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Debt Rattle April 30 2026

Apr 302026
 
 April 30, 2026  Posted by at 9:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  35 Responses »


Joaquin Sorolla Passeggiata sulla spiaggia (Walk on the beach) 1909


• Trump Tells Aides US Preparing For Extended Blockade: WSJ (ZH)
• Iran Is in a ‘Death Spiral’ and Time Is Running Out (Matt Margolis)
• UAE Announces Departure from OPEC Effective May 1st (CTH)
• More Countries ‘Very Likely’ To Leave OPEC: Ex-UAE Diplomat (RT)
• Glory Days of OPEC Long Over – Afshin Rattansi (RT)
• UN Makes Iran Vice President of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Conference (Salgado)
• Shell Speech: Why the Second Comey Indictment is Likely to Fail (Turley)
• US Envoy To Ukraine To Resign Over Dwindling Aid To Kiev – FT (RT)
• Who This Democrat Blames for the Latest Trump Assassination Attempt (Margolis)
• US to Issue Limited Passports With Trump’s Image for 250th Anniversary (ET)
• The Way Bongino Flushed Out Deep State Leakers Was Pure GENIUS (Margolis)
• RFK Jr.’s New Autism Committee Issues First Proposals (ET)
• German Tabloid Publishes Nudes of Alleged Nord Stream Saboteur (RT)
• Experts Comment on RT’s Social Well-Being Index (RT)

 


 

I was wondering when immortality would enter the conversation.

 


 


I don’t think so. The message was meant for IGRC ears. Trump doesn’t want a long siege. And he won’t need it.

• Trump Tells Aides US Preparing For Extended Blockade: WSJ (ZH)

If confirmed, this constitutes another huge gamble by Trump – on both the economic and political fronts, and with the lingering potential for escalation (towards some kind of ground action as well). According to the WSJ Tuesday evening, the president has told aides and his staff that he’s prepared to implement an extended blockade: President Trump has instructed aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran, U.S. officials said, targeting the regime’s coffers in a high-risk bid to compel a nuclear capitulation Tehran has long refused.


In recent meetings, including a Monday discussion in the Situation Room, Trump opted to continue squeezing Iran’s economy and oil exports by preventing shipping to and from its ports. He assessed that his other options—resume bombing or walk away from the conflict—carried more risk than maintaining the blockade, officials said. Yet continuing the blockade also prolongs a conflict that has driven up gas prices, hurt Trump’s poll numbers and further darkened Republicans’ prospects in the midterm elections. It has also caused the lowest number of transits through the Strait of Hormuz since the war began.

However, it remains that this could also be some classic Trump signaling of a ‘maximalist’ position, in order to get Iran to capitulate at the negotiating table. Just as the WSJ report hit, there was this headline over the news wires based on fresh comments: TRUMP SAID IRAN WANTS THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ REOPENED AND MAY ACCEPT AN INTERIM DEAL TO END THE US NAVAL BLOCKADE WHILE BROADER WAR-END NEGOTIATIONS CONTINUE. The new threat of prolonged military action was accompanied late Tuesday by this from the Treasury Secretary:

And per Bloomberg latest: In recent meetings, including a Monday discussion in the Situation Room, Trump opted to continue squeezing Iran’s economy and oil exports by preventing shipping to and from its ports. He assessed that his other options—resume bombing or walk away from the conflict—carried more risk than maintaining the blockade, officials said.

Read more …

“It is an authoritarian regime, and it can claim that resisting economic pressure is a question of national pride..”

• Iran Is in a ‘Death Spiral’ and Time Is Running Out (Matt Margolis)

Something huge is happening inside Iran right now — and the regime’s leadership knows it. Six weeks of war with the United States and Israel, combined with a crippling naval blockade, have accelerated an economic collapse that was already years in the making. The Iranian rial hit an all-time low of roughly 1,810,000 to one U.S. dollar this week, even as a fragile ceasefire technically holds. According to the Wall Street Journal, Iran is in a “death spiral.” The paper quoted Mahdi Ghodsi of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, summing it up with brutal clarity: “Living is not affordable anymore,” he said. “Iran is at its weakest point.”


He’s not wrong. Over a million Iranians have lost their jobs since the conflict escalated. Businesses are shuttering across the country — manufacturers, retailers, anyone dependent on steel or imported raw materials. Electronics are scarce and unaffordable. Food and medicine, priced against the dollar exchange rate, are slipping out of reach for ordinary families. Residents describe hardship not seen in decades. The regime’s response? Wage hikes, subsidies, and cash handouts. Buying time with money it’s rapidly running out of. Basically, socialism — and we know how that works out.

“It is an authoritarian regime, and it can claim that resisting economic pressure is a question of national pride,” Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow and Iran expert at the Middle East Institute, explained. At the same time, “as the money dries up because of the blockade, we may find that more and more folks have no choice but to mobilize politically.” Now, to be clear, this economic death spiral didn’t begin with the war. Years of U.S. sanctions had already hollowed out Iran’s financial foundations before a single shot was fired. But the blockade turbo-charged the damage.

The regime is fracturing too. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the war. His wounded son, Mojtaba Khamenei, formally holds the supreme leader position now, but he’s been MIA for weeks. Why does this matter? Without a genuine clerical authority at the top arbitrating key decisions, rivalries among IRGC commanders could intensify. And as the perception grows that Mojtaba is a figurehead, the regime’s internal legitimacy erodes further — both among elites who see an opening and among ordinary Iranians who have watched their purchasing power evaporate in real time.

The regime certainly knows how to mobilize security forces, but repeated massacres deepen public resentment rather than extinguish it. At some point, the IRGC’s willingness to shoot its own people may not be enough to hold the line. And Washington is betting on exactly that breaking point. U.S. officials believe that while talks have stalled, Iran will eventually crack under the economic strain. The question isn’t whether Iran is approaching a tipping point; it’s how much longer the regime can pretend it isn’t. It is essentially a high-stakes waiting game, and Iran’s clock is running out faster than its leadership wants to admit.

Read more …

What part of this is Trump?

• UAE Announces Departure from OPEC Effective May 1st (CTH)

Big things are happening quickly as President Trump continues to disrupt historic global structures of control and influenceThe United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced they are leaving OPEC in order to manifest their own sovereign economic destiny and increase domestic oil production without the limits and rules of the OPEC cartel. This is a significant alignment with President Donald Trump who has actively argued against the OPEC assembly and the oil price controls they have historically imposed.


DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates said Tuesday it will leave OPEC effective May 1, stripping the oil cartel of one of its largest producers and further weakening its leverage over global oil supplies and prices. The UAE’s decision had been rumored as a possibility for some time, as it pushed back in recent years against OPEC production quotas it felt had been too low — meaning it wasn’t able to sell as much oil to the world as it had wanted. “Having invested heavily in expanding energy production capacity in recent years, the bigger picture is that the UAE has been itching to pump more oil,” Capital Economics wrote in an analysis.

“The ties binding OPEC members together have loosened,” it said, particularly after Qatar withdrew from the cartel in 2019. (read more)As noted by CNBC, “The UAE has played an influential role in OPEC’s decisions over nearly six decades. It was the group’s third-largest oil producer in February behind Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The Gulf state joined OPEC in 1967, seven years after the organization was founded.” This is where things get really interesting…. Because the UAE can effectively eliminate the Hormuz chokepoint, and Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent previously outlined something very important to the UAE:

LAST WEEK:

WASHINGTON – US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday that a number of allies in the Gulf region and in Asia have requested currency swap lines from the United States to help deal with energy shocks and other fallout from the Middle East war. Bessent told US senators that both the US and the United Arab Emirates would benefit from a proposed swap line that President Donald Trump said he was considering on Tuesday. Bessent did not name the countries making such requests, but told a US Senate Appropriations subcommittee budget hearing that such facilities would help stabilize financial markets amid turmoil from the Iran war.

“And swap lines, whether it’s from the Federal Reserve or the Treasury, are to maintain order in the dollar funding markets and to prevent the sale of the US assets in a disorderly way,” Bessent said. “So, the swap line would benefit both the UAE and the US, and as I said, numerous other countries, including some of our Asian allies, have also requested them.” The US Treasury last October provided Argentina with a $20 billion currency swap to help stabilize the country’s peso during a tumultuous election period that helped strengthen the position of President Javier Milei’s party.

That swap line, backed by the Treasury’s $219 billion Exchange Stabilization Fund, provided Argentina with a safety net of dollars that the central bank could use to help prop up the value of the peso and prevent a devaluation ahead of the vote. It has since been repaid.

REQUESTS FOR RUSSIAN OIL

Bessent also said that he extended sanctions relief on Russian seaborne oil for another 30 days after requests from a number of countries that are most vulnerable to oil shortages from the closed Strait of Hormuz. The requests came during last week’s International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings, he said. The action reversed his comments last week that he would not renew expiring sanctions waivers. A separate waiver to allow countries to buy Iranian oil stranded at sea lapsed on April 19. (more)

The UAE can bypass the Hormuz chokepoint, and Saudi Arabia can pump oil to the Red Sea via their east/west pipeline. If Trump keeps the blockade against Iranian oil shipments in place, the UAE and Saudi Arabia can fill the global oil void; however, they need to get outside the OPEC restrictions to do it. Thus, the UAE exiting OPEC makes strategic sense both now and in the geopolitical longer term. However, in the short run the UAE needs financial stability as the switch is done. Enter Scott Bessent with the currency swap lines for the UAE.

Brilliant planning.

Iran just lost all their leverage.

Read more …

“The UAE’s decision to withdraw from the cartel had been “a long time coming,” Obaid Ahmed Al-Zaabi believes ..”

• More Countries ‘Very Likely’ To Leave OPEC: Ex-UAE Diplomat (RT)

More countries are “very likely” to withdraw from OPEC following the United Arab Emirates’ decision to leave the group, former UAE diplomat to the UN and World Trade Organization, Obaid Ahmed Al-Zaabi, told RT. The Gulf nation announced its intent to leave the cartel and broader OPEC+, which brings together OPEC members and other key oil-producing countries, on Tuesday. The withdrawal is set to come into force on May 1. The UAE’s decision has been a “long time coming,” Al-Zaabi has said, arguing that the country has been “substantially” restricting its production while many other members of the groups have been limited by their output capacities.


“The UAE is no longer entirely dependent on oil and hydrocarbons, and our economy is highly invested all over the world. The organization OPEC acted as a tax on global productivity, and it’s now in our interest to see the world as productive as possible. Also, it costs the UAE the most to impose OPEC,” the ex-diplomat argued. At the same time, Al-Zaabi suggested that the withdrawal was driven more by “other geopolitical realities” rather than oil itself, pinning the blame on Iran’s retaliatory actions against its Gulf neighbors in the wake of the US-Israeli attack.

“It hardly seems in the UAE’s interest to collude with Iran on the oil price when we’re being directly struck by them,” he argued. More countries are “very likely” to follow suit and leave the cartel, the ex-diplomat suggested. “The truth is very likely, because the more people that defect, the more costly it is to maintain the volume restriction. So if the UAE is serious and they no longer respect the limits, then there’s going to be no incentive for Kuwait and other countries to reduce their production,” he said.

Read more …

Qatar left OPEC in 2019..

• Glory Days of OPEC Long Over – Afshin Rattansi (RT)

The decision by the United Arab Emirates to leave OPEC will further weaken the cartel of oil producers, whose power has been eroding over the years, Afshin Rattansi, host of Going Underground, has told RT. The Emirati government announced the departure on Tuesday, citing plans to focus on “national interests” and the Gulf state’s “long-term strategic and economic vision and evolving energy profile.” The move comes amid uncertainty over the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway crucial to global oil trade, which has remained largely closed to shipping since February due to the US-Israeli war with Iran.


Speaking to RT, Rattansi noted that the UAE’s departure is not unprecedented, as another oil-rich Arab monarchy, Qatar, left the organization in 2019. The journalist argued that the cartel can no longer wield power comparable to what it had in 1973, when Arab countries declared an embargo on the US and other states supporting Israel.

“One has to realize that OPEC’s power has diminished. The glory days of (Saudi oil minister Ahmed Zaki) Yamani and 1973, when the Saudis and OPEC could exert geopolitical pressure, are long over,” Rattansi said. “Russia and the United States are the top oil suppliers in the world,” Rattansi added. He suggested that the UAE could align itself more closely with regional blocs such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as the Gulf monarchy has sought to maintain independence while under Western pressure to cut ties with Russia.

Read more …

Trump will not take this lying down.

• UN Makes Iran Vice President of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Conference (Salgado)

The United Nations (UN) is determined to reject all blame for electing representatives of the genocidal Iranian regime to its Human Rights Council and other completely inappropriate positions. Now, it has also given an Iranian representative a key role in reviewing nuclear non-proliferation policy. It’s like putting Adolf Hitler on a committee against antisemitism.


Only a couple weeks ago, the American delegation had to leave Pakistan without any deal made with the Iranian delegation after the latter refused to agree to the basic requirement that Iran not pursue nuclear weapons development. “But the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” U.S. Vice President JD Vance explained. And yet the UN is pretending that Iran can be helpful in preventing nuclear proliferation. Watchdog group UN Watch posted the following:

Christopher Yeaw, U.S. assistant secretary for arms control and nonproliferation, protested to the UN delegates, “Rather than choosing to use this review conference to defend the integrity of the NPT [non-proliferation treaty] and call Iran to account, we instead elect Iran a vice president. It is beyond shameful and an embarrassment to the credibility of this conference.”

But the UN has made a series of disgusting moves to reward the Iranian regime this year, all of them after that same regime massacred over 40,000 of its own people, a slaughter that continues with executions of Persian freedom protesters. The other most recent UN nomination happened after the Iranian regime had been indiscriminately bombing civilian targets in multiple nations, particularly Israel. UN Watch posted furiously on April 10, “SHAME: The Islamic Republic of Iran has just been nominated to the U.N. Committee for Program and Coordination, which meets soon to shape policy on women’s rights, human rights, disarmament, and terrorism prevention.”

Besides that despicable display, the UN recently welcomed an Iranian regime representative to chair a forum for the Human Rights Council. The Iranian regime is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world; it supports murderous jihadis, including Hamas, Hezbollah (which has helped Iran kill civilians in this conflict), the Houthis, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Then again, the UN also employs Hamas jihadis.

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Comey can threaten Trump then flip him the bird. US law is great, but not in this case.

Everrybody knows what he means. If he himself didn’t, he would never have been FBI director. His career says he’s guilty.

• Shell Speech: Why the Second Comey Indictment is Likely to Fail (Turley)

Below is my column on Fox.com on the second indictment of former FBI director James Comey. Despite being one of Comey’s longest critics, the indictment raises troubling free speech issues. In the end, it must be the Constitution, not Comey, that drives the analysis and this indictment is unlikely to withstand constitutional scrutiny. If it did, it would allow the government to criminalize a huge swath of political speech in the United States. Here is the column:


In the last year, coverage of former FBI Director James Comey appears to be reverting to the level of a high school yearbook. Last March, we were discussing how Comey channeled Beyoncé in a classified meeting and then may have revealed a code name in an encore performance for family. Now we are back to discussing Comey’s beach shell art on social media. The latter controversy is now at the heart of a second criminal indictment of Comey. In November, a court dismissed the first indictment for false statements after a challenge to the status of the acting U.S. attorney. However, this indictment is being brought in North Carolina, the location of the beach where the offending shells were found. Comey will now likely create a new category of protected shell speech.

The problem with this indictment will be the merits. The indictment concerns an image that was later removed by Comey showing “86 47” in shells on a beach. Comey has a rather odd history of drawing inspiration from shells. This message, however, had a lethal twist since many interpreted the message as essentially calling for the killing or “86-ing” of Trump. Comey insists that he did not make the shell art and that he only posted it to his more than 1 million followers on X. He was merely the captive of his shell muses. For over a decade, I have been one of Comey’s most vocal and consistent critics. I have dozens of columns criticizing his excesses and the damage that he has done to our system.

For that reason, I would prefer to crawl into one of Comey’s conversant shells than write a column supporting him. However, here we are. The fact is that I believe that this indictment is facially unconstitutional absent some unknown new facts. To convict Comey, the Justice Department will have to show that his adolescent picture was a “true threat” under 18 U.S.C. § 871 and § 875(c). It is not.mThe First Amendment is designed to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech rarely needs protection. It also protects bad and hateful speech. It even protects lies so long as those lies are not used for the purpose of fraud or other criminal conspiracies.

In 1969, the Supreme Court declared a more direct threat protected under the First Amendment. In Watts v. United States, an 18-year-old anti-war protester exclaimed, “If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J.” While the court did rule that “the statute [criminalizing presidential threats] is constitutional on its face,” it emphasized that “what is a threat must be distinguished from what is constitutionally protected speech.” The court ruled that the expression of wanting to kill a president is “a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition to the President.” Saying the same thing in shell is only further removed from criminal speech. Citizens are allowed to denounce and even wish a president ill. I have written about what I called this “age of rage.”

It is not our first. This nation was founded in rage. The Boston Tea Party was rage. In forming this more perfect union, we created the world’s greatest protection of free speech in history. It is arguably the most American contribution to our Bill of Rights. Great Britain did not — and still does not — protect free speech as we do. It comes at a cost. Perhaps Comey is that cost. However, he has a right to write out any hateful thoughts that come to him on his walks on the beach. A true threat requires “statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.” Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 359 (2003).

It is certainly true that the threat can be implied. However, “The ‘true’ in that term distinguishes what is at issue from jests, ‘hyperbole,’ or other statements that when taken in context do not convey a real possibility that violence will follow.” Counterman v. Colorado, 600 U.S. 66, 74 (2023). At the time, Comey quickly deleted the post and said that it never occurred to him that it would be interpreted as being violent. In a subsequent Instagram post, Comey said he assumed the shells that he saw on a beach walk were “a political message” and that he “did not realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.”

We will have to wait to see if the administration has a “smoking shell” allegation that makes Comey’s shell speech more menacing as a willful and knowing threat. I cannot imagine what that would be beyond a sleeper surfer hit squad waiting for a shell signal. Absent such new evidence, it appears to be yet another Comey posting that makes his Beyoncé renditions seem professional in comparison. Ironically, the indictment is unlikely to survive a challenge, but it is likely to fulfill Comey’s narrative about the administration. It will undermine the legitimate objections to the lawfare waged under Comey. Comey’s shell speech should not be celebrated, but it should be protected.

Read more …

The Kiev mob wants more money.

• US Envoy To Ukraine To Resign Over Dwindling Aid To Kiev – FT (RT)

Acting US Ambassador to Ukraine Julie Davis will leave her post over disagreements with President Donald Trump regarding his waning support for the country, the Financial Times has reported, citing three people familiar with the matter. The State Department has confirmed Davis’ departure but denied that she was leaving because of differences with the president. “Ambassador Davis has been a steadfast proponent of the Trump administration’s efforts to bring about a durable peace between Russia and Ukraine,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement on Tuesday. He added that Davis will depart Kiev in June.


Davis has served as chargé d’affaires in Ukraine since May 2025, following the resignation of her predecessor, former Ambassador Bridget Brink, who accused Trump of “appeasement” toward Russia. “Unfortunately, the policy since the beginning of the Trump administration has been to put pressure on the victim, Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia,” Brink wrote in an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press shortly after resigning.

Trump has angered many in Kiev and the EU by suggesting that Ukraine may have to make concessions to Russia, including potentially ceding territory. He also criticized Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, whom he once branded “a dictator” for refusing to hold elections. The US mediated several rounds of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine throughout 2025, although they did not result in any breakthroughs. Trump also broke with the diplomatic boycott of Russia by hosting President Vladimir Putin in Alaska in August 2025.

Read more …

They blame Trump. That way they’re not to blame. Same as: he organizes the attacks himself. Because he’s so impopular. Their media says it’s so.

• Who This Democrat Blames for the Latest Trump Assassination Attempt (Margolis)

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) didn’t waste any time pointing the finger after Saturday’s assassination attempt on President Donald Trump — and he aimed it squarely at Trump himself. The anti-Trump stalwart appeared on CNN’s Laura Coates Live following the arrest of a man identified as carrying a pump-action shotgun, a semi-automatic handgun, and at least three knives to Washington, D.C. after traveling from California. The suspect emailed his family just before the attack, laying out his grievances against the Trump administration, and a manifesto left little ambiguity about his targets. More charges are expected to follow.


Coates played a clip of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who called out what she described as years of escalating demonization of the president. “This political violence stems from a systemic demonization of him and his supporters by commentators, yes, by elected members of the Democrat Party, and even some in the media,” she said. “This hateful and constant and violent rhetoric directed at President Trump day after day after day for 11 years has helped to legitimize this violence and bring us to this dark moment.”

Goldman, who sits on the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees and is a former federal prosecutor, of course, doesn’t blame his party for the shooting. When asked about the White House’s response, Goldman didn’t even pause. “I mean, it’s pretty rich given that Donald Trump’s rhetoric led to January 6,” he said. “And we know what Donald Trump’s rhetoric leads to because we know many times over how his followers use violence in — when they follow him.”

Yes, he literally blamed President Trump for the assassination attempt against him. Let’s recap what happened. A man traveled across the country armed to the teeth, wrote a manifesto targeting Trump administration officials, and Goldman’s primary takeaway is that Trump’s rhetoric is the real problem here. The suspect’s own words, apparently, are less relevant than invoking January 6. And speaking of January 6, how exactly can we trust Democrats when it comes to assessing the rhetoric of Trump or anyone, when they claim that Trump telling his supporters to march “to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” was inciting a riot.

But I digress. After blaming Trump for the assassination attempt, Goldman had the audacity to play the “both sides” card. “Now, that does not excuse rhetoric that would otherwise call for violence by anybody,” he continued. “The point is that we do need to dial it down on all sides.” As we’ve pointed out before, this is what Democrats do every time there’s left-wing violence. They try to downplay their own culpability by claiming the problem exists on “both sides.” They can never own up to the fact that they’ve been calling Trump a Nazi, a dictator, an existential threat to democracy, etc., etc., for years, and that the people carrying out all the violence we’re seeing are echoing that rhetoric, are clearly radicalized by it, and feeling morally obligated to do something about it.

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That’s his mugshot. In your passport. How can you not love that?

• US to Issue Limited Passports With Trump’s Image for 250th Anniversary (ET)

The U.S. State Department announced on April 28 that it will release limited-edition passports featuring a picture of President Donald Trump to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary of independence. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement to multiple news outlets that the department would release “a limited number of specially designed U.S. passports to commemorate this historic occasion” in July, but did not specify how many would be issued.
“These passports will feature customized artwork and enhanced imagery while maintaining the same security features that make the U.S. passport the most secure documents in the world,” Pigott said.= The White House posted a mockup of the limited-edition passport on social media, which shows the interior page featuring an image of Trump and his signature in gold, while the back cover displays the “Declaration of Independence” painting by John Trumbull. “Patriot passport unlocked. Limited edition. Stamped for America 250,” the White House said in the X post. > The only presidents featured in current U.S. passports are in a double-page depiction of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Other depictions include the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and scenes of the Great Plains, mountains, and islands. Current passports also contain quotations from Martin Luther King Jr. as well as Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Dwight Eisenhower.

Last year, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the department would issue new commemorative park passes this year to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, with the annual passes featuring images of George Washington and Trump, and military passes showing a photo of Trump saluting troops.

In addition, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts last month approved a final design for a commemorative coin featuring Trump’s image to mark the nation’s anniversary. “As we approach our 250th birthday, we are thrilled to prepare coins that represent the enduring spirit of our country and democracy, and there is no profile more emblematic for the front of such coins than that of our serving President, Donald J. Trump,” Treasurer Brandon Beach said in a statement on March 20.

The Treasury Department also announced on March 26 that Trump’s signature would appear alongside that of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on future U.S. paper currency in honor of the 250th anniversary. “There is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Donald J. Trump than U.S dollar bills bearing his name, and it is only appropriate that this historic currency be issued at the Semiquincentennial,” Bessent said.

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Don’t get lost in hyperbole. It was alright.

• The Way Bongino Flushed Out Deep State Leakers Was Pure GENIUS (Margolis)

If you’ve ever wondered just how deep the dysfunction runs inside the FBI, just gave a peek behind the curtain—and it’s worse than you think. In a revealing conversation on the “Hang Out with Sean Hannity” podcast released Tuesday, Bongino described a bureau split into what he bluntly called “two FBIs.” One side, he said, is filled with agents doing the hard, honorable work Americans expect. The other? A nest of internal saboteurs leaking to the press and undermining the mission from within.


“There were two FBIs trying to help you solve the A, B and C problems, and that’s FBI one and FBI two,” Bongino said. Bongino, who served as deputy director from March 2025 to January of this year, didn’t hold back in describing the divide. He praised agents working violent crime and child exploitation cases, saying he felt “honored” to serve alongside them. These are the people actually protecting Americans. The ones doing the job the FBI was created to do.

But then there’s what he called “this other FBI,” which he said was “populated with, to say, unfortunately, ‘snakes’ is being nice.” And here’s where it gets even more troubling. Bongino said he and FBI Director Kash Patel couldn’t easily tell who was who. Loyalty wasn’t obvious. “You’re trying to figure this out, and you’re asking someone for advice, you’ve only been there a couple weeks, and you don’t know if that person is part of the good FBI or the bad FBI,” Bongino explained.

Think about that. Senior leadership inside the FBI, tasked with restoring integrity, couldn’t even rely on internal guidance without wondering if they were being set up. It gets worse. Bongino said he was repeatedly assured certain individuals were trustworthy, only to suspect them of leaking shortly afterward. “It happened a couple times where they’d say, ‘Oh, you can trust John Smith.’ And you trust John Smith, and then a week later you see a leak in the media and you’d be like, ‘I’m pretty sure that came from John Smith,’” he said. At that point, most bureaucrats would shrug and complain. Bongino did something smarter.

He set a trap. To flush out leakers, Bongino began planting harmless, fake details—like an “innocuous” schedule item—and sharing them selectively with specific individuals. Then he watched. If that exact detail showed up in the press, he had his answer. “It was like we would play this little game,” he said. Call it a game if you want. It was actually a classic counterintelligence tactic, and it worked. When the planted information surfaced publicly, Bongino confronted the source directly. No guesswork. No plausible deniability. Done.

When you think about it, what Bongino describes isn’t just bureaucratic infighting, it’s a battle over what the FBI even is. Is it a law enforcement agency serving the public, or a politicized institution where leaks and agendas shape outcomes behind the scenes? Apparently, there are enough of the latter to be a serious problem. And if rooting out “snakes” requires undercover tricks from the deputy director himself, that tells you everything you need to know about how entrenched the problem has become.

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The numbers are scary as all hell.

• RFK Jr.’s New Autism Committee Issues First Proposals (ET)

A federal committee remade by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recommended on April 28 that health agencies revamp guidance for diagnosing and treating people with autism spectrum disorder. The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee voted to advise the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to make clear to doctors that they should be prepared to recognize and treat new issues that crop up in autistic people, such as seizures and difficulty sleeping; develop standardized clinical steps when encountering conditions such as developmental regression and allergic disease when screening, diagnosing, and treating children with autism; and formally define profound autism as having little or no ability to speak and require continuous supervision.


The committee also said the government should take steps to enhance a warning system for missing and endangered people so that when autistic people wander away, alerts are issued. The HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The meeting was the first since Kennedy removed existing committee members and selected new ones in January, including some who said vaccines can cause autism. None of the recommendations involve vaccines, although some public speakers and panel members said they either think vaccines can cause autism or that research should be conducted into the possibility.

One recommendation is that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an HHS component, should clarify that when screening, diagnosing, and treating children with autism, doctors should seriously evaluate conditions such as developmental regression and allergic disease.“When such triggers are present, further evaluation should be pursued or arranged as clinically indicated,” the committee said, adding that the evaluation “should not permit these signals to be dismissed solely on the basis of an autism diagnosis.”

The committee said that there is much clinical evidence describing medical conditions that occur among autistic people, but “this evidence is not consistently integrated into clinical assessment, resulting in gaps in recognition, evaluation, and follow-through, especially when these conditions present atypically.”It added later: “The result has been delayed identification, fragmented care, and preventable morbidity—reflecting a translational gap rather than an absence of evidence.”

Another is that the Health Resources and Services Administration, which is also part of the department, should develop training for doctors to identify and address gastrointestinal changes and sleep disturbances, among other problems, in autistic people.The committee said that despite evidence showing new symptoms require treatment, “clinical care remains inconsistent and fragmented across settings.” The symptoms “can be overlooked, deferred, treated as secondary to behavior, or not systematically elicited at all,” it said.

Among the specific recommended changes is treating observations from caregivers of autistic people who are unable to speak, or speak well, as medically relevant information, rather than anecdotal context. Dr. Sylvia Fogel, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard Medical School and the committee’s chair, said during the meeting that focusing on treating autistic individuals is imperative, because many continue to suffer from undiagnosed psychiatric and pain-causing conditions.“It is unacceptable,” said Fogel, who said her son has what she described as profound autism. The committee also recommended that officials adopt the term profound autism as a reference for autistic people “with the highest and most persistent support needs.”

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They keep on trying to make you think it wasn’t the Americans. But you have Seymour Hersh. What comes after nudes?

• German Tabloid Publishes Nudes of Alleged Nord Stream Saboteur (RT)

German tabloid Bild has published nude images of a Ukrainian woman allegedly linked to the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. According to media reports, the woman was part of a group of Ukrainian nationals suspected by German investigators of renting the yacht Andromeda to carry out the sophisticated underwater operation. Claims about the woman’s past as an erotic model – identified under the alias ‘Freya’ – were first reported by Wall Street Journal chief European political correspondent Bojan Pancevski in his book on the Nord Stream attack. His account is partly based on interviews with individuals allegedly connected to the case.


The photos released by Bild include fully naked images said to show Freya, whose real name was previously reported as Valeria Chernyshova. One image shows her featured on a 2004 erotic magazine cover; another shows her on a sofa. Her face was obscured in both photos. Russian officials have expressed skepticism about Western media narratives surrounding the investigation, suggesting that these reports attempt to attribute responsibility to rogue Ukrainian actors for what Moscow regards as an act of terrorism backed or potentially carried out by NATO.

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‘A breath of fresh air’:

• Experts Comment on RT’s Social Well-Being Index (RT)

Built around six indicators – total fertility rate, life expectancy, infant mortality, number of homicides, income inequality and education levels – the Social Well-Being Index, or SWI, is intended as an alternative to familiar measures such as GDP rankings and the UN’s Human Development Index. Its creators argue that while older frameworks are useful for assessing individual development or economic output, they often fail to show whether a nation is cohesive, secure and sustainable over the long term.


Former British MP George Galloway offered the strongest endorsement, arguing that existing measures can badly misrepresent a country’s true condition. “The pre-existing indexes are completely inadequate,” he said, adding that they “tell not just an incomplete story, but a story that is false.” That criticism goes to the heart of the new index’s appeal. Traditional measures such as GDP and even broader composite indicators like the HDI can reward wealth, consumption and personal attainment without asking whether the surrounding society is healthy. In Galloway’s view, that is a major blind spot.

“The current indexes don’t tell you that story,” he said, describing how someone may appear prosperous on paper while living amid “potential violence, and mass unhappiness and misery.” The SWI tries to correct for that by focusing less on isolated individual outcomes and more on the overall environment in which people live. Homicides, inequality and demographic sustainability are treated as core indicators of whether a society is stable and likely to reproduce itself over time.

Matthew Ehret, director of the Rising Tide Foundation, called this approach “a breath of fresh air” after what he described as decades of narrow Western economic thinking. The problem with ranking countries by GDP, Ehret argued, is not just that it is incomplete, but that it often confuses harmful activity with real progress. “GDP generally fails to address what is real value and what is fake value,” he said, pointing to criminal, speculative or socially corrosive activity that can still inflate national output figures. The SWI goes further by explicitly measuring social conditions that economic aggregates often obscure. A country may generate large volumes of output, but if it is aging rapidly, suffering from low fertility, burdened by deep inequality, or marked by lethal social breakdown, its long-term trajectory may be weaker than headline growth numbers imply.

Economist Santosh Mehrotra, a visiting professor, of the Centre for Development at the UK’s University of Bath, knows the Human Development Index well, having previously worked closely with such metrics. He describes the SWI as “definitely an improvement upon GDP or GDP per capita.” He also noted that the index does share some DNA with older composite measures. Life expectancy and education, for example, overlap with HDI-style thinking, and the index uses a familiar min-max method to combine its components.

But Mehrotra says one particularly notable innovation is the attempt to capture social cohesion through violence. “What is sort of most striking is the use of the homicide rate as an indicator of social well-being,” he said. “I like that.” The number of homicides is more than a crime statistic. It can serve as a blunt but revealing measure of whether people trust institutions, whether daily life is secure, and whether social conflict has become normalized. In that sense, the SWI’s inclusion of homicide moves it closer to questions ordinary citizens often care about most: Can families raise children safely? Do communities function? Does the future feel livable?

The fertility component is likewise central to the index’s philosophy. Unlike measures that treat population change as secondary, the SWI interprets demographic sustainability as a sign of national confidence and continuity. Supporters say that makes the ranking especially relevant in an era when many advanced economies face aging populations and shrinking birth rates. Matthew Ehret welcomed that emphasis directly, saying the index challenges the assumption that population growth is inherently negative. “I appreciate that you don’t believe that,” he said, referring to the idea that demographic growth can reflect social confidence, productive capacity and belief in the future.

Professor Mehrotra, while more measured, agreed that demographic sustainability is “of course very important,” especially for countries facing rapid aging, including parts of Europe and East Asia. That theme was echoed in reflections on China shared by John Gong, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), and a China Forum expert. He described the country as a place of enormous gains but also sharp internal contrasts, warning that broad national averages can hide important divides. “GDP doesn’t say it all,” he said. “It’s a nuanced picture here.” .

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