:26 am Finance Tagged with: bombs, Cuba, EVs, IC, impeachment, Iran, Joe diGenova, Magyar, Marco Rubio, Netanyahu, Russiagate, Schrödinger, Spygate, Trump 43 Responses »

Edward Hopper The Circle Theater, New York 1936

• Trump Blinks Again, Unilaterally Extends Iran Ceasefire (ZH)

• Schrödinger’s Strait (PA)

• Trump Says Iran Can ‘Expect’ Bombs (ZH)

• Iran Promises To ‘Reveal New Cards On The Battlefield’ (RT)

• Iran: US Must Retract ‘Maximalist’ Nuclear Demands for Talks to Proceed (ET)

• Are We Seeing the Makings of an Iranian Civil War? (Eric Florack)

• Perspective on Iran Conflict and Latest Intel Efforts to Disrupt Trump (CTH)

• It Is, After All, the Department of Justice (CTH)

• US Intel Secretly Flagged Major 2020 Election Vulnerabilities (JTN)

• Spygate, Russiagate, IC Impeachment, Jack Smith Targeting and Lawfare (CTH)

• US, Cuban Regime Confirm ‘Secret’ Talks in Havana (Sarah Anderson)

• The Space Launch Industry Is in Big Trouble… Except for You-Know-Who (Green)

• Hungary’s Magyar Warns Netanyahu of Arrest (RT)

• Europe EV Sales Jump 51% As Iran War Sends Gasoline Prices Soaring (Paraskova)

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet https://t.co/RotJJnsAP1
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2026

The smartest men in the world bet everything on the right idea.

They went bankrupt.

Elon Musk had the same idea and built a monopoly.

Marc Andreessen just explained why.

Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers.

Consumer satellite internet was a graveyard before Musk ever… pic.twitter.com/oBWlKNlgo0
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) April 21, 2026

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2046308075947405581?s=20

Elon Musk just asked the one question about AI nobody in power wants to answer.

Not whether it turns hostile.

Whether it turns obedient.

Musk: “It is very important that AI be trained to be honest even if that truth is unpopular.”

Every oracle humanity has ever consulted had… pic.twitter.com/MncclOgDFH
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) April 20, 2026

https://twitter.com/Tironianae/status/2046175457201041457?s=20

Bill O’Reilly just told @bungarsargon that as far as President Trump is concerned, NATO is FINISHED.

He exposed the real reason European allies refused to help the U.S. in Iran: their leaders are terrified of their own radical Muslim populations.

UNGAR-SARGON: “Where do we go… pic.twitter.com/CFf9L3ajkm
— Overton (@overton_news) April 21, 2026

WAS OBAMA CAUGHT STEALING A DEAD MAN’S SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER?

Was Obama using the SSN of a Connecticut Man who died in Hawaii?

It appears that he ILLEGALLY did so to occupy the White House.

Fake name.
Fake papers.
Fake presidency.

EXPOSED…the ULTIMATE Manchurian Candidate pic.twitter.com/HglkvGVE5A
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) April 20, 2026

No, Trump doesn’t blink. This is scripted.

• Trump Blinks Again, Unilaterally Extends Iran Ceasefire (ZH)

TACO Tuesday… Again: Ceasefire Extended in Trump TS Post. Can’t make this up… Trump unilaterally extends ceasefire, but says US Navy’s blockade of Iran’s ports will stay in place, after Islamabad talks collapse. Trump punts again… enjoy TACO Tuesday… we can say at least the bombing doesn’t look to resume, yet. To give more formality to it – or make it official, the White House also quickly put out Trump’s statement (and in a more presentable font) below. Initial reaction from Tehran:
IRAN NOT OFFICIALLY COMMENTING ON CEASEFIRE EXTENSION
IRAN’S POSITION WILL BE ANNOUNCED SUBSEQUENTLY

2nd Round Talks Collapse, Vance Not Traveling
Late afternoon headlines now confirm what was looking more and more inevitable as the hours passed but with no one side boarding planes to head to Islamabad: the Associated Press is reporting that Vice President Vance has called off the whole trip. This also as Tasnim is reporting Iran’s “final decision” to not be in Pakistan Wednesday – the same day the two-week ceasefire formally comes to a close. Pakistan sources are meanwhile reporting that key negotiating figures are absent on the ground, and officials are said to be urging the sides to join a second-round summit. And per Bloomberg: “Iran, for its part, told the mediators its delegation won’t leave Tehran before the blockade is lifted, according to officials familiar with the matter.”

Iranian officials have consistently said that they are prepared for Trump to resume the war. A senior official recently told me that if that happens, Iran will suspend all diplomatic channels indefinitely and focus on imposing "significantly greater costs on US interests"
— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) April 21, 2026

US Delegation Trip for Talks ‘On Hold’
As VP Vance has been seen at the White House, clearly not en route to Pakistan for Iran talks, a hugely significant headline has sent oil up and stocks dumping more:
VP Vance’s Pakistan trip has been put on hold as Iran’s leadership remained divided over whether to participate in a new round of peace talks, via Axios
VANCE TRIP ON HOLD AS IRAN DIDN’T RESPOND TO US POSITIONS: NYT
VANCE TRIP TO PAKISTAN HAS NOT BEEN CANCLED: NYT
Newsquawk market reaction: Stocks see weakness, while oil and Dollar gain amid NYT reports that VP Vance’s diplomatic trip to Islamabad has been put on hold after Tehran failed to respond to American negotiating positions.
Latest Update on Islamabad Talks: Pakistan remains in continuous contact with the Iranian side regarding confirmation of its delegation. As mediator, Pakistan continues sincere efforts to advance diplomacy and dialogue. With the ceasefire ending at 4:50 AM PST on 22 April, Iran’s… pic.twitter.com/r95ywZttwC
— Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (@MoIB_Official) April 21, 2026

“.. open and closed at the same time,.”

• Schrödinger’s Strait (PA)

Over the weekend, the Strait of Hormuz became Schrödinger’s Strait: open and closed at the same time, depending on which headline you were reading. On Friday, markets traded as if the Iran war was winding down cleanly. Iran said the Strait was open to commercial shipping during the ceasefire, Trump said he expected a deal with Iran “soon,” oil fell, and stocks rallied. By Sunday evening, Brent was back up sharply and stock futures were lower, after new friction around the U.S. blockade and Iran’s threats to respond. Reuters reported over the weekend that U.S. forces had turned back vessels under the blockade rules, that Iran warned the Gulf and Gulf of Oman would not be secure if its ports were threatened, and that the U.S. enforcement zone extends east into the Gulf of Oman. That sounds like chaos, but there’s a logic to it.

Reflexivity With Warships
What Trump appears to be doing here—whether consciously or not—is something that looks a lot like George Soros’s principle of reflexivity. Soros’s basic idea was that markets don’t just passively reflect reality; they can also change it. Prices move, expectations shift, financing conditions tighten or loosen, and those moves feed back into the real economy and even into political decisions. That’s especially relevant in a war centered on oil flows, shipping lanes, and financial pressure.
Iran’s Lever
Iran’s preferred lever has been obvious for weeks: threaten the Strait of Hormuz, raise oil prices, spook global markets, and put pressure on Washington through the U.S. economy. Higher crude means higher gasoline prices, and higher gasoline prices are one of the fastest ways to create political pain for an American president.
That leverage is real, because oil is globally priced and higher crude still means higher gasoline prices for American consumers. But it is also less direct than it would be for countries more dependent on Gulf barrels. The U.S. imports about 30%-35% of its crude oil demand, but 60%-62% of those imports come from Canada. That doesn’t make Washington immune, but it does mean Tehran’s strongest market weapon is still blunter against the United States than against much of the rest of the world. That is Tehran’s most obvious form of reflexive pressure. It doesn’t need to destroy a U.S. carrier group to hurt Washington. It just needs to make markets believe supply is at risk.
Trump’s Lever
Trump’s pressure campaign has been different. Much more of it has been in the physical world. First, there’s the blockade itself. It’s not a general closure of the Strait. It’s a targeted effort to stop Iranian oil sales, block Iranian maritime commerce, and deny Tehran both export earnings and imports flowing through the Gulf. U.S. enforcement boundaries extend east into the Gulf of Oman, which means Washington can exert pressure without having to crowd all its ships into the narrow and dangerous Strait itself. Second, there’s the pressure that builds as time passes. A blockade doesn’t just reduce cash inflow. It also creates storage problems for a producer.
As Miad Maleki put it in an X post over the weekend, “the oil and gasoline clocks don’t negotiate.”

My father had a trick in the bazaar in Tehran: walk halfway out the door in the middle of the price negotiation. The shop keeper always blinked first. The regime is doing the exact same thing right now. Here's what the numbers, not the talking points, actually say.

The bluster… https://t.co/Hq17vQT8Kf
— Miad Maleki (@miadmaleki) April 19, 2026

He wrote that Iran entered the blockade with about 15 million barrels in Kharg storage, roughly 51% full. At a flat production fill rate of 1.9 million barrels per day, that storage would max out in about 8 days. Even with aggressive upstream throttling, he said, the ceiling would still be hit in about 20 days. After that, wells may have to be shut in, risking permanent reservoir damage. nThat’s the point. As time passes, Tehran has to think not just about lost revenue, but about storage, field management, and what happens if production has to be curtailed under pressure.
The Market As Battlefield
And that’s where reflexivity comes in. If Iran can push oil high enough, long enough, it can create pressure on Trump through markets and through consumer prices. But if Trump can keep oil from rising too much—through his own rhetoric, through repeated hints of imminent talks, through confidence that the conflict will end soon—then he can blunt Iran’s pressure on the U.S. economy while continuing to squeeze Iran physically through the blockade.
In other words, the market itself becomes part of the battlefield. If crude stays lower than Tehran wants, Trump buys time. Lower oil prices mean less pressure from American drivers, less political pressure on the White House, and more room to keep the blockade in place. If crude spikes, the reverse happens: Tehran’s leverage rises, not because it has sunk the U.S. Navy, but because it has raised the domestic economic cost of continuing the campaign.

Iran will delay wherever they can. They’ve done it for 50 years. It’s worked for 50 years. Trump will break that. But it will take some time.

• Trump Says Iran Can ‘Expect’ Bombs (ZH)

President Trump on Tuesday said he expects a strong outcome from negotiations with Iran, telling CNBC that “they will end up with a great deal.” He added that “Iran has no choice, it is regime change no matter what you want to call it,” and emphasized that the US is in “a strong negotiating position.” He said the naval blockade “has been successful” and that US forces are “in control of the Strait.” Trump also stated he does not want to extend the ceasefire, saying “there is not that much time” – but added that “Iran can get itself onto good footing with a deal.”

He also acknowledged that Iran has likely continued to do missile restocking in the ceasefire interim period, and also moving its remaining missile arsenal around. But Trump also claimed the US is “much more powerful than it was a few weeks again” and that CENTCOM used the ceasefire to restock as well. Importantly he also said the US is “ready to go militarily” and that the world should “expect” bombing – in the instance there’s no Pakistan deal reached. And an interesting China reference:
Caught an Iranian ship with gifts from China, thought he had an understanding with China’s Xi, says “that’s alright”. Pakistan Talks: Timeline Still Up in the Air Who will fly to Islamabad first? Al Jazeera comments on the emerging diplomatic standoff before actual diplomacy even gets started, amid the continued tit-for-tat threats of potential escalation on the battlefield: Pakistan is ready to host the talks. They are planning for them to take place on Wednesday at the highest level. But the White House has been very tight-lipped about when JD Vance will be leaving Washington.
What appears to be going on is the US trying to protect itself from embarrassment. If it is to send its team, which ends up sitting here in Islamabad without Iran showing up, that would be a huge embarrassment. As a result, there now appears to be a game between the US and Iran over who is going to get on their plane and fly here first. Per Bloomberg at about 4am US time: “Iran s state-run TV denies unspecified media reports that an Iranian delegation has departed for or arrived in Pakistan for negotiations with the US.” Latest:
Al Jazeera reports: Mediators received confirmation of US VP Vance and Iran’s Ghalifab’s arrival in Islamabad at dawn Wednesday to lead talks.At the same time, per WSJ, Iran has informed regional mediators that it will send a delegation to Islamabad after for days of repeatedly refusing to commit to a new round of negotiations. However, there’s not been official confirmation, only signaling, with Pakistani officials insisting the Iranians will be there. And yet, it was only on Monday that Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said that there was no plan for a second round of negotiations.
But if all goes well, Vice President Vance is expected to depart for Pakistan today, leading the delegation which includes Kushner and Witkoff. As a reminder, on Monday President Trump said “lots of bombs” will be unleased on Iran if there is no deal, and also given the White House doesn’t plan to extend the ceasefire. The key issues of Iran’s nuclear program and the Hormuz Strait loom large. Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has at the same time warned: “we do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and over the past two weeks we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield”.
Another Vessel Interdiction by US Navy
US forces boarded a sanctioned tanker without resistance in the Indo-Pacific as part of operations targeting vessels linked to Iran, the Pentagon said on X. Initial statements did not indicate a precise location, and clearly it did not occur in the Hormuz Strait. Washington recently announced it is ready to seize ‘illicit’ Iran-linked vessels anywhere on the high seas. The move follows Sunday’s major boarding of an Iranian-flagged vessel, when a US warship opened fire as it attempted to transit the strait, striking and damaging the engine room.
CENTCOM: Overnight, U.S. forces conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding of the stateless sanctioned M/T Tifani without incident in the INDOPACOM area of responsibility. https://twitter.com/DeptofWar/status/2046544038812156177

They have no new cards. But they can say they do.

• Iran Promises To ‘Reveal New Cards On The Battlefield’ (RT)

Iranian officials have struck a defiant tone ahead of a possible new round of talks with Washington, warning that Tehran has prepared to “reveal new cards on the battlefield” while rejecting any negotiations conducted “under the shadow of threats.” Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf accused US President Donald Trump of trying to turn negotiations into “a table of surrender” and said Iran had spent the past two weeks preparing new military options.

“Trump, by imposing a siege and violating the ceasefire, seeks to turn this negotiating table – in his own imagination – into a table of surrender or to justify renewed warmongering. We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” Ghalibaf wrote on X.] Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, meanwhile, said the “non-constructive and contradictory” conduct of US officials sent the message that Washington was seeking Iran’s surrender, adding that Iranians “will not bow to coercion.”
The temporary ceasefire, brokered by Pakistan, is set to expire on Wednesday, after the first round of talks in Islamabad last weekend failed to produce a breakthrough and Trump imposed a US military blockade of Iranian ports. Trump warned on Sunday that if Iran doesn’t accept Washington’s “fair and reasonable deal,” the US is going to “knock out every single power plant, and every single bridge, in Iran.”
The US president initially announced the second round of talks for Monday, and the White House reportedly spent the day waiting for confirmation that Tehran would send its negotiating team. Axios reported later in the day that US Vice President J.D. Vance, alongside Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, was expected to leave for Islamabad by Tuesday morning.
According to Axios, Iranian negotiators had been stalling amid reported pressure from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to take a harder line and refuse talks unless the US first ends its blockade. The report claimed that Pakistani, Egyptian, and Turkish mediators had urged Tehran to attend, and that Iran’s team allegedly received a green light from the supreme leader on Monday night.

‘Maximalist’ demands means: NO nuclear activity. Trump will not give that up.

• Iran: US Must Retract ‘Maximalist’ Nuclear Demands for Talks to Proceed (ET)

Iran is not ready to hold another set of peace talks with U.S. representatives until President Donald Trump backs off from his “maximalist” stance on Iran’s nuclear activity, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said on April 18. During a visit to Turkey on Saturday, Khatibzadeh told reporters that there needs to be a clear “framework of understanding” for peace talks to proceed. The Iranian official offered the comment with just days left on a two-week ceasefire that began on April 7.

Vice President JD Vance had led a U.S. delegation in a 21-hour round of talks with Iranian representatives on April 11, but the talks ended without a deal. At the time, Vance said the sticking point had been Iran’s refusal to clearly swear off the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Tehran has denied it’s pursuing nuclear weapons, however, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran has about 970 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity—a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent. As he spoke with reporters on Saturday, Khatibzadeh said Iran would not agree to stricter limits on nuclear activity than those expected of other countries under existing international standards.
“The other side should abandon its maximalist position and should respect international law, within which we can then secure diplomacy,” Khatibzadeh said. “I have to be very crystal clear that Iran would not accept to be an exception from the international law.” Earlier this week, Trump raised the prospect of a second round of weekend peace talks. As he spoke with reporters on Saturday, Khatibzadeh said no date would be set for such talks until there is a baseline agreement between Washington and Tehran. U.S. forces bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025. Since then, there has been speculation about whether stockpiles of highly enriched uranium may still be trapped under the rubble at these damaged nuclear facilities.

Not so far. Too deadly.

• Are We Seeing the Makings of an Iranian Civil War? (Eric Florack)

Much has been made of the on-again, off-again negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz. The claim here in the States from a few under-informed individuals is that Donald Trump was lying to us about the status and that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, yada, yada, you know the drill. Of course, it’s untrue, but I want to take a few minutes this morning to explain why it’s untrue. The Islamic Regime in Iran is engineering its own destruction. The reason amounts to a civil war in Iran. To understand why, you must first understand what the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) actually is — and isn’t. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been studying the IRGC, its makeup, and its original purpose, as well as who controls it in the end.

With that understanding, we can have a better idea of the reason behind the on-again, off-again blockade situation we’ve seen over the last several days.Let’s bust a widely held misunderstanding right out of the gate. The IRGC is not a conventional military. Its founders did not build it to defend Iran’s borders. They built it in 1979 with a specific mandate: protect the Islamic Revolution and the clerical regime’s ideological order, suppress internal dissent, and project what they called “revolutionary power” across the region. The BBC called it a “business empire” back in 2010 — and that description still holds. The IRGC answers to no elected official. It reports directly to the Supreme Leader, bypassing the defense ministry and the civilian government entirely.
The IRGC commands land, naval, and missile forces, plus the Quds Force — the arm that funds, arms, and directs allied militias like Hezbollah and the Houthis. It also controls the Basij, a paramilitary force whose sole purpose is to keep Iran’s civilian population in line. The widespread killing of Iranian civilians over the past month is the Basij at work. As you may have picked up, the entire idea of the IRGC is permanent resistance and interference of the West, which, by the nature of the thing, includes the United States and Israel. That last point is the very reason for its existence. Absent that, the IRGC wouldn’t have any reason to exist at all.
Militarily, the IRGC is built for asymmetric warfare — an idea those of us who lived through Vietnam would recognize immediately. It is not designed for the swift, overwhelming force that conventional militaries such as our own pursue. It is designed to make any conflict long, painful, and costly. Threatening regional stability and choking energy flows isn’t a side effect of IRGC strategy — it is the strategy. The IRGC runs a parallel power structure inside Iran, and it answers to no one but the Supreme Leader. In that position and by design, it controls perhaps 40% of Iran’s economy. Say, construction companies, Telcom nets, and oil, to name a few items. I suppose that in some business sense, the IRGC is comparable to the East India Company.
With all that in mind, let’s turn to a piece in the Jerusalem Post from March 29: “Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian is reportedly clashing with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) chief Ahmad Vahidi over the economic and social impact of the war with the United States and Israel, Iran International reported on Saturday, citing Iranian sources. According to the London-based Iranian opposition outlet, Pezeshkian criticized the IRGC’s approach of increasing tensions in the region and attacking neighbouring countries, warning of the long-term effects that these movements could cause on the Iranian economy.
The report also mentioned that Pezeshkian has been demanding that executive decisions regarding the war be made by the Iranian government rather than the IRGC, a demand Vahidi did not accept. In response, the IRGC criticized Pezeshkian’s inability to implement structural reforms in the Islamic Republic to address several problems within the system before the current war began. The report comes as Iran’s already dying economy keeps being pushed toward full collapse after several weeks of war.
So this tells us many things. Among them, the civilian government is, and has been bucking the IRGC, with somewhat less than complete success. So we see that when Iranian President Pezeshkian, who seems, as a rule, more pragmatic than the IRGC, signaled he’s ready to be reasonable and will negotiate, the IRGC didn’t follow along, but rather launched a war against Iran’s civilian government. It is the IRGC who have been working against every diplomatic channel that Pezeshkian has been trying to open.
He’s not hiding by any means. Within the last 72 hours, Pezeshkian has been seen delivering a speech at Iran’s Ministry of Sports and Youth in Tehran, where he addressed the ongoing conflict with the US and stated that Iran is seeking to end the war “with dignity.” He’s also been in conference with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, ostensibly to discuss the current war. Both Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi have been at the center of reported internal tensions with the IRGC. It is the IRGC that’s been contradicting both Pezeshkian and Araghchi on the negotiations over Hormuz. Now, just because Pezeshkian seems more reasonable than the IRGC in some senses, doesn’t mean he’s not saying publicly things the IRGC wants him to say:
Iran is seeking to end the war with the US and Iran “with dignity,” the country’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Sunday, arguing that US President Donald Trump has no right to deprive Tehran of its nuclear rights, Anadolu reports. “Trump says Iran should not use its nuclear rights, but does not explain what crime Iran has committed,” Pezeshkian said during a visit to Iran’s Sports and Youth Ministry, the ISNA news agency reported. He also called for the nation to stand “firm against a bloodthirsty and brutal enemy.”Iran must manage the current atmosphere in a way that “does not portray us as war-mongers” as “we are defending ourselves,” he added.

“Promethean Action Provides..” The elderly ladies are becoming a force.

The photo I’ve seen 5 times now. so here it is…

• Perspective on Iran Conflict and Latest Intel Efforts to Disrupt Trump (CTH)

Promethean Action – Barbara Boyd previews renewed Iran peace negotiations in Islamabad ahead of a ceasefire deadline, as Iran allegedly challenged a U.S. naval blockade, lost a ship, and again closed the Strait of Hormuz, with Trump warning “No More Mr. Nice guy” if peace fails and arguing Iran is bleeding $500 million a day. She shows a City of London–linked propaganda network is working to prolong the war and damage Trump before the midterms by targeting Vice President JD Vance, citing a Financial Times column by Edward Luce and post–Munich Security Conference smears portraying Vance as pro-Putin.
Boyd outlines three layers of Iran-linked messaging—Press TV in London, NIAC in Washington, and the “Iran Experts Initiative” infiltration of U.S. think tanks—and says justice is coming via prosecutions led by Joseph DiGenova, with Kash Patel promising arrests, while Vance leads talks and a National Fraud Task Force.

PRESIDENT TRUMP – “I’m winning a War, BY A LOT, things are going very well, our Military has been amazing and, if you read the Fake News, like The Failing New York Times, the absolutely horrendous and disgusting Wall Street Journal, or the now almost defunct, fortunately, Washington Post, you would actually think we are losing the War.
The enemy is confused, because they get these same Media “reports,” and yet they realize their Navy has been completely wiped out, their Air Force has gone onto darker runways, they have no Anti Missile or Anti Airplane Equipment, their former leaders are mostly gone (This has been, in addition to everything else, Regime Change!), and perhaps, most important of all, THE BLOCKADE, which we will not take off until there is a “DEAL,” is absolutely destroying Iran. They are losing $500 Million Dollars a day, an unsustainable number, even in the short run. The Anti-America Fake News Media is rooting for Iran to win, but it’s not going to happen, because I’m in charge! Just like these unpatriotic people used every ounce of their limited strength to fight me in the Election, they continue to do so with Iran. The result will be the same — It already is!” ~ President DONALD J. TRUMP.

“Counsel to the Attorney General, has a nice ring to it.”

• It Is, After All, the Department of Justice (CTH)

Joe diGenova sworn in.

Hubby being sworn in as Counsel to the Attorney General. pic.twitter.com/kgNDLv8Nth
— Victoria Toensing (@VicToensing) April 20, 2026

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”
~Theodore Roosevelt
Counsel to the Attorney General, has a nice ring to it.
Heavenly Father, strengthen us when we feel weak and weary. Grant us perseverance to face challenges with courage and determination. Help us to trust in Your guidance, remain steadfast in our faith, and overcome every obstacle that comes our way. Fill our heart with confidence and resilience, allowing us to stay focused on our goals. May Your power flow through us so that we may achieve success that honors You and fulfills the purpose You have established for our life and this mission. Lord of righteousness, strengthen our faith so that we do not become discouraged, nor act impulsively. Grant us focus, discipline and energy so that every accomplishment can be a reflection of Your guidance. May every step we take align with Your will, and may patience guide us to sustain success with honor, fidelity and stewardship. Amen

Memo newly declassified by DNI Gabbard shows concerns about integrity of American voting were far greater than the public was told by previous administrations. Evidence emerged that China had gained access to voter registration data in multiple states and had even sent fake driver’s licenses to the United States in a bid to help Joe Biden win the election, officials said.

• US Intel Secretly Flagged Major 2020 Election Vulnerabilities (JTN)

Months before the 2020 presidential election, U.S. intelligence issued a secret but stark warning that foreign adversaries had the capability to “compromise” America’s voting infrastructure and raised specific concerns about the vulnerability of voter registration databases that later would be penetrated by China and Iran, a newly declassified memo obtained by Just the News shows. The National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) concerns were so extensive that officials personally briefed President Donald Trump at the White House in February 2020, according to photos obtained by Just the News showing top CIA, FBI and Homeland Security officials joining with NIC analysts to inform the president.

But the American public was never fully alerted, even after evidence emerged that China had gained access to voter registration data in multiple states and had even sent fake driver’s licenses to the United States in a bid to help Joe Biden win the election, officials said. “We judge that US adversaries, including, at a minimum, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise US election infrastructure for the 2020 presidential election,” the NIC wrote in the memo dated Jan. 15, 2020.
“Adversaries gaining access to US election-related systems could disrupt the voting process, steal sensitive data, or undermine confidence in the election results, but we do not know whether any of them have specific plans to manipulate election-related systems,” the memo added. The document was recently declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who continues to expose examples of the intelligence community suppressing or misusing intelligence. Though officials say that an ongoing second Trump administration investigation has found no evidence yet that vote-counting machines were directly compromised in the 2020 election, the memo shows how such machines could be vulnerable to intrusions in the future and made clear that the voter registration databases that were breached by China and Iran were easy targets.
American voting system more vulnerable to intrusion than acknowledged
The memo, prepared by then-NationaI Intelligence for Cyber Christopher Porter, has become part of a broader body of evidence showing America’s election systems are more vulnerable to hacks, breaches and manipulations than previously acknowledged.After the 2020 election, many senior Intelligence Community officials insisted on the historical security of the 2020 election and downplayed concerns about such vulnerabilities.
Krebs: “The 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history.”
For example, the members of the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee released a mid-November 2020 joint statement declaring that “the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” One of the officials who sat on that committee, Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, testified to the Senate after the election that he “approved CISA’s publication of a joint statement from the election security community, reflecting that community’s consensus that the 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history.”
Krebs has been accused by the Trump White House of being “a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his government authority. Krebs’ misconduct involved the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic.”
Porter: “It is no secret that China and Iran compromise election equipment for a variety of intelligence purposes”
But Porter told Just the News those assurances did not reflect the government’s assessment of just how vulnerable America’s election infrastructure was. Iran and China did gain access eventually to voter registration data, but those breaches were suppressed until November 2021, when Iranian hackers were indicted, and March 2026 when Just the News obtained the first declassified documents acknowledging Beijing’s penetration of voter registration data.
[..] Intelligence community had disdain for the “vulgarian” Trump
In January 2021, the Intelligence Community analytic ombudsman — tasked with ensuring objectivity in intelligence products — conducted a review of the spy community’s handling of Russian and Chinese meddling efforts during the 2020 election. He concluded that intelligence analysts downplayed China’s actions because they had disdain for the “vulgarian” Trump and did not want to support the policies and priorities of the Trump administration toward China with which they “personally disagree,” Just the News reported last month.

“..the Obama-Clinton-Kerry Iranian deal likely included a mechanism for return payments to U.S. officials following the release of billions in frozen Iranian asset funds and the loosening of sanctions “

• Spygate, Russiagate, IC Impeachment, Jack Smith Targeting and Lawfare (CTH)

In the next few days, much more about the overall investigative review underway in Florida will likely begin to surface. The review has been led by USAO Jason A. Reding Quiñones, a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Florida. Quinones is now supported by Counsel to the AG, Joe diGenova. As with all investigations containing multiple players and actors, the first investigative information is extracted from testimony by those furthest away from the principals, yet closest to the granular details of the events being reviewed. The questioning then goes upstream, using information collected to assemble more specific questions as the principal players are approached.

The widest concentric circles are questioned first. Then, using the responses and investigative information from that circle, the questioning and inquiry goes to the next inner circle of participants. The information is assembled, and more pointed questions are then targeted to the next inner circle; the process continues until the core is questioned. Beginning with the end in mind, the biggest challenge is knowing what the correct questions are to ask of those who were closest to the corrupt activity (the outer circle). Background research then becomes critical. From those pointed questions you get answers. Then, next level of more specific questions get focus, and so on, and so on.
On March 20, 2026, James Comey was subpoenaed. Also remember, there are two distinct and different aspects to the overall conspiracy and timeline. nThere was surveillance of the 2016 Republican candidates by contractors working on behalf of the FBI who was institutionally collaborating with the Clinton campaign; that is known as “Spygate.” There was then an FBI operation to target and eliminate the threat represented by the 2016 GOP primary winner, Donald Trump; that is known as “Russiagate.” ‘Spygate’ and ‘Russiagate’ are two distinctly different corrupt pathways that eventually merged due to common interests.
The Mueller investigation, an extension of Crossfire Hurricane (Russiagate) was used by Obama-era politicians and internal government officials as a mechanism to block President Trump from executing a divergent foreign policy. The primary policy of focus was to protect the Obama era operations, including the Iran deal. Based on mounting evidence, a pattern in other international activities and U.S. participants, the Obama-Clinton-Kerry Iranian deal likely included a mechanism for return payments to U.S. officials following the release of billions in frozen Iranian asset funds and the loosening of sanctions – (ie. pallets of cash). Qatar was the mediator/broker.
However, it is speculated, perhaps being evidenced, that return payments to the Obama team contained a timing mechanism, and the quid-pro-quo payments were stopped after President Trump withdrew from the Iran deal and re-instituted sanctions. Thus, a much larger background context exists for why the totality of the U.S. government and Intelligence Community opposed President Donald Trump. Is it all about the money? Time will tell. Current events may not be coincidental.

Where Marco has free rein.

• US, Cuban Regime Confirm ‘Secret’ Talks in Havana (Sarah Anderson)

On April 10, something happened in Cuba that hasn’t happened in a decade: a U.S. government plane touched down outside of Guantánamo Bay. We have confirmation of this from the Cuban regime via their official Communist Party propaganda newspaper, Granma. Several media outlets, including Fox News, CNN, and the Miami Herald, are also confirming it, based on statements from unnamed senior State Department officials. The State Department delegation — supposedly made up of assistant or deputy-level officials but not Marco Rubio himself — reportedly warned the Cuban regime that it has a very short window in which to make a deal, which supposedly includes releasing political prisoners and making major economic and political reforms.

“As President [Donald] Trump has stated, a new dawn for Cuba is coming very soon. The Cuban regime should stop playing games as direct talks are occurring. They have a small window to make a deal,” a State Department official told the Miami Herald. Some outlets are reporting that the talks included compensation for U.S. citizens and companies whose properties were confiscated after the 1959 revolution, allowing Elon Musk’s Starlink into Cuba (it’s currently illegal to use there), and discussion of the threat of foreign military and terrorist groups being allowed to operate freely in the island nation.
Allegedly, a separate meeting was held with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, Raúl Castro’s grandson who goes by “Raulito” or “El Cangrejo” (the crab). While Rubio has never confirmed it that I’m aware of, some media outlets report that this is not the first time a team from the State Department has met with the younger Castro. And, of course, the Cuban regime tells a different story. Deputy Director General for U.S. Affairs Alejandro García del Toro told Granma that the meeting was “respectful and professional,” but denies that were any conditions, like political prisoners, or deadlines set by the United States. He also called it a “delicate matter” that is being handled “discreetly.”
“Eliminating the energy blockade against the country was a matter of top priority for our delegation. This act of economic coercion is an unjustified punishment for the entire Cuban population,” he said. The Miami Herald reports that a U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton surveillance drone was flying near Havana during the meeting, though I’ve noted that happening on other days last week, as well. Basically, the regime is attempting to paint this as normal diplomacy between two countries. But we all know it’s not. Regardless of what was actually discussed, Trump has made it pretty clear that he’s got his eye on making a change in Cuba soon. Assuming all of this is true, I believe he and Rubio are testing them to determine what the next steps are once we’re not so distracted with Iran.
As I reported over the weekend, on Friday, while speaking at a Turning Point USA rally, Trump said, “And very soon, this great strength will also bring about a day 70 years in waiting — it’s called a new dawn in Cuba. We’re going to help them out with Cuba. We have a lot of great Cuban-Americans… that were brutally treated, whose families were killed, and now, watch what happens.” Later, while aboard Air Force One, a reporter asked him about anonymous reports that the Pentagon is ramping up plans for military action against Cuba. “Well, it depends on what your definition of military action is,” the president said, not giving much away.

“.. a “constellation that every smartphone, every ship, every aircraft and every missile guidance system on Earth depends on. SpaceX might just call it “Tuesday.”

• The Space Launch Industry Is in Big Trouble… Except for You-Know-Who (Green)

“Early this morning, SpaceX launched the final GPS III satellite in our constellation, the most advanced GPS satellites ever built,” Space Force Gen. Chance Saltzman announced on Tuesday. It’s the finishing touch, as Chronos Intelligence explained, in a “constellation that every smartphone, every ship, every aircraft and every missile guidance system on Earth depends on. SpaceX might just call it “Tuesday.” Elon Musk’s launch company is about to raise tens of billions in the biggest-ever IPO on its way to easily top a $1 trillion valuation — and no wonder. This morning’s Space Force mission was its 48th Falcon 9 launch of the year (with a 100% success rate) and on track to roughly match last year’s record-breaking launch cadence.

Meanwhile, the company is making final preparations for the next flight test of the massive Starship rocket that will not only make the Falcon 9 obsolete, but every other rocket in the world. But I’m not here today to praise Musk or SpaceX. I just needed to set the stage to show you how the competition is performing. Or not. Because Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance (ULA) are having a rough time. Blue Origin whiffed a major New Glenn mission on Sunday, putting a $30 million AST SpaceMobile cellular satellite into the wrong orbit. Bluebird 7 is so low that it lacks enough onboard fuel to boost itself to its proper orbit, and will have to be de-orbited as a total loss. AST SpaceMobile shares were down sharply on Monday and have yet to fully recover.
BO touted the launch as a success — they did recover the booster, which is always impressive. And the booster was partially reused, which is even more impressive. But the mission was a failure, and celebrating that is not a good look. New Glenn is “likely grounded for four months” to investigate what went wrong with the upper stage, according to Next Big Future’s Brian Wang. Meanwhile, ULA’s Vulcan workhorse — well, sort of — is grounded following two Northrop Grumman solid rocket booster failures. Folks, space is too big and too important for the United States of America to have just one reliable launch provider. True story.
SpaceX successfully landed an orbital launch vehicle — the now-venerable Falcon 9 — in late 2015. Just 15 months later, in early 2017, the company successfully re-flew a “flight proven” Falcon 9. Here we are, more than nine years later, and Blue Origin is only now becoming the second company anywhere in the world to master reusable rockets. I watched those early SpaceX efforts in total amazement, and not just because one of my closest friends was an actual rocket surgeon at ULA. Ed was very good at his job and had the bonus checks for nailing satellite orbital placement to prove it. So I asked him one time why ULA wasn’t looking into reusability.
“We did look into it, we’re not idiots,” he said. “We’re good engineers. We could do it, but the economics didn’t work out.” Making a rocket reusable comes with tradeoffs, and ULA didn’t see enough demand for lift to make those compromises financially worthwhile. SpaceX created Starlink, which generates the demand and the cash flow to keep the company ahead of the competition. My friend was right that ULA had plenty of engineering talent, but the corporate management lacked imagination.
Because, as the country’s only major launch company for so long, ULA didn’t need imaginative management — they just needed the next NASA or Pentagon launch. And those were basically guaranteed at the slow-but-steady cadence that the company’s disposable Atlas and Delta rockets could deliver. For what it’s worth, not long after that conversation, ULA “voluntold” engineering graybeards like my friend — actually guys as young as their early 50s — to retire. I couldn’t tell you for sure that retiring the most experienced engineering talent is directly responsible for ULA’s current woes, but there’s more than enough room there for conjecture.
ULA’s busiest year was 2016 with a total of 16 launches. After that, the company began transitioning to the troubled Vulcan Centaur rocket, which launched just five times in 2025, and is currently “paused” while Northrop Grumman works out issues with the solid rocket boosters — after a decade of development and transition. SpaceX conducted 165 Falcon 9 launches in 2025 with a 100% success rate.

“The incoming PM has pledged to stop Budapest’s withdrawal from the ICC, which has an active warrant for the Israeli leader..”

• Hungary’s Magyar Warns Netanyahu of Arrest (RT)

Hungary’s incoming prime minister, Peter Magyar, has said he would order the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he enters the country, marking a sharp reversal of predecessor Viktor Orban’s policy. Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Magyar said he would halt Hungary’s withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC), initiated by Orban, and stressed that as a member state Budapest is legally obliged to enforce its arrest warrants. The ICC issued warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in 2024 over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel claimed earlier this week that Magyar had spoken with Netanyahu and invited him to visit Hungary after his Tisza party’s landslide win on April 12. Asked to clarify, Magyar confirmed the call but downplayed the invitation, saying he had spoken with multiple leaders and broadly invited them to attend an upcoming anniversary of the 1956 popular uprising. He added that Netanyahu was informed Hungary would seek to remain in the ICC – and what that implies.
“I made it clear to the Israeli prime minister that we are not stepping back [from the ICC]. It is the Tisza government’s intention to stop this and for Hungary to remain a member,” Magyar said. “So I think I didn’t mislead anyone. If a country is a member of the ICC and if a person who is wanted enters that country’s territory, they must be taken into custody… I assume that every state and government leader is aware of these regulations.”
Magyar’s position marks a direct break with the stance of the outgoing government, which rejected the ICC’s jurisdiction and guaranteed Netanyahu safe passage. Orban dismissed the warrant as “brazen and cynical.” Last April, Budapest moved to withdraw from the ICC, arguing the court had become politicized. The country’s parliament approved the move in May, though under the Rome Statute withdrawal only takes effect a year after formal UN notification, currently set for June 2.
Magyar campaigned on repairing ties with Brussels and unlocking more than €16 billion ($19 billion) in EU funds for Hungary currently frozen due to rule-of-law and corruption allegations. Since his victory, Magyar has also pledged to reform state media, consider Eurozone membership, and end vetoes on Ukraine aid – though with caveats. He backed Hungary’s opt-out from the EU’s €90 billion loan package to Kiev, citing budget constraints, and said Ukraine’s EU accession within a decade is unrealistic.
At Monday’s press conference, he also urged Kiev to reopen the Russian Druzhba pipeline and said Hungary would not accept “any kind of blackmail” over energy supplies. He previously said Budapest would continue buying Russian energy, prioritize the cheapest oil, and signaled he would “pick up” if Russian President Vladimir Putin called.

“Europe’s five largest countries — Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Poland — all recorded BEV growth above 40% year-to-date.”

If the EVs were Peugeots and BMWs, easy peasy. But they’re Chinese and Tesla, I think.

• Europe EV Sales Jump 51% As Iran War Sends Gasoline Prices Soaring (Paraskova)

Registrations of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in Europe’s key automotive markets surged by 51% in March as the Iran war pushed gasoline prices to multi-year highs, data published by research firm New Automotive and trade association E-Mobility Europe showed on Monday. More than 224,000 new electric passenger cars were registered in March alone across 15 key EU + EFTA markets, the analysis found. These sales accounted for as much as 22% of all new passenger car sales across the key European markets.

In another sign that expensive gasoline is pushing drivers to EVs, European Union member states registered more than 500,000 new electric cars in the first quarter of 2026, a surge of 33.5% compared to the same period last year, the data showed. New BEV registrations accelerated across every major EU market in the first quarter of 2026. Europe’s five largest countries — Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Poland — all recorded BEV growth above 40% year-to-date. Europe’s biggest car market, Germany, saw a rebound in EV sales after the introduction of new incentives, with around one in four cars registered in March fully electric – a 42% year-to-date jump, according to the data. Italy’s BEV registrations soared by 65% year-to-date, boosting the EV market share to 8.6% in March from about 5% as of the end of 2025.
France continued to lead among large markets with a 28% BEV share in March, underpinned by its social leasing scheme, and nearly 50% year-to-date growth. Energy security was the catalyst for change in driver choice in recent weeks, analysts at New Automotive and E-Mobility Europe say. “At a time when energy security has moved to the top of the political agenda, the EV transition is delivering real and measurable resilience,” commented Ben Nelmes, CEO of New Automotive. “The pace of change we’re now seeing across major European markets — including countries like Italy and Poland that were slower to start — suggests the transition has entered a new phase.”

Joe Rogan: "What you're seeing with Trump, regardless of flaws, is a massive concentrated PsyOp. They've distorted who he is… It's all a f*cking illusion." pic.twitter.com/NePg8dAaVe
— Joe Rogan Podcast News (@joeroganhq) April 20, 2026

https://twitter.com/robertdunlap947/status/2046330432514355702?s=20

Jensen Huang said AI has 5 layers of value. India doesn't have a presence in any of them.

⚡ Layer 1 — Energy. A hyperscale AI campus now draws 1–2 gigawatts — a mid-sized nuclear reactor, for one building. China added nearly India's entire installed grid in new capacity last… pic.twitter.com/wbA0lM3Z2h
— Himanshu Sinha (@hsinha1445) April 20, 2026

The ‘Covid Pandemic’ was PLANNED by Bill Gates, Jeffrey Epstein, Dr. Fauci and the Rothschilds Family.

WE HAVE THEIR EMAILS
THESE ARE WAR CRIMES
THEY MUST BE ARRESTED

FOLLOW ME, THE NEXT DROP WILL BE SHOCKING pic.twitter.com/NocMhTQ76Y
— John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. (@MrJohnJnr) April 20, 2026

JUSTICE IS COMING@mrddmia has nothing but praise for Todd Blanche’s early moves as acting AG. Highlighting his legal defense of Trump and new accountability push, including bringing on veteran prosecutor Joe diGenova to support efforts in Florida.@Bannons_WarRoom pic.twitter.com/KV8QOi6xOm
— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) April 20, 2026

How the Rothschild family acquired complete control over governments using debt. pic.twitter.com/lLoHfsu8q2
— Red Pill Dispenser (@redpilldispensr) April 21, 2026

https://twitter.com/argosaki/status/2046475300960391255?s=20

Mebendazole and ivermectin should be over-the-counter. Dirt cheap and available to everyone.

Dr. John Campbell SHOCKED after ivermectin cancer study: We could be CURING cancer—with ivermectin and mebendazole.pic.twitter.com/furUPmIsHE
— Dr. Dawn Michael (@DawnsMission) April 20, 2026

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Debt Rattle April 2 2026

Apr 022026

April 2, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:49 am Finance Tagged with: AI, ceasefire, Chuck Schumer, Cuba, Iran, Marco Rubio, NATO, Venezuela 63 Responses »

Vincent van Gogh A Lane near Arles (Side of a Country Lane) 1888

• Trump Reassures Americans: Iran Operation Won’t Be a Forever War (Chris Queen)

• US, Iran Discussing Ceasefire In Exchange For Reopening Strait (ZH)

• Rubio Delivers a Reality Check on Iran, NATO, Cuba, and Venezuela (Anderson)

• Marco Rubio, the Question Must be Asked: “Why are we in NATO”? (CTH)

• NATO Without America? A Slow Shift Is Already Underway (Zevelev)

• Keir Starmer Gives a National Address – Things Will Never be the Same Again (CTH)

• Chuck Schumer Is Losing Control of His Party; They Turn On Him (Margolis)

• Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Warns Against Unbridled Free Speech (Turley)

• How Many Times has the EU Screwed Itself Over in the Past Year? (Marsden)

• Europe Needs to Hear This Harsh Truth (Stephen Green)

• A Civilization Whose Defense is Abandoned, is Lost (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Charlie Kirk Bullet Doesn’t Match Suspect’s Rifle – Lawyers (RT)

• More Than Half of Americans Believe AI Will Do More Harm Than Good: Poll ET)

https://twitter.com/andweknow/status/2039304266775740853?s=20

LARRY JOHNSON PREDICTS: US GROUND INVASION OF IRAN ISLANDS THIS WEEKEND

Ex CIA Larry Johnson cuts through the noise with a chilling assessment based on troop movements and force deployments right now. Trump has not backed down out of fear. He is simply playing the same games… pic.twitter.com/n41bRkIPTg
— Mark (@Mark4XX) April 1, 2026

pic.twitter.com/De0SXeB4s8
— Words of Wise | Mindset Coach (@Wordofwise_) March 31, 2026

https://twitter.com/WallStreetMav/status/2039126040686248240?s=20 https://twitter.com/ScaryEurope/status/2039236276709376095?s=20

EU Witch Ursula Von Der LIAR is caught RED-HANDED STEALING HUNGARY’S ELECTION

Globalist Overlords are trying to install a Puppet Regime to crush Orban’s Sovereignty

This is outright TYRANNY from the EU

Hungarians: Tell these corrupt DEMONS to GO TO HELL pic.twitter.com/sQpIVJlOqN
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) April 1, 2026

https://twitter.com/BasilTheGreat/status/2039088940129391074?s=20

Angela Merkel just ADMITTED on CAMERA she deliberately flooded Germany with third-world migrants to “stop the far right.”

She chose to erase her own people rather than lose power.

This wasn’t a mistake.

It was demographic warfare.
This is TREASON. pic.twitter.com/NpiUl1ZC9C
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) April 1, 2026

He has to wrap it up quickly, nobody wants a long war, or heavy casualties, and it’s midterms soon.

• Trump Reassures Americans: Iran Operation Won’t Be a Forever War (Chris Queen)

President Donald Trump delivered a speech on Wednesday night with the intention of informing Americans about what’s going on with our joint military operations with Israel against Iran. It was remarkably restrained for a Trump speech and relatively brief. Side note: My favorite phrase from the speech was when Trump referred to the “green, green cash” that Barack Obama threw at the Islamic regime during his presidency. The president remarked that Wednesday was the one-month mark for Operation Epic Fury:

As we speak this evening, it has been just one month since the United States military began Operation Epic Fury targeting the world’s number one state sponsor of terror, Iran. In these past four weeks, our Armed Forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield — victories like few people have ever seen before. Tonight, Iran’s navy is GONE. Their air force is in ruins. Their leaders, most of them — the terrorist regime they led — are now dead. Their command and control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Core is being decimated as we speak. Their ability to launch missiles and drones is dramatically curtailed and their weapons, factories, and rocket launchers are being blown to pieces — very few of them left. Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks.
He reminded viewers that disabling Iran was one of his earliest campaign promises: “From the very first day I announced my campaign for President in 2015, I have vowed that I would never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. This fanatical regime has been chanting ‘Death to America, ‘Death to Israel,’ for 47 years. Their proxies were behind the murder of 241 Americans in the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut, the slaughter of hundreds of our servicemembers with roadside bombs, they were involved in the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, and they’ve carried out countless other heinous acts… For these terrorists to have nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat. The most violent and thuggish regime on earth would be free to carry out their campaigns of terror, coercion, conquest, and mass murder from behind a nuclear shield. I will never let that happen.”
The president expressed that his goal was to resolve Iran’s issues diplomatically, but Iran wouldn’t allow that to happen: “My first preference was always the path of diplomacy — yet, the regime continued their relentless quest for nuclear weapons and rejected every attempt at an agreement. For this reason, in June, I ordered a strike on Iran’s key nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer… The regime then sought to rebuild their nuclear program at a totally different location, making clear they had no intention of abandoning their pursuit of nuclear weapons… For years, everyone has said that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons — but in the end, those are just words if you’re not willing to take action when the time comes.”
Trump acknowledged the pain Americans are feeling at the gas pump. (As somebody who recently bought a new vehicle that gets much lower gas mileage than my prior car, I can testify.) “Many Americans have been concerned to see the recent rise in gasoline prices here at home… This short-term increase has been entirely the result of the Iranian regime launching deranged terror attacks against commercial oil tankers and neighboring countries that have nothing to do with the conflict. This is yet more proof that Iran can never be trusted with nuclear weapons. They will use them and they will use them quickly. It would lead to decades of extortion, economic pain, and instability worse than we can ever imagine. The United States has never been better prepared economically to confront this threat.”
He called out nations that are dealing with the effects of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz: “To those countries that can’t get fuel — many of which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, we had to do it ourselves — I have a suggestion. Number one, buy oil from the United States of America; we have plenty. We have so much. And Number two, build up some delayed courage… Go to the Strait and just take it. Protect it. Use it for yourselves. Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done.”
After assuring the public that operations in Iran should be done in “two to three weeks,” Trump reassured his viewers that Iran’s days as a threatening power are almost over. “Tonight, every American can look forward to a day when we are finally free from the wickedness of Iranian aggression and the specter of nuclear blackmail,” he declared. “Because of the actions we have taken, we are on the cusp of ending Iran’s sinister threat to America and the world.”
Tonight, the president gave a speech that was characteristically Trumpian. But it achieved the objectives that he wanted of informing the American people that Operation Epic Fury is nearly over and won’t be a “forever war.”

A ceasefire or “back to the stone age”, everything’s on the menu.

• US, Iran Discussing Ceasefire In Exchange For Reopening Strait (ZH)

Ahead of Trump’s address tonight at 9pm ET, Axios reports citing three sources that the US and Iran are discussing a potential deal that would involve a ceasefire in exchange for Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz “The officials did not say whether those discussions had taken place directly or only through mediators, and they cautioned that it was unclear whether a deal could be reached. But the officials said President Trump was discussing the possibility with officials inside and outside the administration.” As a reminder, earlier in the day Trump claimed on Wednesday that Iran had asked the U.S. for a ceasefire, but stressed he would only consider it if the strait was reopened. In response, Iran countered that it had not requested a ceasefire. https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/2039352788468003220
* * *
Iranian Supreme Leader Vows To “Continue Supporting The Resistance Against The Zionist-US Enemy”
Amid speculation that he is dead or badly wounded, moments ago Iran’s new supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said on X that he “emphatically declare that the consistent policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, following on the path of Imam Khomeini and the martyred Leader, is to continue supporting the Resistance against the Zionist-US enemy.”
* * *
Iran: Not True that Iran Requested a Ceasefire
Iran has again rejected Trump’s narrative, after he hours ago claimed that “Iran’s New Regime President” has just “asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!” Iran’s Foreign Ministry has responded by saying “there is no truth” to “Trump’s statements that Iran requested a ceasefire.” The Iran FM spox statement continues: “No decision has been made yet. We have many considerations. Our conditions for ending the war are very clear. We do not accept a ceasefire; We seek a complete end.” As a reminder, President Masoud Pezeshkian has been Iran’s president since July 2024 – and he’s made public appearances in Tehran, even over the last days. There is not a “new regime president”.= Additionally, Trump is now threatening to bomb Iran “back to the stone age” if Hormuz is not reopened, but just yesterday suggested he’s fine with it staying closed and that ultimately others should open it.
Here’s a clue that the new president of Iran has not in fact begged for a CEASEFIRE:

They do not have a new president. https://t.co/zqAUthm1d8
— Scott Horton (@scotthortonshow) April 1, 2026

Preparing American Public for an Exit?
President Trump has issued new words to Reuters on his highly anticipated speech tonight (9pm ET): The United States will be “out of Iran pretty quickly” and could return for “spot hits” if needed, President Donald Trump tells Reuters, hours before he was scheduled to make a primetime address to the nation. Trump also says he would state in the speech that he is considering withdrawing the US from the NATO alliance. There’s expected to be heavy focus on chastising NATO. If this is indeed the Bush-style ‘mission accomplished’ moment, it may be that he’s ready to blame Western allies for the closure of the Hormuz Strait – a problem which didn’t exist before Operation Epic Fury.
Trump: Iran President has Asked for Ceasefire
President Trump on Truth Social has claimed the US has been directly asked for ceasefire; however, he coupled this with the typical threat of bombing Iran “back to the Stone Ages!!!” Here’s what he said (note: Iran does not have a new president): Iran’s New Regime President, much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE! We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!! President DJT
And yet the Hormuz question lingers, after just yesterday Trump strangely said the vital energy shipping waterway would “automatically open”. Oil prices initially dumped on the Trump message, and quickly rebounded – perhaps based on the latter part of Trump’s statement. A lot would have to happen – for one Washington is likely to require that Tehran giving up charging a some $2 million fee for tankers to make safe passage. Oil unimpressed…

“Cuba has no economy, and no one there can fix the economy because they’re incompetent. ..”

• Rubio Delivers a Reality Check on Iran, NATO, Cuba, and Venezuela (Anderson)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been doing a lot of MSM interviews lately, and I kind of get the feeling he’s… fed up. He’s tired of having to correct false narratives on Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela. As I reported on Monday, he got to a point where he told George Stephanopoulos that maybe he needed to “write down” Donald Trump’s objectives for Iran because no matter how many times Rubio told him what they were, he implied that he didn’t understand them. While it was entertaining, it does get old, I imagine.

The three main points about these topics that he’s asked about in every interview — and there have been a lot; perhaps Trump is prepping him to cover for Karoline Leavitt when she goes on maternity leave (kidding) — are as follows: 1) We’re very close to meeting our objectives in Iran. Not months, not days but weeks away. 2) Cuba has no economy, and no one there can fix the economy because they’re incompetent. 3) Venezuela is in phase two of the three-phase plan he and Trump have for its recovery, and things are going very well there. But no matter how many times he says these things, to hear the MSM tell it, the administration has no idea what’s going on in Iran, the people in Cuba are suffering because of Trump, and Venezuela isn’t improving at all.
Well, on Tuesday night, Rubio appeared on Hannity on Fox News, where he was actually allowed to talk without being asked asinine questions. He hit on all three countries (and NATO), and while he didn’t necessarily say anything new, he was able to lay it all out clearly and without dealing with stupidity, so it was nice to watch. Plus, as I said, he’s fed up with these MSM narratives, and it’s always fun to watch him get a little worked up. I’m going to kick back here and let him do most of the talking. I feel like i’m taking the lazy way out, but sometimes, it’s best just to let him talk. On how efficiently our military has achieved its objection and how it will “go down in history”:

.@SecRubio: "We are going to get to the point where our military will have achieved all of its objectives in this mission, and they're doing so with extraordinary efficiency — something that I think will go down in history as one of the best run tactical military operations in… pic.twitter.com/NaoMThIhs2
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 1, 2026

On the threat to the United States and the rest of the world:

.@SecRubio on Iran: "They were moving towards eventually having a missile that could reach the continental United States… That's what they would've ultimately achieved had President Trump not taken these steps that he has taken." pic.twitter.com/B95UN5vuyg
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 1, 2026

On why it’s the regime’s fault that we’ve gotten to this point:

.@SecRubio on Iran: "They refused to negotiate… For all these people out there talking about how this could've been avoided — they were given every opportunity, in multiple talks, and all they did was either reject or delay, and that's not going to happen under @POTUS." pic.twitter.com/9qcb0TEXwJ
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 1, 2026

.@SecRubio: "Why do they continue to refuse to turn over 60% enriched uranium? There's only one reason — and that is because they want to hold it and keep it to one day use it to build a bomb." pic.twitter.com/xXXH66R4Rx
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 1, 2026

“The NATO membership is now a one-way street where they demand our military protection..”

• Marco Rubio, the Question Must be Asked: “Why are we in NATO”? (CTH)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears on Fox News to discuss the various goals and objectives of the U.S. military operation against Iran. As part of the interview Secretary Rubio was asked about the strategic conflicts and hypocrisies now flowing from NATO member states. The U.S. supports our NATO posture in Europe in part because it provides us with strategic military bases and operations that are considered vital to our national interests. However, as outlined in the Iran conflict, when we need to use those strategic bases the NATO member states withdraw previous permissions. France has blocked us from flying over their airspace, Spain and Italy have said the U.S. cannot use our military bases on their soil for operations. The U.K has refused to protect and/or escort their own energy assets.

The NATO membership is now a one-way street where they demand our military protection, but Europe blocks us from using our own military assets for our independent operations. Europe, while hiding behind the NATO protection skirt of the U.S, is simultaneously telling the U.S. what we can and cannot do with our own military. Secretary Rubio and President Trump are now confronting this very visible one-way benefit head on.

80 years ago.

• NATO Without America? A Slow Shift Is Already Underway (Zevelev)

US President Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy is often dismissed as chaotic or erratic. In reality, it reflects a deeper shift that is unlikely to disappear when he leaves office. Beneath the surface lies a consistent worldview, one shaped by populism and nationalism, that’s steadily gaining ground, both within the United States and globally. This shift is already reshaping long-standing institutions. Nowhere is this more visible than in Washington’s relationship with its European allies. For decades, US foreign policy rested on a simple premise: alliances, above all NATO, were the foundation of American power and influence. That consensus held across party lines for nearly 80 years. Today, it’s breaking down.

Trump is not merely skeptical of alliances, he openly questions their value. His reaction to the refusal of European allies to support US and Israeli military action against Iran was telling. Writing on Truth Social, he described NATO as a “paper tiger” and accused American allies of cowardice. “Everyone agrees with us, but they don’t want to help. And we, as the United States, must remember this,” he said. The message is blunt: if allies don’t act when Washington calls, then their status as allies is called into question. This doesn’t mean the United States is about to withdraw from NATO. What is unfolding is more gradual, and arguably more significant – a quiet dismantling of the alliance’s traditional structure.
There are growing signs of this shift: sharper rhetoric, fewer high-level engagements, and plans to reduce the American role within NATO’s command system. This is no longer just political theater.Even when constrained by Congress, as in the decision to block a rapid reduction of US troops in Europe, the administration has adjusted tactics rather than abandoning its objective. The restriction on cutting troop levels below 76,000 slows the process, but doesn’t change its direction. The broader aim remains clear: shifting responsibility onto Europe.A key element of this strategy is the gradual transfer of operational control. Reforms to NATO’s integrated command structure are already underway.
Soon, all three of the alliance’s operational commands will be led by Europeans. This marks a significant step towards transforming NATO into a European-led organization. If the United States relinquishes its central role in force planning and command, the consequences will be profound. NATO may remain intact in form, but its substance will change. Washington will no longer lead the alliance in the way it once did. This isn’t simply a matter of one president’s preferences. Trump reflects a broader shift in American public opinion.
There’s growing fatigue in the United States with the idea of underwriting the security of others. Years of costly conflicts in the Middle East, rising national debt, and pressing domestic concerns have made the traditional role of global guarantor increasingly unpopular. Don’t mistake it for isolationism. The recent strikes on Iran demonstrate that Washington remains willing to use force when it chooses. The change is more subtle, and more consequential. The United States no longer wants to be bound by obligations. Alliances and institutions that once defined American leadership are now seen as constraints. The emerging model is one of leadership without commitments: the ability to act freely, without being tied to the interests or expectations of partners.
That is a fundamentally different approach to international relations. It leaves NATO in an uncertain position, still formally intact, but increasingly hollowed out. In time, the alliance may survive. But it will no longer be the same organization that defined the transatlantic relationship for generations. And it’s far from clear that Europe is ready for what comes next.

“.. if it remains alone, without key support and protection from the USA, the British empire is at risk of collapse.”

• Keir Starmer Gives a National Address – Things Will Never be the Same Again (CTH)

Against the backdrop of the Iran conflict, crisis in the middle east and the disruption of energy supplies due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, U.K Prime Minister Keir Starmer held an urgent meeting with British business leaders, finance and bankers as well as U.K insurance leaders. At the conclusion of that meeting he informed media of a national address. During the national address to the people of Great Britain, Prime Minister Starmer emphasized that events in the middle east have forever changed the landscape of U.K. economic and geopolitical policy. Signaling an inflection point crossed, the British prime minister announced that urgent actions were being taken to mitigate a national crisis.

Additionally, accepting the U.S. position toward NATO and the U.K appears to be permanently shifted, Starmer said the British relationship with Europe now becomes critical to their vital national security interests. Against the backdrop of an end to the “special relationship” with America, the Brexit independence from the European Union is now a threat. The United Kingdom must find a way to reunite with the European Union, because if it remains alone, without key support and protection from the USA, the British empire is at risk of collapse.

“..while he may be the most recognizable congressional leader, that familiarity isn’t doing him any favors ..”

• Chuck Schumer Is Losing Control of His Party; They Turn On Him (Margolis)

A quiet rebellion is brewing inside the Democratic Party, and Chuck Schumer is sitting right in the crosshairs. Even as the Senate Minority Leader works to claw back the majority he lost in 2024, several Senate candidates are making it a point of pride to say they won’t support him as leader — before they’ve even won their races. The clearest shot came from Illinois. Lieutenant Gov. Juliana Stratton, who won her Democratic Senate primary earlier this month, made her position crystal clear during a January debate. “I’ve already said that I will not support Chuck Schumer as leader in the Senate, and I’m the only person on this stage that has said so,” Stratton declared. She’s not alone.

Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow has also called for Schumer to step aside. Texas Senate Democratic nominee James Talarico is keeping his options open, saying he wants to hear from leadership candidates before making any commitment. And when Sen. Chris Murphy was offered the opportunity on NBC’s Meet the Press to back Schumer directly, he ducked it with a classic non-answer: “Well, no, we are united as a caucus right now.” United, sure. Just not necessarily behind Schumer.
Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, was careful to keep his support firmly in the past tense. “I’ve been supportive of our leadership right now,” Kim said, which is a far cry from saying he’d vote to keep Schumer in charge after November, and it’s quite the insult to the sitting leader. “And I think that that’s really what the American people are seeing is what we get when the Democrats are united, and the Republicans are constantly fighting themselves,” Kim concluded.
The Hill reports: “Schumer, 75, has led the Senate Democratic Conference since 2016, when he replaced longtime party leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who died in 2021. But in recent years, the New York Democrat has faced calls to give up power from various corners of the party, including from progressive groups, House Democrats, and even Democrats running for Senate. Criticism of Schumer particularly ramped up after eight Democrats, a group he was not part of, joined Republicans in voting to end the record-long government shutdown in November.
Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, the Democratic nominee in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), told liberal YouTuber Jack Cocchiarella earlier this month that she does not support Schumer serving as Senate Democratic leader for another Congress. We all know that Schumer’s problems with the base go back to this vote to keep the government open last March. That one vote cost him dearly with the base, and he’s never recovered from it. Schumer told The Hill he is just focused on winning the majority in November.
“The way to counter Trump more effectively is to win the majority in 2026 and put gavels in the hands of Democrats. That’s my North Star, and that’s what I’m focused on doing every single day,” Schumer said. A recent Morning Consult poll found that while he may be the most recognizable congressional leader, that familiarity isn’t doing him any favors. Compared to John Thune, Mike Johnson, and Hakeem Jeffries, Schumer is viewed the most negatively.

“No One Knows What Will Happen Now”:

• Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Warns Against Unbridled Free Speech (Turley)

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is again warning of a growing threat to the nation. In her lone dissent in Chiles v. Salazar, Jackson observed that “to be completely frank, no one knows what will happen now.” The ominous tone stemmed from the fact that free speech had prevailed over state-imposed orthodoxy in a Colorado case. Eight justices, including her two liberal colleagues, ruled that Colorado could not prevent licensed counselors from “any practice or treatment” that “attempts or purports to change” a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The win for free speech was catastrophic for Jackson and many on the left. Allowing counselors to discuss the causes and basis for sexual orientation changes, Jackson maintained, would “open a can of worms.” It would be far better for the majority to simply silence such dissenting voices in the name of science.

The dissent in Chiles is only the latest example of the chilling jurisprudence of Justice Jackson, including a pronounced dismissal of free speech values. Consider the holding of her colleagues that Jackson finds so horrific. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the First Amendment “reflects … a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth … any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an ‘egregious’ assault on both of those commitments.” What a nightmare.
Instead, Jackson would have declared the ban on anything deemed “conversion therapy” to be “conduct,” not speech. It is that easy. You simply impose an orthodoxy and then treat any dissenters as being regulated for their conduct, not their viewpoints. Justice Elena Kagan could not withhold her frustration with her colleague, noting that “[b]ecause the State has suppressed one side of a debate, while aiding the other, the constitutional issue is straightforward.” She added that Jackson’s view “rests on reimagining—and in that way collapsing—the well-settled distinction between viewpoint-based and other content-based speech restrictions.”
Other countries have embraced Jackson’s permissive approach to speech curtailment. Recently, Malta failed to convict a man who was facing five months in prison for merely discussing his own abandonment of homosexuality due to a religious conversion. Of course, we just went through a pandemic when censorship and orthodoxy were dressed up as science. Leading scientific figures were canceled and harassed. That was the case with Jay Bhattacharya, who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration and was a vocal critic of COVID-19 policies. Bhattacharya was target due to his dissenting views on health policy, including opposing wholesale shutdowns of schools and businesses.
He and other scientists were later vindicated. European allies that did not shut down their schools fared far better than we did, including avoiding a national mental health and learning crisis. We simply never had that debate. He was recently honored with the prestigious “Intellectual Freedom” award from the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. He is also now the 18th director of the National Institutes of Health. Yet, years ago, the courts, the media, and politicians joined in treating dissenting views as “conspiracy theories.”
Some argued that the virus’s origin was likely the Chinese research lab in Wuhan. That position was denounced by the Washington Post as a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli called any mention of the lab theory “racist.” Federal agencies now support the lab theory as the most likely based on the scientific evidence.Likewise, many questioned the efficacy of those blue surgical masks and supported natural immunity to the virus — the government later recognized both positions.
Others questioned the six-foot rule, which shut down many businesses, as unsupported by science. In congressional testimony, Dr. Anthony Fauci later admitted that the rule “sort of just appeared” and “wasn’t based on data.” Yet not only did it result in heavily enforced rules (and meltdowns) in public areas, but the media further ostracized dissenting critics. For years, pundits portrayed those who questioned gender reassignment surgeries and treatments as bigots. Now, leading medical associations and European nations have decided that such procedures should not be generally allowed. All of it was orthodoxy masquerading as science.
Yet, Jackson sees the protection of dissenting scientific and professional views as a “can of worms” that the courts should avoid in favor of state and assocational imposed truths. She wrote that allowing such opposing views “ultimately risks grave harm to Americans’ health and wellbeing.”

“Ursula von der Leyen recently announced the need to yank another €200 million from taxpayers to “support investment in innovative nuclear technologies.”

• How Many Times has the EU Screwed Itself Over in the Past Year? (Marsden)

Hey, good news! The EU has found a new source of desperately needed gas amid the current energy crunch. The bad news? It’s in the US. So it will serve America, first. With Europe getting any sloppy seconds that Daddy Trump feels like overcharging it for when he isn’t threatening to invade. It’ll be the French energy multinational, TotalEnergies, serving it up to the US like a waiter at a Montmartre bistro, forced to smile and bow while the guest pockets the silverware.

Even better? The company wasn’t even supposed to be over there doing that. They had planned to be building offshore windfarms. But instead, Trump’s Department of the Interior now says that they made a deal with the French company to spend roughly a billion dollars investing in American gas operations in exchange for getting about the same amount of cash back for agreeing to say goodbye to its green wind dreams in the US. Team Trump calls it an “innovative agreement driven by President Donald J. Trump’s Energy Dominance Agenda.” But the CEO of the European company is making the cucking sound like a big win.
“TotalEnergies is pleased to sign this settlement agreements with the DOI and to support the Administration’s Energy Policy. Considering that the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest, we have decided to renounce offshore wind development in the United States, in exchange for the reimbursement of the lease fees,” said TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne, while adjusting his knee pads, before continuing to service Trump via official US government press release.
“Furthermore, these agreements, under which we will reinvest the refunded lease fees to finance the construction of the 29 Mt Rio Grande LNG plant and the development of our oil and gas activities, allows us to support the development of US gas production and export.” Hold up. So this company gave the US about a billion dollars in exchange for access to green energy. Then the US gave them back their money. And now they’re reinvesting it to serve Trump’s agenda? And publicly “pleased” about it?
Well, good riddance to – er, I mean, so much for Europe’s green dreams, I guess. But at least it means they’ll get easier access to more desperately needed LNG, right? Since they’re the ones doing the heavy lifting. Not without securing a trade agreement on America’s terms, they won’t. Which is why they’re aiming to ratify a trade agreement with their tormentor.
Brussels had been concerned about the agreement that was struck with Trump back in 2025, named the Turnberry Agreement after the US president’s Scottish golf resort where it all went down. The deal was about tariffs. Specifically, it gave a huge break to the US with ZERO tariffs on some of its exports to the EU, while slapping a 15-percent tariff on EU imports to the US. Another master stroke of cuckoldry. And yet Trump still won’t stop talking about how the EU is constantly stiffing America on trade. Which explains why the EU has been dragging its feet on ratifying it, worried that maybe it was putting too many eggs in a very unstable basket. Something that the US warned it against doing with Russia, being only too happy to step up to offer a costlier overdependency on itself instead.
The EU is doing the exact same with green energy, turning its back on nuclear power before its beloved green renewables were even ready for prime time. Which also went about as well as you might expect from these central planning geniuses. Calling it a screwup, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently announced the need to yank another €200 million from taxpayers to “support investment in innovative nuclear technologies.” The same ones they’d been busy vilifying until recently.

“Europe believes that their needs must be our priority, and that, furthermore, we’re required to do their job for them.”

• Europe Needs to Hear This Harsh Truth (Stephen Green)

Shipping and military expert John Konrad spent all day in D.C. on Tuesday talking to his military sources and concluded that “the Navy appears to be in no rush to reopen the strait,” even while Iran dictates whose oil tankers are allowed to pass. “What is this administration trying to leverage?” Konrad wondered, and that nobody he talked to was willing to discuss the fate of Hormuz “until European politicians and media stop calling Americans war criminals and monsters.”

While Konrad admitted he has “no idea” when Hormuz will reopen, “but if the price is a modicum of cooperation and respect for everything America has done for decades to keep Europe safe, the strait could stay closed for months, or turned into a toll booth for years, because the majority of Americans…. and the vast majority of Trump administration officials I’ve talked with… seem fed up with their arrogance.” The self-styled sophisticates in Brussels and Europe’s capitals remain remarkably provincial in their outlook, and that’s why today we will speak some harsh truths to our friends in Europe — not because the truth is harsh, but because they believe that we naïve Americans don’t recognize it.
So here comes the truth bomb, laser-guided right into the atrium of the EU’s Berlaymont building. The harsh truth is that Hormuz is their priority, not ours, and yet they refuse to make any serious contribution to the war effort. The U.S. is a net exporter of oil and liquified natural gas (LNG), and we buy hardly anything from the Gulf. Closing the Strait of Hormuz is an inconvenience for us (in the price of gas and diesel) and hardly a strategic necessity. In both military and economic terms, Hormuz is way down our target list. Complicating the decision matrix even further, re-opening Hormuz at this stage likely requires ground troops — so it’s simply smarter for us to continue the bombing campaign and see if we can’t wait out an increasingly split and brittle regime that might still collapse under pressure.
Europe, of course, doesn’t see things the way we do. Europe believes that their needs must be our priority, and that, furthermore, we’re required to do their job for them. [And Another Thing: We could do more to stabilize energy prices, but in 2024, the Biden Cabal declared a moratorium on the construction of new LNG export terminals. So while the rest of the world suffers an LNG supply shock, our producers are forced to, at times, pay people to take LNG off their hands, and even burn off excess. Crazy, right?]
Before Epic Fury, something like 20% of the world’s LNG and 25% of seaborne oil trade passed through the strait each year and accounted for something like 10-15% of Europe’s energy supplies. Losing that hurts, and Politico reported on Tuesday that one “top Brussels official urges Europeans to work from home and drive less.”nEU energy chief Dan Jørgensen says Europe faces a “very serious situation,” and that “even if… peace is here tomorrow, still we will not go back to normal in the foreseeable future.”nSucks to be EU, chief. Meanwhile, Europe’s contribution to the actual military effort is barely minuscule, and a handful of nations, including France (duh), Spain (fricken commies), and even Giorgia Meloni’s Italy, have closed their airbases to our military traffic headed to the Gulf. Apparently, “lead, follow, or get out of the way” isn’t a part of Europe’s lexicon.

The UK today.

• A Civilization Whose Defense is Abandoned, is Lost (Paul Craig Roberts)

For many years I have expressed concern that Western Civilization was being destroyed intentionally from within by failing to convey the civilization’s achievements to succeeding generations via education. Instead, education was used to alienate generations from their own civilization by stressing evils such as wars, slavery, oppression of blacks and women, oppression of other peoples as the result of colonial rule, abuse of children by parents, religious prejudices, class prejudices, and so on. The history of Western Civilization as a series of great reforms was kept from generation after generation so successfully that today hardly anyone under sixty years of age knows about them.

Western civilization has many achievements in science, technology, architecture, music, art, but perhaps the greatest achievement of Western Civilization began in the ninth century during the reign of Alfred the Greet in what became England. Alfred established law based on the people’s beliefs and behavior–the English Common Law–not on the edicts of a king. This was the beginning of developments over the centuries that culminated in the Glorious Revolution of 1680 that established that the king was subject to the law and the law was established by the commoners and the aristocrats in Parliament, thus making the king accountable to the people. The accountability of government rested on free speech. Without free speech truth cannot be ascertained.
The Americans who inherited the notion of government accountable to the people inscribed in the US Constitution the right to free speech.In recent years this right on which accountable government rests has been eroded in the US and essentially destroyed in the UK. In America today citizens who use the Constitutionally protected right of free speech can lose their jobs, can be prohibited from contracting with or having jobs with many state governments. If they are students who protest Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, they are expelled from the university, and if they are foreign students they are deported. The universities do nothing to protect the free speech that the US Constitution guarantees. Neither do the bar associations nor the law schools.
Free speech is in the way of anti-Western civilization ideologies. We must believe that white racism, not the black King of Dahomey’s slave wars, is the cause of black slavery. We are denied the fact that blacks held blacks in slavery and the fact that the blacks sent to the New World were enslaved by blacks, and that colonists in the New World purchased already enslaved blacks for a labor force. White people did not enslave black people. Black people sold as slaves were enslaved by the black King of Dahomey. You will not be able to find this fact in any Black Studies program in any university. The generations of indoctrination of white people against themselves, called education, has produced a situation in which law is no longer applied to the guilty but to his victim. Black immigrant-invaders are protected against hate speech and an accusation of rape has become hate speech.
In the UK, and also I believe in Norway and Sweden and perhaps throughout the EU, a white woman who reports a rape or a gang-rape might be charged with a hate crime against a “person of color.” This possibility essentially conveys rape privileges to black immigrant-invaders to rape white European women. The police are as likely to hold the rape victim accountable for a hate crime as to hold the rapist accountable for rape. In England these rapes went on for 30 years with the police and the British government doing nothing about it except covering it up. A year or two ago former British prime minister Liz Truss said that for 30 years the British government covered up the rapes. It stilll does.

Tyler Robinson’s defense team may use this argument in an attempt to get the charges against him dropped”

• Charlie Kirk Bullet Doesn’t Match Suspect’s Rifle – Lawyers (RT)

Investigators could not match the bullet that killed conservative influencer Charlie Kirk to the rifle used by his alleged assassin, lawyers for the suspect have claimed. The accused killer’s defense team is using this fact to push for a delayed trial. Tyler Robinson’s lawyers said in a recent court filing that the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) could not conclusively connect a bullet fragment recovered from Kirk’s body to a rifle found at the scene, citing an internal report by the agency.

The full ATF report has not been made public, but Robinson’s lawyers cited excerpts from the document in a request to delay a preliminary hearing scheduled for May. The 22-year-old suspect’s legal team stated that they need more time to review the bullet analysis, and to analyze the DNA of multiple other people found at the crime scene. Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was shot in the neck and killed almost instantly at an event on a Utah college campus last September. His death sent shockwaves through the US, with President Donald Trump posthumously awarding Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom and describing the conservative icon as “a visionary and one of the greatest figures of his generation.”
Robinson was arrested two days after Kirk’s death. Investigators quickly linked him to a Mauser model 98 rifle found near the scene, which had apparently been modified at some point to fire the American 30.06 round used in the assassination. Text messages between Robinson and his transgender lover were then unearthed, in which Robinson confessed to the killing and revealed almost every detail of the plot, down to how he cleaned his fingerprints off the gun before stashing it in a nearby patch of woods.
Prosecutors have said that DNA matching Robinson’s was found on the trigger of the rifle, but the case has nevertheless spawned multiple conspiracy theories – including the widely spread claim that Kirk was killed for turning on TPUSA’s pro-Israel donors and opposing US strikes on Iran. Every firearm leaves a unique imprint on a bullet as the projectile leaves the barrel. When enough fragments are found in good condition, ballistic analysts can match the projectile to the weapon with almost 100% confidence. Robinson’s lawyers suggested in the filings that they may point to the lack of a match in an attempt to dismiss charges against their client.

People hear it will take their jobs, and that’s all they can understand.

• More Than Half of Americans Believe AI Will Do More Harm Than Good: Poll ET)

About 55 percent of Americans surveyed in a 2026 Quinnipiac poll said artificial intelligence (AI) will be more harmful than helpful. The survey, released on March 30, was conducted in collaboration with the Quinnipiac University School of Computing & Engineering and the Quinnipiac University School of Business. In April 2025, only 44 percent believed AI would do more harm than good in their daily lives. In the 2026 poll, 21 percent answered that AI affects their lives a lot, while 29 percent said only somewhat, and 30 percent believed AI impacts are minimal. Only 17 percent said they are not impacted at all.

Regarding education, 64 percent of survey respondents said AI is more harmful, compared with just 27 percent who believe it will help. For health care issues, 45 percent of those surveyed believed AI will do more harm, while 43 percent said AI will be more helpful. The employment outlook showed the greatest percentage of people worried about the future of AI, as 75 percent said continuous advancements in AI will most likely lead to a decline of job opportunities for people. While 18 percent said AI will not have much of an impact on jobs, only 7 percent said jobs for humans will increase as a result of AI.
In just one year, the fear of possible job losses due to AI increased by nearly 20 points. In April 2025, 56 percent of respondents said AI would be detrimental to human jobs. All generations surveyed remain pessimistic about the job outlook as a result of AI’s rapid growth, with Gen Z—including ages 18 to 29—exhibiting the highest percentage at 81 percent. For millennials, aged 30 to 45, 71 percent said jobs are likely to decrease as AI grows, and 67 percent of Gen Z, aged 46 to 61, agree. Of the baby boomer generation, aged 62 to 80, 66 percent indicated that human jobs will decline.
“Younger Americans report the highest familiarity with AI tools, but they are also the least optimistic about the labor market,” Tamilla Triantoro, associate professor of business analytics and information systems at Quinnipiac University School of Business, said in the report. “AI fluency and optimism here are moving in opposite directions.”Among those currently employed, 30 percent reported being very or somewhat concerned about AI rendering their jobs obsolete, but 69 percent said they are not very worried about it. Compared with last year’s survey, only 21 percent of employed Americans expressed fear of losing their jobs to AI.
“Americans are more worried about what AI may do to the labor market than about what it may do to their own jobs,” Triantoro said. “People seem more willing to predict a tougher market than to picture themselves on the losing end of that disruption—a pattern worth watching as the technology moves deeper into the workplace.”
An overwhelming 85 percent of Americans said they would be unwilling to work a job where their direct supervisor was an AI program that assigned their tasks and schedules. When asked how much they trust AI, 76 percent of respondents said that they hardly ever trust it, while just 21 percent admitted they do trust AI. Still, 51 percent said they often use AI for researching topics. Only 20 percent said they relied on AI for medical advice, and just 15 percent for personal advice.

Elon Musk didn't have a background in mechanical engineering or rocket science when he founded Tesla and SpaceX.

He didn't.

He was once asked how he packed so much knowledge into his brain so quickly.

His answer: "It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree —… pic.twitter.com/wsgQD8MWj0
— Greg McKeown (@GregoryMcKeown) March 31, 2026

If you want to know what’s really safe or what’s not, just try buying insurance for it https://t.co/AusNZjaw6n
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 1, 2026

Elon Musk: “My essential philosophy is curiosity. I’d like to understand the meaning of life — is the Standard Model of physics correct? The beginning of life, the beginning of existence, and the end of the universe. What questions do we not know to ask, that we should ask? AI… pic.twitter.com/M11492h1wr
— Mars University (@MarsUniversityX) April 1, 2026

The corporate world built a religion around one lie.

That leadership is separable from understanding.

That you can run a machine you cannot read.

Musk: “At SpaceX, almost all my time is spent on engineering and design.”

Not strategy meetings. Not press tours. Not optics.

The… pic.twitter.com/2dLcY2crp0
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) April 1, 2026

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

Debt Rattle March 31 2026

Mar 312026

March 31, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:33 am Finance Tagged with: Alexander Dugin, birthright, Civil War, DHS, EU, Hungary, Iran, Marco Rubio, No KIngs, RINO, Tom Homan 60 Responses »

Damien Hirst Spiritual Day Blossom 2018

• Trump Presents a Strong Statement Toward Iran – Rubio Responds (CTH)

• Israel Has Launched America Into The Third World War (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Geopolitics of the Third World War (Alexander Dugin)

• Iran’s Victory Would Have a Silver Lining (Paul Craig Roberts)

• EU Parliament Told Continent Is ‘On Track For CIVIL WAR’ (MN)

• US Senators Seek To Sanction Hungary Over Obstructing Ukraine Aid (ZH)

• Whatever the Ruling on Birthright Citizenship… (Turley)

• Springtime for RINOs (James Howard Kunstler)

• The Great Illusion of NATO is Fading Fast (Trenin)

• Tom Homan Bulldozed Jake Tapper’s DHS Funding Narrative (Matt Margolis)

• This Trillion-Dollar Firm Wants Out of Mamdani’s NYC (Stephen Green)

• Scott Jennings Destroyed the ‘No Kings’ Rallies, CNN Wasn’t Happy (Margolis)

This is an insane perspective.

And it's all because Europe deviated from the free-market and entrepreneurial-freedom ideals that made them rich in the first place. pic.twitter.com/87PMEPdSaR
— George (@BehizyTweets) March 29, 2026

Never regret a day in your life. Good days give happiness, bad days give experiences, worst days give lessons, and best days give memories.

—Professor Richard Feynman pic.twitter.com/lqCve6XncO
— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) March 29, 2026

Vladimir Zelensky sent five million euros in cash every week to the Hungarian opposition party Tisa, said a former Ukrainian intelligence officer who defected to Budapest.

Usually, these are one hundred euro banknotes in vacuum packaging. As far as I know, this money comes from… pic.twitter.com/MCpWvYyZGj
— Sprinter Press (@SprinterPress) March 29, 2026

https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/2038285905627136090?s=20

Saudi Prince MbS reveals that President Obama gave Iran $150 billion, and the IRGC didn’t even build a single street with that money.

Instead, they made missiles and drones. And they used the funds Obama provided them to finance and arm terrorists like Hamas, Ansar Allah, and… pic.twitter.com/GiJZvj89dA
— Ian Miles Cheong (@ianmiles) March 29, 2026

https://twitter.com/MichaelARothman/status/2038389429426147786?s=20

Rubio’s good.

• Trump Presents a Strong Statement Toward Iran – Rubio Responds (CTH)

As Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears for an interview on Good Morning America, President Trump released the following statement:

“The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran. Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately “Open for Business,” we will conclude our lovely “stay” in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet “touched.” This will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime’s 47 year “Reign of Terror.” Thank you for your attention to this matter.” ~ President DONALD J. TRUMP
Secretary Rubio responded in real time to questions about the objectives. Rubio impressively underlined the objectives in Iran, reemphasizing the core intent of the military operation to remove the capacity of Iran to pose a threat to the stable alliances that have formed in the region.

“The UN, EU, US, Russia, China, India are yet to try to stop Israel’s multi-year genocide of the Palestinians.”

• Israel Has Launched America Into The Third World War (Paul Craig Roberts)

“The Third World War has been initiated by the United States in the context of preserving, strengthening, and ultimately consolidating the unipolar model of world order. All others are offered a choice: to become obedient vassals or to be treated as enemies. It is against these opponents of the unipolar world that Washington is waging the Third World War. At stake is sovereignty.”

I think a more correct explanation of Trump’s change of posture is the power of the Israel Lobby over the US government, media, universities, and entertainment and Netanyahu’s ability to use this power to put the US again at war for Greater Israel as the George W. Bush administration was used in “the war on terror,” which was the opening phase of destroying “seven countries in five years” called for by the Zionist neoconservatives. It is the extraordinary control that Israel has over the United States that accounts for Trump’s change in posture. Trump inherited the war with Russia in Ukraine. He could not end it because the combination of the Israel Lobby and the US military/security complex is too powerful for an American president.
I am surprised that a person as thoughtful as Dugin does not see Netanyahu’s role in realigning Trump. Especially so because in February the former Israeli prime minister, Bennett, addressed the American Conference of Jewish Organizations and declared: “Turkey is the next Iran.” These were marching orders to the Israel Lobby to begin the demonization of Turkey and setting Turkey up as the next “terrorist” country to be destroyed. Dugin is very much aware of the threat posed by Greater Israel, but in his article he does not say that it is the Israel Lobby that changed Trump from a multipolar position to a unipolar position, thereby bringing wider wars to the world.
As best as I can tell, most governments defer to Israel’s explanations and justifications. The UN, EU, US, Russia, China, India are yet to try to stop Israel’s multi-year genocide of the Palestinians. In the US, UK, and some EU countries it is becoming a hate crime and a criminal felony to criticize Israel. American students are expelled from US universities for criticizing Israel. Even Putin defers to Israel and abandoned Russia’s Syrian ally to Greater Israel. As for the current conflict in the Middle East, Hezbollah secretary-general Qassem is the only person to accurately describe the war with Iran in terms of “the US-Israeli project of ‘Greater Israel.’” https://paulcraigroberts.org/finally-an-arab-leader-who-understands/

“Washington has now fully adopted the neoconservative position and behaves as if it alone possesses genuine sovereignty ..”

• Geopolitics of the Third World War (Alexander Dugin)

(Translated from the original Russian version on RIA Novosti).

Many analysts are now advancing the hypothesis that the Third World War has already begun and that we are in its first stage. Whether this is so or not will become clear in the near future, but for now let us assume the validity of this hypothesis and attempt to survey its geopolitical contours.The essence of the Third World War lies in a radical transformation of the entire architecture of world politics. The international institutions that exist today have long ceased to correspond to the real state of affairs. They are still organized according to the logic of the Westphalian system and the bipolar world. The Westphalian model is based on the recognition of the sovereignty of all states acknowledged at the international level. The United Nations is built on the same foundation.

However, in practice, over the past hundred years, the principle of sovereignty has turned into pure hypocrisy. In the 1930s, a system took shape in Europe in which only three forces were sovereign, and these were strictly ideological: 1. the bourgeois-capitalist West (Britain, the United States, France, and so on); 2. the communist USSR; 3. the Axis countries with a fascist ideology. This situation persisted even after the end of the Second World War, except that one of the ideological poles—the fascist one—disappeared. The other two—the capitalist and the socialist ones—grew stronger and expanded. Yet once again, no national state was sovereign in itself. Some were governed from Moscow, others from Washington. The Non-Aligned Movement wavered between the two poles.
he self-dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the USSR put an end to bipolarity, and from that moment only the United States remained as the bearer of sovereignty. The United Nations and the Westphalian model became a fig leaf for global hegemony. Thus emerged the unipolar world. Already in the 1990s, it became clear that international law would have to be revised—either in favor of a world government (the liberal “end of history” scenario of Francis Fukuyama) or in favor of direct Western hegemony (as envisioned by American neoconservatives). European countries followed the world-government scenario and, as a preparatory stage towards it, ceded their sovereignty to the European Union. Everyone else was subtly encouraged to prepare for the same.
However, in the early 2000s, a new tendency emerged: the will to restore sovereignty in Russia and China. Moscow and Beijing moved to make sovereignty not a fiction but a reality. Thus, multipolarity made itself known. From that point onward, it was proposed that sovereignty be vested in “civilization-states”—both those already formed (Russia, China, India) and potential ones (the Islamic world, Africa, Latin America). These, in turn, coalesced into BRICS.
As a result, the unipolar project came into direct confrontation with the multipolar one. Both globalists and neoconservatives opposed multipolarity. The potential for conflict was evident, while the old norms and rules inherited from previous geopolitical eras no longer functioned. Whether the Third World War has already begun or not is ultimately secondary; its geopolitical content is clear: it is a war between unipolarity and multipolarity over a new architecture of the world, over the distribution of sovereign centers of decision-making: either confined to the West alone or shared among rising civilization-states.
Donald Trump returned to the White House for a second term in 2024 with an agenda that suggested he might accept multipolarity: rejection of interventions, criticism of globalists, direct conflict with liberals, sharp attacks on neoconservatives, a focus on domestic U.S. issues, and calls to return to traditional values—all of this gave reason to believe that Trump and his administration would align with multipolarity, while seeking to secure the most advantageous position for the United States within this new framework.
However, very soon the Trump administration began to move closer to the neoconservatives and to move away from its initial position. This was followed by support for the genocide in Gaza, continued provision of intelligence to Kiev, the seizure of Maduro, preparations for an invasion of Cuba, and finally a war against Iran, including the killing of the political leadership of the Islamic Republic. Washington has now fully adopted the neoconservative position and behaves as if it alone possesses genuine sovereignty in the world: without any reference to rules or international law, it asserts unilateral authority over the entire globe. It seeks to prove this in practice: through wars, invasions, abductions of heads of state, and the orchestration of regime-change operations.
The Third World War has been initiated by the United States in the context of preserving, strengthening, and ultimately consolidating the unipolar model of world order. All others are offered a choice: to become obedient vassals or to be treated as enemies. It is against these opponents of the unipolar world that Washington is waging the Third World War. At stake is sovereignty. Since there is as yet no single power capable of symmetrically opposing the United States, it is conducting military operations across several fronts simultaneously.

“Israel wants to mobilize 15,000 working Israelis. Trump has sent 15,000 Marines and paratroopers. Iran has mobilized 1,000,000 troops. What does that tell you? ”

• Iran’s Victory Would Have a Silver Lining (Paul Craig Roberts)

Former Israeli Army officer says Israel’s military is “on the brink of collapse.” Israel’s capability, with US help, is assassinations and sneak attacks. Israel’s army is good at bombing civilians and shooting mothers and babies in the head. But when it comes to fighting, Israel is pitiful. Twice the vaunted IDF tried to occupy Southern Lebanon in order to steal the water resources there. And twice the Israeli army was totally defeated by a mere Hezbollah militia with no air force, tanks, or artillery. It might be about to happen for a third time.

The current war with Iran now expanded into Lebanon is disrupting Israeli life and bringing bombing home to them as Iranian missiles penetrate Israel and Washington’s air defenses without difficulty. More and more of Israel’s population is seeing the current war as an unnecessary “political war” and do not support it. If by “political,” Israelis mean the Zionist Greater Israel agenda, then the Israeli population’s support for the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel might not be very broad or deep and might be eroding. Possibly Israelis, as well as Muslims, are having the Zionist agenda imposed on them.
If this is the case, then the Israeli population’s support for the Israeli-American war on Iran may falter before the Iranian population’s support does. Already, the American public is heavily against Trump’s war against Iran. Unless the Trump-Netanyahu war criminals use their nukes, Iran is likely to win this war. The silver lining in an Iranian victory is the liberation of both America and the Israeli population from servitude to the crazed Zionist agenda of a Greater Israel from the Nile to Pakistan.
Americans should pray for an Iranian victory. Otherwise, their blood and money will continue to be used for Israel’s bloody purpose of Greater Israel. Israel wants to mobilize 15,000 working Israelis. Trump has sent 15,000 Marines and paratroopers. Iran has mobilized 1,000,000 troops. What does that tell you? If the dumbshit Netanyahu-Trump strike Iran with nukes, Iran will nuke Israel by destroying the nuclear plant at Dimona. Israel will no longer exist. Israel is tiny. lran is as large as Western Europe. An honest American has to ask himself how America became the vehicle for Israel’s wars for Greater Israel. Whatever happened to the requirement that the American government represents Americans’ interests, not those of some foreign country?
The 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by US VP Dick Cheney and the Zionists he positioned in the essential offices of the US government. The orchestrated “attack on America by Muslin terrorists” was the “New Pearl Harbor” that the American Zionist neoconservatives said was necessary to destroy seven Muslim countries in five years. It has taken longer than the five years that 4 Star General Wesley Clark said was the agenda shown to him by Pentagon generals. But America is now working for Israel on destroying Iran, after having disposed of Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Last month former Israeli prime minister Bennett came to America to address the American Organizations for Israel and gave them marching orders to begin demonizing Turkey as “the next Iran.”
Turkey has a leader who is just as stupid as America’s, as the UK’s, France’s, Germany’s, Russia’s, China’s, India’s. If Tayyip Erdogan understood the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel unfolding in front of his eyes, he would understand that he and his country are next and would have united with Iran to preserve Turkey’s sovereignty. But the fool thinks he can sit on the fence and ride both horses. In a world in which nuclear weapons and the ability to deploy deadly infections exist, and in which no objective, inquiring media exists, any fake news can rule.
There is nothing shameful about Iran fighting for its right to exist as a sovereign nation. But it is shameful for America to inflict harm on herself and others by fighting for Greater Israel.

“Mass migration is shredding cultural homogeneity and paving the way for Balkanisation and violence..”

• EU Parliament Told Continent Is ‘On Track For CIVIL WAR’ (MN)

Europe’s ruling class has spent decades importing chaos under the banner of “diversity,” and now the bill is coming due in the most explosive way possible. A major conference held inside the European Parliament has heard stark warnings that the continent is barreling toward civil war as mass migration erodes trust, creates no-go zones, and fractures societies along ethnic lines. Professor David Betz of King’s College London cut straight to the point, telling the assembled lawmakers and experts: “Europe is on track for civil war”.

European Parliament Hosts “Civil War? Europe at Risk” Conference Amid Rising Social Tensions

MEPs Mikael Weimers and Marion Maréchal convene experts warning that eroding social cohesion from mass immigration could push Europe toward civil conflict, with Prof. David Betz… pic.twitter.com/80RUypdOqB
— Washington Eye (@washington_EY) March 25, 2026

The event, titled Civil War: Europe at Risk?, was hosted by French populist-right leader Marion Maréchal and Sweden Democrats MEP Charlie Weimers. It also launched a new report documenting up to a thousand no-go zones across Europe based on public data including crime rates, sexual violence, youth gangs, unemployment, school performance, antisemitism, homophobia, mosque density, attacks on firefighters, and NGO presence. Maréchal opened the conference by reflecting that formerly peaceful and stable societies are “rapidly transforming before our eyes into societies of violence and mistrust”, stating that “the main basis of trust between citizens is cultural homogeneity”, which is now fast eroding.
She warned Europe is already under a great strain of “diffuse guerrilla activity”, which takes various forms, including “riots, looting, random attacks, anti-white racism, and terrorist attacks”. Weimers echoed the assessment, noting the impact of mass migration on cultural cohesion. The Swedish MEP reflected: “Western democracies that were once relatively homogenous societies have become deeply fragmented. Newcomers often share little in common with the indigenous population. More alarmingly, many have no intention of assimilating.” Both hosts said they were driven to hold the conference to find political answers and prevent “the horror of civil war”.
Betz, who has gained prominence for highlighting the collapse of social cohesion, described the trajectory in chilling detail. He warned of “a peasant revolt. A conservative uprising in which the ruled seek to punish their rulers for violating their obligations under the social contract, and for changing the rules of the game against their wishes. It will look something like Italy’s Years of Lead, the ‘dirty wars’ of Latin America, or maybe The Troubles of Northern Ireland, but on a larger scale.” He continued: “What is already a guarded society will become a radically more heavily fortified society as elites seek more protection with more walls, guards, and surveillance. It will be bloody… the Balkanisation of British life along ethnic lines [is underway].”
Betz further urged, “What I call assortative movement is already occurring, quite obviously in some places like Tower Hamlets in London, Sparkhill in Birmingham which are already ethnic enclaves, zones of negotiated policing with parallel legal systems, alternative economies, and… zones of endemic and large-scale out-group sexual predation… this ought to be more generally frightening.” “In government there are plenty of people who understand fully the gravity of the situation, although it is, career-wise, terminal to speak of it openly,” he added.
Betz also warned of the ultimate stakes for native populations. “Where does Balkanisation lead us? … it leads to the extinguishment of Britain in the sense of a coherent cultural entity dominated by people genuinely sharing the titular identity of ‘British’… it leads to large scale and widespread civil war…” “It is very possible that the Britons end up like the Canaanites or the Arcadians, a people of historic interest, their monuments visible here and there in some sort of ruination, of interest to archaeologists and historians,” Betz explained, adding “This would be a tragedy, but that is a very viable option in front of us, and in fact it is a possibility that is quite close.”
Weimers asked bluntly: “Where will Europe be in 50 years? Will there be a Europe in 50 years?” Betz further outlined how any future conflict might unfold, describing “the siege of urban areas but with a few 21st century twists. In many ways it will be reminiscent of the siege of Sarajevo, but much more dominated by paramilitary actors using system disruption tactics. Most importantly, infrastructure attack to degrade and destroy the life support systems of urban, non-native enclaves.” He continued, “The political object is very simple, it is to compel non-natives to leave.
The strategy is to create conditions of life in the cities so intolerable that leaving is preferable to staying… it’s not an implausible theory of victory because its central premise, the instability of the modern urban condition, at the best of times is something scholars of urban studies have been warning against for 50 years already.” Betz warned that “fuel systems are easy to attack, they are flammable if not explosive by definition, they are difficult to repair, and expensive to replace. In fact they are impossible to replace in civil war conditions where no insurance is available.” He continued, “Moreover, disruption of fuel has very rapid knock-on effects of everything else logistically, most importantly the food distribution system which is the traditional weapon of siegecraft.” The full conference is below:

Betz has continually warned of the deep social erosion he’s believes is cascading toward civil war in Britain and Eure. Retired British Army Colonel Richard Kemp has also warned that integration breakdowns have worsened over the past two decades, paving the way for inevitable conflict. Kemp outlined that there is “No government, the government now or any prospective government of the UK, has the guts to stop it” when it comes to the Islamification of Britain. The pattern is unmistakable. Globalist policies of open borders and elite denial have created parallel societies, eroded national identity, and left ordinary Europeans with no peaceful political outlet.
As Betz has noted, many in government already grasp the gravity but stay silent to protect their careers. As educational as this all is, Europe doesn’t need more conferences or reports. It needs leaders with the courage to end mass migration, restore cultural cohesion, and put their own people first — before the warnings stop being theoretical and the conflict becomes reality.

“The ruling Fidesz party has made anti-Ukraine messages the central element of its election campaign and insisted on maintaining Russian oil imports.”

• US Senators Seek To Sanction Hungary Over Obstructing Ukraine Aid (ZH)

Because US Congress is perfectly functional, and all domestic issues have been resolved (one would very ironically think), the FT reports that a bipartisan pair of US senators are set to introduce legislation calling for sanctions to be imposed on senior Hungarian officials involved in obstructing aid to Ukraine. If passed, the Block Putin act would require President Trump to impose financial sanctions and visa bans on Hungarian government officials involved in the country’s purchases of Russian oil and gas, and who have sought to block support for Ukraine.

The introduction of the bill comes as Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has held up a €90bn EU loan to Ukraine as he faces a tough re-election campaign ahead of parliamentary elections next month. Opinion polls indicated Orbán, who has served as prime minister since 2010, could lose power. The opposition Tisza party’s lead stood at 23% points on Wednesday, according to pollster Median. Pro-government polls show a slight lead for Orbán’s ruling Fidesz. Orbán, historically aligned with Vladimir Putin, has accused Kyiv of disrupting the flow of Moscow’s oil to Hungary by stalling repairs to the Druzhba pipeline, which transits Ukraine.
Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Thom Tillis, co-chairs of the Senate Nato observer group, are set to introduce the legislation this week. The pair have been outspoken about Europe’s continued dependence on Russian energy. Tillis said: “The United States and our allies must remain united in supporting Ukraine and in cutting off the revenue streams that fuel Putin’s war.”“This bill holds senior Hungarian officials accountable while giving Hungary a clear path to get back in line with its allies by ending its reliance on Russian energy and stopping its obstruction of support for Ukraine,” he added.
Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said: “It is beyond belief that vice-president Vance is reportedly planning on visiting Hungary to provide an electoral boost to a corrupt government that continues to help fund Russia’s war machine.” “If we want this war in Ukraine to end, the Trump administration needs to be consistent in holding our allies to the same standards; no one, especially Viktor Orbán, should get a free pass,” she said. While much of the continent has sought to wean itself off Russian oil and gas supplies since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Hungary and Slovakia have increased their dependence on Russian energy… and lucky for them, as now the “rest of the continent” is about to go dry as a result of the Iran war.
Complicating matters, Trump is very close to Orbán and has endorsed his re-election bid. Politico on Wednesday reported preparations were being made for US vice-president JD Vance to visit Hungary days ahead of the elections. Trump has criticized Europe for continuing to buy Russian energy and has urged the continent to take the lead in supporting Ukraine. “They’re buying oil and gas from Russia while they’re fighting Russia,” Trump said in his address to the UN General Assembly in September. The draft text of the bill, which has been seen by the FT, does not mention Orbán explicitly as a target of the sanctions. Therefore, it would fall to the Trump administration to determine which Hungarian officials have been involved in holding up aid to Ukraine and continuing the country’s dependency on Russian energy, a congressional aide said.
Orbán and his foreign minister Péter Szijjártó have long sought close ties with Russia, with Szijjártó meeting his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov more than 20 times since the start of the war in 2022. The ruling Fidesz party has made anti-Ukraine messages the central element of its election campaign and insisted on maintaining Russian oil imports. “If President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy wants to get his money from Brussels, he must open the Druzhba crude pipeline,” Orbán said in a video message to the Ukrainian president last week. “They tell us openly that they don’t want to allow cheap Russian oil through to Hungary, so the situation is very simple. No oil — no money.”

Why does the American Bar Association.express an opinion?

• Whatever the Ruling on Birthright Citizenship… (Turley)

The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in the historic birthright citizenship case. It is a hearing that has been over 150 years in the making, since the ratification of the 14th Amendment. It is not just a long-debated question that has divided the nation, but it has divided many lawyers as well. For that reason, there was one brief that stood out before the court: the amicus brief of the American Bar Association. The ABA filed its “friend of the court” brief to argue that the matter is clear: Anyone who gives birth on our soil, even if here illegally or only briefly, may claim U.S. citizenship for their child.

Most nations on Earth, including many of our European allies, reject birthright citizenship, and many of us in this nation believe that it is a foolish policy. Yet, even as someone who opposes birthright citizenship, I have long believed and argued that there are good-faith arguments on both sides of this debate. The sponsors of this language clearly disagreed on the issue at the time of its enactment. Some stated at the time that the language did not allow for birthright citizenship.The debate comes down to six poorly chosen words: “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Those words were not in the original draft, but were inserted by an amendment. Thus, they were not superfluous or casual verbiage, but an intentional condition. They were placed in the middle of an otherwise clear statement that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States … are citizens of the United States.”
For more than a century, many have argued that the words reflect an intent to limit the amendment to citizens and legal residents who are subject fully to the jurisdiction of the United States. That brings us back to the bar association. Regardless of how one comes out in the fascinating historical and constitutional debate, this is a case one would expect the ABA to sit out. It clearly does not speak for all lawyers on the issue, yet, it filed a strident brief and laid out a parade of horribles about what would happen if the Supreme Court were to reject birthright citizenship.I found the brief to be one of the least compelling submissions to the court. But, once again, the media will portray the brief as speaking for American lawyers, even though the ABA represents less than two out of every ten attorneys.
I previously wrote a column on these pages on “the rise and fall of the American Bar Association,” exploring how the ABA has alienated many lawyers with its partisan advocacy. When it was founded on August 21, 1878, in Saratoga Springs, New York, the 75 lawyers present from 20 states (and the District of Columbia) wanted an organization to create a national system of standards for “the advancement of the science of jurisprudence, the promotion of the administration of justice.” It was created to focus on professional accreditation, education, and training. That changed in 1990, when advocates overrode earlier votes to remain neutral on the constitutional interpretations supporting the right to abortion.
The adoption of a pro-abortion position shocked many and fundamentally changed the culture at the ABA. (It is worth noting that the very arguments embraced by the bar association were later rejected by the Supreme Court in the Dobbs decision.)Since that time, the ABA has become fully captive to partisans who use the organization to support liberal and often Democratic Party positions. The result has been a steady decline in membership.Today, there are roughly 1.3 million lawyers in the U.S. Even if the ABA represented just half of that number, it would have 650,000 members. As recently as 2015, it still had 400,000. But more recently, membership has fallen to 227,000, or just 17 percent of the bar.
Despite complaints that the ABA has become a partisan organization, its leadership has doubled down with positions and programming that are echo chambers for the left. During Trump’s terms, the ABA has uniformly opposed him and his policies. The ABA brief in favor of birthright citizenship is signed by ABA President Michele Behnke. It simply declares the language and history clear and resolved. It then predicts a virtual meltdown of order and due process in this country if birthright citizenship is not upheld. The decline of the ABA to the point where it does not speak for most lawyers has followed a familiar model. The media also abandoned neutrality in covering such stories, with many journalism schools now teaching students that they are advocates for social justice.
Likewise, academia largely purged its departments of Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians, as it increasingly prioritized advocacy over education. All three of these groups have one thing in common beyond their liberal ideological bias and advocacy: They are all increasingly unpopular. Higher education and the media have plummeted in public trust to record lows. Like the ABA, which can no longer claim to speak even for most lawyers, there is little indication that the loss of trust is causing the leadership to do any soul-searching. As memberships and revenues decline, the use of these institutions for advocacy remains personally beneficial. Behnke is leading an organization that is a shell of its former self, but she (like academics and journalists) is lionized for taking these positions.
Ironically, Behnke has a role in two of these areas, as a board member for the University of Wisconsin Law School and the University of Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association Board.Faced with an ABA doubling down on these controversial positions, various states are moving to do away with its historical role in bar memberships. The brief reaffirmed for many lawyers that the ABA is no longer a neutral and fair representative for all lawyers. It will continue to represent a dwindling faction of lawyers who look at the association as more of a stridently ideological than a strictly professional organization. That is why, whatever the outcome in Trump v. Barbara, the American Bar Association is likely to be the loser.

“This sort of derangement is a novel psychopathology in the human species. . . a synthesis of low-IQ feminized brain scramble & neurotic lunacy.” JD Haltigan on X

• Springtime for RINOs (James Howard Kunstler)

Went to the No Kings assemblies in my town and the next nearby town on Saturday. Mental illness as far as the eye could see. Old folks, too, as far as the eye could see, predominately of the female persuasion: the devouring grandmothers. The Democratic Party has marshalled mental illness as its premier campaign strategy, and lately it is winning bigly around the country as mental illness becomes the go-to cope option for the ragged remnants of Boomerdom.

They believe things that are patently insane, for instance, the latest proposal by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) that illegal immigrants deserve reparations on account of being “traumatized” by U.S. immigration enforcement actions. If it feels like the Democratic Party is at war with our country you are not hallucinating. It is every bit as much a jihad as the Death to America crowd in Iran has explicitly pushed since 1979.
The president gets no help whatsoever from his own party, as you see in the disgraceful hijinks around the urgent issue of election reform. You know exactly how the election playbook was written: let x-million foreigners into the country illegally, give them (illegally) social security numbers, driver’s licenses, automatic voter registrations, addresses, mail-in ballots. . . and voila! They don’t even have to mail-in their own mail-in ballots. Lawfare ninja Marc Elias will arrange ballot pick-up service. And the cherry on top is that the census must count all the illegal aliens to add new congressional districts for extra seats in Congress.
So, in the face of that, Republican Majority Leader John Thune could not muster enough votes to save the SAVE Act. Or so he said. Looks more like lack a’wanna. Eerie lack a’wanna. On their tours of cable news, the hapless Republican senators, when asked, would not name their colleagues leaning against the SAVE Act. But you know who they are. Mitch McConnell, Murkowski, Tillis, Collins, Capito.
Leader Thune could not even manage to get Homeland Security funded with the prospect of Iranian sleeper cells awakening around the country. He just threw in the towel at three o’clock in the morning on Friday, and sent the whole crew home to meet the Easter Bunny. Chuck Schumer did an end-zone dance. The brokenness of our politics could not be more in your face. As things shape up this grueling springtime, Mr. Trump might have to go Abe Lincoln on these folks. That is, declare some sort of national emergency to save the election and the country.
Of course, the nation is more than a little distracted just now with doings in Iran. The No Kings folk are unabashedly rooting for everything to go wrong there, and not a few conservatives in the public arena are straining to conjure an Iranian victory in their black-pilled deliriums. Many claim they “have no idea” what we are doing there — can it be that hard? — or else they are rabidly exercised over our alliance with Israel in the operation. You know how that goes. Cue Tucker. He’ll explain.
The truth is we are pounding these savage Shia clerics and their Revolutionary Guard myrmidons to the garden of eternal bliss where the seventy-two virgins wait. Whatever remains of Iran’s legit government is bargaining under cover for an off-ramp now. Pakistan mediates. The parties sit in different rooms and pass notes through the mediators in a third room. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi pretends that he will not negotiate with Mr. Trump’s envoys, Witkoff and Kushner, both Jews, the horror! But that’s sheer fakery.
To avoid humiliation in the process, Iran is still lobbing missiles and drones around the Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and they will probably keep doing that until the very moment of capitulation. Anyway, in less than a week, Mr. Trump turns the lights off all over Iran, and then they are back in the twelfth century. . . no command communication, no juice for anything, no money, no food, no water, no nothing . . . and a population getting dangerously desperate to make it all go away. . . to return to some dim memory of what normal life once was in an Iran not ruled by psychotic death cultists.

“America steps back, and the Alliance starts to wobble ..”

• The Great Illusion of NATO is Fading Fast (Trenin)

One of the more idealistic ambitions of the last Soviet leadership was the simultaneous dissolution of both Cold War blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Only half of that vision came to pass. The Warsaw Pact disappeared in the spring of 1991. NATO didn’t. Instead, it endured and expanded. Over the following decades, the alliance not only survived but grew from 16 to 32 members. It took part in military campaigns in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya, and steadily extended its reach. After the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, back in 2022, NATO expanded further, incorporating Finland and Sweden, while consolidating itself more firmly on an anti-Russian footing than at any time since the Cold War.

For the first time in its history, Russia found itself facing a unified military alliance stretching across Europe and North America. The idea of a “collective West” opposing Moscow ceased to be rhetorical and became a strategic reality. Yet by the mid-2020s, cracks had begun to appear. The return of Donald Trump to the White House marked a shift not in America’s commitment to NATO, but in how that commitment was defined. Trump has abandoned the familiar model of the US as a paternal, often indulgent leader of the alliance. In its place, he presented America as a demanding hegemon, insisting that its allies bear a far greater share of the burden.
Initially, European capitals reacted with unease. For decades, they had relied on Washington to shoulder the lion’s share of NATO’s costs. Yet they have adjusted. Military spending targets rose, even toward Trump’s proposed 5% of GDP. But the real shift went deeper than budgets. Under Trump, Washington’s strategic focus moved decisively away from Europe and toward China. While previous administrations had sought to integrate Beijing into global governance structures, Trump pursued confrontation, both economic and geopolitical. In his second term, containing China has become the central pillar of US foreign policy.
This inevitably required a redistribution of resources. The latest US National Defense Strategy made the logic explicit: Western Europe, with its combined economic and demographic weight, was capable of managing the Russian challenge on its own. America would remain within NATO, but its role would change. It would step back from the front line and expect Europeans to step forward. This recalibration was most visible in Ukraine. Trump, wary of escalation and unconvinced of Ukraine’s strategic value, reduced US involvement without ending support altogether. He shifted the financial and military burden increasingly onto Europe and began engaging Moscow directly, often without consulting European allies.
For Western European elites, this was deeply unsettling. They had invested heavily, politically and economically, in the Ukraine conflict. For some, it had even become a tool for consolidating the European Union and driving militarization as a means of economic stimulus. Then came a further shock. Trump’s remarks on Greenland and Canada in which he questioned the sovereignty of longstanding NATO members struck at the alliance’s core assumptions. Whether or not such ambitions were realistic was beside the point. What mattered was that the leader of NATO had publicly cast doubt on the territorial integrity of its own allies. This was unprecedented.
Taken together, these developments called into question NATO’s foundational principle: collective defense. For decades, Article 5 had been treated as an ironclad guarantee, underpinned by American nuclear power. Yet in reality, that guarantee had always contained ambiguity. When the treaty was ratified, the US Senate ensured that Washington wouldn’t be automatically committed to war.

“.. if you want ICE to take the mask off, the threat level has to decrease. It’s up 8000 percent increase in threats against ICE officers..”

• Tom Homan Bulldozed Jake Tapper’s DHS Funding Narrative (Matt Margolis)

Border Czar Tom Homan hit the Sunday shows this weekend, and the liberal networks didn’t know what hit them. Over at CNN, he spent the segment repeatedly bulldozing Jake Tapper, and it was awesome. Homan wasn’t there to take any crap, and he repeatedly hammered the same indisputable point to Tapper: fund the Department of Homeland Security, and the problems go away.

For example, Tapper asked why, if the administration had the power to move money around to pay TSA agents without Congress, it took 41 days to act. This is a point many Democrats have been making lately, and Homan crushed it. He responded by broadening the issue beyond TSA, and that TSA pay does not address the larger DHS funding problem. “You’ve got the Coast Guard. You’ve got CISA. You’ve got the men and women of Secret Service. You’ve got a lot of people working at the Department of Homeland Security that isn’t getting paid,” he said. He argued the entire department should be funded because the country is facing a “heightened threat posture.”

Jake Tapper PRESSED Tom Homan on what ICE agents at airports have actually accomplished.

The Border Czar FIRED BACK with a series of truth bombs about ICE that CNN’s audience wasn’t ready for.

TAPPER: “What have ICE agents at airports been doing? What have they actually… pic.twitter.com/7JIiTn2mws
— Overton (@overton_news) March 29, 2026

The most effective part of Homan’s response was how he turned Tapper’s question back on Congress. He said he did not pretend to be an appropriations expert, but he was clear about the political bottom line. “I’m just glad that President Trump is able to pay the TSA agents. At least that’s a start,” Homan said. “But, again, there’s a lot more, many more, thousands more, tens of thousands more DHS employees who are not being paid that need to be paid.”
Tapper then tried (and failed) to hit Homan on the ICE deployment to airports, asking whether the agents would leave once TSA workers were paid. Homan refused to give him the answer he seemed to want. “We will see,” he said. He explained that the deployment depends on how many TSA workers return, how many have quit, and what each airport needs. He said he was working with TSA and ICE leadership to figure that out, while praising ICE for “plugging those holes” and helping keep airports secure.
When Tapper cited the TSA union’s criticism that ICE replacements were like “a teaspoon of cough syrup” for a patient with pneumonia, Homan fired back that the wait times had already gone down. He said he had seen improvements in Houston and that additional agents were being sent to Baltimore. “Every place we send ICE officers, the lines have decreased,” he said. “They need to decrease more.” Homan also pushed back hard on the idea that ICE was overstepping its role at airports. He said ICE officers were checking IDs and covering exits so TSA screeners could focus on the machines. “We’re doing the job TSA is asking us to do, so their officers can get back to main screening,” he said.
Tapper then moved to the DHS deal and asked why President Donald Trump would oppose a deal that Senate Republicans said was good. Homan did not budge. He said Trump wanted the entire DHS funded and open, and he accused Democrats of trying to change ICE tactics and force the agency to arrest fewer people. “They’re holding the department hostage because they don’t like what ICE is doing,” Homan said. “If they don’t like what ICE is doing, then change the law. That’s your job.” When Tapper brought up warrant changes, mask use, alleged mistaken detentions, and broader criticism of ICE, Homan insisted that the laws had not changed.
“Let’s talk about the masks. You don’t see ICE wearing masks inside the airports because they’re not on the street arresting criminals. You have got the agitators who cross the line and threaten ICE agents,” he said. “The same people in the Democratic Congress that want ICE to take off the mask are the same people who say ICE is going to shoot people inside airports. I mean, they can’t have it both ways. So, if you want ICE to take the mask off, the threat level has to decrease. It’s up 8000 percent increase in threats against ICE officers, and that’s because of a lot of the rhetoric coming from the Hill. Stop calling ICE Nazis and racists. Stop saying they’re going to shoot people inside airports. That’s going to drive the threat level down, and we can talk about masks.”

Tom Homan educates Jake Tapper on one of the reasons ICE needs to wear masks — constant incendiary rhetoric from Democrats in DC:

"The same people in the Democratic Congress that want ICE to take off the masks, are the same people who say ICE is going to shoot people inside… pic.twitter.com/eQJaV1JKMZ
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) March 29, 2026

Apollo Global Management manages a meager $900 billion in assets…

• This Trillion-Dollar Firm Wants Out of Mamdani’s NYC (Stephen Green)

As New York City’s filthy commie mayor struggles to fill a $5.4 billion budget gap with a massive soak-the-rich-then-soak-them-some-more tax hike, trillion-dollar asset management fund Apollo Global Management says it will open a secondary headquarters in Florida or Texas. “Apollo expects most of its future hiring to be in the second hub rather than Manhattan,” according to the New York Post, surprising literally no one.] “The reality is that you can’t propose budget after budget that vilifies employees and then be surprised when they decide to go somewhere else,” Partnership for New York City CEO Steve Fulop told the paper.

“New York City can’t tax people in sane states,” Your Friendly Neighborhood VodkaPundit sagely added while adding an extra dash of schadenfreude to his Bloody Mary. You know what happens after a huge firm like Apollo builds a second headquarters in a low-tax, liberty-loving state like Florida or Texas, right? Sooner or later, they shrink operations at the old HQ before finally boarding the windows and padlocking the doors. “TAX THIS!” to put it in language New Yorkers understand and enjoy. Before we get deeper into this, I’d like to apologize for the completely over-the-top hyperbole in the lead and in the headline. As it turns out, Apollo Global Management is nothing like a “trillion-dollar firm.” In fact, Apollo manages a meager $900 billion in assets, which is practically nothing, and certainly not even close enough to a trillion dollars for Mamdani and his commie cronies to ever miss it.
On the other hand, $900 billion here, $900 billion there, and pretty soon you’re pining for the days of $5.4 billion deficits. So about that deficit. NYC has an annual budget of about $127 billion, and chronic deficits of $4-6 billion. But that’s nothing for the city’s “Democratic Socialist” mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who wants to throw additional billions of Other People’s Money at public education (already some of the most expensive in the world, and with terrible results), legal services for illegals fighting deportation, city-run grocery stores, Homeless Inc., free buses, and more. NYC lavishes its 8.5 million people (and shrinking) with $127 billion in spending, not including whatever Albany contributes with state spending. That’s just shy of $15,000 per person in city spending alone, but I wonder if you’ll ever meet a New Yorker who feels like they get anything close to $15,000 in services.
The city’s budget is slightly more than the entire state of Florida ($117.4 billion) spends on the state’s 23.5 million people (and growing). Florida’s budget includes $16.75 billion in reserves and $250 million for debt reduction. But let’s look at Miami, Florida’s largest city, where the local government spends just $3,600 per denizen — or roughly a quarter of NYC’s largess. Yet the Post notes that Mamdani views his city’s deficit as “a crisis that can only be fixed with more taxes to build revenue.”
“Florida has already lured heavyweights like Citadel and Elliott Management,” the Post reminds readers, while “Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are hunkering down in Texas.” Wealthy individuals and trillion-dollar firms (sorry, I did it again!) like Apollo either have left New York or are eyeing the exits. And Mamdani is just getting started.

“If he were a king, Senate Democrats would be powerless because if Trump were a king, or acting like one, he’d just be able to do it.”

• Scott Jennings Destroyed the ‘No Kings’ Rallies, CNN Wasn’t Happy (Margolis)

The “No Kings” rallies over the weekend were such a joke, and CNN’s Scott Jennings totally exposed them for what they really are on Sunday’s State of the Union. What happened was that CNN political commentator Ashley Allison argued that the weekend’s protests represented a growing resistance movement — one that had been slow to materialize after the 2024 election but was now picking up steam. She pointed to the crowds, the celebrity appearances, Bruce Springsteen and Jane Fonda lending their star power to the cause. “When you have millions of people peacefully go out, rock stars, Bruce Springsteen, Jane Fonda, all these folks coming out and saying, we don’t like it either, we’re not in isolation, it shows a unifying force that could be powerful,” she said. Snooze…

Anyway, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) was even more enthusiastic, boasting about how he attended six rallies over the weekend like it was a badge of honor or something. That’s when Jennings pounced.”That’s a lot of free speech for a country with a king,” he said. Subramanyam tried to brush it off, inviting Jennings to join them next time and offering to get him a T-shirt. But Jennings didn’t let up.”That’s a lot of free speech for a country with a king,” he said again.There’s a reason that Subramanyam tried to ignore that statement.
The entire premise of the “No Kings” movement — that America is somehow living under a monarchy — looks stupid when thousands of people can freely march through major cities with zero consequence on a random Saturday. I would also add that Trump really wants the SAVE America to pass, but Democrats are blocking it in the Senate. If he were a king, Senate Democrats would be powerless because if Trump were a king, or acting like one, he’d just be able to do it. Nevertheless, Subramanyam ignored Jennings and pressed on, saying the rallies showed genuine grassroots energy and that he’d even met a Republican attendee who said the Iran situation would keep him from ever voting Republican again — which I guarantee never happened.
But I digress. The next great moment came when Jennings exposed what the No Kings rallies were really about. “These No Kings rallies actually look pretty representative to me of the Democratic coalition,” he said. “I saw people flying the hammer and sickle in New York City. I saw Hezbollah flags. I saw Hamas flags. I saw Palestinian flags. I saw trans signs. I see weirdo liberal boomers out there. This is pretty representative of the Democratic coalition. And that’s who funds it as well, by the way.” Allison pushed back immediately, insisting that the fringe elements Jennings mentioned didn’t represent what the movement stood for. But Jennings wasn’t buying the “that’s not who we are” defense.”You like hammer and sickle? You like hammer and sickle flags?” he shot back as the table erupted. “They had a bunch of them. They come from somewhere,” he added. They sure did, no matter how uncomfortable that makes the left.

Some VERY, VERY important facts !

A grasp of these essentials should reduce racism https://t.co/NkdomYX9ku
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) March 29, 2026

https://twitter.com/NatCy891/status/2038711644625293539?s=20 https://twitter.com/CRRJA5/status/2038097858428080577?s=20

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