Claude Monet Water lillies 1914 – 1917
Victor Davis Hanson says we’re watching a modern-day French Revolution play out as socialists hijack the Democratic Party.
— Overton (@overton_news) July 2, 2026
Once you see it, the similarities are impossible to ignore.
HANSON: “We’re watching a modern-day French Revolutionary-like takeover of the Democratic… pic.twitter.com/giicypyYGW
While the world was watching bombs fall on Iran,
— Steven Eugene Kuhn (@StevenEKuhn) July 2, 2026
Trump was attempting the biggest financial heist in 100 years. https://t.co/LBaMivJrza
2 July 2026#Iran #RussiaChina #IStand @ShawnRyan762 @CryptoRichYD @the_irascible @RealAlexJones pic.twitter.com/IBiCOtXKAk
US golf courses use 531 billion gallons of water per year. That’s down from 759 billion gallons per year in 2005 and is 0.5% of total annual water withdrawals in this country. And somehow, the country manages to not look like the Sahara Desert.
— Rod D. Martin (@RodDMartin) July 2, 2026
Meanwhile, data centers – the… pic.twitter.com/BxdtHv0S6W
I very much like she includes Dr. King as someone who fought for liberty in America.,
• 250 Years of Fighting for Liberty (Ashley McCully)
The pursuit of freedom has inspired every step of America’s journey and, as we all reflect on what the last 250 years have produced, it is imperative that we view our history through the lens of liberty. America’s story is vastly different from other countries because our definition of freedom is vastly different. From individual colonies to our 47th president, the United States is founded on the idea that our rights come from God, not government. For more than three centuries, we have fought to preserve this belief, and if we want to keep it, the fight will continue for at least another three.Read more …
Consider the colonists. They endured filthy, deadly conditions to cross the Atlantic to find freedom. Monarchies consolidated power and exercised it tyrannically, limiting how people could and could not worship God, imprisoning, beating, or fining anyone who did not comply. Rigid European class structure mandated that anyone born in poverty would die in poverty because there was no reason the upper crust should tolerate individualism. These people finally broke free of the Crown only to be hounded and taxed an ocean away, so they fought back with the greatest breakup letter of all time.“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”
—The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776It’s straightforward: our rights come from God, and men form a government to protect those rights, not to issue or infringe upon them. After winning the Revolutionary War, America’s quest for freedom was only beginning. Yes, we were no longer under the jurisdiction of the Crown, but we did have to secure our sovereignty on the world stage. We wanted to regroup economically, so we opted to stay out of the British-French trade squabble, but neutrality soon became impossible. The British, for all intents and purposes, kidnapped as many as 9,000 American sailors, claiming they were British deserters and forcing our ships into their ports, requiring us to pay their duty tax. Not even 30 years after we threw off the yoke of tyranny, they were after us again, so we fought back in the War of 1812.
“There shall be a firm and universal Peace between His Britannic Majesty and the United States, and between their respective Countries, Territories, Cities, Towns, and People of every degree without exception of places or persons. All hostilities both by sea and land shall cease as soon as this Treaty shall have been ratified by both parties as hereinafter mentioned.”
—Treaty of Ghent, December 24, 1814Finally free to sit at the grown-up table in world affairs, the United States set out to make its fortune, and it did, on the backs of slaves. Chattel slavery robbed men and women who were created in the image of God—the same God who supposedly endowed all of His creation with inalienable rights outlined in the Declaration of Independence — of their freedoms and dignities. The North and the South both willingly engaged in the slave economy, but enough people understood how egregious and contradictory the practice was and fought back.
“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free”
—Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863It would be more than two years before the Civil War came to an end and the last remaining slaves in Galveston, Texas, were notified of their freedom. We added the 13th Amendment to our Constitution, finally and forever abolishing slavery in America. We added the 14th Amendment to afford those born into slavery in America the status of citizens. The 15th Amendment granted citizens the right to vote regardless of the color of their skin.
Women were the unsung heroes of the American abolitionist movement and, once they saw freedom secured for black people, they continued to cast off their own chains. Fighting against assumptions of intellectual ineptitude and the idea that women were far too busy in the home to cast well-informed votes, women pushed themselves across the finish line in 1920 with the 19th Amendment, giving them the right to vote.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice. He has taken from her all right in property, even to wages she earns…
—The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, Seneca Falls Convention, July 20, 1848Close readers will pick up the thread of freedom shifting ever-so-slightly from rights in life to rights in politics. It is this shift, wherein the government begins to issue rights to participate, that we must pause and reflect, especially when it comes to questioning the next 300 years of freedom in America.
Regardless of laws declaring a person’s right to vote, pervasive Jim Crow laws were unofficial statutes designed to keep black people down. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. picked up the thread and moved it back toward rights in life. The Civil Rights Movement in America reminded us that God does not only care about votes, but about how His children are treated. We watched growing numbers of citizens link arms and peacefully march across bridges, endure dog attacks and fire hose boundaries, sit in chairs they were supposedly not good enough to sit in, and people fought back.
“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1964Today we are still fighting for freedom, at home and abroad. Brave men and women wearing the cloth of a sometimes-grateful nation work to protect us from terrorists who seek to kill us for no reason other than that we are not one of them. God-fearing patriots stand up every day for the unborn and their right to be born. Good guys with guns have to remind politicians and special interest groups that the right to keep and bear arms is not about hunting. As AI increases and privacy is decreasing, it is up to us to come together and protect that which no one has a right to: intrusion of personal information and space.
The definition of freedom has never changed; it has always come from God and will forever need to be protected against government. Our lives, though, have changed substantially, and we are facing new threats to our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. We have a constitutional republic, if we can keep it—if we want to keep it. No one said this road would be easy, but we all know in the core of our selves that freedom is worth its price.
The world was ready for it.
• US At 250: Why America Has Been So Successful And Can It Continue (ZH)
So what has caused this incredible success?Read more …
The first reason, and one of the most critical historically, has been the US’ political and institutional stability. Clearly, there have been moments of intense turmoil, most notably with the Civil War in the 1860s. Its historical path also should not be over-romanticised, with US territorial expansion during the 19th century having many similarities to that of the Old World colonial empires. Nonetheless, the US is incredibly rare in that its political system is recognizably the same over the last 200 years. This relative stability and early development of property rights provided a fertile environment for long-term investments, which in turn has aided economic growth over the centuries.The second reason is its geographic advantages. The US possesses vast arable land, navigable rivers, large coastlines, and access to two oceans. It therefore found itself more insulated from the destructive effects of the world wars, with productive capacity not impacted in the same way. Moreover, the country borders Mexico and Canada, who in both population and GDP terms are much smaller than the United States, meaning it didn’t face the security risks that many European powers faced over the 19th and early-20th centuries.
The third reason has been its abundance of energy resources, particularly relative to Europe. In large part a corollary of its geographic strengths, this energy abundance has given the US several advantages. First of all, lowering costs for households and industry, which has helped the economy be more resilient against geopolitical shocks. Moreover, with the US becoming a net energy exporter in recent years, it also strengthens the external position.
The fourth reason for the US’ relative success was that its main competitors in Europe were deeply affected by the world wars and wider political turmoil. Their productive and financial capacity was severely degraded, with the destruction causing huge loss of life as well. Even among those who survived, many scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs left for the US in the first half of the 20th century. Whilst not a US “success” as such, this meant that on a relative basis, the US’ divergence widened considerably. Indeed, in the first half of the 20th century, the US economy grew by 5.7 times, Germany by 3.4 times, the UK by 2.0 times, and France by 1.8 times.
The fifth reason for the US’ outperformance is scale. It has a large domestic market of over 300m people, with high average incomes, a common language, and low internal barriers to trade. This has given firms the ability to reach a large-scale domestically before expanding abroad. Indeed, it is notable that 8 of the world’s 10 largest firms are based in the US, whereas none are in Europe.
The sixth reason is the structural advantage of the US Dollar, which remains dominant in global trade and FX reserves. This dollar demand matters because it lowers borrowing costs and raises demand for US Treasuries. In turn, it leaves the US with an exceptional capacity to run bigger fiscal and external deficits without facing a funding crisis, and expands the geopolitical leverage that the US possesses. This has been dubbed the “exorbitant privilege”, and has been a major advantage in recent decades.
The seventh reason is financial depth. The US has a large banking system, but also a wide range of non-bank financing, which means startups have access to other sources of capital. In fact, in the decade from 2013 to 2023, annual venture capital financing was 0.7% of GDP in the US, compared to just 0.2% in the EU. This financial depth is important because innovative firms can often be loss-making for lengthy periods, so countries with bigger pools of patient risk capital are better placed to commercialise new technologies.
The eighth reason is its self-compounding advantages in education and research. The US has many of the world’s strongest research universities, including 7 of the top 10 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2026. Moreover, this research also has an economic angle, as scientific discoveries feed into startups, workforce training and industrial scale-ups. In turn, this becomes self compounding, because top global talent is attracted to the US, and ensures it remains at the forefront of new sectors such as artificial intelligence.
The ninth reason is its pro-business architecture, including a greater tolerance of business failure than many European systems. For instance, Chapter 11 reorganisation is designed to preserve and restructure viable firms rather than liquidate them. This more positive approach to business failure ties into the empirical literature, which suggests that more debtor-friendly and efficient insolvency frameworks are associated with greater entrepreneurship and innovation.
The tenth reason is adaptability. The cultural acceptance of failure and capacity to reinvent itself have boosted US ability to adapt to the changing world. This has allowed it to navigate repeat boom-and-bust cycles, as well swings of the policy pendulum – between openness and isolationism, between protectionism and free trade – without threatening overall the institutional stability we highlighted above. And while capitalism has been a key underlying driving force, it is pragmatism rather than ideology that have driven continued success over time.
It is also important to note that these advantages do not play out individually, but are mutually reinforcing, with the interaction between them allowing the US to benefit from network and externality effects that few if any countries can match.
He talks like it’s his annniversary.
“America, in Mamdani’s view, is a sad place where heartless, racist, xenophobic plutocrats rule the roost ..”
• Mamdani Gives 250th Anniversary Speech (Robert Spencer)
New York City’s Communist Twelver Shi’ite Mayor Zohran Mamdani has bestowed upon a waiting world his speech commemorating America’s 250th anniversary, and it is just as small, petty, grievance-laden, fantasy-based, and angry as you’d expect a speech from a man who hates America to be.Read more …
The visual effect was even worse, as Mamdani delivered the speech while seated at a desk that seemed to be turned the wrong way around, while surrounded by a social studies-book array of glum-looking, unsmiling, unhappy people, all black and brown and hijabed and whatnot and all forlornly holding small flags of the country their mayor despises, with a single grim-faced white guy standing in the back (as is his place). But even if one didn’t avail oneself of the joys of watching Mamdani, who was just as grim as his prop companions, what the young Commie mayor said was bad enough.
Communist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who just came to this country, chose to become an American, is deciding he is the foremost authority to tell Americans what it means to be American.
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 3, 2026
He has the AUDACITY, on America's 250th birthday, to call our great nation "an arena of… pic.twitter.com/sayf6IDu90America, in Mamdani’s view, is a sad place where heartless, racist, xenophobic plutocrats rule the roost and oppress the rest of us to the degree that you wonder why anyone from elsewhere would want to immigrate in the first place. Mamdani does hold out some hope in the end, saying that the foes of these cruel tyrants can throw off their yoke and remake this unhappy land in their own image. And that, of course, is just what Mamdani has set out to do.
Mamdani began by painting a verbal picture of the “land, lush and teeming with life” to which newcomers arrived, only to encounter “men waiting at the docks to take them into bondage” and “tenements rife with squalor.” As you’d expect, he claimed that the Declaration of Independence established “the ideals our nation still strives to fulfill,” with no indication of how marvelously it has fulfilled them already, or how it has inspired the world in doing so.
The mayor goes on to fill in all the expected blanks, telling the story of how a freed slave made a new life for himself, thereby showing America to be “a place each of us has the power to make.” Immigrants poured into America, not yet seeing “the nativism they would face — the jobs they would be refused, the landlords who would not rent to them, and the abject labor and living conditions they would withstand.” Still, they kept coming.
Mamdani goes on to mock and misrepresent the idea of American exceptionalism, and here he begins to claim that “we are told” a series of things that few people, if any, have ever been told. “We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else.” On the contrary, in less fractious days, we were told that we were “richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else,” because we were a uniquely just society in which anyone could make something of himself.
Mamdani, however, couldn’t possibly admit that without betraying his Marxist ideas, which tell him that America is inherently oppressive, and his Islamic beliefs, which tell him that only a Sharia society is truly just. And so instead, he claims that “the powerful” view America as “an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.”
This is pure leftist rage fantasy. Who ever says any of that? Can Mamdani produce even one “powerful” person who says even one of those things? Donald Trump doesn’t (contrary to leftist claims). Elon Musk doesn’t. Mamdani would be hard pressed to substantiate his smear here, and he prudently refrains from naming any names as he continues to lambaste these imaginary capitalists: “How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal.”
Apparently hoping you won’t notice how divisive his hateful speech really is, he goes on to slam his fantasy foes for supposedly fostering “division.” This apparently involves wanting sensible immigration controls, so that the country isn’t overwhelmed with criminals, terrorists, and people who do nothing but put an added burden upon American citizens: “And yet today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted — but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum.” Persecutes, i.e., by not letting them in and paying for their every need.
Mamdani then goes on to offer a frankly Marxist vision: “We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world — one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more.” By all means, the wealth this trillionaire has earned must be confiscated! “We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans.”
We’ve read about this Andy Burnham guy as a leader for 2+ weeks now, but he hasn’t shown his face.
What’s wrong with him? Something must be.
• UK Labour Party Proves Why America Was Right to Ditch Parliament (Queen)
As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our last day as colonists on Friday, the UK is giving us a huge reason to be glad that we got out from under the crown and the parliamentary system. The current leadership turnover in the Labour Party makes our republic look more sensible than ever. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is stepping down as leader of the Labour Party — and as prime minister along with it — and the frontrunner to replace him is newly minted Member of Parliament Andy Burnham. My friend and colleague Stephen Green pointed out that Burnham stands to drag Labour further to the left and take the UK along with him.Read more …
The trouble is that Burnham has been awfully quiet on policy. As Michael Gove and Madeleine Grant put it on The Spectator’s Quite Right! podcast, Burnham acts like he can lead a major political party on vibes alone. Charles Moore writes at The Spectator: “The British constitution is an admirably flexible thing, so I would not claim that Andy Burnham’s leadership campaign, and the coverage thereof, is unconstitutional, but it is certainly unseemly. Why did a BBC helicopter follow his train from Manchester to London (which arrived, of course, late) as if he were Lenin heading for the Finland Station? And why was he allowed to pre-empt his result with a mass selfie with about 200 of his supporting MPs in Westminster Hall?He is merely a new Member of Parliament, until he isn’t. Turning the place into his stage set is a way of intimidating possible challengers. If he is challenged, he will surely still become leader, but the point of a challenge is to force him to say what he means to do. So far, no one – not even, one suspects, Andy Burnham – knows what Andy Burnham stands for.” Moore suggests that Burnham might abandon the UK’s horrific net zero climate policy. The biggest blowback to that might happen at home; Burnham’s wife is on the board of an NGO and an EV company executive who expresses a “passion for sustainability and the green economy” and for “championing the fair and accessible transition to electric vehicle ownership.”
In a Spectator column, Grant likens Burnham’s campaign launch to the sickly sweetness of Tony Blair’s campaign. The optimism of this leadership challenge is at odds with the way many Britons feel about the state of their nation. “His promise of ‘a new era of possibility’ was a lot of style – mingled with some inevitable Burnhamite sentimentalism: ‘hope in every heart and good growth in every postcode,’” she writes. “It made me long for a gun in every hand and a cyanide capsule in every drawer.” Ross Clark has plenty of daggers for Burnham in a Spectator column. He sees Burnham as a different sort of throwback.
“Whoever thought of putting him in a grey outfit against the backdrop of a grey door for [Monday] morning’s speech in Manchester certainly wasn’t thinking of injecting a bit of colour into national life,” he writes. “It was like watching Harold Wilson: the last PM before colour TV was introduced to Britain.” Clark also has his doubts that Burnham’s big vision will get many people excited (although I wouldn’t mind something like this in the U.S.):
Burnham’s big mission for the country – to devolve power to the regions and localities – also wasn’t exactly calculated to set pulses racing. Rightly or wrongly, few things can be relied upon to provoke a yawn in British life than local government. Just look at the turnout in local elections and the increasing tendency for the electorate to use them as little more than a referendum on national government. It was, after all, the local elections which finally did for Keir Starmer and put Burnham in the position he is now.
If Burnham can really make the British public excited about local government, he will have achieved something genuinely impressive, but I would say he has an uphill task.
Quantum computing is not a reality, despite what the article suggests.
Which is good, because we’re nowhere near ready.
“.. whoever gets there first could lock in “irreversible strategic superiority.. ”
• The AI-Quantum Race Is About Who Governs the Future (Jeff Dornik)
President Donald Trump’s June 22, 2026, executive orders on quantum computing should be understood for what they are: not a shiny technology announcement, not a photo-op for the federal innovation class, and not another soothing Washington press release telling us that “America remains competitive,” which is usually government-speak for “we found the cliff and are now forming a task force to admire it.”Read more …
Executive Order 14413 directs the federal government to accelerate quantum innovation, commercialization, deployment, manufacturing, and national-security applications, while Executive Order 14412 warns that large-scale quantum computers in adversarial hands will threaten widely used cryptographic systems and enable hostile actors to collect encrypted American data now and decrypt it later. The White House’s companion post-quantum cryptography effort requires federal agencies to prioritize migration of vulnerable cryptographic systems with the objective of mitigating quantum risk by December 31, 2030.That is the right level of urgency, because quantum computing is not merely faster computing, and artificial intelligence is not merely better software. AI is already becoming the decision layer of the digital world, shaping what people see, how companies operate, how banks assess risk, how governments investigate threats, how militaries plan, and how institutions increasingly outsource judgment to machines that speak with the confidence of a consultant who has never once been interrupted by reality. Quantum computing, once mature enough for practical cryptographic and scientific use, becomes an amplifier for problems that classical computers cannot solve at a useful scale.
Put them together, AI as the mind and quantum as the accelerator, and the winner does not simply build a better tool, but actually builds the operating system for global power.The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission has already noted that nations that integrate quantum with AI-driven research platforms will compound their advantages exponentially, and that the country achieving quantum supremacy in quantum computing and AI will gain disproportionate and likely enduring advantages in intelligence collection, encryption, precision targeting, materials science, energy, medicine, and the digital economy.
The Commission also warned that whoever gets there first could lock in “irreversible strategic superiority,” especially because current global infrastructure remains exposed to attacks on public-key encryption. That is why this is an all-or-nothing race. America is not competing against a friendly research consortium at a science fair where everyone claps politely and shares their grant proposals over room-temperature coffee. We are competing against the Chinese Communist Party, a regime that does not have our Constitution, our courts, our churches, our independent press, our civil society, our due process traditions, our free-speech protections, or our national gift for holding seven hearings before deciding whether a light switch is racist.
China can centralize resources, compel cooperation, absorb civilian research into state priorities, hide its most sensitive work, and deploy technologies against its own people without any meaningful legal restraint from the governed. Human Rights Watch reports that under Xi Jinping, there is no independent civil society in China and no freedom of expression, association, assembly, or religion, while critics and human rights defenders are persecuted.
The technological edge is narrowing because China has made quantum a state priority and is building the infrastructure to match. CSIS reports that China’s superconducting, photonic, trapped-ion, and neutral-atom quantum computing efforts are moving from laboratory prototypes toward commercial use, with Chinese systems including Zuchongzhi, Origin Wukong, and Tianyan-504 supported by universities, research centers, state-linked firms, and companies such as China Telecom Quantum Group and Origin Quantum. The Special Competitive Studies Project has also noted that China has made quantum computing a strategic priority since the 14th Five-Year Plan, with government funding showing China’s strategic prioritization of quantum technology at a projected $15 billion compared to $4 billion in the United States.
Never enough money for never enough electricity (power).
“Virginia’s “Digital Gateway” project, a mega site roughly twice the size of New York’s Central Park with city-sized power needs.”
Zero Hedge take from almost a year ago.
• World’s Largest Data Center Project On Verge Of Collapse (ZH)
Up until now, when it comes to real estate, Blackstone was best known in recent years for dumping many of its trophy office properties – which in the aftermath of work from home never recovered their projected cash flow potential – at a huge discount. Now, it may be pulling a page from its old, pre-Lehman playbook by calling the top in yet another commercial real estate segment: data centers.Read more …
Two days ago we reported that Blackstone was selling its stakes in a trio of data centers across Northern Virginia for $3.5 billion, cashing out of part of a bet it made less than three years ago. According to Bloomberg, Digital Realty Trust would pay $1.2 billion of cash and offer $2.3 billion of its shares (which the PE giant has largely cashed in by now) to Blackstone funds; in exchange, the data center company will acquire Blackstone’s 80% interest in two 96-megawatt data centers in Manassas, Virginia, and a 50% interest in a 96-megawatt center in nearby Sterling.We said that “the question is why did Blackstone decide to pull the cord now, just as fresh doubts are creeping whether the Mag 7s will continue funding the AI expansion with virtually unlimited capex.” Two days later we have an answer. The digital ink is barely dry on its Virginia data center sales, and we learn that Blackstone’s QTS (QTS Realty Trust) is again quietly fading its AI exposure by walking away from plans to build its portion (which at this point is the only portion left after its partner already pulled out days ago) of a 2,100-acre data center campus in Virginia – also known as Prince William Digital Gateway which would house as many as 37 data-center buildings – handing a win to residents who fought for years to topple the project.
QTS’s proposed facility at 9400 Godwin Drive in Manassas
The data center developer had planned to transform more than 800 acres in Northern Virginia’s Prince William County, a project that would have spanned 22 million square feet, making it the largest data center campus in the world. Located on the edge of an historic Civil War battlefield and on what used to be land protected from development, the project ignited strong pushback from homeowners and has been stalled by lawsuits.As part of Wall Street’s broader push into data centers, investment has poured into Northern Virginia, which is considered the country’s largest data center market, and is better known as “Data Center Alley”. But in a strategic U-turn, in recent days QTS executives decided that it isn’t worth pressing forward in court, the Bloomberg sources said. The firm’s attorneys plan to inform the court of their decision as soon as this week, the people said, asking not to be named discussing non-public information. QTS’s rapid growth has made it a poster child of how private equity has fueled the data center industry’s breakneck expansion. Those ambitions are colliding with public anxiety over strains to electricity grids and home prices from AI data centers.
The retreat may be the final blow to Virginia’s “Digital Gateway” project, a mega site roughly twice the size of New York’s Central Park with city-sized power needs. The initiative was supposed to bring in some $100 billion in spending and create one of the world’s largest technology corridors. Not any more. The project had sparked contentious, drawn-out public hearings. A clerical blunder related to a key zoning meeting created setbacks for developers. Already, Brookfield-backed Compass Datacenters, which was supposed to build on more than 800 acres at the site, had pulled out in May. The U-turns by both firms, Bloomberg writes, amount to one of the most dramatic retreats by developers from a data center project.
It’s a reminder of how tech firms’ race for the computing infrastructure to support AI advances is increasingly facing the same bottlenecks, from power shortages to supply crunches, we have been warning about for the past two years and which Citadel Securities warned about just yesterday. Organized opposition is mounting, forcing firms and developers to be more deliberate about where they choose to build. This is precisely what we warned one year ago would happen as more grassroots organizations pushed back against the relentless data center rollout. At least we haven’t gotten to the arson stage (yet).
between exploding electricity bills and lack of jobs for grads, a new luddite revolution is coming – they will be burning down data centers within a year
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 25, 2025
Paint me skeptical. I can take missing 1 or 2 warnings, maybe even 5. But 102?
“The Homeland Security Department report lists communications failures and security lapses that led up to the gunman opening fire from a rooftop.”
• Secret Service Missed 102 Warnings Before Trump Assassination Attempt (ET)
The U.S. Secret Service missed multiple opportunities to detect, prevent, and disrupt the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024, including missing more than 102 radio transmissions warning of a suspicious person, a Department of Homeland Security report concluded. The report, released on July 2 by the department’s Office of Inspector General, chronicles a series of communication failures, inadequate planning, limited intelligence sharing, and security lapses that combined to create the conditions that allowed gunman Thomas Crooks to open fire from the roof of a nearby building during a July 13, 2024, campaign rally in Butler. Crooks was fatally shot by a Secret Service agent.Read more …
Among the report’s most significant findings was that Secret Service members did not receive 102 radio transmissions “that local law enforcement officers in a separate communications room received concerning an increasingly intense search for a suspicious person. Instead, we found that the Secret Service received only five phone calls and three text messages about Crooks. As a result, Secret Service members did not alert President Trump’s protective detail about concerns of a suspicious person.” The Secret Service would have delayed Trump’s speech or removed him from the stage had they been aware of the search for Crooks, the report stated.The report also said the Secret Service failed to detect a drone that Crooks flew over the rally site about two hours before the shooting. Investigators said the agency’s counter-drone system was inoperable because of a malfunction, and the lone operator assigned to the event lacked sufficient training to repair the equipment. The system remained offline while Crooks flew the drone for nearly nine minutes, allowing him to survey both the stage and the rooftop he later used to carry out the attack.
The report also found serious communication breakdowns between the Secret Service and local law enforcement. The Secret Service never received three radio reports from law enforcement that Crooks had climbed onto a roof with a rifle. The inspector general also found that classified intelligence concerning a long-range threat to Trump was not shared with the Pittsburgh field office or agents responsible for planning security at the rally. The report said broader dissemination of that intelligence likely would have resulted in additional security personnel being assigned to the event.
Investigators further concluded that the Secret Service failed to ensure the American Glass Research complex, where Crooks launched the attack, was secured by state and local law enforcement. In addition, the agency did not use available resources to block the rooftop’s line of sight to the stage, despite recognizing it as a potential vulnerability. The inspector general issued seven recommendations to improve protective operations. The Secret Service agreed with all of them, and the report said some have already been implemented while others remain in progress.
I wonder how Tulsi now views what’s becoming of her work.
• Tulsi Gabbard Outlines the Mechanics of the Deep State (CTH)
Former Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, gives a speech outlining the mechanics of the Deep State and how the people within it operate. At around 3:30 of the presentation, Gabbard gives a specific example of the attitude of the employees on assignment to the ODNI. Obviously, I am not certain, but Tulsi seems to be describing the FBI liaison desk within the DNI as she explains how this federal government employee refuses to participate in the DNI request. Listen and you gain an appreciation of the challenge that exists for any appointed leadership. WATCH:Read more …
There is no apple; it’s all worms!
This goes back to 2024, and the Biden FBI. So of course Newsom accuses…Trump.
• FBI Mole Wore Wire Inside Newsom’s Inner Circle: Lawyer (ZH)
A mole working for the Biden FBI was secretly recording Gavin Newsom’s inner circle before the agency expanded its corruption probe into the California governor and his wife, according to a bombshell report by the NY Post. Democrat insider Alexis Podesta, a 45-year-old Sacramento consultant and Newsom appointee – no known relation to John Podesta – secretly taped conversations for the FBI as early as June 2024, while Joe Biden was still in the White House, according to McGregor Scott, the former US attorney now representing Dana Williamson. Williamson, 53, ran Newsom’s office as chief of staff until late 2024; in May she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, filing a false tax return, and lying to federal agents.Read more …
Federal prosecutors accused Williamson and others of orchestrating a scheme to siphon roughly $225,000 from a dormant campaign account which belonged to former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra -disguising the payments as legitimate consulting fees while routing the money to benefit Becerra’s former chief of staff, Sean McCluskie. According to Podesta’s attorney, she was placed in charge of overseeing the account in question – but did not know the payments were improper. Becerra is now the Democratic nominee to succeed Newsom as governor. “Alexis wore a wire, and Dana did not,” said Williamson’s lawyer and former US attorney for the Eastern District of California, McGregor Scott.“A lot of people received letters essentially informing us that there were certain periods of time where the FBI was given access to follow phone calls,” said assemblymember Josh Hoover (R-Folsom), who said he was among those who received a letter even though he had never spoken with either Podesta or Williamson. “I don’t know how these investigations work, but it sounds like they cast a pretty broad net across the Capitol community to see what they could find.”
A separate source with knowledge of the matter said they knew of four Sacramento insiders who also received FBI notifications confirming they had been recorded.= One recipient told the source: “Dude, I got this f—ing letter. I never even met with Dana Williamson!” “Their curiosity was that they never even met with Dana Williamson, so they were wondering what this is all about,” the source said. “And now you have the answer.” -NY Post. News of the wire comes just over two weeks after Newsom claimed that the Trump administration is punishing him because he may run for president in 2028.
“They’re demanding records, they’re abusing the grand jury process, digging through years and years of random documents. Donald Trump isn’t just coming after me because of my mean tweets, he’s coming after me because I’m considering running for president, because he hates that I’ve consistently called him out over and over again for his lies and deceit,” Newsom said, before sending a mass email asking for political donations. Sources close to the investigation, however, told The Post that the feds have spent the past year digging into Newsom, his staff, and his wife’s taxes after whistleblowers reportedly dropped the dime that led to the probe. Williamson’s attorney told the outlet that his client declined to cooperate because she didn’t have anything on Newsom.
Podesta – a former staffer for the late Dianne Feinstein, is a longtime Democratic power broker who remains on California’s State Compensation Insurance Fund board – to which Newsom appointed her in January 2020. She also held senior positions in Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration, and served as secretary of the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. While she hasn’t been charged with a crime, her attorney identified her as an uncharged co-conspirator in the Williamson indictment.
Of note, Podesta is still getting paid $60,797 by the state while cooperating with the FBI, while she sits on the Insurance Fund Board. nCampaign finance records show Becerra’s committee making $10,000 monthly payments to ‘Podesta Company’ during 2023 and 2024. During this period, Williamson – while Newsom’s CoS – shared confidential info with Podesta regarding a corporate client that has now been identified as Activision Blizzard.
FYI.
• Need Another Reason to Loathe Michelle Obama? (Matt Margolis)
I’m sure you don’t, but I’ll give you one anyway.Read more …
Michelle Obama has spent years selling herself as America’s warm, approachable former first lady. Remember the whole “when they go low, we go high” thing? We knew then it was just an empty slogan, because whenever she had a chance to prove she’s the bigger person, she just proved the opposite. According to a Daily Mail report, Barack Obama’s wife personally torpedoed Cheryl Hines’ return to the small screen when Larry David’s new HBO series, Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America, began casting. The show premiered last week. Higher Ground, the production company the Obamas own, produces it.Hines, 60, spent all 12 seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm playing Larry David’s wife, and having her return for the new show made sense. But apparently, Obama couldn’t handle the fact that Hines is married to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. According to unnamed sources cited by the Daily Mail, that was disqualifying. One insider claims that Obama wanted Kennedy’s wife banned from the cast outright because she is “all-MAGA, all-the-time.” Another source says Obama reacted sharply when production staffers who knew Hines from Curb floated the idea of bringing her back.
According to one insider, Obama’s message was simple. “She’s not one of us,” she reportedly said. Funny thing is, Hines is most definitely a leftist herself. She spent decades as a reliable Hollywood liberal long before she ever said “I do” to Kennedy. None of that bought her a pass. In Obama’s world, being married to someone in the Trump administration gets you blacklisted. A third source confirmed to the Daily Mail that the exclusion had nothing to do with talent and everything to do with Hines’ perceived politics, tied to her marriage and her proximity to Trump’s circle. Obama reportedly stayed out of the writers’ room and never touched a script. But casting, including guest stars, was hers to control. She used that control to keep Hines off the set.
An insider says Hines felt devastated when she learned producers had cut her, and who could blame her? She reportedly believed that David could look past his own politics for the sake of a 12-season friendship. Another source says that David didn’t have that option. Michelle made the call, and David felt that he had no room to overrule her. David has made his own politics abundantly clear. He’s a rabid leftist who despises Trump. Could he have fought for Hines? Probably. But it may not have done any good, and he shouldn’t have had to fight for Hines anyway.
In the end, this just gives us another reason to loathe Michelle Obama, who says, “when they go low, we go high,” one day, then blacklists an actress over her husband’s Cabinet post the next. That’s the opposite of going high. Hines has learned the hard way just how horrible her side is. Back in November, she told Bill Maher that while Republicans have treated her with basic kindness and respect (even when RFK Jr. was running as a Democrat), her fellow Democrats reacted with spite and the urge to exile anyone who steps out of line. Hines indeed has become living proof that the party that preaches “tolerance” has become a cult of cancellation, while the people they demonize are the tolerant ones.
He’s dragging the country to its grave. It is too late.
“Merz was shocked not only by the technological capability, but also by the Chinese industrial work ethic and capabilities of the workforce.”
• Chancellor Friedrich Merz Delivers Statement to German Workforce (CTH)
This next storyline needs context to understand appropriately what just happened. In February of this year, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz travelled for the first time in his business and life to China. Merz a lawyer by training, worked in business and corporate life doing mergers and acquisitions (Blackrock), but had never been to China. Despite his upward climb in German politics, his worldview was always dominated by an internal acceptance that Germany was the industrial heart of the European Union.Read more …
Chancellor Merz believed that Germany was unrivaled within industrial manufacturing, particularly in aeronautics and mechanical engineering (auto sector). So, when Merz went to China -while he held no trade capabilities as an outcome of the EU collective controlling everything- he also had no idea what Chinese industrial capacitary actually looked like. To say Chancellor Merz was stunned by the advancements in robotics and industrial manufacturing within China would be an understatement. Merz was shocked not only by the technological capability, but also by the Chinese industrial work ethic and capabilities of the workforce.Merz returned to Germany and immediately began discussing how Chinese industrial capacity was far beyond anything he previously estimated. Merz was shook. His reaction was, essentially, the #1 industrial nation within the EU confronting a reality of years of industrial complacency. Immediately he began talking about how things in Germany must change; how the German workforce must immediately start to get serious about productivity and production capacity. That was late February and early March.
Today, Friedrich Merz announced a series of reforms, radical modifications within the German industrial workforce. German workers are no longer allowed to call in sick. The German government will now adopt a policy to make sure all workers report to their jobs, or else. The German workforce may not like this at all. There is a certain, shall we say, “Fascist irony,” when you think about mandated private sector productivity compliance and the relationship with official government policy.
Germany’s coalition government has announced a wide-ranging package of pension, tax and labor reforms aimed at boosting economic growth and strengthening competitiveness. Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the measures would create jobs, reduce bureaucracy and preserve key social welfare protections. The 34-point plan includes income tax relief for low- and middle-income households as well as a gradual increase in the retirement age.
Expect fighting in the streets.
“As the AfD heads to its party congress in Erfurt, Germany’s collapsing mainstream braces for protests, panic, and a deeper political rupture..”
“..every sixth German is at risk of poverty.”
• Germany’s Rotten Center Is Heading For A Reckoning (Amar)
In the summer of 2026, Germany is a punch-drunk country reeling from harsh knocks, many of which are self-inflicted. In the short term, it has just suffered a humiliating defeat at the UN General Assembly, where it was punished for Berlin’s brazen arrogance, political provincialism, and last but not least, steadfast support for Israel and its crimes, including genocide. At the World Cup, the German team was booted out of the tournament early and crushingly. To make things worse, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz felt this was just the right moment to release some X posts apparently meant to be reassuring but stunning the nation by their cack-handed ineptitude and sheer disconnect with reality.Read more …
Why settle for a mere national depression if you can trigger a raging s**t-storm in addition? Germany’s fundamentals are also thoroughly catastrophic. According to Handelsblatt, Volkswagen, a traditional flagship of the German car industry at the core of the national economy and national pride, is stuck “in the greatest cost and structural crisis in decades.” Around 100,000 jobs are on the chopping block. And yes, that is representative of the economy as a whole.The country’s birth rate – at 1.35 children per woman – is the lowest since the mid-1990s, which reflects the mood of anxiety and pessimism across the country. Even Germany’s public (de facto state) broadcasters, not known for unbiased reporting or serious criticism of the powers that be, are admitting that poverty is becoming entrenched. In what was once a country of economic success and optimism, according to official statistics, every sixth German is at risk of poverty.
And all of the above is happening under a succession of textbook-centrist governments, based on coalitions of parties and politicians that share a fundamental lack of convictions (apart from the blind urge to fight Russia again), egotism, careerism, and a coldhearted indifference, if not disdain, for the worsening problems and hardships that shape the lives of ordinary Germans. At this point, the latest iteration of centrist uselessness warming seats in Berlin unites deeply unpopular Social-Democrats (SPD) – 12% in the polls – and widely scorned mainstream conservatives (CDU/CSU) – 22% and falling. No wonder that a whopping 53% do not trust any political party, while an abysmal 77% are dissatisfied with Merz.
It is this catastrophic decline, ruling fecklessness, and national frustration that will really be at stake in what is soon going to happen in the eastern German city of Erfurt, where the AfD (Alternative for Germany) will hold its party congress July 4-5. Ahead of the meeting, Germany has the jitters. While the AfD is expecting hundreds of party delegates as well as guests, the authorities are predicting that 35,000 to 70,000 protesters will gather as well. That is a significant number by any measure. But it is even more impressive – or concerning – if you consider that Erfurt is historic (with one of Germany’s oldest universities) but not big, with a population of not quite 220,000.
It is extremely unlikely that all the anti-AfD protests about to converge on Erfurt will remain peaceful. While calling for calm, the local authorities and police are clearly trying to prepare for disturbances and violence, including blockades and worse. Bjoern Hoecke, the key representative of the AfD Right and the powerful leader of the party in Thuringia, where Erfurt is located, may have been a touch hyperbolic when speaking of “civil war-like conditions.” Yet leaked documents show that Thuringia’s police are warning of thousands of violent activists who they believe will stage firebomb attacks from roofs, accept severe injury and death among their targets, and even execute an “endgame scenario” of storming the AfD congress.
The police union is concerned about not having enough officers on the ground. Whatever happens in Erfurt, it is already clear that the scene has been set for some big symbolic showdown theater. According to centrist and mainstream narratives, the battle lines are as Manichean as the best of Tolkien: Here, the forces of Mordor of the AfD, widely labeled as hostile to democracy and the constitution if not outright fascist; and there, the Hobbit forces of light of conformist protest, civil society, and a wholesome resistance that knows its place. If the latter features serious violence as well, then that will be written off as the exception, and ultimately the fault of the AfD.
So much for the childish story you will hear a lot about in the mainstream media.
https://twitter.com/MrJohnJnr/status/2072671824870084962?s=20President Trump tells Joe Kernen that he sent Elon Musk a note congratulating him when he became a trillionaire.
— Overton (@overton_news) July 2, 2026
He says he maintains a “very good” relationship with Musk to this day.
KERNEN: “Have you spoken to Elon since he became a trillionaire?”
TRUMP: “I haven't.”
“No, I… pic.twitter.com/otCEQDYUHi
https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/2072645371432522193?s=20RFK Jr: "If you look at the studies of the Pfizer vaccine — the people who got the vaccine had a 23% percent higher death rate from all causes."
— Joe Rogan Podcast News (@joeroganhq) July 2, 2026
Bill Maher: "But that could be the disease itself…"
RFK Jr: "Then the vaccine doesn’t work, does it?" pic.twitter.com/Rb7wAtww41
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