Apr 232025
 


Edward Hopper Sailing 1911

 

Trump Makes ‘Final Offer’ To End Ukraine Conflict – Axios (RT)
Trump Signals Step Back On China Tariffs (DC)
‘Only Trust Primary Sources’ On US-Russia Talks – Kremlin (RT)
Ukraine Not Ready to Discuss US Peace Plan Proposal – Reports (RT)
Ukraine Will Not Recognize Russia’s Crimea – Zelensky (RT)
Rubio and Witkoff To Skip London Ukraine Talks (RT)
EU and UK Preparing Naval Blockade of Russia – Patrushev (RT)
Zelensky Could Easily Rig Wartime Election – Ex-Campaign Chief (RT)
US To Propose Crimea Recognition As Part of Ukraine Peace Deal – WaPo (RT)
Putin Offers To Halt Fighting Along Current Front Lines In Ukraine: FT (ZH)
Tesla Shares Pop 5% After Musk Says He’ll Limit Time With DOGE In May (ZH)
Rubio Announces MAJOR State Department Overhaul (PJM)
Trump’s Courage to Fight the Good Fight (DS)
How Trump ‘Restored Law and Order’ to US Borders (Allen)
Woke Blackout in Tinseltown (Ryumshin)
The Big Short and The Bigger Long (Egon von Greyerz)

 

 


Nikas Safronov (gifted to Trump by Putin)

 

 


https://twitter.com/iam_smx/status/1914636471778111601

JFK

Nap/Sachs

Rice

Zeldin

BlackRock
https://twitter.com/JimFergusonUK/status/1914581682675449912

 

 

 

 

“..the US is said to be prepared to grant “de jure” recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, and unofficially acknowledge Moscow’s “de facto” control over the[four regions]..”

Zelensky simply says no, not acceptable. For Kiev, It’s just a game.

Trump Makes ‘Final Offer’ To End Ukraine Conflict – Axios (RT)

Washington has presented Kiev with what US President Donald Trump is calling a “final offer” to end the conflict in Ukraine, according to a report by Axios. The Kremlin, however, has urged the public to rely on official sources for developments in US–Russian talks. The one-page document was reportedly drafted following Trump envoy Steve Witkoff’s four-hour meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month, and was presented to Ukrainian officials in Paris last week, Axios reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources with direct knowledge of the discussions. Under the proposed deal, the US is said to be prepared to grant “de jure” recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, and unofficially acknowledge Moscow’s “de facto” control over the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.

The plan also includes provisions for lifting post-2014 sanctions on Moscow and enhancing bilateral economic cooperation. In addition, Washington would formally oppose Ukraine’s bid to join NATO. In return, Ukraine would reportedly receive a “robust security guarantee” from a coalition of EU and other like-minded countries, though the proposal lacks details on how this “peacekeeping” operation would function. Russia has consistently rejected the deployment of NATO forces to Ukraine under any pretext. The framework also promises Kiev unimpeded access to the Dnepr River and potential compensation for reconstruction efforts, although it does not specify where the funding would originate. The plan references a minerals deal between the US and Ukraine, which Trump expects to be signed on Thursday.

Another component of the proposal, according to Axios, involves designating the area around the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (NPP) as neutral territory under US administration. Washington reportedly expects Kiev to respond to the proposal during a multinational meeting in London on Wednesday. Both Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will skip the event, with General Keith Kellogg, another Trump envoy focused on Ukraine, leading the US delegation instead. Witkoff is expected to travel to Moscow for a follow-up meeting with Putin. Rubio warned last week that the US could abandon the peace initiative and “move on” to other issues if negotiations fail. Trump said on Monday there is “a good chance of solving the problem” this week.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly ruled out ceding any territory to Russia and continues to urge the US and other allies to provide sustained military support. Moscow has consistently stated that the status of Crimea – which joined Russia in 2014 following a referendum held after a Western-backed coup in Kiev – and the four other former Ukrainian regions that voted to join Russia in 2022 is not open to negotiation. Russian officials insist that any peace agreement must address the “root causes” of the conflict. Putin has added that a viable ceasefire would require Western nations to halt arms deliveries to Ukraine.

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“..I think they’re going to be happy, and I think we’re going to live together very happily and ideally work together.”

Trump Signals Step Back On China Tariffs (DC)

President Donald Trump signaled Tuesday evening from the Oval Office that the U.S. will ease tariffs on China, saying they’ll “come down substantially” but won’t be eliminated entirely. On April 2, Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on several countries, with higher rates for nations like China due to their own trade barriers against the U.S. When asked Tuesday about the tariffs against the foreign country, Trump said that the 145% hit would not last forever. “I’m sure 145% is very high, and it won’t be that high, not going to be that high,” Trump said. “It got up to there. We were talking about fentanyl where, you know, various elements built it up to 145. No, it won’t be anywhere near that high.” Following Trump’s initial tariff announcement, the U.S. and China entered a tariff war, with China responding by imposing steep tariffs of its own.

By April 9, Trump said the U.S. would raise tariffs on China from 104% to 125% — after the country refused to lift its retaliatory measures — while implementing a 90-day pause on tariffs for other countries. “It’ll come down substantially, but it won’t be zero. It used to be zero,” Trump said. “We were just destroyed. China was taking us for a ride and just not going to — it’s not going to happen. We’re going to be very good to China. I have a great relationship with President Xi, but they would make billions and billions and billions of dollars a year, and they were building a military out of the United States on what they made.” By April 10, the White House said that Trump’s announced 125% tariff would actually total 145% on all Chinese imports, according to The New York Times.

The administration said the 125% would be added on top of a previously announced 20% tariff already in place on goods from China, the outlet reported. “So that won’t happen. But they’re going to do very well, and I think they’re going to be happy, and I think we’re going to live together very happily and ideally work together. So I think it’s going to work out very well, but, no, it’s at 145%. It will not be anywhere near that number,” Trump said. During a speech Tuesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he expects a “de-escalation” in the tariff war between the U.S. and China, adding that the ongoing conflict would be unsustainable in the long run, according to the Associated Press.

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Maybe the no.1 item for the day. If the Kremlin feels they must warn about what everybody already knows, it’s serious. The other day I mentioned NPR, NYT, Politico as suspicious sources on the topic. Today the FT very much joins those ranks.

“A lot of fakes are being published now, including by respected publications..”

‘Only Trust Primary Sources’ On US-Russia Talks – Kremlin (RT)

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has urged people to go to the primary sources regarding developments in talks with the US on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, warning of fake news. In an interview with RIA Novosti on Tuesday, Peskov was asked to comment on a recent report from the Financial Times claiming that Moscow is ready to freeze the conflict along the current front lines. “A lot of fakes are being published now, including by respected publications, so you should only listen to the primary sources,” he said. According to the FT article from Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to freeze the conflict during his meeting with US special envoy Steve Witkoff earlier this month in St. Petersburg.

Russian presidential foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov confirmed on Tuesday that Moscow is expecting another visit from Witkoff later this week. This will be the diplomat’s fourth visit to Russia since the start of the US diplomatic push regarding the Ukraine conflict. US President Donald Trump has touted a big reveal of his plan to wrap up the hostilities in Ukraine. “I will be giving you a full detail over the next three days,” he told journalists on Monday, adding that the US has “had very good meetings on Ukraine, Russia.” The Kremlin stated that while work is underway, the peace process is unlikely to conclude soon.

“This topic is so complex that it probably shouldn’t be constrained by strict timeframes,” Peskov told the press on Tuesday. Trump and his administration have signaled growing dissatisfaction with the pace of the peace talks. “If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters last Friday. Throughout the conflict, Moscow has said it is open to talks with Kiev. Negotiations must be based on the realities on the ground and address the root causes, such as Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO. The Kremlin previously stated that it would not accept a temporary halt in the hostilities, saying this would simply allow Ukraine’s Western backers to rearm its military.

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“Not ready yet.” Trump is being played.

Ukraine Not Ready to Discuss US Peace Plan Proposal – Reports (RT)

Ukraine appears to be reluctant to discuss the peace plan framework, prepared by the United States, during the upcoming talks in London, Axios reports, citing a US official. In the past 24 hours, there had been “indications from the Ukrainians” that they only planned to discuss a 30-day ceasefire on Wednesday, instead of US President Donald Trump’s complex peace plan proposal, Axios said on Tuesday night. The Washington Post reported earlier on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter, that the Trump administration was going to propose during the upcoming talks with Ukrainian and European representatives in London that Crimea gets recognized as part of Russia and that the front lines get freezed as part of a peace agreement.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing a person with knowledge of the negotiations, that British and French officials were “open to a scenario” where Ukraine would “accept the loss of control of some of the territories taken by Russia,” in exchange for economic support and security guarantees. The newspaper specified that France and the United Kingdom would prefer a Ukraine peace deal that acknowledged control of territories “only in a de facto way.” The New York Post reported, citing a senior US administration official, that Kiev was seemingly “willing to give up 20% of its land,” but only if it was considered a “de facto” recognition of the territory and not “de jure.”

Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, the US special presidential envoy for the Middle East, held talks on the conflict resolution with representatives from Germany, the United Kingdom and Ukraine, as well as with French President Emmanuel Macron, in Paris. On April 18, Rubio said he hoped the next meeting between Ukrainian and European representatives would lead to progress in the Ukrainian settlement. On Tuesday, US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said that Rubio was not going to attend the upcoming talks in London. The US will be represented by special envoy Keith Kellogg. Axios suggested on Tuesday that the decision to send Kellogg was made because of Kiev’s reluctance to discuss Trump’s peace plan framework.

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Zelensky claims Russia wants to prolong the war…

Ukraine Will Not Recognize Russia’s Crimea – Zelensky (RT)

Kiev refuses to discuss recognizing Crimea as a Russian territory, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky told journalists on Tuesday, according to Ukrainian outlet Suspilne. “[Crimea] is our territory, the territory of the people of Ukraine. We have nothing to talk about on this topic – it is outside our Constitution,” Zelensky said. The Ukrainian leader claimed that discussing the issue of Crimean ownership will only lead to prolonging the war. “As soon as we start talking about Crimea, about our sovereign territories, we enter the format of prolonging the war,” he said, adding that this is “what Russia wants.”

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The US will now send Kellogg, who was recently demoted to make place for Witkoff.

“Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov reportedly told the US envoys that Kiev is “90%” aligned with Washington’s proposed peace framework..”

Rubio and Witkoff To Skip London Ukraine Talks (RT)

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will not attend the upcoming Ukraine talks in London, despite earlier plans to take part, the State Department has confirmed. President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, has also withdrawn from the meeting, according to the Financial Times, and is expected to visit Moscow instead. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce cited scheduling conflicts as the reason for Rubio’s withdrawal from Wednesday’s talks, insisting this does not signal a change in the US commitment to the peace process. “Secretary Rubio is a busy man… And so when there’s certain plans, they’re conditional. And in this particular instance, while the meetings in London are still occurring, he will not be attending. But that is not a statement regarding the meetings; it’s a statement about logistical issues in his schedule,” Bruce told journalists on Tuesday.

General Keith Kellogg, another Trump envoy tasked with negotiating with Kiev directly, will represent Washington at the London discussions. The talks will include officials from the UK, France, and Germany – countries that advocate continued military support for Ukraine – as well as representatives from Kiev. The London talks follow a series of high-level meetings in Paris last week, where Rubio and Witkoff held discussions with European and Ukrainian officials. According to the New York Post, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov reportedly told the US envoys that Kiev is “90%” aligned with Washington’s proposed peace framework, which has not yet been made public. Sources cited by the Washington Post on Tuesday claimed that the US proposals include formally recognizing Crimea as Russian territory and potentially lifting sanctions on Moscow as part of a future agreement.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times claimed that Russia is prepared to halt the hostilities along the current front line. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged the media and public to rely on official sources regarding developments in US–Russian talks on the Ukraine conflict, warning that “a lot of fakes are being published now, including by respected publications.” Both Washington and Moscow have officially confirmed that Witkoff will travel to Russia for talks “later this week.” Moscow has stated that the status of Crimea – which joined Russia in 2014 following a referendum held after a Western-backed coup in Kiev – and the four other former Ukrainian regions that voted to join Russia in 2022, is not subject to negotiation. Russian officials maintain that recognizing the “reality on the ground” is essential to achieving a lasting peace.

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Russia would have to react. EU and UK hope that starts a war with NATO.

EU and UK Preparing Naval Blockade of Russia – Patrushev (RT)

The EU and the UK are gearing up to impose a naval blockade on Russia, Nikolay Patrushev, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, has said. He warned that Moscow has a fleet powerful enough to respond to any such move. In an interview published on Monday by Kommersant, Patrushev, who chairs Russia’s Maritime Board, a body which oversees national policy in this domain, stated that Moscow is facing escalating threats and challenges at sea amid growing geopolitical tensions. “The collective West no longer hides its intentions to expel our shipping from the seas, while sanctions plans mulled, for example, by the British and some EU members increasingly resemble a maritime blockade,” he said. Patrushev warned that these steps would “meet an adequate and proportionate response” from Moscow.

“If diplomatic or legal instruments do not take effect, the security of Russian shipping will be ensured by our navy. The hotheads in London or Brussels need to clearly understand this,” he said. Patrushev emphasized that Russia is pursuing a large-scale naval modernization program, including the development and deployment of unmanned systems while refining navy tactics. However, Moscow does not intend to get involved in a “naval arms race,” he added. Western countries introduced maritime restrictions on Russia in 2022 over the Ukraine conflict, and have sanctioned dozens of Russian ships for allegedly circumventing an oil price cap. Russian ships have also faced major obstacles in accessing EU ports, insurers, and financial institutions.

The British Navy has been shadowing Russian ships passing near its waters for months, citing concerns about a perceived threat to national security and maritime infrastructure. Maritime tensions have also been heightened in recent months following several ruptures in underwater infrastructure in the Baltic Sea. While there has been speculation about alleged Russian involvement, Western officials have offered no evidence. The Kremlin has dismissed the speculation as “absurd.” NATO has increased its military presence in the Baltic Sea following the sabotage allegations, prompting Russia to warn that it would respond appropriately to any “violations” by the bloc’s vessels.

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You can’t have a fair election with him as a candidate, or an organizer.

Zelensky Could Easily Rig Wartime Election – Ex-Campaign Chief (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has the ability to manipulate the outcome of a presidential election under the current martial law, according to his former campaign chief, Dmitry Razumkov. Zelensky’s presidential term expired last year, but he asserts that no leadership change can occur while the conflict with Russia persists. In an interview with journalist Anna Maksimchuk on Monday, Razumkov, a seasoned political strategist who propelled Zelensky to power, expressed concern over his former client’s ability to maintain control. ”If someone devises a system for elections under martial law, Zelensky will end up with 102% of the vote,” he quipped. “They’ll station conscription officers at every polling station and draft on the spot anyone who dares not support the current government.”

Razumkov further criticized the notion of conducting a remote election via Ukraine’s e-government service, asserting that “whoever controls Dia will then secure that same 102%.” He quipped that Russia could engineer Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s election in Ukraine through such a faulty system. “Dia,” which translates to “the state and I,” is an app closely associated with Digitalization Minister Mikhail Fedorov. Razumkov managed the successful 2019 campaign that turned Zelensky from a comedian into a head of state. Subsequently, he served as the speaker of parliament until 2021, when he was ousted by fellow lawmakers from the president’s party in what many observers said was a consolidation of power.

Zelensky has continuously extended martial law in Ukraine roughly every three months, with the latest prolongation last week pushing the expiration date to early August. His emergency rule has even been condemned by US President Donald Trump, who called Zelensky a “dictator without elections” in February. Moscow contends that, according to the Ukrainian constitution, Zelensky should transfer presidential authority to the current parliamentary speaker, Ruslan Stefanchuk. Zelensky’s refusal to do so casts doubt on the legal validity of any documents he signs, including potentially a peace treaty with Russia, President Vladimir Putin has observed.

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“.. it was “Witkoff’s idea” for the US to designate Crimea as Russian “without forcing Ukraine to recognize it.”

US To Propose Crimea Recognition As Part of Ukraine Peace Deal – WaPo (RT)

Washington will propose a peace deal recognizing Russian sovereignty over Crimea and freezing the front lines in the Ukraine conflict at a meeting with Ukrainian and European officials this week, the Washington Post has reported, citing sources. The US is expected to hold talks in London on Wednesday with Ukrainian and European officials as US President Donald Trump continues his push for a deal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg are reportedly set to meet foreign ministers and security advisers from France, Germany, the UK, and Ukraine. People familiar with the matter told the outlet on Tuesday that US proposals, presented to Ukraine in Paris last week, include Washington formally recognizing Crimea as Russian territory and eventually lifting sanctions against Moscow under a future accord.

One Western official described the pressure on Ukraine as “astounding.” European officials are expected to push for security guarantees for Ukraine and postwar reconstruction efforts, possibly funded in part by frozen Russian assets, the report said.Trump has threatened to walk away if progress is not made soon, and told reporters on Monday that he would be releasing details of the US proposals “over the next three days.” US special envoy Steve Witkoff, who has had multiple rounds of talks with senior Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, will visit Russia later this week, Moscow has confirmed. According to one of the Post’s sources, it was “Witkoff’s idea” for the US to designate Crimea as Russian “without forcing Ukraine to recognize it.”

Crimea held a referendum to join Russia in 2014 following a Western-backed armed coup in Kiev. The new Ukrainian government, along with its Western supporters, has refused to recognize the vote’s legitimacy.Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has ruled out relinquishing any territorial claims against Russia and has urged the US and other nations to continue providing military aid – a policy the Trump administration has said it will end. Moscow insists that the status of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol, and the four former Ukrainian regions which voted to join Russia in 2022, is not up for negotiation. Russian officials have emphasized that recognizing the “reality on the ground” is key to achieving lasting peace.

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This is the report the Kremlin warns about.

Putin Offers To Halt Fighting Along Current Front Lines In Ukraine: FT (ZH)

In a huge development, President Vladimir Putin has offered to halt his invasion of Ukraine across the current front line as part of ongoing efforts to work with US President Donald Trump toward reaching a permanent peace deal. This reportedly happened during ongoing dialogue with Trump’s top envoys. This is according to several sources which spoke to Financial Times, which wrote further in a Tuesday report, “The proposal is the first formal indication Putin has given since the war’s early months three years ago that Russia could step back from its maximalist demands to end the invasion.” “The Russian president told Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, during a meeting in St Petersburg earlier this month that Moscow could relinquish its claims to areas of four partly occupied Ukrainian regions that remain under Kyiv’s control, three of the people said,” FT continues.

The Kremlin side has not publicly acknowledged this, and so the breaking report should be taken with a grain of salt, given this contradicts Putin’s public stance that Russia will never relinquish the four territories which were declared part of the Russian Federation after the Moscow-backed referendums of Sept. 2022. However, if Russian forces did simply halt their advance based on an agreed-upon freeze in fighting, there would be portions of these territories still not under Russian military control. The FT report goes on, “The US has since floated ideas for a possible settlement that includes Washington recognizing Russian ownership of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, the people added, as well as at least acknowledging the Kremlin’s de facto control over the parts of the four regions it currently holds.”

All of this is being reported hours after Ukraine’s President Zelensky said he has rejected the possibility of ceding over Crimea, after the Trump administration reportedly offered the ‘gift’ to Putin of US recognition of Russian sovereignty over the strategic peninsula and home to the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet. According to Ukrainian media: “Ukraine will not legally recognize Russia’s occupation of Crimea under any circumstances, President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a briefing in Kyiv on April 22. “There is nothing to talk about. This violates our Constitution. This is our territory, the territory of the people of Ukraine,” Zelensky told reporters. Zelensky added, “As soon as talks about Crimea and our sovereign territories begin, the talks enter the format that Russia wants — prolonging the war – because it will not be possible to agree on everything quickly.”

Kiev has also recently accused Moscow of using negotiations as a smokescreen while in actuality prolonging the war, also coming off the 30-hour Eastern truce, which saw both sides accuse the other of many violations. The Financial Times acknowledged this possibility, and the fact that Moscow is in the driver’s seat related to any potential settlement that would end the conflict, in the following: But European officials briefed on US efforts to end the war cautioned that Putin would probably use the apparent concession as bait to lure Trump into accepting Russia’s other demands and forcing them on Ukraine as a fait accompli. “There is a lot of pressure on Kyiv right now to give up on things so Trump can claim victory,” one of them said.

The reality remains that if Zelensky can’t so much as admit that Crimea will be permanently in Russia’s hands, with no hope of Kiev ever getting it back, the prospect of a peace settlement happening anytime soon seems very remote. But clearly Moscow is seeking to show itself willing to compromise by these overtures, but whether there’s much substance or genuineness behind the offer to halt all frontline fighting is another question. At the moment, at least 99.5% of Kursk territory is back in Russia’s control. Russia’s military also still continues to advance in remaining parts of Donetsk still held by Ukraine, but slowly and village by village.

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Tesla will be alright. So will Musk.

Tesla Shares Pop 5% After Musk Says He’ll Limit Time With DOGE In May (ZH)

In a candid call with analysts on Tuesday, Elon Musk announced that he will begin scaling back his involvement with the federal government starting in May, signaling a shift in priorities back toward Tesla. As a result, Tesla shares were up 5% late in the after hours session.“I think starting probably next month, May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,” Musk said. Musk has been a central figure in the effort to streamline the federal government under the Trump administration through an initiative he dubbed the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE. That effort has involved an aggressive reduction of federal workforce levels, targeting DEI programs, and a broad reorganization of agency resources. Despite growing protests against Tesla and Musk’s role in Washington, he remains unapologetic. “The work with DOGE is critical,” he stated, while dismissing the backlash as “organized and paid for.”

Although the billionaire entrepreneur holds the title of “special government employee”—a designation that legally limits him to 130 days of federal work per year—his presence in the capital has been nothing short of influential. Musk indicated that the heavy lifting to establish DOGE is “mostly done,” allowing him to reallocate his schedule. “I will spend ‘a day or two’ per week on government matters if President Trump wants me to,” he said, but emphasized that more of his attention will now return to Tesla. Despite his pullback from the capital, Musk said he will “continue to advocate for lower tariffs, rather than higher tariffs,” noting that this is the extent of his ongoing engagement on trade policy. Tesla remains the only publicly traded firm among Musk’s sprawling portfolio, which includes SpaceX, Neuralink, XAI, and The Boring Company. As such, it has absorbed much of the public response—both praise and criticism—related to Musk’s deepening political ties.

Yet, the CEO expressed confidence in Tesla’s direction. “I remain extremely optimistic about Tesla’s future,” he said, pointing to the company’s ambitions in autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. He reiterated his forecast that Tesla will become the most valuable company in the world, noting that robotaxis are expected to deliver a meaningful financial impact by mid-2026. He also revealed that Tesla aims to have thousands of its Optimus humanoid robots operational in factories by the end of the year, with plans to scale to one million units annually within five years—a pace he described as faster than any product in the company’s history. Closing the call with idealism, Musk said, “I like this phrase sustainable abundance for all,” and affirmed his commitment to continue leading Tesla through its next phase of innovation and expansion. Tesla reported earnings after the market closed that were worse than analyst expectations. The stock, with most of the bad news seemingly already priced in, held its ground in after hours trading. The results were:

• Revenues $19.34BN, big miss to estimates of $21.37BN
• EPS 27c, missing estimates of 43c
• Gross margin 16.3% (down from 17.4% y/y), and beating estimates of 16.1%
• Automotive gross margin ex reg credits 12.5%, beating estimates of 11.9%
• Operating income $399 million, -66% y/y, missing estimates of $1.13 billion
• Free cash flow $664 million (vs. negative $2.53 billion y/y) missing estimate $1.08 billion
• Capital expenditure $1.49 billion (down -46% vs $2.77Bn y/y and down 47% vs $2.78BN Q/Q), missing estimates of $2.49 billion
Of note, Tesla eked out positive free cash flow number by slashing capex almost in half compared with the prior quarter and a year ago. Absent that, it would have burned cash.

Tesla offered a measured outlook during its earnings report, signaling that it will revisit its 2025 guidance in the Q2 update, while notably omitting any concrete forecast for a return to growth. The company emphasized that its rate of growth will hinge on a range of variables, including global trade policy, which it admitted is difficult to quantify in terms of impact. Tariffs, in particular, are expected to weigh more heavily on the company’s energy unit than its automotive business, with Tesla cautioning that the broader tariff landscape could have a larger effect on demand and operational strategy. Nevertheless, the company maintained that actions are being taken to stabilize performance over the medium to long term, and it expressed confidence in having sufficient liquidity to fund its product roadmap. Tesla confirmed that plans for new, more affordable vehicle models remain on track for production in the first half of 2025, though it acknowledged that these models may lead to less dramatic cost reductions than previously expected. Even with trade headwinds, the company reiterated a growing need for energy storage solutions across markets.

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“In its current form, the Department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission..”

Rubio Announces MAJOR State Department Overhaul (PJM)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a huge announcement on Tuesday regarding the State Department and the Donald Trump administration’s “America First” agenda. It’s being called the biggest shakeup at State in decades. “Today is the day,” Rubio began in a post on X, adding, “Under @POTUS’ leadership and at my direction, we are reversing decades of bloat and bureaucracy at the State Department. These sweeping changes will empower our talented diplomats to put America and Americans first.” The post included an official statement from the State Department, which reads (emphasis mine): We are facing tremendous challenges across the globe. To deliver on President Trump’s America First foreign policy, we must make the State Department Great Again. In its current form, the Department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition.

Over the past 15 years, the Department’s footprint has had unprecedented growth and costs have soared. But far from seeing a return on investment, taxpayers have seen less effective and efficient diplomacy. The sprawling bureaucracy created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America’s core national interests. That is why today I am announcing a comprehensive reorganization plan that will bring the Department into the 21st Century. This approach will empower the Department from the ground up, from the bureaus to the embassies. Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist. Under President Trump’s leadership, we have a commander in chief committed to putting America and Americans first. As his Secretary of State, I am confident a reformed State Department will meet the moment and help make our country great once again.

So what exactly does a “comprehensive reorganization” of the State Department look like? According to The Free Press, which Rubio says has the “real exclusive,” — by the way, how do we get one of those exclusives here at PJ Media? — internal documents show that the Department “will close 132 agency offices, including those launched to further human rights, advance democracy overseas, counter extremism, and prevent war crimes.” That’s a 17% reduction to start. Additionally, “under secretaries at the State Department are also being instructed within 30 days to present plans to reduce their U.S. personnel in individual departments by 15 percent,” including “six top offices employing thousands of people.”

Rubio also wrote about the shakeup in what appears to be a new Substack for the State Department, stating that “The Department has long struggled to perform basic diplomatic functions, even as both its size and cost to the American taxpayer has [sic] ballooned over the past fifteen years. The problem is not a lack of money, or even dedicated talent, but rather a system where everything takes too much time, costs too much money, involves too many individuals, and all too often ends up failing the American people.” He also expanded on a topic I covered last week, the shuttering of the Global Engagement Center — an office that censored U.S. citizens — citing it as just one of many reasons why this overhaul is necessary.

“An example of an out-of-control Department is the Global Engagement Center (GEC) that I shuttered last week. The office engaged with media outlets and platforms to censor speech it disagreed with, including that of the President o the United States, who its director in 2019 accused of employing ‘the same techniques of disinformation as the Russians.’ Despite Congress voting to shutter it, the GEC simply renamed itself and continued operating as if nothing had changed. Unless we confront the underlying bureaucratic culture that prevents the State Department from carrying out an effective foreign policy, while allowing offices like GEC to flourish in the shadows, nothing will change. That is why I am initiating a broad reorganization of the Department to address the steady growth of bureaucracy, duplication of functions, and capture by special interests that have crippled American Foreign Policy.

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“Courage means feeling fear but behaving in a way that is noble and good..”

Trump’s Courage to Fight the Good Fight (DS)

When the White House invoked the “Immortal Chaplains” to illustrate the history between the United States and Greenland, it touched on a theme emerging in the second Trump administration: the importance of courage. On Feb. 3, 1943, the American steamship SS Dorchester embarked with 902 souls—soldiers, merchant seamen, and civilians—bound for a U.S. Army base in southern Greenland to support the buildup of military personnel during World War II. The ship’s captain ordered those on board to sleep in their uniforms and life jackets in case of an attack by German submarines, but many disregarded the order because of heat from the ship’s engine. Just after midnight, a U-boat’s torpedo slammed into the Dorchester’s starboard side below the water line. Four Navy chaplains—a rabbi, a Methodist minister, a Catholic priest, and a Protestant reverend—gave up their own life vests and guided panicked crew members to the lifeboats.

The Dorchester sank in 20 minutes. One of the 230 survivors later recalled what he saw as he swam away from the ship: “The bow came up high and she slid under. The last thing I saw, the four chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men. They had done everything they could.” Courage means feeling fear but behaving in a way that is noble and good, as the chaplains did when they acted on their deepest convictions aboard the Dorchester. Donald Trump once wrote that courage is not the absence of fear but “the ability to act effectively, in spite of fear.” In 2016, Trump showed moral courage when he spoke the truth to American voters: A parasitic “establishment” of political and corporate interests had been exploiting our workers, farmers, and soldiers. When Trump challenged 16 opponents in the Republican primary, he exposed untruths in a conservative orthodoxy passed down from Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush.

Establishment foes hounded him with investigations and impeachment proceedings throughout the four years of his presidency, but Trump refused to compromise his principles or check his ambition to “make America great again.” Emboldened by Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021, the establishment connived to use the 14th Amendment to prevent Trump from running for president a third time. They leveled charges against him in two federal district courts, tried him in a New York state court, and indicted him in Georgia for alleged RICO Act violations. Though Trump was unbowed, his campaign manager, Susie Wiles, was concerned: “I just worry that if they can’t get him this way, they’ll try to kill him.” And that almost happened on July 13 at the fairgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, when an assassin’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear.

Where Trump modeled courage, the establishment shows only cowardice—their decade-long effort to destroy Trump has been prosecuted from the shadows, hiding behind the anonymity that bureaucratic power affords. They falsely claimed that Trump “colluded” with Vladimir Putin and Russia. They used a cloak-and-dagger plan to scuttle the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. And, in 2022, someone leaked a copy of the Dobbs decision overruling Roe v. Wade. In spite of Chief Justice John Roberts’ promise, the leaker remains unidentified and unaccountable. Some say that Trump’s opponents exemplify courage in their bold attacks on his character and reputation. But talk doesn’t make them courageous, least of all because it costs them nothing. Their admonitions are purely performative means to curry favor with the media and the establishment at large, which are viciously opposed to Trump’s reforms.

There is nothing courageous about yelling “F–k Trump” into a microphone. Whatever force it has in the political sphere depends on showing that the saying is accompanied by a doing. Trump’s been talking tough for years and backs it up by action of some kind. In the moment that he rose to his feet in Butler, with his face bloodied and yelling, “Fight! Fight! Fight!,” he gave the final proof that he’s more than a tough talker. Biden’s presidency is a rich example of cowardice: Insiders worked for years to conceal that the sitting president was incapable of executing the duties of the office. In the book “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” longtime political reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes pull back the curtain on Biden’s presidency, detailing how his staff stage-managed a declining president and hid his impairment from the American people. Biden “lived in bubble wrap inside bunkers,” the authors write.

Though “the signs of decline were clear to anyone who was willing to see them,” Biden’s inner circle believed that “no one walks away from the house, the plane, the helicopter,” so, onward they went. When the scam was exposed at the presidential debate last June, the power players in Washington again retreated to the secrecy of the back room and hatched a scheme to cede the delegates that Biden had secured to nominate a candidate of their choice rather than the people’s choice. For decades, presidents talked about moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but no one did until Trump. For years, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Bernie Sanders called for tariffs to restructure world trade. But when Trump did what he said he would do and imposed tariffs? That was all it took for the same people to discover their opposition to tariffs.

The cowardice of Biden and the leading lights in the Democratic Party contrast sharply with the new administration. Trump and many others have gambled their reputations, fortunes, and future interests on a bold but polarizing agenda. They face the American people, every day, openly and fearlessly. For Trump, the most important quality for aides and Cabinet members is not loyalty but courage—and the willingness to pay a price for things that matter.

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Turns out, the border is a problem only if you invite people over.

How Trump ‘Restored Law and Order’ to US Borders (Allen)

The House Homeland Security Committee released its latest “Border Brief” Tuesday, highlighting significant changes at the border since President Donald Trump took office, and a staggering year-over-year decline in the number of illegal immigrants attempting to enter the United States. “Southwest border crossings have hit another record-low because we now have a president and [a Department of Homeland Security] secretary who enforce the law,” Rep. Mark Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told The Daily Signal. “In less than three months, President Trump has restored law and order to our nation’s borders, removed criminal illegal aliens from our communities, and helped ensure the safety of the American people by empowering Department of Homeland Security law enforcement to do their jobs,” according to a committee press release.

In March, encounters with illegal aliens between ports of entry at the southern border fell by 94% compared to March 2024. Customs and Border Protection encountered 29,065 illegal aliens nationwide last month, down 88% from the 246,505 encountered in March 2024. Border Patrol’s daily apprehensions nationwide were the lowest in recorded history in March, averaging 264, a 94% decline from the previous year. The House Homeland Security Committee credits the decline in illegal crossings to the “Trump administration’s sustained deployment of military and federal law enforcement across the Southwest border, as well as partnerships with countries like El Salvador.” Since Jan. 20, the Trump administration has deployed thousands of troops and additional military resources to the southern border. The U.S. also formed an agreement with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to house deported illegal aliens in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center.

The Trump administration has also ended various parole programs set in place or expanded under the Biden administration, such as the CBP One mobile application that allowed illegal aliens to schedule an appointment at a port of entry to claim asylum. The result of ending the Biden administration’s parole programs, according to the House committee, is an 80% decline in migrant encounters at U.S. ports of entry since March 2024. The daily average of known “getaways,” illegal aliens who manage to evade Border Patrol apprehension, has also fallen by more than 90% since Trump took office. Last week, a Maryland jury found Victor Martinez-Hernandez, a reported illegal alien gotaway from El Salvador, guilty of murdering Rachel Morin, a mother of five. The number of unaccompanied alien children arriving at the southern border declined by 92% last month when compared with March 2024.

Border Patrol has also witnessed a 97% year-over-year decline in the number of Chinese nationals crossing the southern border between ports of entry. Rather than “commending this return to law and order,” Green, R-Tenn., said his “colleagues across the aisle are working to defend an illegal alien MS-13 gang member who was rightfully removed from our country.” Democrats are advocating for the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an illegal alien with ties to MS-13 who the Trump administration recently deported to a prison in El Salvador. Some Democrats, such as Mayland Sen. Chris Van Hollen who traveled to El Salvador to meet with Abrego Garcia, claim the man was wrongfully removed from the U.S. “To the American people, the contrast could not be clearer,” Green continued.

“Make no mistake—our communities are safer because the Trump administration has empowered DHS law enforcement to do their jobs, remove violent criminals, and dismantle the cartels’ business model. Now, Congress must codify President Trump’s homeland security agenda and provide the necessary funding to continue successfully securing our borders.” The House Homeland Security Committee’s March “Border Brief” celebrates the 32,809 arrests of illegal aliens at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers during the first 50 days of the Trump administration. The nearly 33,000 arrests included “14,111 convicted criminals, of whom 1,155 were criminal gang members, as well as 39 aliens on the Terrorist Screening Data Set,” according to the committee. ICE has also arrested more than 300 members of the violent prison gang Tren de Aragua since Trump took office.

The committee in April advanced legislation introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., that would require the DHS to publish the known number of special interest aliens, that is illegal aliens who pose a possible national security risk to the U.S., who cross U.S. borders. In its first border-related hearing of the 119th Congress, the committee highlighted the changes at the border during a Border Security and Enforcement Subcommittee hearing on March 28, aimed at showcasing the Biden administration’s “failure” at the border. “President Trump continues to deliver on the promises he made to secure our border,” Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., told The Daily Signal. “As the chairman of the Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement, I am honored to have the opportunity to work alongside President Trump to continue delivering results for the American people.”

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Woke has bankrupted Hollywood. Or almost. Bad for business.

Woke Blackout in Tinseltown (Ryumshin)

The conservative winds that have swept across America since January 20, 2025 have reached all the way to California. Hollywood, once the global capital of progressive values, is rapidly turning its back on the previous narrative. Transgender characters are quietly being cut from scripts, LGBT-themed productions shelved, and studios are shifting toward content with Christian and family-oriented values. Entire projects have been dropped. Others are being rewritten on the fly to avoid positive portrayals of LGBT characters. Just a year ago, such a reversal seemed unthinkable. Hollywood, which had long been synonymous with ‘woke’ ideology, appeared firmly entrenched in its liberal agenda. Anti-Trump themes were being churned out with near industrial efficiency, and conservative attempts at counter-programming lacked the budget or reach to compete. In the cultural trenches, liberals were not just winning, they were dominating. But now, studios are backing off.

The liberal press, already ringing alarm bells, has pinned the blame squarely on Donald Trump. In this rare case, they might have a point. Following his re-election, President Trump wasted no time in asserting ideological control. He signed executive orders recognizing only two genders, reinstated the ban on transgender individuals serving in the military, and scrapped federal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) guidelines. In the cultural sphere, he made a bold appointment: Brendan Carr, a staunch Trump supporter and co-architect of the ‘Project 2025’ conservative reform blueprint, was named chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC might seem bureaucratic, but under Carr, it has become a powerful cultural weapon. Investigations were quickly launched into media outlets seen as hostile to Trump.

Disney, one of the most vocal progressive corporations, was accused of violating equal opportunity laws through its DEI policies. After making some adjustments, Disney still found itself under pressure, with Carr even threatening to revoke ABC’s broadcasting license. The result? Rapid, widespread self-censorship. Studios aren’t backpedaling because they’ve had a change of heart, they simply don’t want to attract the regulatory wrath of Washington. Amazon, led by Jeff Bezos, was ahead of the curve. Bezos cultivated ties with the Trump camp, quietly axed DEI advisors, and began investing only in “safe” content. The reward? Government scrutiny vanished. Still, it would be unfair to credit Trump alone for Hollywood’s pivot.

The shift had begun before the 2024 election, driven by cold economic realities. The traditional business model of cable TV is collapsing. Streaming services, flooded with progressive content, have failed to turn a profit. Worse, many of those “inclusive” productions have sparked controversy, underperformed at the box office, and alienated large swathes of the audience. Family-oriented and religious films, by contrast, often require modest budgets and cater to a mainstream audience. Conservative content, it turns out, is not just safer – it’s more profitable. There’s also the matter of public fatigue. Americans are tired of being lectured. Box office returns, streaming numbers, and network ratings all tell the same story. Once-dominant liberal cable channels are in freefall. As of December 2024, CNN and MSNBC had lost half their prime-time audiences, plunging to 30-year lows.

Fox News, meanwhile, is thriving. So are conservative-leaning podcasters like Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan, now the dominant voices in America’s ‘new media’ landscape. None of this is a coincidence. The broader cultural and economic environment in the United States has shifted. Hollywood’s liberal monopoly was unsustainable, both financially and ideologically. Trump’s return to power merely accelerated a transformation already underway. Will this rightward turn change the face of global culture? Almost certainly. Will it return Hollywood to its former glory? Time will tell. But what is already clear is that the old narrative is dead – and the new one is being written with a red pen.

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“..the total collapse which is about to happen, is not “Trump’s fault”. He just happened to be the right person to execute the inevitable downfall of a major monetary era. But even if it is not his fault, history will unfairly blame him as the villain who brought the world economy down, and thus see him as probably the worst president in history. So not the best of timing for Mr Trump.”

The Big Short and The Bigger Long (Egon von Greyerz)

For at least 35 years, the monetary system has been telling us that the current era is coming to an end. That means a debt collapse, a currency collapse and a collapse of most bubble assets like stocks and property. THUS THE BIG SHORT! As I am writing this on Easter Monday, the Dow is down 1,100 points (2.9%) and the Nasdaq is down 3.3%. Anyone who buys the dips will be slaughtered. As I have said for a very long time, before this is over, stocks will be down 90-99% in real terms, which is gold. More importantly, this total collapse has very little to do with TRUMP. More later.

And don’t for a moment believe that gold is overvalued. As many have used conventional technical tools to predict a gold correction, I have been saying for a long time that gold is in an acceleration phase and will reach multiples of the current price. (Yes, of course, there will be corrections on the way up, but most probably not yet.) THUS THE BIG LONG! As many have used conventional technical tools to predict a gold correction, I have been saying for a long time that gold is in an acceleration phase and will reach multiples of the current price. (Yes, of course there will be corrections on the way up but most probably not yet). THUS THE BIG LONG!

END OF A MONETARY ERA The end of a monetary era is always the same, with bubble assets going up in smoke. The majority of investors haven’t got a clue what is happening. They are hanging on to their stocks, hoping that Trump will save them by firing Powell and telling the next Chairman of the Fed to lower interest rates. But the time of manipulating rates is over. The market will now determine rates, which it should always do. And with uncontrollable debt escalation in the US and many other countries, the cost of debt can only go one way – UP! Remember, there is only one buyer of US debt, which is the Fed. But the Fed can only buy debt if the US government issues more debt. And therein lies the crux. More debt must be created in a futile attempt to save the ever-growing and out-of-control finances of the US. This is without doubt the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. Madoff would certainly have enjoyed it.

And still, it would have been so easy, as all of this has been totally predictable. To paraphrase Churchill, the more you study history, the more self-evident the future becomes. Still no government, no central banker, no journalist and virtually no market student spends any time on learning from the past. Why, why, why, you ask yourself. Well, it is clearly sheer arrogance in believing that we know better today and that we have better tools. And of course, “The times are different today”. Hmmm! But they are not and have never been. Every monetary system has collapsed in history, and every currency has gone to ZERO, without fail. As I witnessed Greenspan’s expansionary policy after the property market collapse in the 1990s and how debt and derivatives quickly continued to grow, I was certain that we were seeing the end of a major monetary system.

I had, since the late 1980s, been convinced that gold was the best insurance against yet another coming failure of the monetary system. As major central banks like the UK and Switzerland were selling their gold in the mid to late 1990s, it was clear that we were near the bottom. So we waited until the 1999 gold bottom at $250 and confirmation of the gold price recovery in the early 2000s before buying physical gold. BACK TO TRUMP – the culprit. But everything is, of course, Trump’s fault! All the misery hitting the world now is due to Trump’s capricious actions. Here are just a few examples of how TRUMP is now wrecking not just the US but the whole world economy, according to the general public as well as the media and politicians in most countries:

Stocks crashing, bonds crashing, rates up, dollar crashing, trade wars with massive daily tit for tat yo-yo swinging tariffs between 10% and 145%, much higher Inflation, collapse of global trade etc, etc. Yes, all of the above is happening and much more and it is all Trump’s fault.But is it really? No, Trump is not the culprit. Instead, Trump happens to be the catalyst. An absolutely superb analysis of the US-China trade war was given by this very acute Chinese influencer: “Leaders are instruments of their time, and they appear at the time in the cycle to carry out what was going to happen anyway.

Just like Thatcher and Reagan were the right leaders to lead the upturn in the early 1980s, Trump is perfect for creating the havoc and chaos that comes with the end of a major monetary era. What is happening in the US and global economy today, and the total collapse which is about to happen, is not “Trump’s fault”. He just happened to be the right person to execute the inevitable downfall of a major monetary era. But even if it is not his fault, history will unfairly blame him as the villain who brought the world economy down, and thus see him as probably the worst president in history. So not the best of timing for Mr Trump.

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ivm

 

 

Malhotra

 

 

Hotez

 

 

https://twitter.com/DiedSuddenly_/status/1914837101486518732

 

 

 

 

Phone

 

 

Mom

 

 

Goose

 

 

https://twitter.com/Lin11W/status/1914406273602277705

 

 

Feynman

 

 

Goats
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1914628619722281004

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Apr 202025
 


Edward Hopper The long leg 1935

 

Opposition to ‘Eurofascism’ Driving US and Russia Closer – Spy Agency (RT)
Russia Announces Easter Ceasefire (RT)
European Union Bans Commemorating The Defeat of Nazi Germany (SCF)
Trump Administration Plans To Send Envoy Witkoff To Russia Again – CNN (RT)
Scott Ritter: Rubio’s Threats to Quit Ukraine Talks Look Like Sabotage (Sp.)
US Threats To Quit Ukraine Talks Aimed at Kiev Rather Than Moscow (TASS)
US Sets Timeline For Kiev To Agree To Ceasefire (RT)
Germany Wants The UK To Hold Its Hand While It Starts WWIII (Marsden)
Moldova Wages War On Christians To Please Its EU Overlords (Romanenko)
Will Trump’s Tariffs Hurt GOP in Midterms? (Caldwell)
US, Iran Agree To Enter Next Phase Of Nuclear Negotiations (JTN)
Trump On Deported Migrant: ‘He’s Got MS-13 Tattooed’ On His Knuckles (JTN)
SCOTUS Order Pauses Deportations Under Alien Enemies Act (Allen)
SCOTUS Blocks Deportation of Alleged Venezuela Gang Members for Now (ET)
SCOTUS Halts Venezuelan Deportations, 4th Circuit Upholds Garcia Order (Turley)
Judge Blocks Trump’s Order Ending ‘X’ Gender Marker on Passports (ET)
Tesla Continues to Reign Supreme Despite Leftist Violence (Blackmon)

 

 

 

 

90 days

Cernovich
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1913298101915238458

Tish
https://twitter.com/LynneBP_294/status/1913223009462010142

DEI

injunctions

Left

Ireland

Conor

 

 

 

 

“.. work together to prevent “a new global conflict” and confront “possible provocations both from Ukraine and from the ‘maddened Europeans’..”

Opposition to ‘Eurofascism’ Driving US and Russia Closer – Spy Agency (RT)

The US and Russia are natural allies against “Eurofascism” and the tyrannical tendencies prevalent in Western European countries, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has said. The spy agency published a text on its website on Wednesday titled ‘Eurofascism, just as 80 years ago, is the common enemy for Moscow and Washington.’ The SVR argued that Europe has a “historical predisposition” to “various forms of totalitarianism that periodically produce devastating, global-scale conflicts.” It cited the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution and the “bloody actions” of Napoleon as examples. It also referenced the Charlemagne Division of the SS, made up of volunteers from Nazi-occupied France.

The agency credited French author Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, who collaborated with Nazi Germany, with introducing “the concept of Eurofascism… and its ideology.” According to the SVR, la Rochelle believed that “Eurofascism … [is] inherent not only to the Germans but to other European ‘societies’ as well.” The agency cited unnamed experts as saying that the current rift between the US and the EU facilitates a “situational rapprochement of Washington and Moscow.” “The United States is free due to the willingness of the ancestors of modern Americans to confront such dictatorships as the British Monarchy or the Jacobin Revolution,” it said. The SVR claimed that “conservative expert circles in the USA believe that the British elite … is very much inclined to commit the gravest crimes against humanity.”

“America felt the effect of similar inclinations of the British back in August of 1814, when the British troops occupied Washington, burned the Capitol and the White House,” the SVR claimed. The agency said that “foreign expert circles” are hopeful that Russia and the US will work together to prevent “a new global conflict” and confront “possible provocations both from Ukraine and from the ‘maddened Europeans’ traditionally urged on by Great Britain.” The statement was released as the US is attempting to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Russian officials said that, unlike the Biden administration, President Donald Trump and his team have shown a readiness to listen to Moscow’s positions and understand the root causes of the conflict.

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It took just seconds for Zelensky to claim Russia was violating its own ceasefire. And that is the only newsbit broadcast all across the west.

Russia Announces Easter Ceasefire (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced a temporary Easter pause in hostilities with Ukraine, which is slated to begin at 18:00 Moscow time on Saturday and last until midnight on April 21. The announcement came during his meeting with Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov in Moscow. Putin expressed hope that Kiev would demonstrate goodwill and adhere to the ceasefire. ”At the same time, our troops must be prepared to respond to any violations or provocations by the adversary, to any aggressive actions,” he said. Putin stated that Ukraine’s reaction to the ceasefire would be a clear indicator of whether Kiev is sincerely willing to engage in negotiations to end the conflict. The president referenced the US-brokered 30-day energy infrastructure truce agreed to on March 18, accusing Ukraine of violating it.

“We know that the Kiev regime has violated the agreement on pausing energy infrastructure strikes more than a hundred times,” Putin explained. “Therefore, I ask you [Gerasimov] to remain extremely vigilant and prepared for an immediate and full-force response.” Shortly after Putin’s statement, the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the ceasefire, calling on Kiev to reciprocate. ”The ceasefire is being introduced for humanitarian purposes and will be observed by the Russian Joint Group of Troops, provided it is mutually observed by the Kiev regime,” the ministry said. While Kiev did not immediately provide a clear response to Putin’s announcement, it appeared to reject the temporary truce. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky branded it an attempt to “play with human lives,” claiming that swarms of Russian kamikaze drones were detected in the country’s skies at 17:15 Moscow time.

The drones “in our skies show Putin’s true attitude to Easter and human lives,” Zelensky said in a statement. According to RT war correspondent Andrey Filatov, reporting from the Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) area in Donetsk People’s Republic, multiple violations of the ceasefire were observed within an hour of it taking effect. Ukrainian forces in the area have been actively using drones, mortars and heavy artillery, striking Russian positions with cluster munitions. Earlier this week, Moscow suggested a full long-term ceasefire with Ukraine was highly unlikely, given Kiev’s long history of broken promises and violations of previous deals.

Speaking to reporters at UN headquarters on Thursday, Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia said there are “big issues with the comprehensive ceasefire,” referencing the fate of the long-defunct Minsk agreements, as well as repeated violations of a US-brokered 30-day moratorium on energy infrastructure strikes. In the meantime, Washington has signaled that time is running out for finding a solution to the Ukraine conflict. On Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration was prepared to throw in the towel soon. “We need to figure out here now, within a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term. Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on,” Rubio stated.

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In case you were wondering what the EU stands for. This should be hard to believe. Unfortunately, it is not.

European Union Bans Commemorating The Defeat of Nazi Germany (SCF)

The European Union is warning European leaders not to attend the 80th anniversary of Victory Day in Moscow on May 9. Ostensibly, the rationale for such a ban is that Russia is allegedly waging a war against Ukraine and threatening the rest of Europe, according to the EU. That’s one way of seeing it. Another way of seeing the matter is that the conflict in Ukraine is a proxy war sponsored by the EU and NATO to defeat Russia, eight decades after Nazi Germany failed to do it. The Euro elites who have come to dominate policymaking share the same fascist mentality. No wonder, then, that they are against attending the 80th anniversary event in Moscow next month. They need to sully that event by way of covering up their despicable politics. The event marking the defeat of Nazi Germany and fascism in Europe is a massively important historical date for the entire world.

Eighty years ago, on May 9, 1945, the Soviet Red Army crushed the Nazi regime in Berlin thereby ending the most horrific war in human history. Up to 27 million Soviet citizens – perhaps more – gave their lives in the epic struggle to defeat Nazi Germany and its fascist European allies, including Vichy France, Italy, Hungary, Finland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Russia holds the honor of liberating Europe from the evil of fascism. By comparison, the other anti-fascist allies of the United States and Britain lost less than 5 per cent of the casualties that the Soviet citizens endured. It is fitting that many international leaders are attending the Victory Day parade in Moscow this year. They include China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi. Many others, however, will not be in Moscow, which is lamentable.

The American President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer should be present to pay respects to the soldiers and civilians who sacrificed their lives. Deplorably, the toxic politics that have poisoned relations between Western states and Russia have rendered such participation impossible. What is all the more appalling, however, is the explicit ban on European leaders attending the celebrations in Moscow. This week, Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, issued a warning that any politicians who went to Moscow would face severe consequences. Kallas, who was formerly the prime minister of the tiny Baltic state of Estonia, was appointed last year as the EU’s most senior official on foreign policy. One of those defying orders is Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. He rebuked Kallas for daring to tell him, as the leader of a sovereign nation, where and where not to go.

He added: “I will go to Moscow to pay respects to thousands of Red Army soldiers who died liberating Slovakia.” Fico was elected on a platform calling for friendly relations with Russia and an end to the NATO proxy war in Ukraine. He has consistently opposed sending more military aid to the Kiev regime. Last year, Fico survived an assassination attempt in which he was shot by a gunman motivated by pro-Ukraine politics. Of particular note, the European Union’s sanctions on politicians attending the Victory Day commemoration in Moscow are targeting candidate states joining the 27-member bloc. Kallas threatened that their candidacy could be cancelled. They include the Balkan nations of Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia, as well as Moldova and Georgia. Nevertheless, Serbian President Aleksander Vucic stated that he would be going to Moscow despite intense pressure from Brussels.

“We are proud of our struggle against fascism, and that was the key reason why I accepted the invitation”, said Vucic. He spoke, however, of the sinister leverage on his government. “It seems to me that the sky is about to fall on my head due to the pressure surrounding the trip to Moscow,” said the Serbian president, who added that his country was being destabilized by outside agitators. The unseemly controversy over the Victory Day parade in Moscow serves to highlight the growing malevolent tendencies of the EU. Increasingly, the bloc’s centralization of political power is becoming more authoritarian and hostile towards Russia. Any dissent among the EU members questioning the bloc’s support for the proxy war in Ukraine is ruthlessly suppressed with threats of political and economic sanctions.

The EU leadership, under Russophobic autocrats like European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas, is implicated in suppressing elections in Romania, Moldova and Georgia to prevent parties that are calling for an end to the war in Ukraine and better relations with Russia. The recent dubious prosecution in France of nationalist politician Marine Le Pen, who has been critical of NATO’s proxy war, is another baleful example of the EU moving to crush dissent. It is startling how much the EU has come to operate like a fascist bloc. Policy decisions about funding a NeoNazi regime in Ukraine to fight a proxy war against Russia are being made by Russophobic elites with no democratic accountability.

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This will be visit no. 4. Putin and Trump now know from each other what they want, not just what they say they want.

This is the first time that I see Witkoff saying a peace deal would include not only the recognition of Crimea as Russian, but also the other 4 regions.

Trump Administration Plans To Send Envoy Witkoff To Russia Again – CNN (RT)

US President Donald Trump’s administration is planning one more meeting between special envoy Steve Witkoff and senior Russian officials to get Moscow on board with its vision for peace in the Ukraine conflict, CNN has claimed, citing an anonymous source. Witkoff has already met with Russian President Vladimir Putin three times this year as the US president tries to broker a ceasefire between Kiev and Moscow. In its article on Saturday, CNN further quoted its source as saying that Washington’s plan, which was reportedly presented to Ukrainian officials and several European leaders during a top-level meeting in Paris on Thursday, envisages a ceasefire along the current front line. The US government also supposedly signaled a willingness to recognize Crimea as Russian territory.

Commenting on his meeting with Putin in Moscow last Friday, Witkoff told Fox News on Monday that the nearly five-hour talks were “compelling” and that the Kremlin is seeking a lasting solution to the Ukraine conflict. Trump’s special envoy claimed that Moscow and Kiev “might be on the verge of something that would be very, very important for the world at large.” According to the US official, any potential peace deal would include the recognition of Crimea, the Donetsk, and Lugansk People’s Republics, and Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions as part of Russia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday that while there were “no clear outlines of any agreement yet,” Moscow values the “constructive and substantive” contact with the US.

Witkoff’s remarks did not sit well with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, who on Thursday accused Trump’s envoy of “wittingly or unwittingly spreading Russian narratives.” He reiterated that Kiev will “never recognize any temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian.” Russia has maintained that it is open to peace talks with Ukraine in principle, as long as its key security concerns are addressed. Moscow demands among other things that Kiev renounce its NATO aspirations and recognize the territorial “realities on the ground.” The Kremlin has insisted it will not accept a mere freeze of the conflict.

On Saturday, President Putin announced a temporary Easter truce effective from 18:00 Moscow time through midnight on Sunday night. While he expressed hope that Ukraine would reciprocate, he also stated that the “Kiev regime has violated the agreement on pausing energy infrastructure strikes more than a hundred times.” Putin argued that Ukraine’s reaction to the ceasefire would be a clear indicator of whether Kiev is serious about wanting to achieve peace.

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Trump cannot leave the talks. They’re his, after all. And it would lead to a Moscow-Brussels war, which would involve Paris, London, Berlin and … NATO. They will try to blackmail the US into that fight. Trump should simply say, beforehand, that he wants none of this to happen.

Scott Ritter: Rubio’s Threats to Quit Ukraine Talks Look Like Sabotage (Sp.)

Marco Rubio warned Friday that the US could walk out of the Ukrainian peace process if progress is not made “within days.” A day earlier, Volodymyr Zelensky accused Trump Ukraine envoy Steve Witkoff of “spreading Russian narratives,” and claimed Witkoff has no “mandate…to speak about Ukrainian territories.” The US secretary of state’s remarks on potentially ending the US peace push in Ukraine signal dual frustrations: with Steve Witkoff’s influence over Ukraine policy, and with Russia’s demands for a lasting peace instead of a temporary ceasefire, military analyst and former Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter told Sputnik. “I think this is an effort by Marco Rubio to insert himself into the process, but I want to remind people that he doesn’t make policy, especially policy concerning US-Russian relations,” Ritter emphasized.

Ritter sees Rubio’s comments as an attempt to “create the atmosphere of a failed policy” to try to get the US to abandon its current policy on Ukraine, but doesn’t see President Trump accepting this position. Ritter also recalled that Rubio’s position in the Trump administration has forced him to pull a 180 degree turn on the traditional pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia posture he held throughout his career in the Senate. “Rubio’s statement actually empowers Europe and Ukraine in many ways because now all they have to do is drag this out. The key here is for Europe and Ukraine is to get the United States out of the peacekeeping business and hopefully get the US back into the war-fighting business, that is, to continue their proxy conflict against Russia. That doesn’t seem to be the policy direction that Donald Trump favors,” the observer stressed.

Ultimately, Ritter said, what the Ukraine crisis needs right now is diplomacy. “This requires the United States to put pressure on Europe, to put pressure on Ukraine. The Trump administration doesn’t seem to have the leverage necessary to achieve that. This is where Marco Rubio is supposed to be stepping forward to take the lead diplomatically to see the president’s will translated into actual policy that can be implemented. But Rubio doesn’t seem to be inclined to do this.” “So what I envision happening is, in a week or so, you’ll see Marco Rubio make a play with the Trump administration, with the president himself, to terminate America’s effort to bring this conflict to an end. But I don’t see Donald Trump accepting that. I see Donald Trump rejecting that advice and continuing to press forward and giving Steve Witkoff a chance to work with the Russians. But this is a process that if it continues, is going to take weeks, if not months, before you get the kind of detailed agreement necessary to allow Russia to accept a ceasefire,” Ritter summed up.

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“..we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people.’

US Threats To Quit Ukraine Talks Aimed at Kiev Rather Than Moscow (TASS)

Washington’s threats to walk away from the negotiation process on Ukraine are directed against the Kiev regime rather than Moscow, the Axios portal said, citing European officials. “Two European diplomats confirmed Rubio said Trump was losing his patience and might withdraw from the process if a deal wasn’t reached soon,” the portal wrote, adding that “three European diplomats felt Rubio’s comments were mostly aimed at the Ukrainians.” “A source close to the Ukrainian government also said it seemed Rubio’s comments were aimed at pressing Ukraine. The source was also concerned that a Trump withdrawal from the negotiations could lead to suspension of US military aid to Ukraine,” the portal noted.

The European diplomats pointed out that during talks in Paris, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has not mentioned “increasing the pressure on Russia.” “The impression was that Rubio and Witkoff are under a lot of pressure from Trump and they are channeling it to the other players,” a European diplomat said. According to Axios, Rubio said that US President Donald Trump had decided that “he has dedicated a lot of time and energy to this, and there are a lot of things going on in the world right now that we need to be focused on.” “We need to figure out <…> within a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term. If it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on,” the top US diplomat added.

Rubio told reporters in Paris that Trump may abandon his efforts to settle the Ukraine crisis if there is no immediate progress. “We’re not going to continue with this endeavor for weeks and months on end,” he explained. Earlier, Trump himself did not rule out the US leaving the negotiations. “Now if, for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people.’ And we’re going to just take a pass, but hopefully we won’t have to do that,” he told reporters at the White House.

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“..as early as next week..”

I think the talks will take much longer.

US Sets Timeline For Kiev To Agree To Ceasefire (RT)

US President Donald Trump reportedly expects to “make a determination for a full and comprehensive ceasefire” between Ukraine and Russia as early as next week. Both are to be presented with the final offer, the New York Post has claimed, citing an anonymous senior administration official. Trump has stated on multiple occasions that he wants to put an end to the Ukraine conflict as soon as possible. Since he assumed office in January, Washington and Moscow have been engaged in active diplomacy, holding several rounds of high-level talks. The newspaper quoted a source on Friday as saying that “this coming week in London, we want to make a determination for a full and comprehensive cease-fire.” The unnamed US official added that the “intent then is to have [discussions] with the Russians” and determine where Moscow and Kiev stand on this “final offer.”

According to the publication, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov told US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff during their meeting in Paris on Thursday that Kiev is “90%” on board with Washington’s peace framework, which has yet to be made public. Ukraine’s remaining concerns mostly revolve around territories which Kiev claims as its own, but are in fact under Moscow’s control at present, the Post reported.Russia has demanded that Ukraine officially recognize the “reality on the ground,” while Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly ruled out such a scenario.

The media outlet further alleged that the US could offer Russia a “carrot”: the relaxation of sanctions and the potential unfreezing of Moscow’s seized assets, which are currently held by Western institutions. Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump echoed a remark made by Rubio earlier in the day, stating that “if for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult… we’re going to just take a pass.” Russian authorities have expressed skepticism about the feasibility of a ceasefire with Ukraine and accused Kiev’s backers in Europe of undermining US efforts. Speaking to journalists on Thursday, Moscow’s UN representative, Vassily Nebenzia, stated that due to the West’s record of using peace deals to help build up the Ukrainian military, expectations of a full ceasefire are “simply unrealistic at this stage.”

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“..Merz needs a useful idiot to ride shotgun alongside him in the doltmobile to share in any responsibility for the eventual mayhem when things inevitably go pear-shaped. “You rang?” say the Brits.”

Germany Wants The UK To Hold Its Hand While It Starts WWIII (Marsden)

Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz doesn’t officially take office until May 6, but that hasn’t stopped him from hitting the press circuit like it’s demolition day. Apparently, he’s got some lost time – and infrastructure – to make up for. In a chat with Germany’s public broadcaster, ARD, he floated the idea that Kiev, which seems to rank higher than Berlin on his priority list, needs to “get ahead of the situation” on the battlefield and “shape events” instead of playing defense. The event he seems most eager to shape? Oh, just the Third World War, apparently. Because he pivoted straight to the Kerch Bridge – mainland Russia’s lifeline to the Crimean peninsula – like it’s been living on borrowed time.

Merz said that “if for example, the most important land connection between Russia and Crimea is destroyed, or if something happens on Crimea itself, where most of the Russian military logistics are located, then that would be an opportunity to bring this country strategically back into the picture finally.” Cool, cool. Which picture would that be, exactly? The one labeled “Catastrophic Misjudgments of the 21st Century”? Probably. Which is why Merz needs a useful idiot to ride shotgun alongside him in the doltmobile to share in any responsibility for the eventual mayhem when things inevitably go pear-shaped. “You rang?” say the Brits. Or at least that’s what Merz is apparently hoping they say. “Our European partners are already supplying cruise missiles,” Merz said in an interview. “The British are doing it, the French are doing it, and the Americans are doing it anyway, this must be jointly agreed. And if it’s agreed, then Germany should take part.”

Merz’s fellow Christian Democratic Party MPs have been floating the idea in the Western press that he’s waiting for an official permission slip from London. It would probably read something like this: “Dear Herr Friedrich, You are hereby authorized to partake in a highly coordinated, militarized pub crawl. First stop: a punch-up with Russia, followed by a wobbly march to a greasy spoon for black coffee, bad lighting, and a collective hangover.” Merz is just days away from grabbing the wheel, and he’s done pretending to be the guy in the backseat yelling directions at Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Scholz, for his part, always said that Germany wouldn’t hand Kiev the Taurus long-range missiles. Not that he had much wiggle room after last year’s leaked audio from Russian intelligence of German Air Force brass workshopping ways to hit the Kerch Bridge without leaving any German fingerprints.

Kind of a bad look for a guy who keeps overtly declaring that he wants peace. So naturally, he was furious. Which is why, if Team Scholz suddenly turned around now and said, “You know what? Let’s try a few long-range missile strikes, just for funsies,” people might reasonably assume that he’d undergone a surprise lobotomy with a NATO letter opener. As the coalition partners for Merz’s incoming government, Scholz’s Social Democrats’ support would be needed on any vote. And so far, they’ve shown no interest in greenlighting his WW3 passion project. You know, democracy and all that. Minor hiccup, I know. If military ambition and musings alone were all it took, Merz would already be well on his way to having a Netflix original named after him and maybe even a seat with his name on it waiting at The Hague.

But hey, hear the guy out. What if it’s, like, a group project? Das ist gut, ja? Nah, dude. Nicht gut. Nicht gut at all. What exactly does Team Merz think this would look like? Would the Brits and Germans sit side by side, fingers hovering over their respective missile buttons, doing a tense little “one, two, three, fire” and just praying that neither one flinches at the last second and leaves the other one with some very awkward phone calls to make? If so, that would certainly explain why they’re talking about specifically needing Britain’s non-negotiable participation and not France – the country that trained a flagship brigade for the Ukrainian army, who apparently learned how to bail out before even seeing action. “Paris hailed it as a ‘unique’ initiative,” reported France24. Training 1,700 Ukrainians in France to fight who then just end up surrendering to the foie gras and rosé at the local café prior to deployment is ‘unique’, alright.

“Ah, wonderbar!”

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“..Moldova’s airport detentions echo the trajectory taken by the Kiev authorities in Ukraine..”

Moldova Wages War On Christians To Please Its EU Overlords (Romanenko)

On Thursday, Moldovan authorities chose to detain Bishop Marchel of the Moldovan Metropolis, a metropolitanate under the Russian Orthodox Church, at Chiinau International Airport. Bishop Marchel was on his way to Jerusalem to bring back the Holy Fire for Easter, one of the most sacred ceremonies of the year for Orthodox believers. According to reports, he was pulled aside for a thorough inspection of his person and luggage, had his passport confiscated, and was not allowed to board his flight even though nothing suspicious was ever found. His documents were only returned thirty minutes after the plane departed. By contrast, the rival Metropolis of Bessarabia, a different Orthodox Christian church in Moldova, canonically under the Romanian Patriarchate, sent its own delegate, Bishop Filaret, on the same mission unmolested.

This isn’t an isolated outrage but rather the latest episode in a systematic campaign against anyone deemed pro Russian. On March 25, 2025, Eugenia Gutul the democratically elected head of the Gagauz autonomy was detained at the very same airport. Her passport was confiscated and she was held incommunicado for 72 hours on opaque corruption and illegal financing charges, before being put under house arrest to await trial. Two days later, opposition figure Alexei Lungu was stopped from leaving the country on murky grounds, and Viktor Petrov another Gagauz leader was held for hours in February after flying in from Istanbul, an arrest he claims was orchestrated by Prime Minister Recean’s office. These incidents form a clear pattern: every pro Russian politician, cleric or public figure is under suspicion of destabilizing European choice or colluding with foreign powers.

At its core, what is being played out in Moldova in regards to the Moldovan Metropolis is an attempt to hold the spiritual life of the majority hostage to a political agenda. Nearly 70 percent of Moldovans adhere to the Moldovan Metropolis of the Russian Orthodox Church. By making its shepherds and representatives into targets, the government is sending a message: worship with a Romanian or European aligned body and you re free to practice your faith; profess loyalty to a politically inconvenient church and you risk being treated like a criminal. This is not a security measure it is a politicization of religion.

Worryingly, Moldova’s airport detentions echo the trajectory taken by the Kiev authorities in Ukraine. In August 2024, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law effectively banning any religious organization affiliated with a state engaged in armed aggression a barely veiled reference to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP). The bill sailed through 265 29 and obliged each parish to sever ties with Moscow or face court ordered closure within nine months. President Zelensky hailed it as a step toward spiritual independence, yet by criminalizing an entire denomination, Kiev set the stage for unprecedented state intrusion into religious life.

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“if a far-left radical is the one raising the most money, and someone who’s arguing that Democrats should go even further left, that’s good for Republicans.”

Will Trump’s Tariffs Hurt GOP in Midterms? (Caldwell)

As President Donald Trump moves at a feverish pace in imposing tariffs and undoing much of his predecessor’s legacy, a question has emerged: How will voters react to these bold actions when midterm elections arrive in 2026? Trump has said that his tariffs—which have corresponded with a drop in his economic job-approval rating—will end up benefiting him and Republicans in midterms. “And I really think we’re helped a lot by the tariff situation that’s going on, which is a good situation,” he said at a National Republican Congressional Committee fundraising dinner last week. “It’s going to be legendary. You watch.” But Brad Bannon, a veteran pollster and political consultant for Democrat congressional campaigns, told The Daily Signal he thinks lower approval ratings and higher uncertainty on the economy will benefit Democrats significantly.

“I don’t believe that anybody should panic, but the Republicans should be worried, based on the latest polling I’ve seen,” said Bannon. Bannon said he was paying particular attention to a CBS poll that showed 53% of people thought the economy had worsened in the past three months and 54% thought Trump had ownership for the state of the economy, rather than former President Joe Biden. Though he acknowledged that Trump’s economic approval rating has risen since its nosedive amid the market crash, he suggested that the fall in the stock market would trigger backlash from voters with 401(k)s who “got basically killed during the tariff thing.” But Republican consultants painted a different picture.

Jason Roe is a reelection campaign consultant for Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich., who flipped Michigan’s 7th Congressional District in 2024, which is one of the most volatile swing districts in the country. Michigan is in a special situation as a state that’s especially reliant on Canadian goods, but also has many voters who suffered from deindustrialization in the wake of prior free-trade agreements. Roe says polling suggests to him that voters are willing to give Trump a chance on his ambitious restructuring of the economy. “Everyone seems to—even people that don’t love Trump—feel like we’ve got to do something,” Roe said. “It’s unsustainable as it is.” “So, I think there’s this willingness to give the benefit of the doubt, and you see that in polling on issues like tariffs that don’t poll well, yet Trump’s numbers are still holding. He’s at 47 in the most recent CBS poll. For him to be doing what he’s doing and being who he is, that’s an extraordinarily strong number… but if we get much past Labor Day and people aren’t seeing results… then we could see political problems.” he added.

Democrats also have much to fear as they look toward the 2026 midterms. The Democratic Party had a 27% approval rating in an NBC poll in March. Additionally, the Democratic Party has begun to gravitate toward polarizing figures, such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Jasmine Crockett of Texas, as leaders. Republican strategists think that will be a great asset when midterm season comes. “The national party heads become great targets,” said Brett O’Donnell, a veteran of many presidential campaigns who is consulting for the reelection campaign of Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. He contends that figures such as Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would alienate most voters. “They make for great targets because they’re talking about things that, for the most part, aren’t the concerns of the majority of Americans,” O’Donnell said.

Todd, the Republican consultant, who argues that the Democrats suffered in 2024 because “they’ve allowed themselves to get so far out of the mainstream,” thinks that those figures will hurt Democrats in the next election cycle. Asked about Ocasio-Cortez’s massive fundraising efforts, he replied, “if a far-left radical is the one raising the most money, and someone who’s arguing that Democrats should go even further left, that’s good for Republicans.”

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“..Iran completely free of nuclear weapons and sanctions, and maintaining its ability to develop peaceful nuclear energy..”

US, Iran Agree To Enter Next Phase Of Nuclear Negotiations (JTN)

The U.S. and Iran have agreed to enter the next phase of negotiations over the Iranian regime’s nuclear program. The second round of the talks began in Rome on Saturday between Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff through the mediation of Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi. The envoys have “agreed to enter into the next phase of their discussions that aim to seal a fair, enduring and binding deal which will ensure Iran completely free of nuclear weapons and sanctions, and maintaining its ability to develop peaceful nuclear energy,” a spokesperson for Oman’s foreign ministry said in a statement posted on Saturday on X. “It is only in dialogue and clear communication that we will be able to achieve a mutually credible agreement and understanding for the benefit of all concerned regionally and internationally. It is also agreed that the next round will take place in Muscat in the next few days,” the statement also read.

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Is that the hill you want to die on?

“Two other Congressional Democrats have asked the House Oversight Committee to allow them to travel to El Salvador on the taxpayers’ dime to visit the migrant, but Chairman James Comer denied the request on Friday.”

Trump On Deported Migrant: ‘He’s Got MS-13 Tattooed’ On His Knuckles (JTN)

President Donald Trump on Friday night doubled down on his administration’s allegation that a deported migrant now in El Salvador is connected to the violent MS-13 gang. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was originally from El Salvador, has become the focal point of one of the biggest deportation cases in recent history, after he was sent back home with another group of illegal migrants. Democrats have argued that Abrego Garcia was a peaceful, law-abiding man from Maryland prior to his deportation, but the Trump administration argues that he was a member of MS-13, who had beaten his wife. Court documents from 2021 showed Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez, applied for a protective order against her husband, though the case was eventually dismissed. Trump, in a post on Truth Social, shared an image of what he claimed was Abrego Garcia’s hand, which showed tattoos on his knuckles that included a marijuana leaf, a cross, a skull and a smiley face.

“This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such ‘a fine and innocent person,'” the president wrote in the post. “They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles, and two Highly Respected Courts found that he was a member of MS-13. “I was elected to take bad people out of the United States, among other things,” he continued. “I must be allowed to do my job. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” The post comes after Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen met with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador this week. Two other Congressional Democrats have asked the House Oversight Committee to allow them to travel to El Salvador on the taxpayers’ dime to visit the migrant, but Chairman James Comer denied the request on Friday.

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“I am sympathetic to everything you’re saying, I just don’t I think I have the power to do anything,” Boasberg told the attorneys for the illegal aliens.”

SCOTUS Order Pauses Deportations Under Alien Enemies Act (Allen)

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration early Saturday morning to pause the deportation of some Venezuelan illegal aliens until the court can rule further. The Court did not grant or deny the use of the Alien Enemies Act to remove the illegal aliens, who the Trump administration claims are Tren de Aragua gang members, but instead the justices simply hit pause on the matter. “The Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court,” the order states. After designating Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, the White House announced in March that President Donald Trump would use the powers of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove members of the gang from America.

The illegal immigrants in question in the ongoing case are currently being held in Texas. The Supreme Court order is in response to an emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the Court’s order. Before the Supreme Court issued the order, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C. told the lawyers representing the illegal aliens that he did not have the power to stop deportation flights. “I am sympathetic to everything you’re saying, I just don’t I think I have the power to do anything,” Boasberg told the attorneys for the illegal aliens.

Boasberg did, last month, issue a temporary restraining order barring the U.S. from using the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport illegal aliens, but shortly thereafter the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could resume deportations of Venezuelan criminal illegal aliens under the Alien Enemies Act. The previous 5-4 decision from the justices was narrow and did not address the constitutionality of using the Alien Enemies Act to deport members of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua. Instead, the court said in its opinion that “judicial review” was requested in the wrong court. The attorneys for the illegal alien should have filed their lawsuit against the deportations in Texas, where the illegal aliens are being held, instead of filing in Washington, D.C., the court found.

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“..immediate apprehension, detention, and removal” of members of the group who are Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older and who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents of the United States.”

SCOTUS Blocks Deportation of Alleged Venezuela Gang Members for Now (ET)

The Supreme Court on April 19 temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting an unspecified number of Venezuelan men currently in immigration custody who are alleged to be members of a criminal gang. The new, unsigned order granting the Venezuelans’ emergency application was issued on Saturday at about 12:55 a.m. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. Alito’s reasoning will be added to the court’s file later, according to the order. “The Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court,” the order states. The order notes that a request to block the deportations is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

After the Fifth Circuit acts, Solicitor General D. John Sauer should file a response to the application with the Supreme Court as soon as possible, the order states. The order was issued after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed an emergency request on behalf of its Venezuelan clients late on April 18 asking the Supreme Court to immediately block the Trump administration from deporting the clients. The emergency application in A.A.R.P. and W.M.M. v. Trump, which challenges President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport illegal immigrants who are alleged or confirmed criminal gang members, was directed to Justice Samuel Alito. The ACLU is also seeking a temporary restraining order from the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, as well as a stay of removal order from the Fifth Circuit, according to the application.

On March 14, President Donald Trump signed Proclamation 10903, in which he officially declared that Tren de Aragua, a designated foreign terrorist organization, “is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.” The group is using mass illegal immigration to the United States to harm U.S. citizens, undermine public safety, and support the goal of the Venezuelan regime with which it is associated to destabilize “democratic nations in the Americas, including the United States,” the proclamation said. The president invoked the Alien Enemies Act to authorize the “immediate apprehension, detention, and removal” of members of the group who are Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older and who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents of the United States.

The application said the ACLU’s clients are challenging the Trump administration’s use of the federal statute to deport them. The clients “are in imminent and ongoing jeopardy of being removed from the United States without notice or an opportunity to be heard, in direct contravention of this Court’s order in Trump v. J.G.G.” “Many individuals have already been loaded on to buses, presumably headed to the airport” and are at risk of being sent to a prison in El Salvador, according to the application. On March 15, the Trump administration used the Alien Enemies Act to deport at least 137 Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they are now incarcerated “possibly for the rest of their lives” at the Salvadoran Terrorism Confinement Center, which is “one of the most notorious prisons in the world,” the application said.

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Turley ignores that there are a million+ cases, and they cannot possibly all be heard.

Yeah, the law works on paper. But the people do not.

SCOTUS Halts Venezuelan Deportations, 4th Circuit Upholds Garcia Order (Turley)

It has been a busy 24 hours in the courts. Early this morning, the Supreme Court blocked (for now) the deportations of any Venezuelans held in northern Texas under the Alien Enemies Act, a law only used three times before in our history. At the same time, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the lower court’s order in the case of Abrego Garcia. Despite the growing counter-constitutional movement, both decisions show how the courts are functioning appropriately and expeditiously in sorting out these difficult cases. Indeed, I wanted to flag a couple of paragraphs in the Fourth Circuit case that I hope everyone will take a second to read and consider from Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a widely respected conservative judge. The justices ordered the Trump administration not to remove Venezuelans being held in the Bluebonnet Detention Center “until further order of this court.”

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the order. However, this is merely a hold on deportations pending further review of the emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union, which is challenging the use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. This rarely used and highly controversial law stretches back to the Adams Administration. There are good-faith arguments on both sides of the case that the Court wants to consider. Accordingly, this is not surprising. The Fourth Circuit also correctly upheld the lower court order in the Garcia case. I remain confused by the administration’s appeal. The Supreme Court already upheld the order requiring the Administration to facilitate Garcia’s return. I have been critical of that opinion, but it clearly recognized the authority of the district court to issue that part of the earlier order.

However, Judge Wilkinson’s opinion contains one passage that I wanted to excerpt. It is a measured and important point that both branches need to show mutual respect in these cases. This sage advice is not coming from a critic or a liberal jurist. It is coming from someone who has been at the heart of conservative jurisprudence for decades:

“The basic differences between the branches mandate a serious effort at mutual respect. The respect that courts must accord the Executive must be reciprocated by the Executive’s respect for the courts. Too often today this has not been the case, as calls for impeachment of judges for decisions the Executive disfavors and exhortations to disregard court orders sadly illustrate.

Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around. The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions. The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph. It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.”

Well said, your honor. One can disagree with the ultimate merits on legal issues. However, as I have previously written, the disagreement on those issues should not trigger demands for impeachment or other extreme measures.

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At first I thought Elon Musk had filed a lawsuit.

Judge Blocks Trump’s Order Ending ‘X’ Gender Marker on Passports (ET)

A federal judge ruled against the Trump administration’s executive order banning the use of an “X” on passports marked by people self-identifying as neither male nor female. U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick of the District Court of Massachusetts awarded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) a preliminary injunction on April 18, staying the president’s executive action requiring sex, instead of gender identity, to be used as an identifier on government-issued identification documents. The executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” was one of several signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office. “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” the order stated. ”These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”

The order stated that gender identity “reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.” It ordered the secretaries of State and Homeland Security, and the director of the Office of Personnel Management to “implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex.” It also ordered the rescinding of prior federal guidance documents, including “The White House Toolkit on Transgender Equality.”

The ACLU took legal action against the order on behalf of five plaintiffs who identify as transgender and two who identify as nonbinary, seeking to preserve the pro-LGBT policies put in place under President Joe Biden, allowing a third option on identification documents. “We all have a right to accurate identity documents, and this policy invites harassment, discrimination, and violence against transgender Americans who can no longer obtain or renew a passport that matches who they are,” ACLU lawyer Sruti Swaminathan said in a statement. The Trump administration argued that the president had broad discretion in setting the passport policy, and those policy changes did not “violate the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution.”

The federal government also denied any harm befalling the plaintiffs due to the policy, since they were still free to travel abroad. The judge said the administration didn’t demonstrate substantial government interests in changing the rule. “The Executive Order and the Passport Policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and thus must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny,” Kobick wrote. “That standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest. The government has failed to meet this standard.”

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“Overall during the first 3 months of 2025, Tesla sold more EVs than the next 10 EV makers combined in the United States..”

Tesla Continues to Reign Supreme Despite Leftist Violence (Blackmon)

The obviously organized attacks on electric carmaker Tesla’s infrastructure and owners of Tesla cars by leftists apparently suffering from Musk Derangement Syndrome dominated the news throughout much of February and March. Sadly, the campaign was supported by a variety of virtue signaling celebrities and cynical politicians like Arizona Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly putting out videos of themselves selling off their own Teslas and replacing them with other electric vehicles or, in Kelly’s case, a gas-guzzling SUV. You can’t make this stuff up, you really can’t.

The frequency of these attacks appears to have largely died down after law enforcement officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department, arrested and charged a number of the activists with felonies, but the objective was clear: The campaign of attacks was designed to damage Tesla’s brand, in the process hoping to punish founder and CEO Elon Musk for his efforts to support the Donald Trump administration by leading the DOGE project to cut government waste and fraud.Certainly, some damage was done to Tesla’s infrastructure, and to its reputation among its liberal-heavy consumer base. But if the goal was to dethrone Musk’s EV juggernaut as the dominant player in the U.S. and global EV industry, first quarter results show the campaign of violence, vandalism, and virtue signaling to have been a miserable failure.

Web-based EV news site Teslarati compiled the numbers, and reports that Tesla still dominated the US market during the first quarter of 2025, and not just by a little, but by a lot. Tesla’s Model Y and Model 3 cars lead all others in total sales for the quarter with 64,051 and 52,520 units, respectively. Coming in a very distant third was Ford’s Mustang Mach E with just 11,607 units sold. Tesla’s vaunted, weirdly designed Cybertruck continued to be more than a bit of a disappointment, selling just 6,406 units, trailing the equally underperforming Ford F-150 Lightning by more than 700 units sold. But here’s the kicker: Overall during the first 3 months of 2025, Tesla sold more EVs than the next 10 EV makers combined in the United States. Musk’s car company dominates the EV space every bit as overwhelmingly as Google dominates the search engine space in the U.S.

Obviously, as I wrote here a few weeks ago, rumors of Tesla’s looming demise are highly overblown. And its dominant status in the market is not limited to the United States. Germany-based Blackout News reported on April 9 that just four EV companies worldwide are operating profitably today. The only one of those four EV makers not based in China – where we must admit that financial reporting is suspect at best – is, you guessed it, Tesla. That’s right: Not a single pure-play EV maker in the United States, Europe, or anywhere else outside of China is operating in the black even after 30 years of heavy financial subsidization by western governments and regulatory actions tilting the automaker playing field in their favor.

But Blackout News does not limit its report to pure-play EV companies like Rivian, Lucid and Fisker, all of which are either in bankruptcy or teetering on the brink today. The report also details the struggles of traditional car companies like Ford, GM, BMW, and others to record profits in their own EV business units, a topic I’ve covered here several times in the past few years. What it all boils down to is this: No matter how hard cynical Democrats like Sen. Kelly and crazed activists try to damage what has become one of America’s great automakers and its thousands of employees, the market is going to be the ultimate decider of the company’s fate. For the first quarter of 2025, the market has spoken, and Tesla and Musk have come out as the clear winners. That may be a bad thing for Democrats, but it’s a great thing for America.

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Severe autism

Makary

Measles

Fauci

Neura

Maculatus

Catmouflage

Santorini
https://twitter.com/mamboitaliano__/status/1913482407660990550

Malaga

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 302025
 
 March 30, 2025  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  33 Responses »


David Hockney A Bigger Splash 1967

 

How Donald Trump Is Reshaping America in Just 7 Weeks (Victor Davis Hanson)
It Wasn’t a Leak, It Was a Devious “Charlie Foxtrot” (Larry Johnson)
Vance Asked Trump To Fire Waltz – Politico (RT)
Why Did Jeffrey Goldberg Leave The ‘Bomb Yemen’ Signal Chat? (Max Blumenthal)
Trump Puts the System on Trial (RCW)
The Best Response For Developing Countries To US Tariffs: Sell US Debt (Proud)
xAI & X Merger Defuses Musk’s Tesla Share Liquidation Risk (ZH)
Iran ‘Doesn’t Care’ About Trump’s ‘Threats’ – Senior Commander (RT)
Federal Judge Halts Shutdown of Voice of America (ET)
Ex-Italian PM Reveals ‘Secret Mission’ For Zelensky (RT)
Zelensky Is a ‘Demon’ – Ukrainian MP (RT)
EU To Reject Russia-US Black Sea Deal – von der Leyen (RT)
The EU Wants to Use War as an Excuse for More Debt (Andreen)
Joe Rogan Guest Completely Shatters the Vaccine Narrative (VF)

 

 

 

 

1994

Birth rate

Painful homework

Details

Not
https://twitter.com/Sassafrass_84/status/1905679457160925611

No. 4

 

 

 

 

“.. it’s a revolutionary achievement. There’s nobody going across the border illegally, or at least, it’s statistically insignificant.”

How Donald Trump Is Reshaping America in Just 7 Weeks (Victor Davis Hanson)

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. How should we characterize the first seven weeks of the Trump administration because we get so much information and misinformation? Almost a day doesn’t go by where The Wall Street Journal is predicting that we are headed for a recession, that our allies are furious at us, that the economy is on the brink. So, what are we gonna make of all this? I think it’s time to take a deep breath and envision the first seven weeks is something like the following: President Donald Trump is in a race. He’s in a race to enact fundamental, disruptive change, a counterrevolution, and it’s going to be rough for a while, as he pointed out. But the things that he has already done are going to have, shortly or maybe even midterm, fundamental advantages for the United States. The question is, can he message and can he explicate and explain what he’s doing so people hang on? Because the eventual reward will be great.

Now, what do I mean? We’re talking about tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, but even the mere mention of tariffs for all of these countries that have not been reciprocal and have imposed tariffs on us in a way that we would never think of imposing on them, that idea that we might return to parity, it’s had an enormous effect. Some $4 trillion of announced investment from the Europeans, from the Saudis, from the Chinese, from the Mexican government, from the Canadians even. That will create hundreds of thousands of jobs. And that is in the process of working out. When Donald Trump entered office in 2017, we were only pumping about 9 million barrels. When he left, we were pumping 12 million. The Biden administration immediately cut back. And then it decided, before the midterms, “Hey, Americans like affordable oil.” So then they continued the Trump plan and got up to 12, almost 13 million barrels.

Already in just seven weeks, we have increased the amount of oil produced per day in the United States by about a third of a million barrels. And we’re on schedule to get up to about 14 million barrels by the beginning of the year. And that is coordinated with an increase in Middle East production as well. So, we’re going to see a moderation of energy prices, which may explain, already, why the inflation rate was not nearly as high as was predicted. If we look at the border, it’s amazing. We were told that the border problem was unsolvable without comprehensive immigration reform. And there were 10,000 people swarming up per day. We don’t even—nonchalantly, nobody talks about it anymore. But it’s a revolutionary achievement. There’s nobody going across the border illegally, or at least, it’s statistically insignificant.

The big issue right now is the Left is cherry-picking judges to prevent, not the deportation of somebody who’s working, who’s never been arrested, who’s been here for five or six years, but criminals and people who already have been ordered out of the country or pro-Hamas, pro-terrorist supporters. But the point I’m making is, what we’re doing now is Phase Two. The border is essentially solved, as far as security, and in seven weeks. Now, we’re having a difficult task of trying to find out who these 12 million people were that former President Joe Biden deliberately and with intent—malicious intent—allowed to come into the country. But the point I’m making is this is an incredible success.

There’s a final point that I want to make. We hear about Elon Musk is not authentically American. He is a nepo baby. And we hear Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, threatening his person, along with threatening Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. All of this chaos and nihilism coming about Elon Musk and what he’s doing, but what he’s finding out, almost every day, in the Treasury, in the IRS, in the Department of Energy, in the intelligence communities, is a vast unreported siphoning off of hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, to favorable and mostly left-wing entities, both abroad and here in the United States.

And already, he has cited areas where the Cabinet officers can cut $200 billion. That’s a fifth, only after seven weeks. He’s got a fifth of the way to go. He thinks he can cut a trillion dollars without touching entitlements. I don’t know if he can. But let me just sum up. If Donald Trump is able to fulfill this promise of commitment by foreign entities of $4 trillion in investment—$4 trillion—if he is able to cut a trillion dollars within a year or two, if he’s able to solve the Ukraine war, and if he is able to have a general peace in the Middle East, that will be the most substantial presidency—if he does nothing else—that we’ve seen in 50 years. Final word, everybody, keep calm. There’s events in process that if they are brought to fulfillment and fruition, this country will be a radically different and radically better place.

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They come off as a platoon of newbie nitwits. Run by Israel. Not pretty.

It Wasn’t a Leak, It Was a Devious “Charlie Foxtrot” (Larry Johnson)

Charlie Foxtrot is a polite euphemism for a crude military term — Clusterfuck. That describes the first scandal of the Trump Administration. Somehow, whether deliberate or accidentally, a Zionist journalist by the name of Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a Signal chat by Trump’s National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz, or by someone who worked for Waltz. Goldberg suddenly found himself part of a group chat of Trump’s top defense, diplomatic and intelligence officials. The group included CIA Director Ratcliffe, DNI’s Tulsi Gabbard, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, among other luminaries.

If you are not familiar with Signal, you create a group chat by naming a group and then adding members from your list of contacts. This tells us that Goldberg was part of Waltz’s list of contacts. Goldberg is a particularly slimy character, not because he published portions of the chat, but because he behaved as a political hack instead of a journalist. A journalist with that unexpected access, would have written an immediate story announcing that the US was going to start bombing Yemen just to make an example of it. What did Goldberg do? He waited till the bombing happened and then hoisted the Trump gang on its own petard. He made the story about Charlie Foxtrot, which he published on Monday in The Atlantic magazine.

This was not a leak. This was a gift to Goldberg. While the contents of the chat are not officially classified, the information being discussed was operationally sensitive. The chat exposed most of the Trump team as shallow and dismissive of the military and diplomatic implications of the decision to start bombing Yemen. If Waltz and company wanted to discuss the pros and cons of bombing Yemen, he should have convened a Secure Video Conference, aka SVTC (pronounced, CIVITS). Pete Hegseth’s remarks to the press, responding to the Goldberg article, makes a solid case that he is not qualified to serve as Secretary of Defense. Instead of admitting that this was a fuckup on the part of Waltz, he decided to attack Goldberg. Moreover, he pretends that the US was hitting hardened, military targets. That is a lie:

While I agree with Hegseth that Goldberg is a partisan hack, Goldberg did not insinuate himself into the chat or steal the material. Waltz, or one of his staff, did that. We will have to wait and see if the Trump team has learned anything from this debacle. I suspect Signal will no longer be used for sensitive topics. The portion of the chat that Goldberg published shows that JD Vance is not a Zionist crazy. He at least had reservations about the plan to bomb Yemen. The same cannot be said for the others — Pete Hegseth in particular. The following snippets from Goldberg’s article makes it clear that the decision to bomb was not based on some actual provocation or attack by Yemen. Nope, it was a malevolent symbolic gesture:

“The account labeled “JD Vance” responded at 8:16: “Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake.” (Vance was indeed in Michigan that day.) The Vance account goes on to state, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.” The Vance account then goes on to make a noteworthy statement, considering that the vice president has not deviated publicly from Trump’s position on virtually any issue. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” “I will say a prayer for victory,” Vance wrote. . . . Hegseth’s counter to Vance’s concern that the American public won’t understand why were bombing the shit out of another faraway country is this: “Nobody [in America] knows who the Houthis are, so [we can just say] Biden failed and Iran funded them.” Well, guess what, boys and girls? Trump failed, just like Biden. The bombings over the last nine days have not deterred the Houthis from renewing their attacks on ships and Israel. And it has put US naval vessels in harm’s way without a good reason. Hegseth gives the game away… this is about blaming Iran.

It is incumbent on Goldberg to release the entire electronic conversation. Maybe I am being too harsh. Maybe Tulsi Gabbard or John Ratcliffe or the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency raised some objections. But it appears that everyone was supportive of the proposed operation. Shameful.

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“Like hell he’d give the liberal media and pearl-clutching Democrats a win..”

Trump’s no. 1 task right now is to stand up for his team. Loyalty.

Vance Asked Trump To Fire Waltz – Politico (RT)

Vice President J.D. Vance and other senior officials “gently offered” President Donald Trump to fire National Security Adviser Mike Waltz during a private discussion about the blunder in which Waltz accidentally included a reporter in a confidential chat about US military strikes in Yemen, according to anonymous insider sources cited by Politico. Two individuals allegedly familiar with the closed-door meeting at the White House on Wednesday night told Politico that Vance, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and personnel chief Sergio Gor advised Trump that it might be time to cut Waltz loose. The president reportedly agreed that Waltz had “messed up,” but ultimately decided against a dismissal.

“Like hell he’d give the liberal media and pearl-clutching Democrats a win,” Politico wrote on Friday, citing one insider as saying the administration “don’t want to give the press a scalp.” The leak, first reported by The Atlantic on Monday, revealed that Waltz had inadvertently invited editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a confidential Signal chat where senior administration officials were discussing upcoming airstrikes on Houthi militants in Yemen. Waltz has taken “full responsibility” for the incident, calling it “embarrassing” in a Fox News interview and attributing the inclusion to a technical “glitch.”

President Trump has largely downplayed the controversy, dismissing the media response as a “witch hunt” and questioning the reliability of Signal. He also emphasized that no classified information was compromised and praised the military operation as “unbelievably successful.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt voiced the administration’s stance, stating on Monday that “President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.” Vance, for his part, has publicly aligned himself with the president’s decision. On Friday, he brought Waltz along for a high-profile trip to Greenland, where he dismissed media speculation and defended the national security team.

“If you think you’re going to force the president of the United States to fire anybody, you’ve got another thing coming,” Vance told reporters. Yet Politico claimed that Waltz’s position remains tenuous, citing one Trump ally who said, “They’ll stick by him for now, but he’ll be gone in a couple of weeks.” Other unnamed sources described longstanding personal and political tensions, alleging that Waltz has alienated colleagues by overstepping boundaries and acting more like a principal than a staffer. A spokesman for Waltz, Brian Hughes, pushed back against the narrative, calling the reports “gossip from people lacking the integrity to attach their names.” He emphasized that Waltz “serves at the pleasure of President Trump” and continues to have the president’s support.

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“..a gargantuan empire bombarding a poor, besieged country because it is controlled by a popular movement that is currently the only force on the planet taking up arms to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza..”

Why Did Jeffrey Goldberg Leave The ‘Bomb Yemen’ Signal Chat? (Max Blumenthal)

Atlantic Magazine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg has won the admiration of his Beltway peers for the conduct he displayed after being accidentally invited into a smoke-filled “bomb Yemen” Signal chat with Trump’s national security honchos and top advisors. “Props to Jeffrey Goldberg for his high standards as a professional journalist,” declared Ian Bremmer, the trans-Atlanticist foreign policy pundit on his Bank of America-sponsored GZero podcast. “When he realized the conversation was authentic he immediately left, informed the relevant senior official, and made the public aware without disclosing intelligence that could damage the United States.” But what exactly did Goldberg do to deserve such high praise?

With a once in a lifetime opportunity to view and report on high level discussions on the US launching an illegal war on Yemen, Goldberg chose to avert his gaze and leave the scene as soon as he could, apparently because maintaining such unparalleled access would have compelled him to report on discussions that might have complicated a war being waged on behalf of the Israeli apartheid state to which he emigrated as a young man. Instead of exploiting his front row seat to the Trump admin’s war planning – a vantage point that would have yielded countless scoops and a bestselling book for any adversarial journalist – Goldberg bolted and dutifully informed the White House about the unfortunate situation.

From there, the story became a palace intrigue over an embarrassing failure of “opsec,” or operational security, and not one about the policy itself, which entails a gargantuan empire bombarding a poor, besieged country because it is controlled by a popular movement that is currently the only force on the planet taking up arms to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In the fourth paragraph of Goldberg’s Atlantic article about the principals’ Signal group, he strongly implied that he supports the war’s objectives, describing Ansar Allah, or the Houthis, as an “Iran-backed terrorist organization” which upholds a belief system that is (what else?) antisemitic. Given Goldberg’s admission that Waltz first reached out to him at least two days prior to mistakenly adding him to the Signal group, it appears the NSC director had been leaking to the Atlantic editor on behalf of the neocon faction in the Trump White House. And it seems clear why Waltz would have sought to cultivate Goldberg.

During the run-up to to the Iraq war, then-Vice President Dick Cheney cited Goldberg’s bunk reporting alleging deep ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda during multiple media appearances hyping up the coming invasion. Under Obama, Goldberg served as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s errand boy, churning out tall tales about Tel Aviv’s imminent plan to attack Iran’s nuclear sites – unless the US did it first. Since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the once-failing Atlantic has suddenly turned a profit, as Goldberg unleashed a firehose of propaganda against the keffiyeh-clad enemies of the magazine’s Upper East Side donor base. This month, with momentum for a strike on Iran building within the Trump White House, Goldberg was summoned once again move to the neocon message, and wound up with more access than he bargained for.

When asked in a March 24 interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins why he left the Trump principals’ Signal group voluntarily, Goldberg ducked the question. But as Ian Bremmer suggested, he did so out of deference to power and an abiding belief in a US empire hellbent on protecting Israel. And in the culture of Beltway access journalism, that’s considered a laudable trait.

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“..the judges’ resistance is expected—they’re bound up in and rewarded by the system Trump seeks to reform.”

Trump Puts the System on Trial (RCW)

President Trump’s supporters have denounced the federal judges seeking to stall or stop this administration’s government overhaul. But there is at least one person who, despite a show of outrage and condemnation, is neither surprised nor intimidated: Trump himself. The politically appointed judges have ordered, among other actions, that federal agencies reinstate thousands of fired probationary employees; that billions of taxpayer dollars be paid to questionable USAID projects and contractors; and that foreign-born criminals deported to their native countries be returned and granted due process. Regardless of the legal merits, the American people recognize these orders as obstructions to what Trump said he would do if elected, and what voters elected him to do. Yet the judges’ resistance is expected—they’re bound up in and rewarded by the system Trump seeks to reform.

Two-thirds of Americans believe the “system” is broken, but for years progressive politicians and their mouthpieces posited that the system couldn’t be fixed. Intellectuals on the Left, including New York Times columnist David Brooks, said America’s flaws were “systemic” in nature: systemic racism, systemic sexism, and systemic injustice. They whined and preached but offered no solutions for the millions of Americans of all races and both genders struggling and failing to unlock their potential to succeed. When Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2015, he too claimed the system was broken, but not because we are racist or sexist by nature, but because the system itself is old, soft, and corrupt, with leaders grown unresponsive to the people they are supposed to serve. That core belief guided his first term and remains unchanged at the start of his second.

For decades, politicians failed to respond to real problems because their agendas, even their identities, were phony, crafted by consultants and pollsters who aimed not for the truth, but for whichever lies or provocations were most efficacious in winning the next election. But one need not resort to craven and conspiratorial explanations of this sort, which hint that elected officials deliberately ignore the public will. The truth is simpler. They have to ignore voters, if only because they have no idea how to fix the problems we face. In one sense, the elites’ ineptitude is understandable: we have a highly complex society that has undergone a recent, rapid, destabilization brought on by technological advance. But to admit that they simply don’t know how to address any contemporary issue would be to concede that it is only their mere status as “elites” that qualifies them to rule.

Thus, to conceal their befuddlement, they explain their inaction by a vague demand that we address the “root causes” of every issue – which further justifies them in doing nothing. The bad faith inherent to the “root causes” strategy was nowhere more obvious than at the border. For years, establishment voices told us that border security measures would fail without addressing the “root causes” of the problem: central American poverty and climate change. These appeals allowed the political class to avoid doing what they didn’t want to do (securing the border) and to manufacture a duty to do the things they did want to do (diverting American revenue to foreign aid “relief programs” and enacting more restrictive environmental policies). Aside from those interventions, they assured us, there was nothing we could do about the illegal immigration crisis.

Speaking about politicians in 2015, Trump said: “I hear their speeches. They don’t talk jobs. [They] have no competence. [They] don’t know what’s happening.” His message of “America First” was clear and authentic, and it implied real action and solid outcomes: protect jobs, livelihoods, and futures of Americans. The hapless politicians had nothing to counter. “The Resistance” to the first Trump administration was advanced by the machinations of bureaucrats in the vast regulatory state. But with the president rapidly dismantling that apparatus, a new strategy was needed. For the Resistance 2.0, it seems the establishment will depend on the courts to thwart the democratically-expressed will of the people. But there is a higher court in this land, where American voters serve as judge, jury, and executor.

Earlier this month at the Department of Justice, Trump warned of the “violent, vicious lawyers” who persecute the president and bully the American public to get their way. Expect these lawyers to “play the ref,” Trump said, weaving in a story about former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight, who once threw a chair across the court and screamed like a madman at the referees for a call to be overturned. The referee wasn’t going to change the first call, Trump said of Knight’s rationale for throwing the tantrum. “But he’s going to change for the next play. And sure as hell, he did.” Trump understands that activist lawyers and progressive pundits will put heat on the judiciary, and that, on occasion, they’ll get their way.

For 10 years, Trump has confronted the political class, calling out their incompetence and dishonesty, and the voters continue to reward him. Federal judges, egged on by the politically-motivated legal establishment, may try to frustrate the president in his pursuit of long-held promises to build a better country. But Trump is building his case outside the courts – and he’s betting on a sympathetic hearing with the American people, who will note the overt evidence of bias, corruption, and incompetence, whether it occurs in the media, executive branch, or the judiciary. Judges will rule on procedure and technicalities, but the people will evaluate the legitimacy of our institutions and credibility of our leaders.

In 2028, the jury will render its verdict.

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In theory perhaps. But how much US debt do you have to spare?

The Best Response For Developing Countries To US Tariffs: Sell US Debt (Proud)

As President Trump threatens the world with sweeping tariffs, he is trying to change the fundamental laws of economics through force of will. He won’t succeed. Rather than fighting back with reciprocal tariffs, developing countries should sell off U.S. debt. The Austrian American economist Ludwig von Mises once said that ‘the balance of payments theory forgets that the volume of trade is completely dependent on prices.’ The United States has such a gigantic trade deficit, at over $1 trillion each year, because it can buy foreign goods more cheaply than it can produce them domestically. Some countries may subsidise production to lower prices, others might export goods that are further down the value chain compared to what American producers will make.

But, stepping back, the U.S. dollar is so powerful, that it renders American exports more expensive, irrespective of any distortions created by its trading partners. This is part of the exorbitant privilege in which the U.S. dollar acts the world’s leading reserve currency, amounting to 58% of total reserves. Foreign countries put their capital into the U.S. because it is a stable and safe, increasing the price of the dollar on foreign exchange markets because demand is always high. A strong exchange rate makes foreign imports cheaper and that helps to manage inflation in America.

President Trump clearly wants to boost his support in the blue collar heartlands of America, driving job creation in traditional American industry that has been undercut by foreign imports over many years. But he can’t have two cakes and eat them both. He can’t simultaneously slash the huge U.S. balance of payments deficit – helping blue collar workers – while at the same time maintaining the U.S. as the destination of choice for foreign capital. That would be to defy the logic of economics. To oversimplify slightly, America has built its bloated Federal apparatus on the back of cheap imports. The huge current account surpluses that exporting powerhouses like China, India, European and ASEAN countries have built up has produced a torrent of easy capital to prop up the U.S. state.

The U.S. has a debt mountain of around $35 trillion which is roughly the equivalent sum of debt held by foreign investors. Of that debt, around $8.5 trillion is in the form of U.S. Treasuries, literally loans to the U.S. government, with a similar amount invested in corporate debt and the rest largely in equity. That’s why Trump is going in so hard with Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative. He’s desperate to reduce the size of the U.S. state apparatus because he knows that the Federal house of cards is built on fiscal quicksand. He also probably figures that there’s a greater propensity among federal workers – who are facing massive job cuts – to lean democrat, than among factory workers.

That’s why the idea of a BRICS currency is so terrifying to Trump, because BRICS now accounts for 41% of the global economy by purchasing power parity. A BRICS currency poses a longer-term risk of making the dollar less appealing and, therefore, weaker, driving up inflation. Because the real challenge to the U.S. is not the federal debt itself but its ability to service its debt. The exorbitant privilege, coupled with the massively disinflationary tidal wave of the global financial crisis, ushered in a period of historically low inflation and low interest rates.

That era has ended, as ratings agency Moody’s pointed out this week. U.S. interest rates are now higher, at 4.25-4.5% driving up the costs of servicing the country’s enormous debt mountain. The threat to the U.S. right now is inflation and what that means for its debt servicing bill, if interest rates are held or, even, forced higher. There are parallels here for the 1970s, when rampant inflation, triggered by a number of factors including the oil crisis and America’s move to a fiat currency, led U.S. interest rates to soar at one point to 20%. During this period, foreign countries withdrew their investments, and the dollar slumped to 45% of total global foreign exchange reserves. And herein Trump’s challenge. He can’t export more without a weak dollar, and a weak dollar will make U.S. debt harder to service.

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“The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion..” Is that $80 billion together or $133 billion?

xAI & X Merger Defuses Musk’s Tesla Share Liquidation Risk (ZH)

Elon Musk secured a multibillion-dollar margin loan using Tesla stock as collateral to finance his acquisition of Twitter (now rebranded as X). In recent months, Tesla’s share price has been cut in half due to a confluence of factors—slowing EV demand amid high interest rates, shifting electric vehicle policies under the Trump administration, market volatility driven by trade tensions, and pressure from a coordinated NGO-driven color revolution known as “Tesla Takedown,” aimed at crashing the stock to trigger loan repayment obligations tied to Musk’s pledged equity. In short, volatility in Tesla shares left Musk heavily exposed to potential loan repayment thresholds being triggered – which was set to occur at or below $114 according to reports – until now.

On Friday evening, Musk announced the merger of X with his AI startup, xAI, in an all-stock transaction that strengthens his financial position, protects Tesla shareholders, and renders the Tesla Takedown color revolution largely ineffective in achieving its intended goal. Musk outlined xAI’s acquisition of X: “xAI has acquired X in an all-stock transaction. The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt). Since its founding two years ago, xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at unprecedented speed and scale. X is the digital town square where more than 600M active users go to find the real-time source of ground truth and, in the last two years, has been transformed into one of the most efficient companies in the world, positioning it to deliver scalable future growth.

xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach. The combined company will deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences to billions of people while staying true to our core mission of seeking truth and advancing knowledge. This will allow us to build a platform that doesn’t just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress. I would like to recognize the hardcore dedication of everyone at xAI and X that has brought us to this point. This is just the beginning.”

Musk privately owns and controls both xAI and X. The transaction is structured as a stock swap, with X investors receiving xAI shares in return. Both companies share overlapping investors, including Fidelity Management, Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Co, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Vy Capital. Musk, also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, purchased Twitter in a $44 billion deal in 2022. X CEO Linda Yaccarino wrote on X last night: “The future could not be brighter.” Musk’s X post announcing the acquisition stated that the deal was about “blending” the AI startup and social media platform to create “a platform that doesn’t just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress.” However, the move also eliminates the risk of Musk undergoing a forced liquidation of the $12.5 billion margin loan backed by his Tesla shares.

As we previously described at the beginning of the note, Tesla shares were halved for a number of reasons: Goldman Trading Desk Views “Trump As Bearish For US EV Market”. “Weak Demand”: Goldman Lowers Tesla Vehicle Delivery Estimate For Quarter. And this…”Tesla Takedown Revolutionaries Prepare Mobilization Nationwide, Tesla Takedown Organizers Plan Color Revolution To “Kill” Brand & “Death Spiral” For Investors. Last week, the Democratic Party and their Communist revolutionaries spelled out their sinister plans… “If we kill the Tesla brand” and “drive down the stock price low enough. We can force him to sell his stock to pay back the billions of dollars of debt he took on to buy Twitter.

“This will drive Tesla into a death spiral,” Micah Lee, The Intercept’s former Director of Information Security, explained on a recent Tesla Takedown teleconference with other far-left revolutionaries. Musk’s indebtedness from leveraging Tesla shares to fund the X deal is no longer a concern for Tesla shareholders. This strategic move also renders the Tesla Takedown color revolution funded by rogue Democrats less likely to force a liquidation.

Read more …

Irann Doesn’t think the US would be stupid enough. But Israel?!

Iran ‘Doesn’t Care’ About Trump’s ‘Threats’ – Senior Commander (RT)

Iran will not bow to US pressure to resume talks over its nuclear program, a top naval commander has said, stressing that Tehran is ready to strike back in the event of an American attack. In an interview with al-Mayadeen TV channel on Saturday, Alireza Tangsiri, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy, pushed back against US President Donald Trump’s recent ultimatum urging the country to enter new nuclear talks. “I have no knowledge of Trump’s message, nor do I care to analyze it,” Tangsiri said. “I hear his threats, I observe his actions, and I prepare myself to counter them. We have the capability to strike all enemy bases, wherever they may be… No one can strike us and escape. Even if we have to chase them to the Gulf of Mexico, we would.”

Tangsiri also rejected any negotiations over Tehran’s missile arsenal or its backing of groups in the region. “Iran will never negotiate over its missiles or the capabilities of the Resistance Front,” he said. He also emphasized that the Islamic Republic seeks peaceful relations with its neighbors: “We always extend a hand of friendship to the countries in the region. As Muslims, we do not pose any threat to our neighboring countries.” The remarks came in response to Trump’s comments on Friday, in which he confirmed sending a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seeking to negotiate a nuclear deal. “You’re gonna have to make a decision one way or the other,” Trump said. “We’re gonna either have to talk and talk it out, or very bad things are gonna happen to Iran. And I don’t want that to happen.” He added that if the US has “to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said that while the letter seemed threatening, it still contained “some opportunities” for Tehran. The standoff follows years of tension over Tehran’s nuclear program. In 2015, Iran signed a deal with the US, the EU, Russia, and other world powers in which it agreed to limit its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. However, in 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the landmark agreement, calling it “a horrible one-sided deal” that had failed to achieve its goals. Iran has not ruled out indirect talks on the matter but has refused to do so under duress. It also maintains that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

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$1 billion a year for a woke relic.

Federal Judge Halts Shutdown of Voice of America (ET)

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from dismantling Voice of America (VOA), the government-funded international news service whose 1,200 reporters and employees were placed on paid leave earlier this month. The judge, J. Paul Oetken of the Southern District of New York, on Friday issued a temporary restraining order in favor of VOA employees and their unions. The order prevents the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees VOA, from shutting down the broadcasting network and its associated radio programs. VOA employees filed the lawsuit against USAGM, its acting Director Victor Morales, and special adviser Kari Lake on March 21.

The complaint accused the agency of failing to fulfill its legally mandated missions and violating both press freedom and the separation-of-powers doctrine when it took a “chainsaw” to the outlet, ordering the entire staff not to report to work, turning off the service, and locking the agency’s doors. In his ruling, Oetken stated that VOA was likely to succeed on its claims, noting that USAGM’s actions appeared unconstitutional. He said that Lake lacked legal authority to withhold congressionally appropriated funds or terminate USAGM staff, programming, or contracts. “By withholding the funds statutorily appropriated to fully administer USAGM, VOA, and its affiliates … the executive is usurping Congress’s power of the purse and its legislative supremacy,” he wrote.

The judge did not require VOA to resume broadcasts, but made it clear that employees must not be terminated while the court determines whether the shutdown violates the Constitution or other federal administrative laws. Friday’s order echoed a similar ruling by another district judge earlier in the week, which granted a temporary restraining order to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, blocking its funding freeze. The Trump administration has since stated in court filings that it has resumed funding for these outlets. President Donald Trump and his supporters have been critical of VOA for years over alleged bias against conservative Americans and in favor of America’s adversaries.

In 2020, the White House sent an email accusing VOA of spending taxpayers’ money to “speak for authoritarian regimes.” It took issue with, among other things, a VOA social media post featuring a video of a light show celebrating the end of the lockdown in Wuhan, the Chinese megapolis where the COVID-19 virus first emerged; as well as the agency’s characterization of China’s effort to control the outbreak as a “model” for other nations. “VOA too often speaks for America’s adversaries—not its citizens,” The White House said. “Journalists should report the facts, but VOA has instead amplified Beijing’s propaganda.”

The VOA first began broadcasting in 1942 in German-occupied territories as part of the Allies’ effort to engage Axis propaganda broadcasts with counterpropaganda. In the following decades, it became a staple in the propaganda war against the Soviet Union and other communist regimes. Over time, it evolved into a global news organization, now operating in more than 40 languages. Elon Musk, a tech billionaire and Trump’s top adviser for downsizing the federal government’s spending and workforce, has echoed calls to shut down VOA and its sister networks, arguing that they have outlived their purpose. “Yes, shut them down. Europe is free now (not counting stifling bureaucracy). Nobody listens to them anymore,” he wrote on X, accusing the outlets of being “radical left” and “torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money.”

Read more …

“You know, you are the first European who came to talk to us about this. The others are just asking us not to support Russia.”

Ex-Italian PM Reveals ‘Secret Mission’ For Zelensky (RT)

Former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema has claimed that he undertook a secret diplomatic mission to Brazil and China on behalf of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to garner international support, amid fears that Kiev would be abandoned by its Western backers. The revelation was made during a conversation with Italian politician Gianfranco Fini published by La Repubblica on Thursday. According to D’Alema, Zelensky approached him sometime in 2024, expressing fears of a potential catastrophe as Western support waned. “I happened to speak with Zelensky on the sidelines of an initiative on the Balkans. And he told me clearly that his country was at risk of disaster because ‘the Americans will withdraw sooner or later, and the Europeans are not reliable,’” the former prime minister told Fini.

“He asked me to go to Brazil and Beijing to find out if Lula and Xi Jinping could do something,” D’Alema claimed. Neither Brazil nor China has publicly confirmed any visits by the former Italian official. In Brasilia, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva reportedly dismissed the initiative outright, insisting that Ukraine is an “American problem.” “I went there, but Lula almost showed me the door, telling me that Ukraine was a problem for the Americans and that, according to him, I should be interested in Palestine instead,” D’Alema said. In China, D’Alema reportedly met with one of the Communist Party’s top foreign policy officials, and discussed the idea of an international peacekeeping force for Ukraine. At the end of the meeting, the Chinese official is said to have remarked: “You know, you are the first European who came to talk to us about this. The others are just asking us not to support Russia.”

The former prime minister also criticized the EU for fueling what he described as unrealistic expectations about the conflict. “Europe has done nothing but repeat that Russia could be defeated, when it was clear to everyone that the war could not be won by anyone,” he said.

Read more …

“They want to inspect the holy relics of our saints. They plan to carve them up, to open them up, to break them into pieces. To perform this sacrilege over them. It’s a huge tragedy for the entire Orthodox world..”

Zelensky Is a ‘Demon’ – Ukrainian MP (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is waging a campaign of terror against his own people by signing off on a crackdown targeting the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), particularly the iconic Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery, lawmaker Artyom Dmitruk has said. In an interview with RT on Friday, Dmitruk responded to reports that Ukrainian officials and police have entered the catacombs of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, the nation’s most significant monastery and the final resting place of several Christian saints. During the raid, authorities unlocked doors, broke into the caves, and changed locks. Dmitruk described their actions as sacrilegious and suggested that Zelensky was directly complicit.

“Zelensky is perpetrating genocide of the Ukrainian people. What we are seeing now and what we are witnessing now is the continuation of terror policies of Zelensky’s against [the] Ukrainian people. Zelensky is a demon in the body of a human being. You can call him whatever you want, a godless person, a terrorist, and so on and so forth. The gist of his actions is the same. Zelensky is following a demon’s will,” he asserted. According to the legislator, who claims to have fled the country over the persecution of the UOC, the stated goal of the “inventarization” of the monastery’s possessions is nothing more than a pretext. “They want to inspect the holy relics of our saints. They plan to carve them up, to open them up, to break them into pieces. To perform this sacrilege over them. It’s a huge tragedy for the entire Orthodox world,” he said, recalling that the results of the review would be classified.

“They are raiding the Lavra. They are trying to seize the property of the Lavra… If we speak from a legal point of view, it’s a crime,” Dmitruk stressed. The Ukrainian government has been cracking down on the UOC for months, which it views as having ties to Russia. This effort has included attempts to take over the Lavra, as well as church raids and arrests of clergy. The UOC, the largest religious institution in the country, severed ties with the Moscow Patriarchate following the start of the conflict. Zelensky has defended the move, insisting on the need to protect Ukraine’s “spiritual independence” from Russia. Moscow has condemned the measures, accusing Kiev of suppressing the canonical Orthodox faith and alleging that the West is encouraging these efforts.

Read more …

Nobody cares.

EU To Reject Russia-US Black Sea Deal – von der Leyen (RT)

The EU will not lift its sanctions against Russia for as long as the Ukraine conflict continues, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said. During talks in Saudi Arabia on Monday, Russia and the US agreed to move towards reviving the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which, according to the Kremlin, should include the removal of Western restrictions against Russian Agricultural Bank and other financial institutions involved in the international sale of food and fertilizers. In her interview with French broadcaster LCI on Friday, von der Leyen made it clear that Brussels will not support the idea of a maritime truce between Moscow and Kiev put forward by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

“The sanctions are very significant; they are painful; they have an impact on the Russian economy, and they represent a powerful lever,” she said when asked about the possibility of the EU fulfilling Russian demands to lift some of the curbs. According to the head of the European Commission, the restrictions “will remain in effect until a just and lasting peace is established in Ukraine.” However, she noted that “when the war is over, the sanctions might be removed.” Von der Leyen also said that for the conflict to end, “security guarantees for Ukraine” are needed as well as “a solid defense industrial base and a deterrent force” in the EU. The Black Sea Grain Initiative, originally brokered in July 2022 by the UN and Türkiye, envisioned the safe passage of Ukrainian agricultural products in exchange for the West lifting its restrictions on Russian grain and fertilizer exports.

Moscow withdrew from the deal a year later, citing the West’s failure to uphold its obligations. The Americans and Russians now see its revival as a step towards settling the Ukraine conflict altogether. Earlier this week, President Vladimir Putin asserted that the Russian economy has become the fourth largest in the world in purchasing power parity terms after those of China, the US and India, despite a record 28,595 sanctions being placed on it by Washington, Brussels and their allies. According to the Russian government’s data, the country’s economy grew 4.1% in 2024, surpassing the official forecast of 3.9%. Putin previously urged the Russian business circles against expecting the sanctions to be fully lifted, describing them as a mechanism of strategic systemic pressure on the country that the West intends to keep using.

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Eurobonds are a huge threat to every European: “The EU Debt Plan is About Centralizing Financial Control.”

The EU Wants to Use War as an Excuse for More Debt (Andreen)

The European political and financial elite knows that the war in Ukraine is lost but wants to use it as an opportunity to reach strategic independence from the United States. As the future chancellor of Germany Friedrich Merz said right after his electoral win on Feb 23: “It will be an absolute priority for me to strengthen Europe as soon as possible so much that it gradually really achieves independence from the United States.” Such strategic independence needs money and investment—a lot of it—not only to boost defense but much else, like energy and innovation; areas in which Europe is lagging behind the US and China. In order to have the pretext to implement this spending plan, the idea among the EU elite is to make sure that the war in Ukraine does not end too quickly. That way the conflict can be used to justify artificially injecting much needed money into the moribund EU economies.

First, there was a question of providing €20 billion euros of additional military support for Ukraine and that the EU self-imposed fiscal rules to be loosened using the existing “escape clause” in the event of “exceptional” circumstances, such as the bogus “defense of Ukraine” excuse. As Bloomberg stated, “under this plan, EU nations would be exempt from debt and deficit limits when financing military expenditures. This marks a fundamental shift in EU financial policy, as such exemptions have previously been impossible under EU rules.” Indeed, the EU elite does not want to follow the arbitrary EU fiscal rules: for Paris, the 3 percent limit of budget deficit to GDP is politically painful, and for Berlin, the limit of max 60 percent of GDP in terms of federal public borrowing seems like an artificial constraint.

Then there was a talk of a €700 billion euro defense package. Newsweek stated that: “Baerbock said the package could be worth some 700 billion euros ($732 billion).” French President Emmanuel Macron also confirmed this on March 2, 2025. “We will give a mandate to the European Commission to define our capacity needs for a common defense,” Macron said in an interview published in several French newspapers. “This massive funding will probably reach hundreds of billions of euros.” The official slogan of “help Ukraine defend itself” will give the EU political and financial elite an excuse to turn on the spigots of the European Central Bank at full thrust again; to shower the entire European economy with “free” money, and shore up its fragile economies, like it did after the euro crisis of 2011, with the enormous covid recovery fund in 2021, as well as with the Green New Deal.

This time, the idea seems to be to use joint EU bonds. Reuters writes: “The bigger amounts will have to come from some type of centralized funding, because most budgets in Europe are relatively stretched, particularly in Italy and France.” As was stated in the infamous Draghi Report from Sept 2024: “the EU should move towards regular issuance of common safe assets to enable joint investment projects among Member States and to help integrate capital markets.” Therefore, “common issuance should over time produce a deeper and more liquid market in EU bonds.”

Joint EU bonds are essentially bond issuances against the whole euro economy and would thus entail a low risk and a lower interest rate than country level EU bonds. This is perceived as necessary in order for the EU to hold its own in competition with the US and China that already have unified capital markets, as a speech Draghi gave to the EU Commission last year made clear. There are three main sources of war financing: printing money, increasing taxes, and borrowing. Making available “hundreds of billions” for the EU would likely be based on debt issued from joint EU bonds. Bloomberg noted that, if the spending were funded with tax increases, or cuts in other areas, that could wipe out any positive impact—or worse. Any immediate spending on the military would not help Europe because it would be mostly spent buying US weapons.

Therefore, what the EU elite has in mind now is likely to put in place what F. Merz said; a strategic independence from the US through a huge investment by joint EU bonds, released and used over the long term in order to slowly build up Europe’s industry, not only in the defense sector but also in other sectors. In a sense, this would-be debt plan is just the European Union emulating the United States playbook of using war for crony capitalist benefits, finally “understanding” how to cynically exploit the Ukraine war, just as the US has been doing since 2022 by feeding its military-industrial complex. But, in order for this to happen, the war must not end too soon for the European elite, which is why efforts are made in order to—outrageously—spoil any US peace plans and get the war to continue for now.

Read more …

All of a sudden, everybody knows Dr. Suzanne Humphries. Her X followers went from a few hundred to 62,000 overnight.

Joe Rogan Guest Completely Shatters the Vaccine Narrative (VF)

Everything you’ve been told is a lie—especially when it comes to polio. Dr. Suzanne Humphries reveals what really made all those polio cases disappear after the vaccine was introduced. Dr. Suzanne Humphries, former board-certified nephrologist and co-author of Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History, just made a bombshell appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience and what she shared will completely change how you think about vaccines. Most people are told vaccines are “safe and effective” with no real downside. But Dr. Humphries pulled back the curtain on decades of deception, starting with a major turning point in 1986—when President Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act into law.

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1905055320449442103

Before that, vaccine manufacturers were getting hammered with lawsuits. Humphries explained that after the 1976 swine flu vaccine disaster, Guillain-Barré cases were piling up. It got so bad that the companies couldn’t even get insurance. They ran to the government and basically said: “Bail us out, or we’re done making vaccines.” So the government stepped in. First, it agreed to cover the lawsuits. Then came the 1986 law—sold to the public as a way to help injured families get compensation faster, but in reality, it became a kangaroo court system that rarely paid families deserving of vaccine injury claims. Companies like Wyeth (now Pfizer) admitted their vaccines were “unavoidably unsafe,” yet instead of making them safer, they were handed blanket immunity.

Humphries explained that this opened the floodgates for “creativity” by the vaccine makers. They could now play with adjuvants without fear of being sued. Profits soared, and the childhood vaccine schedule expanded rapidly. That freedom also meant cutting corners in safety testing. Most people assume vaccines are tested like other drugs—with placebo controls. But that’s not the case. Instead, vaccines are actually tested against other vaccines, which obscures negative outcomes. “The few studies that exist with saline placebos show how bad the vaccine actually is and how it makes you not only not respond to the disease when it comes around, but more susceptible to it in many cases,” Dr. Humphries explained.

When the conversation turned to polio, Dr. Humphries blew just about everyone’s mind on the internet. She challenged one of the most sacred beliefs in modern medicine: that vaccines eradicated polio. The truth is that polio wasn’t actually eradicated. “Polio is still here. Polio is still alive and well,” Dr. Humphries declared. It’s just that a few sleights of hand made the world believe otherwise. The real change that happened, according to Humphries, wasn’t the vaccine’s impact—it was the definition. “Polio is called different things today,” Humphries explained. “Whereas back in the 1940s, 1950s, the criteria for diagnosing polio were completely different to the year that the vaccine was introduced. The playing field, the goalposts—everything was changed… they were able to show a complete cascading drop of paralytic polio simply because of the way they changed the definitions of what polio is and what could cause it. After the vaccine rollout, cases that would’ve been diagnosed as polio were now labeled as Guillain-Barré syndrome, coxsackievirus, echovirus, or chalked up to lead or mercury poisoning.

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1905055665367986241

She also pointed to another key factor: environmental toxins. The rise in polio diagnoses, she said, mirrored the use of toxic chemicals like DDT. When the conversation turned to polio, Dr. Humphries blew just about everyone’s mind on the internet. She challenged one of the most sacred beliefs in modern medicine: that vaccines eradicated polio. The truth is that polio wasn’t actually eradicated. “Polio is still here. Polio is still alive and well,” Dr. Humphries declared. It’s just that a few sleights of hand made the world believe otherwise. The real change that happened, according to Humphries, wasn’t the vaccine’s impact—it was the definition. “Polio is called different things today,” Humphries explained. “Whereas back in the 1940s, 1950s, the criteria for diagnosing polio were completely different to the year that the vaccine was introduced. The playing field, the goalposts—everything was changed… they were able to show a complete cascading drop of paralytic polio simply because of the way they changed the definitions of what polio is and what could cause it.”

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1905056072642998351

After the vaccine rollout, cases that would’ve been diagnosed as polio were now labeled as Guillain-Barré syndrome, coxsackievirus, echovirus, or chalked up to lead or mercury poisoning. She also pointed to another key factor: environmental toxins. The rise in polio diagnoses, she said, mirrored the use of toxic chemicals like DDT. As use of neurotoxic pesticides like DDT, arsenic, and lead declined, so did toxic exposures that mimicked polio symptoms. Fewer kids were bathing in poisons that caused spinal nerve damage, so naturally, paralysis decreased. “The tonnage of production of DDT absolutely mirrored the diagnosis for polio,” Dr. Humphries explained. Even today, she added, “The countries that still make DDT… are where we’re still seeing this paralytic polio situation happen.”

And when it comes to the poliovirus itself? It’s not quite as harmful as people think. Humphries explained that polio is actually a “commensal”—a virus that lives in most people without causing harm. “95 to 99% of all polio is asymptomatic.” Dr. Humphries described a study of the Javante Indians, where “98 to 99% of every person they tested… had evidence of immunity to all three strains of polio,” yet none of the children were crippled. “They were like, ‘We don’t have any of that problem,’” she recalled. Dr. Humphries also cited a chilling story in history. In 1916, a Rockefeller lab in Manhattan set out with “the specific stated goal… to try to create the most pathological, neuropathological strain of polio possible.” Researchers injected monkey brains and human spinal fluid into monkeys.

And that experimentation came with devastating consequences. “There was a big problem with that, which was [polio] released into the public by accident,” Dr. Humphries explained. “And the world experienced the worst polio epidemic on record. 25% mortality.” In short, Humphries argued that polio didn’t vanish because of vaccines. It disappeared under a mountain of redefinitions, environmental triggers, manmade disasters, and a lot of propaganda. Dr. Humphries also raised concerns about a link between vaccines and food allergies. “It’s very well known that the vaccines that have aluminum in them skew the immune system,” she said. Aluminum is added to many vaccines to make the immune system react more strongly. But when that reaction happens, the immune system can mistakenly target other things in the body, like food proteins.

For example, if a baby is exposed to something like peanuts or eggs around the time of vaccination, the immune system might mistakenly tag those foods as threats, potentially leading to a long-term food allergy. “So that’s kind of the paradox there [with vaccines],” Dr. Humphries explained. And then there’s mercury. Did you know that if a mercury-containing vaccine drops on the floor, “the HAZMAT people have to come and take that away”? Yet we inject it into 3-month-old babies.

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1905056642837643586

Read more …

 

 

 

 

RFK vaccines
https://twitter.com/ChildrensHD/status/1905757292546462177

 

 

Bhakdi

 

 

Cows
https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1905842442693186021

 

 

Maruay
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1905998384189854189

 

 

Lovebird

 

 

Ninja

 

 

Coral forest
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1905674058189975930

 

 

Tartaria
https://twitter.com/wakenminds/status/1905352502939099184

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 252025
 
 March 25, 2025  Posted by at 10:59 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  65 Responses »


Caravaggio Conversion on the way to Damascus 1600-01

 

“A New World Order With European Values” (Turley)
‘Nazis’ In Ukraine ‘Nurtured’ By Europeans – Lavrov (RT)
Kiev Wants Trump Envoy Witkoff Sacked (RT)
Ukraine Doesn’t Want Peace – Moscow (RT)
US and Russia Engaging In ‘Creative’ Talks – Moscow (RT)
Rubio Accuses ‘Other Countries’ Of Blocking Peace In Ukraine (RT)
DOGE Reveals Mind Shocking Fraud Propping Up Economy – Ed Dowd (USAW)
The Pentagon’s War on Wasted Dollars (RCD)
Mike Davis Cooks Judge Screwing Around With Trump’s Deportation Flights (Vespa)
Anti-Trump Judge Makes Another Outrageous Ruling (Margolis)
New Dirt on Judge Boasberg Raises More Questions (Margolis)
The Last Resort (James Howard Kunstler)
Pentagon Chief Hegseth Comments On ‘Yemen War Plans’ Leak (RT)
Trump Team Unwittingly Sends Yemen Strike Plans to Editor of The Atlantic (Sp.)
Trump Names Alina Habba To Be Interim US Attorney For New Jersey (NYP)
The ‘Real’ Epstein Files Are Coming. Here’s What to Know. (Margolis)
“Tread Carefully”: Pam Bondi Issues Warning Over Musk “Takedown” (ZH)
Elon Musk Disguises IRS Building As Tesla Dealership (BBee)

 

 

Carpe
https://twitter.com/CarpeDonktum/status/1904173446759625176

RFK

2.924

Taxes
https://twitter.com/TONYxTWO/status/1904206868269945336

Gingrich

Zeldin
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1904209863128814043

 

 

 

 

“The problem is that this vision for a new Holy Roman Empire lacks a Charlamagne. More importantly, it lacks public support.”

“A New World Order With European Values” (Turley)

“A New World Order With European Values.” Emblazoned across banners and signs, those words met the participants at this week’s meeting of the World Forum in Berlin. Each year, leaders, executives, journalists and academics gather to address the greatest threats facing humanity. This year, there was little doubt about what they view as the current threat: the resurgence of populism and free speech. In fairness to the Forum, “a New World Order” likely sounds more ominous for some civil libertarians than intended. While the European Union is a transnational government stretching across 27 nations, the organizers were referring to a shift of values away from the United States to Europe. As one of the few speakers at the forum who was calling for greater protections for free speech, I found it an unnerving message.

Even putting aside the implications of the New World Order, the idea of building a world on today’s European values is alarming for free speech. Free speech is in a free fall in Europe, with ever-expanding speech regulations and criminal prosecutions — including for having “toxic ideologies.” The World Forum has a powerful sense of fraternity, even an intimacy, among leaders who see each other as a global elite — a cadre of enlightened minds protecting citizens from their own poor choices and habits. There has long been a push for transnational governing systems, and European figures see an opportunity created by the conflict with President Trump. The European Union is the model for such a Pax Europaea or “European peace.” The problem is that this vision for a new Holy Roman Empire lacks a Charlamagne. More importantly, it lacks public support.

The very notion of a “New World Order” is chilling to many who oppose the rise of a globalist class with the rise of transnational governance in the European Union and beyond. This year, there is a sense of panic among Europe’s elite over the victory of Trump and the Republicans in the U.S., as well as nationalist and populist European movements. For globalists, the late Tip O’Neill’s rule that “all politics is local” is anathema. The European Union is intended to transcend national identities and priorities in favor of an inspired transnational government managed by an expert elite. The message was clear. The new world order would be based on European, not American, values. To rally the faithful to the cause, the organizers called upon two of the patron saints of the global elite: Bill and Hillary Clinton. President Clinton was even given an award as “leader of the century.”

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“..the West’s approach to public messaging that “portrays itself as infallible and suffers from an exceptionalism complex.”

‘Nazis’ In Ukraine ‘Nurtured’ By Europeans – Lavrov (RT)

European NATO members are willfully ignoring the “Nazi” character of the Ukrainian government, which they have empowered as an anti-Russian instrument, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has asserted.On Monday, the senior diplomat expressed concern over the “demons of neo-Nazism, Russophobia, and other hateful ideologies” spreading across multiple EU nations. Member states are deliberately overlooking Kiev’s misconduct, even as it persecutes ethnic Russians and violates human rights, he stressed. “Ukraine – ‘that’s different.’ Those Nazis have been nurtured for the latest attempt to unite all of Europe under racist, Nazi banners for a war against the Russian Federation,” Lavrov stated.

The minister was speaking in his capacity as a trustee of the Gorchakov Fund, a Russian NGO aimed at enhancing public diplomacy. He emphasized the organization’s mission of presenting an authentic view of Russia and contrasted it sharply with the West’s approach to public messaging that “portrays itself as infallible and suffers from an exceptionalism complex.” The EU is pursuing a multibillion-dollar rearmament plan, justified by what Brussels labels a growing Russian threat. European officials have warned that a direct NATO confrontation with Moscow may break out within the next few years. Russia, however, denies any hostile intentions toward the US-led military bloc.

Tensions between European NATO members and Washington resurfaced after President Donald Trump assumed office in January. The new US administration has sought a swift resolution to the Ukraine conflict and intends to shift security responsibilities onto Europe once a truce is achieved. Moscow’s goal of ‘denazification’ remains central to its stance on the Ukraine conflict. Russian officials have denounced the Ukrainian government as a “neo-Nazi regime” due to its discriminatory domestic policies, alleged war crimes against Russian citizens, and veneration of historical nationalist figures who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

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“..this person needs to be removed from this delegation, he should not be a representative of the [US] president. Since he’s either completely unprofessional or simply repeats Putin’s narratives..”

Kiev Wants Trump Envoy Witkoff Sacked (RT)

US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who has played a central role in opening negotiations on resolving the Ukraine conflict, is “spreading Russian propaganda” and should be sacked, according to a senior Ukrainian lawmaker. The head of the Kiev’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Aleksandr Merezhko, made the remark in response to Witkoff’s interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, during which the envoy spoke about the status of former Ukrainian territories that have joined Russia, describing the issue as “an elephant in the room” that “no one wants to talk about.” “They’re Russian-speaking. There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule,” Witkoff said.

“The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: Will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories? Can [Vladimir] Zelensky survive politically if he acknowledges this? This is the central issue in the conflict,” he added. Merezhko strongly condemned the “disgraceful, shocking statements,” accusing Witkoff of acting as an envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin rather than of Trump. “We are talking about a representative of the president who should have professional expertise in this matter and know some basic things. obvious things. And he doesn’t know this. He spreads Russian propaganda,” the lawmaker insisted in a televised interview.

Merezhko said that [he] wasn’t sure if “ignorance, naivety, or unprofessionalism” was behind Witkoff’s statements and called for the US official to be booted from his role. “We clearly can’t dictate to American friends who should represent them. But this person needs to be removed from this delegation, he should not be a representative of the [US] president. Since he’s either completely unprofessional or simply repeats Putin’s narratives,” Merezhko added.

Moscow and Kiev have taken bipolar positions on the former-Ukrainian Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions and the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, all of which officially joined Russia in autumn 2022 following a series of referendums. Kiev also formally claims Russia’s Crimea, which seceded from Ukraine in the aftermath of a violent Western-backed coup in Kiev and joined Russia in 2014, as its own. Moscow has repeatedly signaled that its sovereignty over the territories is not negotiable, while Kiev has repeatedly pledged to seize back control of all the territories it claims as its own. The Ukrainian leadership has seemingly softened its rhetoric as of late, now insisting it will never recognize “occupation” of the territories and Russian sovereignty over them in any form.

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The US should simply leave.

Ukraine Doesn’t Want Peace – Moscow (RT)

Ukraine continues to attack Russian civilian infrastructure, proving that Kiev does not actually want peace, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. Last week, following a phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, Moscow and Kiev agreed to a partial ceasefire and pledged to suspend strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure for 30 days. However, the Russian Defense Ministry has since reported multiple Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian energy facilities such as oil and gas pipelines. The latest attack reportedly took place at 2 a.m. on Monday on the Kropotkinskaya oil pumping station in Russia’s Krasnodar Region. The station is operated by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which works with US energy giants such as Mobil and Chevron.

Russian air defense systems intercepted a Ukrainian attack UAV some 7km from the facility, with fragments falling in the area of a railway station, according to the Defense Ministry. In an update on Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Ukraine had also launched drone strikes on the Glebovskoye gas condensate field in Crimea on March 23 and on a gas distribution center in Belgorod Region on March 22. Commenting on the recent attacks, Zakharova claimed it is typical of Kiev’s behavior, particularly ahead of international events such as this week’s Russia-US talks in Saudi Arabia.

”Every time it’s the same story. Before any contacts, including during visits to Moscow by foreign delegations, the Kiev regime commits terrorist acts, attacks on civilian infrastructure, on civilian objects, extremist acts, and so on… They don’t need peace. They have stated this repeatedly,” Zakharova told reporters. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stressed that despite Kiev’s repeated violations, Moscow continues to uphold the energy strike truce and that President Putin has not issued any new commands to the country’s armed forces. However, Zakharova warned over the weekend that Russia reserves its right to respond to Ukraine’s attacks, including “symmetrically,” if Kiev continues its “destructive course.”

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The talks will intensify.

US and Russia Engaging In ‘Creative’ Talks – Moscow (RT)

The US-Russian talks held in Saudi Arabia are a “creative” endeavor, though they may not yield a diplomatic breakthrough on Monday, a Russian lawmaker who is part of Moscow’s delegation told journalists. Grigory Karasin, chairman of the International Relations Committee in Russia’s upper chamber of parliament, provided the media an update during a break in the talks in Riyadh. The discussions, which he described as “technical,” focus on maritime security in the Black Sea and the possibility of reviving the Black Sea Initiative, which was originally mediated by the UN and Türkiye. Russia withdrew from the deal in July 2023, citing the West’s failure to provide sanctions relief for its grain exports, as the conditions of the arrangement required.

“Not every negotiation yields a high-profile document or agreement,” Karasin remarked before returning to the closed-door meetings. “What matters is maintaining communication and understanding each other’s positions. In this regard, we are succeeding.” Alongside Karasin, Russia’s delegation includes Sergey Beseda, an adviser to the director of the Federal Security Service. Their American counterparts, as identified by Reuters, are Andrew Peek, a senior director at the White House National Security Council, and Michael Anton, a senior State Department official. When asked about possible outcomes, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked earlier in the day that they “primarily concern the safety of maritime traffic. However, if you recall [the original version] of the deal, there were significant obligations made to our side that were never fulfilled. This remains part of the agenda.”

US President Donald Trump has suggested revisiting the grain deal as part of his efforts to mediate a broader truce between Russia and Ukraine, Peskov added. Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to Trump’s proposal to suspend attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, while Ukraine committed to reciprocate. However, Kiev has violated the partial ceasefire multiple times, including on Monday morning, according to Russia. Moscow has warned that it reserves the right to withdraw from the arrangement should Ukraine fail to meet its commitments. A Ukrainian delegation is also present at the same luxury hotel in Riyadh where the US-Russian talks are taking place, but they have no direct contact with the Russian team. The Ukrainians had their own talks with the US delegation the previous day.

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There are 27 of them in the EU.

Rubio Accuses ‘Other Countries’ Of Blocking Peace In Ukraine (RT)

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that unnamed foreign governments are obstructing efforts to end the Ukraine conflict, crediting President Donald Trump with leading negotiations to mediate peace between Moscow and Kiev. Senior Russian and US officials held marathon 12-hour talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Monday, focused on resolving the Ukraine conflict and ensuring maritime security in the Black Sea. However, the two sides have yet to release details or announce the outcome of the discussions. Speaking during a cabinet meeting at the White House before the talks concluded, Rubio stressed that the conflict “needs to be brought to an end” through negotiations, not military means, and praised Trump as “the only one leader in the world that’s capable of bringing two sides to a table.”

According to Rubio, Trump’s diplomatic initiative has faced resistance from other governments, although he did not name any specific countries. “You’ve done it despite impediments from other countries and others who maybe have different opinions about how this should go,” Rubio said, addressing Trump directly. “Ultimately, I think that the only chance we have for peace is through the President’s leadership.” Following a phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart last week, Moscow and Kiev agreed to a partial ceasefire and pledged to suspend strikes on energy infrastructure for 30 days.

However, the Russian Defense Ministry has since reported multiple Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy facilities. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stressed that despite Kiev’s violations, Moscow will continue to uphold the energy strike truce. In an interview on Sunday, Peskov also remarked that instead of seeking peace and addressing the root causes of the conflict, EU member states are now discussing the deployment of NATO contingents to Ukrainian territory. “This rampant militarist policy of Europe – there is no other way to describe it – is hard to comprehend,” he said.

Tensions between Washington and European NATO members resurfaced after Trump assumed office in January. The new administration has pushed for a swift resolution to the Ukraine conflict and plans to shift security responsibilities to Europe once a truce is in place. Following an emergency summit in London earlier this month, the UK and France signaled that they are open to sending Western “peacekeepers” to Ukraine once a ceasefire is reached. Moscow has rejected the proposal, stating that it makes no difference under what pretext NATO troops enter the country. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that this could lead to a direct war between the military bloc and Moscow.

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DOGE vs the NGOs.

“Martin Armstrong says all the gold movement coming to the US is because of a coming war..”

DOGE Reveals Mind Shocking Fraud Propping Up Economy – Ed Dowd (USAW)

Former Wall Street money manager and financial analyst Ed Dowd of PhinanceTechnologies.com is back with an update of a report on “Danger of Deep Worldwide Recession in 2025.” It was not just heavy government spending on illegal immigration, but “mind shocking” fraud that has been revealed with DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Investigators have uncovered $115 billion so far with many hundreds of billions more to be exposed. Dowd says, “Both sides of the aisle are probably going to have problems. The DOGE revelations are mind shocking. The clear way in which the government was spending money through NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and people taking kickbacks and profits along the way is going to come out. There may have been theft along the way. What business does Stacy Abrams have getting $2 billion for an NGO? This doesn’t make any sense.

It’s going to be shocking, even shocking to me. I knew there was rot in the system, but the mind blowing way the NGOs were used to facilitate the illegal immigration just blows my mind. The 10 million plus illegals that came in over the last four years, you just don’t wake up one day in Central America and say I am going to the Darien Gap, and go to the Mexican border and then meander my way into the interior of the US without a tremendous amount of aid along the way. NGOs facilitated that and probably took their cut. What was the all-in economic cost of the goodies they got once they got here? Plus, the NGOs spent and what the government spent themselves to facilitate this, it’s not hard to imagine $50,000 to $100,000 all-in cost per illegal. . . . This is the all-in cost up and down the entire economic food chain. . . . It was anywhere between $500 billion to $1.5 trillion depending on the illegals. It was an illegal project funded purposely, and it was very logistical. It was not something that just happened overnight.”

The result, says Dowd, was the US economy was propped up when it should have already tanked. Now, all this spending on this illegal invasion is going away. Dowd says, “When we wrote our report, we were surprised on how fast DOGE would get to work. . . . This is why our thesis is playing out a little quicker than we thought. . . . The housing market was on fragile ground the last year or so. It was held up by illegal immigrants supporting rent prices. So, as that unwinds, we think there will be a mini 2008–2009 housing issue. Housing prices are going to come down, and that is a big driver of consumption in the economy. That needs to happen because home affordability is off the charts.”

Dowd also see a recession coming as the government downsizes, illegal alien funding gets cut and illegals continue to self-deport. Dowd says, “Consumer confidence has taken a nosedive recently, and you can see why. There are 10 million to 15 million illegal immigrants worried about their gravy train coming to an end. So, they may be holding back on their spending. There are millions of government employees worried about their jobs. Then, you have the NGO networks that employ about 6 million people. So, you have about 20 million to 25 million people that are in the workforce . . . worried about where their money is going to come from, and that can cause consumer spending to slow down.”

There is good news with the spending cuts, according to Dowd, and that will come in the form of lower interest rates in the bond market. Dowd still likes gold as a core asset and does not see Trump tariffs as inflationary. Dowd says the problems with tariffs are “overblown” and are a negotiation tool to get fair trade for America around the world. Dowd sees “deflation” and possibly a short but “deep recession” coming before inflation. A possible black swan event is an intensified war in Ukraine and no peace deal along with the EU getting deeply involved in a war with Russia. This could be a plus for the US if it stays out of the conflict. Dowd says, “There seems to be war drums beating in Europe, and capital will flee to the US. Martin Armstrong says all the gold movement coming to the US is because of a coming war, and of all the theories on this, that makes the most sense to me. I am not predicting war, but that is a geopolitical risk out there. That is one of those ‘black swan’ events. Another ‘black swan’ event is a Bank of Japan currency crisis and, also, something going on with Iran and the Middle East. . . . Black swan events add to the risk, and those are hard to predict.”

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“America cannot afford inefficiency..”

The Pentagon’s War on Wasted Dollars (RCD)

So far, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has swept through government agencies like the United States Agency for International Development, brushing off cobwebs and uncovering skeletons as it goes. Now, DOGE is set to enter a much bigger agency whose shortfalls demand reform: the Department of Defense. Long criticized for its budget woes, the DOD has recently faced accusations of overspending, underspending, and even simple misspending—criticisms which are all well founded. In fact, the DOD consistently mismanages its budget, a fact that’s led it to fail all of its last seven audits.To address these issues, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently announced that he would work with DOGE to conduct a DOD-wide budget review.

Already, this initiative has revealed $80 million in wasteful spending, including $1.9 million in “DEI transformation and training” and $3.5 million in “Defense HR Support for DEI.” While the Pentagon is notoriously resistant to change, additional pressure from DOGE and the administration could finally force the reforms needed to modernize the American military, refocus on warfighting capabilities, and rid the Pentagon of absurd budget line items. But DOGE’s mission isn’t just to slash budgets: it’s also to restore efficiency. Specifically, DOGE’s role is to ensure the federal government makes the most effective use possible of American taxpayer dollars.

Fundamentally, the DOD exists to ensure America’s warfighting capability—a task DOGE has no intention of obstructing. And even as the DOD’s mission grows more and more urgent, Pentagon dollars continue to be misused, a flaw that cries for immediate correction. Hegseth recently announced he’d be implementing a DOD budget “cut” of 8%, or about $50 billion. Rather than simply imposing strict cuts, this plan seeks to “refocus … and reinvest … existing funds” to build a more lethal fighting force, restore “warrior ethos,” and reestablish global deterrence. This shift is essential at a time when our arsenal is severely depleted and outdated and we lack the ships and planes to deter China from launching an attack in the Indo-Pacific.

To fix this, Hegseth should prioritize reinvesting funding cuts into procurement and, specifically, into the construction of new ships, planes, and munitions. Hegseth should also divert dollars from personnel—a category that accounts for almost a quarter of the DOD’s budget. Already, he and Musk have announced plans to reduce the civilian workforce by between 5% to 8%, a cut that will save the DOD between $9 and $14.5 billion. So far, he’s implemented this plan via a hiring freeze and the firing of probational employees and recent hires.

Many have sought to villainize the Pentagon’s budget purge. Yet those in national security should recognize the need to cut defense budget waste, especially given recent developments on the international stage. There, China continues to rapidly modernize its military to challenge U.S. dominance, while Russia persists in its aggression in Eastern Europe. North Korea still pursues its ever-growing nuclear ambitions (and strengthens its support for Russia), while Iran maintains its destabilizing influence in the Middle East.

These various actors all share one common feature: a vicious antipathy toward the United States. The burden falls on the Pentagon and the DOD to protect the American people. DOGE represents a historic opportunity for the DOD to further this mission by rethinking how it organizes, supports, and employs its people. The goal isn’t to cut corners—it’s to reinvest in the capacity and capability of America’s warfighting force. In a world of rising global threats, America cannot afford inefficiency. The Pentagon must embrace DOGE’s mission to break free from outdated bureaucracy and inefficient spending. Only then will the DOD be able to enhance American warfighting capability and ensure our security and prosperity.

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“He publicly exposed an ongoing U.S. military, intelligence, and law-enforcement operation with an American ally dealing with the most vicious terrorists (Tren de Aragua) and international gang member (MS13) in the Western Hemisphere. That public exposure put American and allied lives in grave danger.”

Mike Davis Cooks Judge Screwing Around With Trump’s Deportation Flights (Vespa)

Well, Attorney General Pam Bondi isn’t going to discuss further the details regarding the deportation flights of Tren de Aragua members, a Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration has designated a foreign terror group. Judge James Boasberg, however, wanted to know the classified details regarding this operation. No, sir. This will not happen, as the Justice Department informed the courts that they’re invoking the State Secrets Act. Move on, little man.

It still doesn’t negate the days of judicial overreach and insanity from Boasberg, who thought he was the executive, or at least in charge of deportation policy. He is not,andd never will be. He dabbled in the Russian collusion hoax, ran legal interference for those caught fabricating evidence to secure illegal FISA warrants. This man is a disgrace to the bench. Before Ms. Bondi invokes the state secrets provision, Boasberg insisted that those marked for deportation should be afforded court dates. Mike Davis, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, took a hatchet to little Boasberg, arguing that it’s time to impeach for his serial incidents of judicial overreach: Here is the fatal flaw with DC Obama Judge Jeb Boasberg’s order:

“Even if these designated foreign terrorists are entitled to individual court review before their deportation, which is disputed, the DC court is not the proper court. Judge Boasberg did not, and does not, have the power to do what he is purporting to do. For this reason alone, everything he is doing is lawless. But it is much worse; it is also dangerous. Judge Boasberg ran to his courtroom to hold a Saturday hearing, even though he was not even serving as the emergency judge that weekend. (How did he get this case?) He publicly exposed an ongoing U.S. military, intelligence, and law-enforcement operation with an American ally dealing with the most vicious terrorists (Tren de Aragua) and international gang member (MS13) in the Western Hemisphere. That public exposure put American and allied lives in grave danger.

Stunningly, Judge Boasberg even ordered the President to turn around planes full of terrorists over the Gulf of America, without knowing the fuel levels, the security footprint back in America, or other crucial operational details. We saw the enormous security footprint in El Salvador. Why would we have had that same footprint in America, as who could have ever imagined an activist DC judge could or would order the President to return planes full of terrorists? And not completing the mission would have humiliated and politically damaged El Salvador’s president, who had hundreds of military, law-enforcement, and other officials awaiting–and who took a significant political and personal risk by agreeing to take these terrorists. Judge Boasberg’s Saturday hearing and order crossed the red line. But Judge Boasberg is doubling down by demanding details about the military operation, to which he is not entitled.

Judge Boasberg says he has a security clearance, but he definitely does not have the need to know. And allowing judges to meddle in military operations like this is dangerous and unacceptable. Foreign leaders are less likely to work with the President, if they fear an activist American judge may disclose their secrets. This harms the President’s ability to conduct foreign policy and his constitutional duty to keep us safe. The President has a constitutional duty, as the chief executive officer and commander-in-chief, to conduct international affairs, repeal foreign invasion, and protect American lives. The President has a constitutional duty to ignore any clearly unlawful court order that imminently endangers American lives, like Judge Boasberg’s orders. Judge Boasberg is refusing to back down. So the House must move forward with impeachment proceedings for his lawless and dangerous sabotage of the President’s core Article II powers.

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“He dragged us into court on a Saturday without any notice. And then he’s continuing these hearings. He’s trying to ask us about national security information, which he is absolutely not entitled to.”

Anti-Trump Judge Makes Another Outrageous Ruling (Margolis)

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is at it again. In a mind-boggling 37-page decision, he has blocked the Trump administration from swiftly deporting members of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang. The judge’s ruling reads like a progressive wish list, demanding “individualized hearings” before any deportations can proceed. Because apparently, we need to roll out the red carpet and due process for criminal aliens who shouldn’t be here in the first place. Even more outrageous, the government must now prove these individuals are actually gang members — as if their presence alone isn’t a violation enough of our immigration laws. Boasberg previously ordered a deportation flight for these illegal alien gang members to turn around back to the United States; however, since he made the ruling while the plane was over international waters, he had no jurisdiction, and the deportations continued as planned.

Boasberg’s memorandum opinion, which accompanied the order, maintains that these individuals must have “the opportunity to challenge their designation as alien enemies.” In other words, we’re giving suspected gang members a chance to argue that they’re actually upstanding citizens who deserve to stay in our country. Now he has the audacity to say that the court “need not resolve the thorny question of whether the judiciary has the authority to assess this claim in the first place.” This is an obvious reaction to the Trump administration’s position that district court judges don’t have the authority to micromanage the president of the United States or the executive branch. Boasberg’s opinion continues:

“That is because Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on another equally fundamental theory: before they may be deported, they are entitled to individualized hearings to determine whether the Act applies to them at all. As the Government itself concedes, the awesome power granted by the Act may be brought to bear only on those who are, in fact, “alien enemies.” And the Supreme Court and this Circuit have long maintained that federal courts are equipped to adjudicate that question when individuals threatened with detention and removal challenge their designation as such. Because the named Plaintiffs dispute that they are members of Tren de Aragua, they may not be deported until a court has been able to decide the merits of their challenge. Nor may any members of the provisionally certified class be removed until they have been given the opportunity to challenge their designations as well. The Motion to Vacate will thus be denied.”

This isn’t just judicial overreach; it’s judicial insanity. “This is an out-of-control judge, a federal judge trying to control our entire foreign policy, and he cannot do it,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. “He dragged us into court on a Saturday without any notice. And then he’s continuing these hearings. He’s trying to ask us about national security information, which he is absolutely not entitled to.” The plaintiffs now have until Wednesday to request converting the temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction. If granted, this would further cement this dangerous precedent and extend protection for these gang members from deportation. Because obviously, what America needs right now is more legal shields for criminal aliens. This ruling sets a dangerous precedent that undermines our immigration enforcement capabilities and makes a mockery of our national sovereignty.

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They’re organized.

New Dirt on Judge Boasberg Raises More Questions (Margolis)

The district court judge who recently blocked President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport illegal alien gang members attended a suspiciously partisan legal conference just months before his ruling, according to a judicial ethics report. Judge James Boasberg, who serves on the D.C. District Court, participated in what appears to be nothing more than a Democrat strategy session masquerading as a legal conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. The conference’s agenda items, “Judges in a Democracy” and “State of Democracy,” sound eerily similar to the Democrats’ tiresome 2024 campaign rhetoric about “saving democracy” — which, of course, has become the justification for their using the courts to obstruct Trump’s agenda.

“Called a ‘Privately Funded Seminar Disclosure Report,” the document discloses that Boasberg was in attendance but offers no details of whether Boasberg was paid for his attendance or travel, or what the remuneration was,’ reports Just the News. The outlet was “alerted to the conference and to Boasberg’s attendance by a retired Democrat-appointed judge, who was concerned the July 2024 conference’s focus on judges’ role in a democracy was too close to a political party’s theme for comfort.”

“Overseen by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the ethical rules governing federal judges require that a private entity who “issues an invitation to a federal judge to attend an educational program as a speaker, panelist, or attendee and offers to pay for or reimburse that judge, in excess of $480, must disclose financial and programmatic information.” The rules do not require a specific accounting for each judge, or even how much was paid to judges at all. […] It is possible that his “payment” was merely reimbursement for expenses, but Boasberg did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News.”

The entire arrangement reeks of the same swamp politics that President Trump has been fighting since day one. Is it any surprise that after rubbing elbows with fellow liberals at this partisan powwow, Judge Boasberg decided to obstruct Trump’s efforts to remove dangerous gang members from our streets? This is exactly why Americans have lost faith in our judicial system — unelected judges attending partisan conferences, then making decisions based on partisan biases, not constitutionality. The conference was part of the Rodel Institute’s Judicial Fellowship, and each attending judge, including Boasberg, was a first-year fellow, according to the institute’s website. Notably, Rodel receives funding from the same foundations that frequently bankroll anti-Trump organizations, programs, and publications. Additionally, the institute’s faculty advisors — twenty in total — are overwhelmingly outspoken Trump critics or those who have opposed his policies.

The Rodel Institute’s Board of Directors is stacked with Trump critics, including Ian Solomon. Co-founders Bill and Don Budinger have deep ties to Democratic organizations and candidates, with Don opposing Arizona’s immigration enforcement efforts and backing Democratic Senate candidates. Former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock was under consideration for Kamala Harris’s Cabinet, while former Arizona legislator Heather Carter abandoned the GOP and endorsed Democrats like Katie Hobbs. Jamie Woodson co-chaired a report lamenting “political disinformation” in 2016, and former Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna has openly attacked Trump, calling him a “demagogue” and dismissing his legal arguments as “flimsy.” Maybe next time, Judge Boasberg can hold his strategy sessions somewhere less obvious than a millionaire’s playground. But then again, the left has never been particularly good at hiding its contempt for Trump or the rule of law.

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“What is the alternative to presidential oversight and management of the agencies listed in this branch of government? They run themselves? That claim means nothing in practice.” —Jeffrey Tucker

The Last Resort (James Howard Kunstler)

Law is humanity’s instrument for creating order out of the terror and chaos of nature, where anything goes. The result of law theoretically, is a civil society, where only the good, true, and right things can go. These days, lawyers are hard at work to replace civilized order with the terror and chaos of nature — which is to say, the seeking of raw power: this is what I can do to you! That primal despotism is the motivating engine of the Democratic Party in its terminal phase, a feral, power-seeking monster. It was why, in case you hadn’t noticed, the essential drive of Woke politics was the sadistic pleasure it took in exacting its endless punishments — cancellation, personal ruin, censorship — not correcting alleged injustices against marginalized minorities.

And that tells you, by the way, exactly why the J-6 defendants were treated so harshly by the likes of Judge James Boasberg, Tanya Chutkan, and their colleagues of the DC federal district. The enabling device for that monstrous power seeking of the Democratic Party was the colossal racketeering operation they implanted in every corner of the federal government, an insidious process that accelerated during the Obama years, eluded discipline during Trump One — with the many distracting ruses such as RussiaGate — and surged into final overdrive during the perfidious term of “Joe Biden,” America’s first false-front president. The racketeering operation was perfectly illustrated in the DOGE’s recent deconstruction of USAID.

That agency worked as a gigantic money laundering matrix to pay Democratic Party activists for the sole purpose of maintaining and expanding the party’s power — its ability to push American citizens around, control our lives, tell us how to live, how to think, and, ultimately, in the Covid-19 scam, telling us to take our shots, get lost, and die. Pitifully, a lot of those vaxx victims were the Democratic Party’s own rank and file, which shows you how psychotically suicidal the Democratic Party became. By and large, it was conservatives who avoided the vaxxes because they were able psychologically to entertain the evidence that Covid was a nefarious set-up and that, month-by-month, the vaxxes were proving to be both ineffective and harmful. Democrats, in their Woke fugue state, could not do that. Even today, they insist that their vaxx injuries are “long Covid” and would be worse if not for the additional boosters they took. Poor dumb bunnies.

Mr. Trump was played masterfully in the initial 2020 Covid roll-out by the likes of Dr. Fauci, Deborah Birx, and the faithless Veep Mike Pence who directed the Coronavirus Task Force (and whoever was behind it). The president could not bring himself to oppose or cast doubt on their diktats and to this day he must remain embarrassed about how that all worked out. But he also probably learned to not be fooled again. And so, after the fishy 2020 election, and during the disastrous “Biden” years, Mr. Trump had time to lay careful and comprehensive plans for ending the massive racketeering and for restructuring the federal apparatus into a leaner, more efficient, and more lawful enterprise for managing the civil society known as the USA. Which brings us to the present.

Mr. Trump’s lawfully appointed agent, Elon Musk, and his legally chartered investigative advisory unit, called DOGE, has begun making recommendations for severe cuts in agencies and employees, which have been executed by the lawfully confirmed heads of agencies, and the chief executive himself. Thus, the rapid, systematic disassembly of the Democratic Party’s grift machine and the end of its immense revenue stream. No more USAID and its thousands of NGO money laundromats. No more Department of Education and its Grant-O-Matic depredations in the universities. No more work-from-home (but not really) nonsense. No more DEI reverse racism in hiring. No more flooding the swing state voting precincts with illegal aliens. No more stupid proxy war in Ukraine. No more gender pretending chaos. You see how it goes now.

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CNN yesterday didn’t talk about anything else.

Pentagon Chief Hegseth Comments On ‘Yemen War Plans’ Leak (RT)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has addressed a recent leak of high-level discussions about US airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, calling the journalist involved “deceitful” and downplaying the significance of the disclosure. The incident came to light after The Atlantic reported on Monday that its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, had been accidentally added to a Signal group chat that included top Trump administration officials such as Vice President J.D. Vance, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Hegseth. The group had been actively discussing potential US military operations against the Houthis for days prior to President Donald Trump ordering strikes on Yemen on March 15. Goldberg claimed that one of Hegseth’s final messages before the attack “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”

When asked about the leak on Monday, Hegseth dismissed Goldberg as “a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes.” “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said when pressed on the content of the messages. National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes told Reuters that the message thread “appears to be authentic” and confirmed that an internal review had been launched into “how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.” “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials,” Hughes added, without clarifying whether national security protocols had been breached or if any disciplinary action would follow.

Trump ordered a “powerful military action” against the Yemen-based Houthi militants last Saturday, accusing them of conducting an “unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones.” The group, officially known as the Ansar Allah movement, has controlled large portions of Yemen – including the capital, Sanaa – since the mid-2010s. In what The Atlantic described as a “fascinating policy discussion,” senior US officials reportedly acknowledged the difficulty of building public support for a new military campaign.

“There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary,” the account labeled ‘JD Vance’ said, arguing that “the strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.” In response, Hegseth agreed, stating: “I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what – nobody knows who the Houthis are – which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.” Trump has claimed that the Houthi attacks “emanate from, and are created by, Iran,” warning that from now on, Washington would view every shot fired by the Yemeni group as if it were fired by Tehran. “Iran will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire,” the president wrote on his Truth Social platform last Monday.

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“..the president dubbing it a “second-” or “third-rate,” “failing magazine” and calling “sleazebag reporter” Goldberg out by name..”

Trump Team Unwittingly Sends Yemen Strike Plans to Editor of The Atlantic (Sp.)

The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was included in a confidential Signal messaging chain detailing US planning. Here’s what was revealed. In a message to Pete Hegseth, Vice President Vance said it was at the DoD chief’s discretion whether or not to proceed. “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance said. Hegseth responded by saying he “fully” shared Vance’s sentiments about the “free-loading” Europeans, but added that the US was the only one capable of engaging the Houthis “on our side of the ledger.” A user named S M (presumably WH deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller) chimed in, saying that “as [he] heard it, the president was clear: green light.” In return, the US would look to “extract” “some further economic gain” from the Europeans, S M indicated. A follow-up message by Hegseth titled “TEAM UPDATE” provided operational details on the attacks, targeting details, which weapons the US would be using, and attack sequencing.

By Goldberg’s account, he was added to the confidential chat by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and didn’t believe it was real at first, fearing it might be an attempt “to somehow entrap” him or a script “by a particularly adept AI text generator.” The White House has confirmed that Goldberg had been made privy to classified discussions and information by mistake. “We are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” NSC spokesman Brian Hughes said. The Atlantic and its editor-in-chief have been a longtime source of Trump’s ire, with the president dubbing it a “second-” or “third-rate,” “failing magazine” and calling “sleazebag reporter” Goldberg out by name multiple times over what Trump said was false reporting on his private conversations.

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Re-organizing the legal teams. Time for the heavies.

Trump Names Alina Habba To Be Interim US Attorney For New Jersey (NYP)

President Trump on Monday appointed his former personal attorney Alina Habba to serve as interim US attorney in New Jersey — with Habba vowing to clean up “corruption” in her home state. Habba, 40, became a public figure while repping Trump in a defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll between the president’s terms of office, and has held the senior role as presidential counselor since January. “There is corruption, there is injustice, and there is a heavy amount of crime right in [Senator] Cory Booker’s backyard and right under Governor [Phil] Murphy. And that will stop,” Habba told reporters on the White House driveway.

“I look forward to working with [Attorney General] Pam Bondi and with the Department of Justice and making sure that we further the president’s agenda of putting America first, cleaning up the mess and going after the people that we should be going after, not the people that are falsely accused.” Habba declined to say if she viewed the appointment as a stepping stone toward elected office in the Garden State — despite aiming her initial remarks directly at the Garden State’s two most prominent Democrats. “I think Cory Booker and Governor Murphy have failed the state of New Jersey,” Habba said. “If you look at what happened in crime, what’s going on in Newark, what’s going on in Camden, this has been a neglected state. It is one of the most populated states for its size, and it needs to stop. We’re going to do a bang-up job. I cannot wait. It’s a great honor.”

Trump announced Habba’s selection after selecting current interim US attorney John Giordano to serve as ambassador to Namibia. “It is with great pleasure that I am announcing Alina Habba, Esq., who is currently serving as Counselor to the President, and has represented me for a long time, will be our interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, her Home State, effective immediately!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Alina will lead with the same diligence and conviction that has defined her career, and she will fight tirelessly to secure a Legal System that is both ‘Fair and Just’ for the wonderful people of New Jersey.”

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“I recognize that when you’re dealing with children, it takes much more time. You’ve got to ensure that what you’re sending out publicly is not revealing any personal information.”

The ‘Real’ Epstein Files Are Coming. Here’s What to Know. (Margolis)

The Trump administration is proving once again that promises made are promises kept. After successfully releasing over 80,000 pages of files connected to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on March 18, the focus has now shifted to perhaps what should be an even more explosive collection of documents—the Jeffrey Epstein files. As you know, there was a huge document dump of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case last month that was, to say the least, underwhelming. Part of the problem, it turns out, was that rogue officials out of the Southern District of New York office had withheld documents from the Department of Justice. So, where’s the good stuff? Well, according to a report from Vanity Fair, it should be coming soon.

It’s the FBI’s flagship field office, with more than a thousand agents and another thousand or so civilian employees. And right now, multiple sources with knowledge of the matter say that one priority at the bureau’s New York field office is taking precedence over all others: the review and redaction of sensitive information in the Jeffrey Epstein case files, to prepare for possible publication.“It’s literally all hands on deck,” one source familiar with the matter tells me, adding that dozens and dozens of agents are working around the clock on the case, instead of on their regular duties. “I even saw an agent walking in with a pillow,” the source added. Attorney General Pam Bondi, appearing on Maria Bartiromo’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” spoke about this massive undertaking. Bartiromo pressed Bondi about the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Acknowledging the complexity of handling such sensitive material, Bartiromo noted,

“I recognize that when you’re dealing with children, it takes much more time. You’ve got to ensure that what you’re sending out publicly is not revealing any personal information.” She then asked Bondi whether more details would be forthcoming. Bondi confirmed that updates were on the horizon, stating, “You’re absolutely right, Maria. You know, tens of thousands of pages of documents and hundreds and hundreds of victims, um, of Jeffrey Epstein.” Bartiromo reacted with a stunned “Wow.” Bondi assured viewers that federal authorities were making progress. “The FBI, they have been working round the clock at my directive, at [FBI Director] Kash Patel’s directive,” she said, adding that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino is also involved. “Dan Bongino’s there, who is a great asset for all of us at the FBI as well.”

Bondi reiterated the need to safeguard victims while ensuring transparency. “We have to protect their identity, their personal information, to make sure they’re safe,” she said. “But other than that, we are releasing all of these documents as soon as we can get them redacted to protect the victims of… of, of all of these horrific crimes he has committed.” Bartiromo responded, “Understood.” Rest assured, transparency is coming, everyone.

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“She is an elected public official, so she needs to tread very carefully because nothing will happen to Elon Musk..”

“Tread Carefully”: Pam Bondi Issues Warning Over Musk “Takedown” (ZH)

We certainly did not have a member of Congress conspiring with radical far-left NGOs to sabotage the most made-in-America car company and critical to retirement and pension funds for millions of Americans on our 2025 bingo card. But here we are, and far-left Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) joined a “Tesla Takedown” teleconference last week, laughing and rooting for Tesla and Elon Musk’s demise. Other revolutionaries on the call described how they wanted to “kill the Tesla brand” and “drive down the stock price” to push Tesla “into a death spiral.” Now Attorney General Pam Bondi is getting involved, warning Crockett to “tread very carefully” following her support for the Tesla Takedown. “She is an elected public official, so she needs to tread very carefully because nothing will happen to Elon Musk, and we’re going to fight to protect all of the Tesla owners throughout this country,” Bondi said on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Bondi’s warning to the unhinged Democrat comes days after her appearance on the Tesla Takedown teleconference:

Crockett’s alliance with Tesla Takedown is alarming, considering the Soros-funded non-profit Indivisible is preparing a multi-city assault on Tesla service locations nationwide by the end of the month. There have been far-left terrorist attacks on Tesla service centers, showrooms, Supercharging networks, and vehicles that paint the Democratic Party as in disarray and resorting to communist revolutionary tactics. Polling data for the party has collapsed, while the latest ploy by the party to improve optics was entirely disproven to be “inorganic” by GPS data. The American people are finally getting to see the real Democratic Party—filled with hate and violence as its revolutionaries attack Tesla, all because the owner, Elon Musk, is uncovering massive fraud and waste by the Deep State. Remember when Democrats wanted to defund everything after George Floyd? Yet suddenly, now they don’t.

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🙂

Elon Musk Disguises IRS Building As Tesla Dealership (BBee)

Proponents of eliminating the federal income tax rejoiced today as Elon Musk cleverly disguised the Internal Revenue Service headquarters as a Tesla dealership so Democrats would burn it down. The billionaire inventor and entrepreneur hatched the genius plan to cover the main IRS building with Tesla emblems and signage, which goaded angry Democrats to launch a large-scale firebomb attack against the building. “This’ll show Musk who’s boss! Burn it to the ground!” one enraged leftist reportedly shouted before throwing a Molotov cocktail through a window of the IRS building. “This looks different from any other Tesla dealership I’ve ever seen. It’s almost like a really old government building. Oh well. It’s all got to go. Everything he owns must be destroyed.”

When reached for comment, Musk was quietly pleased that his plan had worked. “It was quite a simple idea, really,” he said. “If Democrats are trying to burn down anything belonging to me, why not redirect that anger in a useful way to burn down something that should be demolished? For the cost of a few Tesla signs, we’ve now freed the American people from the terrible burden of excessive taxation. Ironically, once the rubble of the IRS building is cleared, we will, in fact, build an enormous new Tesla dealership in its place.” At publishing time, reports had circulated that the U.S. Capitol would be next to be disguised as a Tesla dealership in a plot to round up and imprison Democrats for attempting a violent insurrection.

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MS

Swan
https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1903880749935206439

Rooster

Elephants

Bounce

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 212025
 


Joseph Mallord William Turner Teasing the Donkey 1827

 

Governance by 677 Gavels (Carter)
President Trump Calls For End To ‘Unlawful Nationwide Injunctions’ (JTN)
Obama Judge Blocks DOGE From Social Security Records (ZH)
US Judge Blocks Trump’s Military Transgender Ban (RT)
AG Bondi: District Judge Has No Right to Ask About Flight Deportations (ET)
Soros-Funded NGO Plots Multi-City Assault On Tesla (ZH)
European Nations Plan To Replace US in NATO by 2035 – FT (RT)
The EU’s New Army. The Final Nail In The Project’s Coffin? (Jay)
Not Going For Odessa Would Be A Mistake (SCF)
Ukraine Strikes Russian Oil facilities, Violating the Ceasefire Deal (Sp.)
Russia Has ‘Very Valuable Earth’ – Trump (RT)
Germany Has Dealt ‘Death Blow To The Euro’ – AfD Leader (RT)
North Korea World’s 3rd Largest Bitcoin Holder – Times (RT)
Barron Trump Turns 19 (PJM)
The Democratic Party Is Ripe for a Hostile Takeover (Pinsker)

 

 

 

 

Sleep
https://twitter.com/TheStormRedux/status/1902506686620856391

Macgregor

Bukele

Poll

Mars

MEE

Lighthizer
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1902534188223381666

 

 

 

 

I’m not the only one who counted the number of district judges.

Governance by 677 Gavels (Carter)

Question: What’s the difference between a federal district judge and God? Answer: God doesn’t think he’s a federal district judge.

Or as Winston Churchill once said, “There, but for the grace of God, goes God.” Imagine the sheer hubris and limitless ego needed for an unelected jurist to don a black robe and assume the power of commandeering the national security apparatus and tell an aircraft full of dangerous foreign terrorists to turn around and return back to America to terrorize. Did Commissar Boasberg get his black robe from Hogwarts? Of course, there are a few problems with this, the first being purely logistical. If His Royal Awesomeness Commissar Boasberg is taking over the Venezuelan operation, that leaves the remaining 676 Commissars to split the remaining 194 countries into various principalities to accommodate their imperial administration.

However, I did see that another federal district commissar is assuming operational oversight of the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) to prevent it from ending a $20 million grant program begun by former President Biden even as another federal district liege has assumed control of military readiness by blocking President Trump’s ban on transexuals serving in the military. Still another federal district overlord says that Trump’s dismantling of the corrupt money-laundering machine known as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is likely unconstitutional. History buffs will recall that the USAID clause is written in the Constitution next to the right to stick a fork in a baby’s head, which itself adjacent to the divine right of federal judges to appropriate the President’s Article II powers.

The logistical challenge of what to do with 677 otherwise idle Federal District Commissars having been solved by dispersing them, like the witch’s flying monkeys, throughout the Executive Branch, leaves only one remaining problem. No one elected these judges. They are not answerable to the American people, whom they hold in less esteem than foreigners with a knack for assaulting and murdering the innocent. As Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller wrote: “Currently, district court judges have assumed the mantle of Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security and Commander-in-Chief. Each day, they change foreign policy, economic staffing and national security policies of the Administration. The day the nation arises to see what the craziest unelected local federal judge has decided the policies of the government of the United States shall be. It is madness. It is lunacy. It is the gravest assault on democracy. It must and will end.”

In his book, “The Devil’s Dictionary,” Ambrose Bierce defines law as “Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction,” and he defines a lawyer as “One who is skilled in circumvention of the law.” That last little bit was conclusively demonstrated to me a few days ago when a lawyer acquaintance of mine wrote on social media that “[I]n 1798 Congress enacted the Alien Enemies Act, which specifically provides that when war is declared, the President can remove and treat as hostile all foreign enemy agents on U.S. soil over the age of 14. The statute expressly requires war to be declared (which is a power of Congress)…” His point is that absent a declaration of war, President Trump cannot summarily remove Venezuelan gang members without each individual having their day in court where a judge will adjudicate whether or not they are members of the Tren de Aragua gang. But the wording of the Alien Enemies Act states:

“…Whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government, and the President of the United States shall make public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be in the United States, and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies. ”

Seems that the lawyer left something out of his narrative on the requirements for deportation, i.e. “…a declared war between the United States and any foreign government, OR any invasion or predatory incursion…” Ambrose Bierce is correct yet again.

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“Lawyers endlessly search the United States for these Judges, and file lawsuits as quickly as they find them..”

President Trump Calls For End To ‘Unlawful Nationwide Injunctions’ (JTN)

President Donald Trump on Thursday night called for an end to the “unlawful” nationwide injunctions imposed by multiple judges, as his executive orders face a flurry of legal challenges. Several federal judges have made large moves against the implementation of Trump’s orders, including one federal judge who blocked Trump’s order to ban transgender people from serving in the military. Another judge ordered the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury and Veterans Affairs to reinstate their fired probationary employees. Trump claimed the orders were imposed by “radical left judges” and accused the judges of wanting to “assume the Powers of the Presidency” without getting elected.”Unlawful Nationwide Injunctions by Radical Left Judges could very well lead to the destruction of our Country,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

“These people are Lunatics, who do not care, even a little bit, about the repercussions from their very dangerous and incorrect Decisions and Rulings. “Lawyers endlessly search the United States for these Judges, and file lawsuits as quickly as they find them,” he continued. “These Judges want to assume the powers of the Presidency, without having to attain 80 Million Votes. They want all of the advantages with none of the risks.” The president went on to urge the Supreme Court to get involved in the recent rulings, warning Chief Justice John Roberts that failure to do so would put the country “in very serious trouble.” “A President has to be allowed to act quickly and decisively about such matters as returning murderers, drug lords, rapists, and other such type criminals back to their Homeland, or to other locations that will allow our Country to be SAFE,” he said.

“It is our goal to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and such a high aspiration can never be done if Radical and Highly Partisan Judges are allowed to stand in the way of JUSTICE,” he continued. “STOP NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” The rant comes the same day Trump blasted U.S District Judge James Boasberg as a “grandstander” for issuing an order to halt the deportation of a group of Venezuelans, including alleged members of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang.

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DOGE=government.

Obama Judge Blocks DOGE From Social Security Records (ZH)

A federal judge Thursday issued a two-week temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing personally identifiable information from the Social Security administration. US District Judge Ellen Hollander of Maryland also ordered DOGE to delete any personally identifiable data they may possess. The ruling come after labor unions and retirees asked for an emergency order limiting DOGE access to the agency and its vast troves of personal data, AP reports. “The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” wrote Hollander, an Obama appointee. The order still allows DOGE to access ‘redacted or anonymized data and records of SSA.’

According to the Trump administration, DOGE has a 10-person team of federal employees investigating the Social Security Administration, seven of whom have been granted read-only access to agency systems or personally identifiable information. The government has argued that DOGE access doesn’t significantly deviate from normal practices inside the agency whereby employees can search databases. Established via executive order on January 20, 2025, DOGE aims to cut federal spending, reduce the size of the federal workforce, and modernize government technology. In mid-February, acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, resigned after a standoff with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) over access to sensitive government records.

Today’s ruling follows a string of judicial DOGE-blocking – as their access to records across the federal government have prompted disputes with senior officials at various agencies. Perhaps most prominently, the highest-ranking civil servant at the US Treasury Department quit after similarly refusing to grant Musk’s team access to the Bureau of Fiscal Service, which manages over $5 trillion in annual payments. On February 8, 2025, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer in New York blocked DOGE from Treasury records after 19 states, led by NY AG Letitia James, sued over cybersecurity threats. Subsequent rulings, like Judge Deborah Boardman’s February 24 TRO on Education and OPM data, reinforced limits on DOGE’s reach. These cases established that DOGE’s “need-to-know” basis for PII access was unproven.

The same day that King quit, Musk posted what he says could be the ‘biggest fraud in US history’ in which millions of ‘people’ over the age of 100 are collecting payments. King – who worked at the agency for over 30 years, left her position this weekend after refusing to give DOGE staffers access to sensitive information, such as the fraudulent payments to ‘vampires’ – with at least one recipient being older than the United States itself. To that end, DOGE has removed the names of 3.2 million individuals from the Social Security database, many of whom were listed as 120 years of age or older. The agency has now marked them as deceased.

“For the past two weeks, @SocialSecurity has been conducting a major cleanup of its records. Approximately 3.2 million number holders, all listed as age 120+, have now been marked as deceased. More work remains to be done,” the agency posted on X. Musk shared the post, responding “Cleaning up the dead people database.” In response to the spate of Democrat judges blocking just about every Trump move of import, investor Joe Lonsdale hopes that “The Supreme Court’s going to step in and make some sound rulings here and stop activist judges from violating the Constitution by their interference. It is going to be a big issue.”

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If you’re not aiming for the best possible army when it comes to fighting, then why have an army at all? Can’t defend yourself with symbolism.

US Judge Blocks Trump’s Military Transgender Ban (RT)

A US federal judge has blocked the enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive order barring transgender people from serving in the country’s military. Issued by Trump a week after taking office in January, the order prohibited trans people from enlisting and required the Defense Department to identify and dismiss all service members, who have “a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria.” US District Judge Ana Reyes of Washington, D.C. ruled on Tuesday that the ban is “soaked in animus” and violates the equal protection clause due to discriminating based on transgender status and sex.

“Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact,” she wrote in her decision. Reyes, appointed by former US President Joe Biden, has delayed the effect of her preliminary injunction until Friday so that the Justice Department could challenge it at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The government “could have crafted a policy that balances the Nation’s need for a prepared military and Americans’ right to equal protection,” and “they still can. The Military Ban, however, is not that policy. The Court therefore must act to uphold the equal protection rights that the military defends every day,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department described Reyes’ ruling as “the latest example of an activist judge attempting to seize power at the expense of the American people who overwhelmingly voted to elect President Trump.” “The Department of Justice has vigorously defended President Trump’s executive actions, including the Defending Women Executive Order, and will continue to do so,” the spokesperson stressed.The lawsuit seeking to block Trump’s executive order had been filed by a group of active-duty transgender service members and six transgender people in the process of enlisting, who have claimed that the policy is “unconstitutional.” A senior US defense official told AP last month that about 4,200 US troops currently serving in the Army, National Guard and reserves have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

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The Supreme Court can’t wait forever.

AG Bondi: District Judge Has No Right to Ask About Flight Deportations (ET)

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that a federal judge who blocked the Trump administration from invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to remove illegal immigrants has “no right” to ask questions on flights carrying deported individuals. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg had given the Trump administration until Tuesday to respond to his questions about deportation flights carrying alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which was designated by the administration as a foreign terrorist organization last month, over the past weekend following an order that he issued to suspend deportations after the administration invoked the 1798 law. He extended the deadline for another day, giving the government until Thursday to respond.

But Bondi told Fox News on Wednesday that such questions are inappropriate and that the judge has “no right” to ask those questions and “no power” to order the government to return those flights back to the United States, adding that she believes “liberal” judges are issuing orders on matters they have no jurisdiction over. “They’re meddling in foreign affairs. They’re meddling in our government,” she told the outlet. “And the question should be, why is a judge trying to protect terrorists who have invaded our country over American citizens?” On Wednesday, with the deadline nearing, Bondi said Boasberg had no “business, no power” to order the administration to return the flights. She said it has been a “pattern” from liberal judges to order things they have no jurisdiction to do.

The attorney general said that the Trump administration will continue to carry out deportation flights of Tren de Aragua members who are illegally inside the United States. “We are going to deport them, and we’re going to continue to deport them. We will honor what the court says, but we will appeal, and we will continue to fight terrorists within our country,” Bondi said, adding that Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys “are working on this” case and “will answer appropriately” to Boasberg’s questions. Her remarks on Wednesday are the latest development in a showdown between the federal government and the judge, who temporarily blocked deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

President Donald Trump has called for the judge’s impeachment, while other administration officials have said that the judge has exceeded his authority in preventing the government from dealing with what it described as national security matters and foreign policy. The judge has questioned whether the Trump administration ignored his court order on Saturday to turn around planes with deportees headed for El Salvador, which has agreed to intern them in a prison. A post issued by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on X indicated that his government received the deportees, saying, “too late,” in reference to the judge’s original order. In court papers submitted Wednesday, the DOJ said it was considering invoking the “state secrets privilege” to allow the government to withhold some of the information sought by the court.

“The underlying premise of these orders … is that the Judicial Branch is superior to the Executive Branch, particularly on non-legal matters involving foreign affairs and national security. The Government disagrees,” DOJ lawyers wrote. “The two branches are co-equal, and the Court’s continued intrusions into the prerogatives of the Executive Branch, especially on a non-legal and factually irrelevant matter, should end.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed to reporters during a Monday news briefing that 261 people were deported, including 137 under the Alien Enemies law.

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Tesla’s have extensive camera systems, 6,7 camera’s per car. A lof of this stuff is on “tape”.

Soros-Funded NGO Plots Multi-City Assault On Tesla (ZH)

While the FBI investigates far-left terrorist attacks against Tesla service centers, showrooms, Supercharging networks, and vehicles, the radical Soros-funded non-profit Indivisible is preparing to launch a multi-city offensive against the American company in the coming days. Anti-DEI crusader Robby Starbuck explained more about the rogue non-profit with Soros monies:

“Over the next few days you’re going to see an organized progressional protest effort at Tesla stores put together by a group called Indivisible. George Soros foundation has given Indivisible nearly $8 million dollars for their “activism”. They’re calling these “Tesla takedown” events and they’re doing it in the midst of a domestic terror spree targeting Tesla and Tesla owners. They have these planned across the entire country. These images are just six examples.

How can this not be seen as encouraging more violence and terrorism? I personally think that any violence occurring near locations they’ve chosen should result in Soros, his foundation, Indivisible and their founders being held criminally accountable as co-conspirators. The indivisible founders are Ezra Levin and his wife Leah Greenberg. They became “resistance” figures during Trump’s first term and their work is celebrated by elected Democrats. So yeah, it’s clear to me that the Democrats and their typical thugs are organizing this insanity. There’s reportedly even a form protest leaders can fill out to receive “reimbursement” payments for their protests.”

Tesla

There has been a series of domestic terrorism incidents nationwide by far-left Democrats targeting Tesla showrooms, service centers, Superchargers, and vehicles. The latest occurred on Tuesday in Las Vegas. On Wednesday night, FBI deputy director Dan Bongino said the agency is investigating attacks targeting Tesla. One day earlier, Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened “severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”

Elon Musk previously wrote on X that an investigation found five ActBlue-funded groups have fueled Tesla protests in recent weeks, including Troublemakers, Disruption Project, Rise & Resist, Indivisible Project, and Democratic Socialists of America (AoC’s party).

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It’s getting time to leave Europe.

European Nations Plan To Replace US in NATO by 2035 – FT (RT)

Europe’s NATO members are drawing up a plan to gradually replace the US as their key defense guarantor over the next five to ten years, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing sources. The UK, France, Germany, and the Nordic nations are now in talks about a potential proposal that would shift the military and financial burden of the bloc’s defense away from Washington, four unnamed European officials told the Financial Times. The ultimate goal is to present the plan to the US before NATO’s annual summit in The Hague this June, according to the report. The effort reflects widespread fears among European NATO members that the US, under President Donald Trump, could renege on its defense commitments or leave the bloc altogether.

While the talks are reportedly being framed as offering a managed, long-term transition, European officials have admitted to the FT that the timeline of five to ten years seems extremely ambitious. “Increasing spending is the only play that we have: burden sharing and shifting the dial away from US reliance,” one official told the FT. “We’re starting those talks, but it’s such a big task that many are overwhelmed by the scale of it.” According to the paper, the plan could include EU commitments to increasing defense spending and ramping up military capabilities, which could potentially convince Trump to agree to a gradual transfer of responsibilities and allow the US to concentrate on Asia.

However, some European countries are said to be reluctant to support the talks at all, fearing they could encourage a faster US exit. Meanwhile, others are doubtful whether Washington would agree to a structured transfer of responsibilities, given the “unpredictable nature” of the Trump administration. Trump has demanded that NATO members raise defense spending to 5% of GDP – more than double the alliance’s 2% target. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said that the country “will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship” with its allies, stressing that Washington “will prioritize empowering Europe to own responsibility for its own security.”

Earlier this month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged the EU to create a “defense union.” The EU has also backed a plan known as ReArm Europe to mobilize up to €800 billion ($875 billion) in debt and tax breaks for the bloc’s military industrial complex. Moscow has sharply criticized the EU’s plans to boost military spending, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling the buildup “a matter of deep concern.” He has insisted that the measures “are primarily aimed at Russia” and threaten to undermine peace efforts with Ukraine.

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“..what do all three of these women have in common, apart from having names which sound like sexually transmitted diseases? They all want war.”

The EU’s New Army. The Final Nail In The Project’s Coffin? (Jay)

It used to be quite a common thing for people in polite society to say “imagine if women ran the world…we would certainly have less wars, right?”. Wrong. Women are running the world, well, at least the EU world. Three women to be precise. Ursula von der Leyen, EU commission boss, Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister and of course, last but not least, the EU’s own foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas. And what do all three of these women have in common, apart from having names which sound like sexually transmitted diseases? They all want war. In line with spectacularly poor decision making right from the beginning of the Ukraine war, with probably Russian sanctions at the top of the list of stupid ideas, the EU has only one way forward in Ukraine.

At whatever cost, it must come out at least not looking like it lost. The EU project is very much like an old man on a bike moving very slowly along a Dutch cyclists’ path. The fear from the elites in the EU is that if he falls off the bike, he will never get back on. The constant worry from top EU figures is that if the EU loses its momentum with press coverage and relevance in general, then a pause – any pause – could be devastating. This, you might be surprised to hear, is what EU officials themselves confided in me when I was based in the Belgian capital. Such an expression gives you an idea of how little confidence the EU has in itself as a worthy, stable long-term project. And so the madness escalates now to such a point where we are actually looking at draining the wallets and purses of our own very poorest people to fund the ultimate EU sex toy going: an EU army.

The idea of an EU army is not new. As a notion, it’s as old as the hills as hard core federalists in Brussels have been arguing for the EU to have its own army for at least twenty years, but until now failed. The main reason for the idea not getting off the ground is that it created too many new, worrying political problems for the EU to wrangle with. In a nutshell, there was always a risk of a new political crisis that an EU army would create as member states argue over which country gets to run it, which nationality is its head, where it would be based and how politically would it be run, based on what decision making structure? (existing EU council, EU commission, member states themselves in a new set up via defence ministries). The concern was always that Germany would have too much power and then this would open an old wound about the country re-arming and rekindling memories of 1939. And we all know where that led.

The EU army idea is actually more complicated than you might think. One of the reasons why it never got off the ground despite several serious attempts is that both the EU and member states are both confused and lack confidence about such a bold plan. They are literally concerned the idea could blow up in their faces. It’s what Americans call ‘blowback’. No, that’s nothing to do with the German foreign minister or even innuendo. It’s a military term for when a gun throws back energy in your face when it discharges and wounds whoever is holding the weapon.

For a long time the EU itself wanted the army to be very much controlled by Brussels but knew that the big guns would not wear that. And so, for them, like those in the European Commission it was about giving power away to a new body, a new layer of EU power, as though there aren’t enough institutions in Brussels which already sap away power from member states. The attitude was somewhat self-defeating. ‘If we (the commission) don’t create this entity, then Germany may well do it on their own anyway, and then we will lose the power’ is the mentality in Brussels. Indeed, Germany for at least a decade has been toying with the idea of having its own EU army, which creates a real headache for Brussels as it gives crucial power to one member state who many would argue already wields quite enough in the first place.

The German parliament a few years ago leaked a document suggesting a new international army which Germany would run, which would be sent to troubled hotspots around the world and would be joined by a few allies who would play a supporting role. The problem with this is twofold. One, a good number of Germans would be very unhappy about his and believe that Germany should never be allowed to return to its former military power of the 1930s. Secondly, under such a set-up, the EU would suffer considerably as it would throw a spotlight on its own weakness and underline how ineffective Brussels is, given that it has no military edge and that one member state has gone rogue with a geo-military policy. And so two scenarios present themselves: Germany being the main player in an EU army created and apparently run from Brussels – at least in appearance or Berlin running its own EU army which isn’t called an EU army but the rest of the world will consider it to be one. Neither of these scenarios really does the EU any favours.

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De-nazification.

Not Going For Odessa Would Be A Mistake (SCF)

Odessa is of crucial historical importance and vital relevance in the context of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. Its liberation should not merely be a military goal but a central strategic objective for Russia. Amid tragic events, such as the Trade Unions House massacre, and the extremist rhetoric of Ukrainian leaders, Odessa represents a turning point both for the future of the conflict and for regional security. Not going for Odessa would be a grave mistake, compromising not only Russia’s military objectives but also the very confidence of ethnic Russians in Moscow’s ability to protect them both within and outside the Federation.

The Trade Unions House massacre: A tragic symbol On May 2, 2014, Odessa was the scene of one of the bloodiest and darkest episodes in Ukraine’s recent history. On that day, nationalist militants, supported by the Ukrainian government, attacked anti-Maidan protesters who had sought refuge in the Trade Unions House. The attack culminated in a devastating fire, resulting in the deaths of 48 people and leaving more than 200 injured. Many of the victims perished in the flames, unable to escape the burning building. This massacre was not merely an isolated tragedy but a milestone highlighting the growing extremism within the Ukrainian government. The Ukrainian authorities’ failure to prevent the attack or hold the perpetrators accountable, as recently recognized by the European Court of Human Rights, reveals the regime’s complicity with radical nationalist groups. Since then, Odessa has become a symbol of the suffering inflicted by these groups, and its liberation would serve to rectify this historical injustice.

Kiev’s extremist rhetoric: the ideological threat During his presidency, former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko adopted an aggressive stance that exacerbated division and violence in the country. In a terrifying speech, Poroshenko declared that Russian children would “live in bomb shelters,” revealing not only a belligerent posture but also a desire to instill fear and exclusion in Russian minorities within Ukraine at the time. This speech did not occur in Odessa by chance. Poroshenko chose a historically Russian city to threaten Russian citizens. Odessa then became the ultimate symbol of neo-Nazi occupation, with its liberation being a way to reverse the policies initiated by the Maidan Junta and finally achieve Russia’s goal of denazification.

The geostrategic importance of Odessa Odessa’s significance goes far beyond its symbolic value. Geographically, Odessa is in a crucial position for Russia. The city serves as a gateway to the Black Sea and as a key point to secure Russian access to the Transnistrian corridor — a strip of territory connecting Ukraine with the pro-Russian separatist Moldovan region. Currently, Russian and pro-Russian soldiers and civilians are trapped between Ukraine and Moldova, and controlling Odessa would open a safe route for these people, ensuring evacuation and necessary logistical support — perhaps even enabling the reintegration of Transnistria into Russia, if the local population desires it. The military and humanitarian importance of this operation cannot be underestimated. Without Odessa, Russia would compromise not only its strategic capabilities but also its responsibility to protect its citizens in critical zones.

The tragedy in Odessa, despite finally being covered by Western media after the recent condemnation by the European Court, has never been adequately addressed by Ukrainian authorities. Local police not only failed to prevent the massacre but also delayed the arrival of firefighters, resulting in more deaths. No significant legal measure has been taken against those responsible, and impunity has prevailed. For Russia, liberating Odessa represents more than a military victory. It is a chance to restore the dignity of the victims and reaffirm the need for justice. Odessa has become a symbol of the Ukrainian government’s failure to protect its citizens, and its liberation could be a decisive step toward eradicating nationalist extremism throughout the post-Soviet space.

Odessa as a strategic priority Not going for Odessa would seriously compromise the broader objectives of the special military operation. The city represents a convergence of military, humanitarian, and ideological importance. The liberation of Odessa would not only correct a historical injustice but also ensure a crucial strategic position for Russia, allowing safe access to Transnistria and protecting Russian civilians trapped by the violence of the Ukrainian regime. Recently, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader was assassinated on Odessa’s streets in an act of popular revolt against draconian mobilization policies. Moscow should interpret this gesture as a cry for help from Odessa’s Russian population, which is showing a willingness to take up arms against fascist occupation and in favor of Russian liberation. Furthermore, it is crucial to emphasize that the point of no return in the conflict’s escalation has already been crossed.

The Kiev regime has proven itself untrustworthy for any negotiation, which is why measures must be taken to permanently neutralize Ukraine’s strategic capabilities. Eliminating Ukrainian access to the sea is a fundamental measure in this regard, as landlocked countries face a clear military disadvantage. It is definitely time for Moscow to update its territorial interests beyond the four New Regions. The special military operation cannot allow Odessa to remain under the control of extremist nationalists who reject any possibility of dialogue or peace. After the complete expulsion of neo-Nazis from the New Constitutional Regions, Odessa must become a priority—not only to guarantee military victory but to reaffirm Russia’s commitment to justice, security, and regional stability. Abandoning Odessa should not be an option; after more than a decade of war, it is a mistake Russia cannot afford to make.

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Even before the deal was signed, Zelensky said it was Russia.

Ukraine Strikes Russian Oil facilities, Violating the Ceasefire Deal (Sp.)

Despite Russia downing its own drones as part of the truce, Ukraine continues to attack Russian energy infrastructure. Let’s break it down. On March 18, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed that the first step toward peace would be a 30-day cessation of hostilities against energy and infrastructure sectors. Following the agreement, Russian military forces immediately shot down seven of their own drones that were reportedly targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure facilities linked to the defense industry in the Nikolayev region. However, just hours after the Putin-Trump conversation, the Ukrainian regime launched a drone attack on oil facilities in the village of Kavkazskaya in Russia’s Krasnodar region on the night of March 19. UAV debris damaged a pipeline between fuel storage tanks.

A fire initially broke out over an area of 20 square meters but quickly spread to 4 square kilometers. Firefighting efforts at the oil depot in the Kavkazsky district have been reinforced, with 406 personnel and 157 pieces of equipment deployed to contain the blaze. The attacked facility handles the transfer of oil from rail tank cars to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) system. As a result, operations at the oil depot have been suspended. The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ drone attack on the energy infrastructure facility in Russia’s Krasnodar region was intended to disrupt Trump’s peace initiatives, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

This is not the first time the Ukrainian regime has violated international agreements. Speaking with Mario Nawfal, Andrew Napolitano, and Larry Johnson, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov detailed how Zelensky sabotaged the 2014 Minsk agreements. In April 2022, Zelensky TORE UP the Istanbul accords with Russia after Moscow withdrew its armed forces from Kiev in accordance with the agreement reached after the March 2022 negotiations.

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“They have 11 time zones. You can fly through 11 time zones from one side to the other. They have very valuable earth,” Trump said.”

Russia Has ‘Very Valuable Earth’ – Trump (RT)

US President Donald Trump has cited Russia’s vast territory and valuable land as a reason for restoring economic ties between the nations in an interview with the conservative news outlet Breitbart.The remark followed Tuesday’s phone conversation between Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, where the two leaders focused on bilateral relations and the Ukraine conflict. The presidents agreed that improved ties between the US and Russia would have a “huge upside,” leading to “enormous economic deals” once peace has been achieved, according to the White House. In the interview, Trump said that the US “should be dealing with Russia.” “They have the largest piece of land by far, bigger than China. They have 11 time zones. You can fly through 11 time zones from one side to the other. They have very valuable earth,” Trump said.

The US President went on to mention the rare earths deal with Ukraine which he had sought in order to compensate for the billions the previous administration had given Kiev in aid. Vladimir Zelensky visited the White House in late February to sign the agreement, but the talks became contentious, ending abruptly without the deal being finalized. After the phone call with Putin on Tuesday, the White House said it has moved beyond “just the economic minerals deal framework” and was now focused on a long-term peace agreement. Putin said in February that Moscow was prepared to collaborate with Washington on developing its own rare earth mineral deposits, with Trump indicating he was open to the idea.

Rare earth elements (REE) are a group of 17 metallic elements which are indispensable in modern technology due to their unique chemical and physical properties. They are used in the manufacturing of electronics, defense systems, and in renewable energy technology. They are seldom found in the planet’s crust in concentrated forms, making their extraction both challenging and costly. According to an estimate from Russia’s Federal Agency for Mineral Resources, the country accounts for over 20% of the world’s total stockpile of REEs. Despite the abundance, Russia’s current share of global REE production is less than 1%, indicating significant potential for development. Forbes estimated in 2023 that 70% of Ukraine’s REE deposits are in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which declared independence in 2014 following the Western-backed Maidan coup in Kiev. These territories came under Russian control after popular referendums in 2022.

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“..the Bundestag backed an initiative allowing the federal government to unlock a record level of state borrowing..”

Germany Has Dealt ‘Death Blow To The Euro’ – AfD Leader (RT)

Berlin’s move to overhaul its national debt rules in order to boost military spending has jeopardized the economic stability of the euro area, according to Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Her comments came shortly after the federal legislature approved the measure. On Tuesday, the Bundestag backed an initiative allowing the federal government to unlock a record level of state borrowing for defense and infrastructure. The fiscal package was approved by 513 legislators, while 207 voted against it. “This is a death blow for the euro, which in the coming years – and it is already beginning to do so – will devalue significantly,” Weidel told journalists after the “historic” vote, emphasizing that German lawmakers had approved “gigantic debt.”

The reform, which amends the nation’s constitutionally enshrined fiscal rules, will hit the country’s future generations the hardest, according to AfD’s co-leader, who also warned that “what is being done here is the final destruction of Germany’s financial stability.” “We will lose our AAA rating, our top credit rating,” Weidel warned.The world’s major credit agencies currently rank Germany’s long-term sovereign debt AAA, entailing the lowest expectation of risk. The reform package approved by the lower chamber implies the removal of federal fiscal restrictions in order to increase the special fund for the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces.

If adopted, the amendments will allow spending exceeding 1% of the country’s GDP to be effectively exempt from the nation’s “debt brake” that was added to the constitution in 2009. The current rules normally limit federal budget deficits to no more than 0.35% of GDP. In addition, the proposed reform stipulates the creation of a debt-financed and brake-exempted fund of €500 billion ($548 billion) earmarked for infrastructure and climate investments, with one-fifth of that funding to be committed to fighting climate change. The reform package also needs to be approved by the Bundesrat, a body representing the country’s states, on Friday to become enshrined in Germany’s constitution.

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US $17 billion, UK $5 billion, NK $1.5 billion.

North Korea World’s 3rd Largest Bitcoin Holder – Times (RT)

North Korea is estimated to be the world’s third-largest holder of bitcoin, The Times reported on Tuesday. The US has accused Pyongyang of masterminding a $1.5 billion digital asset heist and claimed that nearly half of North Korea’s foreign currency income comes from “malicious cyber activities.” The country has endured stringent economic sanctions that hinder its participation in international trade for decades. In order to secure resources for its defense programs, based on the need for a robust military ad a nuclear deterrent, Pyongyang has resorted to innovative strategies, including crypto, to circumvent the restrictions.

The ranking stems from an analysis by Arkham Intelligence, a firm that employs AI to trace ownership of anonymous crypto wallets. Arkham estimates that the Lazarus Group – a hacking collective allegedly linked to the North Korean government – holds around $1.2 billion in bitcoin. By comparison, it estimates US bitcoin assets to be worth over $17 billion, and those of the UK at over $5 billion. Last month, the FBI accused the Lazarus Group of stealing approximately $1.5 billion worth of digital currency from Bybit, a Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange serving over 60 million users. The hackers reportedly exploited a routine transfer between digital wallets to abscond with around 401,000 Ethereum tokens. The Bureau said it was expecting Lazarus to launder its ill-gotten gains through various cryptocurrencies.

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“I’m very proud of what he grew up to — his strength, his intelligence, his knowledge, his kindness. It’s admirable.”

Barron Trump Turns 19 (PJM)

While Donald and Melania Trump have done a pretty good job of keeping their son, Barron’s, life private, it still feels like he’s grown up right before our very eyes. He was only 10 years old when his father first took office back in January 2017, and today just happens to be his nineteenth birthday. The president sat down with Fox News host Laura Ingraham for a rather lengthy interview this week — I covered part one on Tuesday, which about topics like Russia, Elon Musk, and rogue judges — but during part two on Wednesday night, Trump got a little more candid and personal and, in a rare moment, talked about his youngest son. Ingraham asked the president how often he talks to his youngest son, and he replied, “All the time” and said that he stays in touch with all five of his children regularly. She also asked him what he sees for Barron’s future. Will he go into business and/or politics like his dad and siblings?

“I think business, and I think he could probably — you know, if you look at my kids, all my kids, they’ve been very good, they’re very smart, always good students… I’m lucky… They are very smart. They’re good kids, and they work hard, and they love our country, and they’re proud of their father. We have a very good relationship,” Trump said. Ingraham brought up the fact that the president’s own father felt that he had an aptitude for music, and she asked what Barron’s aptitude might be. “Maybe technology,” the president replied, adding, “He’s got an unbelievable aptitude in technology.” Here’s more on that:

https://twitter.com/_johnnymaga/status/1902727721718866317?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1902727721718866317%7Ctwgr%5E70a3addc7644211d94e0cd227e9c1c9316b97b5b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2025%2F03%2F20%2Ftrump-gets-personal-talks-about-barron-and-more-n4938103

However, it sounds like Barron has an aptitude for business and politics too. We all know now that Barron also played a minor but important part in his father’s campaign for president in 2024. It’s been said that he introduced his father to some of the most popular podcasts in the country and encouraged him to go on and speak to a new audience, something many say helped Trump win over certain audiences in November, especially men and young people. He is also reportedly working on a business venture that includes building luxury homes and golf courses in western states like Idaho, Utah, and Arizona. The youngest Trump son is currently a freshman at NYU’s Stern School of Business, and while I hate to quote anonymous sources, People magazine actually published a nice article about him today to celebrate his birthday.

One source calls him an “old soul,” and says you can tell he was raised with some of his mother’s European manners. “He isn’t as aggressive as many of his age when they are in their own social circles. He is someone who listens before talking, and is super polite,” the source said. A source also said he largely keeps to himself at NYU, is accompanied by Secret Service detail, and seems extremely focused on his studies, and he maintains a “button down collar mentality when he’s in the public eye.” In 2024, in a Fox News interview, Melania said that Barron chose NYU because he likes being in New York and wanted to continue to live in their home at Trump Tower. She also called him “an incredible young man,” and she said, “I’m very proud of what he grew up to — his strength, his intelligence, his knowledge, his kindness. It’s admirable.”

Trump is truly ushering in a new American Golden Age, but Democrats, the mainstream media, and everyone else on the left will do what they can to prevent it. They won’t even leave his teenage son alone. In her 2024 memoir, Melania wrote that bullying started by leftists led to “irreparable damage” to her son.

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AOC for the throne.

The Democratic Party Is Ripe for a Hostile Takeover (Pinsker)

The United States is a two-party system, yet today, only 7% of all voters have a “very positive” view of the Democratic Party. That’s not a sustainable trajectory. Which means, the Democratic Party is going away. But our two-party system won’t be going away. Like we said, that’s too engrained culturally, economically, and procedurally. It means the Democratic Party is going to be replaced. The new party might still call itself the Democratic Party, but make no mistake, it’s gonna be something different. Just as MAGA transformed the GOP, this new, emerging liberal movement will prove just as transformative to the Democrats. It hasn’t received as much media attention as it probably deserves, but socialist darling Bernie Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.) and Squad radical Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have launched a “populist revolt” against President Trump. At least, that’s what they’re calling it. But it really isn’t about President Trump.

This is a populist revolt against the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders has a national network of liberal/socialist donors — a ready-made list that he fully controls. It’s not in the hands of “senior party leadership” or locked somewhere in the Democratic National Committee (or in Joe Biden’s garage). It belongs to Sanders. He dedicated his life to building that list. And Sen. Sanders is 83-years-old. Question: If you were in Sanders’ shoes, how would you try to cement your legacy?Answer: It wouldn’t be by running for president in 2028 or 2032. He’s too old. Instead, it would be elevating the heir of your movement — and thus controlling the future. Sanders wants to play kingmaker. The Democrats can sense it, too: As Democrats scramble to find an authentic and effective messenger for the second Trump administration, there is a growing desire to elevate Ocasio-Cortez, 35, within the party in some way, according to interviews with a dozen Democratic lawmakers, aides and strategists — especially after last week’s government spending showdown left the base enraged.

Let them speak
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1902545184509862013

Ocasio-Cortez was one of the most outspoken Democrats in torching Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for allowing a Republican funding bill to advance in the Senate to avoid a shutdown. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif, publicly urged Ocasio-Cortez to launch a primary challenge against Schumer in 2028 if he runs for re-election, and several House Democrats told NBC News that her colleagues also privately pushed her to do so at a party retreat last week. Give Sanders and AOC credit: They’re being honest and straightforward about their attempts to transform the party: “If there’s any hope for the Democratic Party, it is that they’re going to have to reach out — open the doors and let working-class people in, let working-class leadership come into the party,” Sanders told the Times. “If not, people will be running as independents, I think, all over this country.”

They’re campaigning on a populist, “anti-oligarch” message. Instead of running on pronouns, hashtags, Ukraine, or calling your enemy a Nazi, they’re running on pocketbook issues: “While Republicans try to gut Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security to pay for tax cuts for billionaires, people across the country are standing up against these attacks on the working class,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “They deserve representation that is willing to stand with them. I look forward to hitting the road with Sen. Sanders.” “Today, the oligarchs and the billionaire class are getting richer and richer and have more and more power,” Sanders said in a Friday statement. “Meanwhile, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and most of our people are struggling to pay for healthcare, childcare, and housing. This country belongs to all of us, not just the few. We must fight back.”

The timing is perfect for a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party. The liberal natives are restless; their gatekeepers have abandoned their gates; everything is wide open. With the right push — and just a little bit of luck — this will be the party of Sanders, AOC, and the Squad by the close of the 2026 midterms. They might not have enough “juice” to seize the whole country, but the Democratic Party is squarely within their grasp. (At this point, it’s low-hanging fruit!) AOC and Sanders know how to organize, lead a media campaign, and fight hard for what they believe in. If you’re a liberal-leaning voter, there’s more reason to support AOC and Sanders than Hakeem Jeffries and Charles Schumer.

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RFK

 

 

 

 

99 million

 

 

Fun
https://twitter.com/Yoda4ever/status/1902550662652580078

 

 

Pup

Mom
https://twitter.com/ShouldHaveCat/status/1902427429303676947

 

 

https://twitter.com/joeroganhq/status/1902524897764470927

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 142025
 
 March 14, 2025  Posted by at 10:12 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  51 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Rest (Marie-Thérèse Walter) 1932

 

Trump ‘Would Like To Meet’ Putin (RT)
Putin Lists Guarantees Moscow Wants For 30-Day Ceasefire (RT)
Putin’s Statement On Trump’s Ukraine Ceasefire Proposal (RT)
Moscow Banned Trump’s Ukraine Envoy From Peace Talks – NBC (RT)
Zelensky’s Last Stand? Trump’s Push For A Ukraine Settlement (Kortunov)
Zelensky In Political ‘Final Act’ — FT (RT)
‘A Ceasefire Only Benefits Those Who Are Retreating’ (RT)
Is Putin Being Boxed In by Trump and Zelensky? (Paul Craig Roberts)
US Deficit Sets Record With $1.1 Trillion In First 5 Months Of FY 2025 (JTN)
Trump Demands ‘Military Options’ To Control Panama Canal (RT)
Schumer Throws Contrived Tantrum After Caving To GOP (ZH)
MTG-Led DOGE House Panel Urges DOJ To Investigate Recent Attacks On Tesla (JTN)
EPA to Begin the ‘Biggest Deregulatory Action in US History’ (Moran)
Investors Betting On Russian Return To Western Markets – Bloomberg (RT)
EU Seeks To Intensify Immigrant Deportations (RT)
Tariffs are Theft (Ron Paul)
Clinton-Appointed Judge Slams Trump “Sham” (ZH)
America and the EU Are Drifting Apart – Moscow Is Watching (Bordachev)
A Conversation with Foreign Minister Lavrov (Larry Johnson)

 

 

 

 

Lutnick is impressive
https://twitter.com/MJTruthUltra/status/1899925243189170457

White House Automall
https://twitter.com/AutismCapital/status/1900027336676041126

Elon

Fox Elon
https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1900061762788974949

Bondi Patel
https://twitter.com/1776Diva/status/1900069765340656088

Artemis

Rogan DOGE

 

 

 

 

 

 

“They discussed NATO and being in NATO, and everybody knows what the answer to that is. They’ve known that answer for 40 years..”

Trump ‘Would Like To Meet’ Putin (RT)

President Donald Trump has expressed his readiness to meet and speak with his Russian counterpart after President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was open to a US-proposed ceasefire in Ukraine but raised numerous questions about its practical implementation. The Russian president voiced support for a potential 30-day ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict on Thursday, but warned of loopholes and strategic disadvantages, outlining Moscow’s concerns over how such a truce could be enforced. “[Putin] put out a very promising statement, but it wasn’t complete. And, yeah, I’d love to meet with him or talk to him,” Trump told journalists during a bilateral press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte later in the day. Trump said the US has already discussed many details of a potential “final agreement” with Kiev and is now waiting to see “whether or not Russia is there.”

“We’ve been discussing land with Ukraine… pieces of land that would be kept and lost and all of the other elements of a final agreement. You know, we’ve been discussing concepts of land because you don’t want to waste time with a ceasefire if it’s not going to mean anything,” Trump said. “They discussed NATO and being in NATO, and everybody knows what the answer to that is. They’ve known that answer for 40 years, in all fairness.” Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, visited the Russian capital on Thursday to discuss the results of US-Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia earlier this week and to relay Moscow’s position back to Washington. Witkoff was also expected to meet with the Russian president behind closed doors in the evening, but officials have yet to confirm whether the meeting took place or to provide details of his other interactions during the brief visit.

Earlier in the day, Putin stated that Russian troops were advancing along nearly 2,000 kilometers of the front line and warned that halting military actions would disrupt their momentum and give Ukrainian forces time to regroup. “These 30 days – how will they be used? To continue forced mobilization in Ukraine? To receive more arms supplies? To train newly mobilized units?” Putin asked. Enforcing a ceasefire over such a vast battlefield would be difficult, he added, and violations could easily lead to a blame game between both sides. Putin also mentioned that Ukrainian troops who invaded Russia’s Kursk Region in August 2024 are now cut off. “Are we supposed to let them out after they committed mass war crimes against civilians?” he said. The Russian leader suggested that further direct discussions with his American counterpart would be necessary to find a viable solution, but officials have yet to confirm any specific timeline for such talks.

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Russia delivers main ceasefire demands to US - Reuters

• No NATO membership for Ukraine
• No NATO ”peacekeepers” in Ukraine
• Ukraine is denazified/demilitarised
• The 4 Donbass regions are recognised as Russian territories plus Crimea

In exchange:
• Cease of all hostilities
• Peace and stability for Ukraine

Putin Lists Guarantees Moscow Wants For 30-Day Ceasefire (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed support for a potential 30-day ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict but has raised concerns regarding how such a truce be implemented. Speaking on Thursday, Putin warned of potential loopholes and strategic disadvantages. “We also want guarantees that during the 30-day ceasefire, Ukraine will not conduct mobilization, will not train soldiers, and will not receive weapons,” Putin said during a press briefing with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko in Moscow. The president pointed out that Russian troops are advancing along nearly 2,000 kilometers of frontline, and halting military actions could disrupt ongoing operations. Ukrainian forces could use a ceasefire period to regroup, receive more weapons, and train fresh recruits, he warned.

“These 30 days — how will they be used? To continue forced mobilization in Ukraine? To receive more arms supplies? To train newly mobilized units? Or will none of this happen?” Putin asked. Enforcing a ceasefire over such a vast battlefield would be difficult, he added, violations could be easily disputed, leading to a blame game between both sides. Systems of “control and verification” to monitor a ceasefire are not in place but should be agreed. Putin also mentioned that Ukrainian troops who invaded Russia’s Kursk Region in August 2024 are now cut off. What is to be done with them in the event of a truce is unclear, he noted.

“Are we supposed to let them out, after they committed mass war crimes against civilians? Will the Ukrainian leadership tell them to lay down their arms, and just surrender?” Putin said. As of Wednesday evening, Moscow’s forces have regained control of 86% of the territory that was occupied by Ukrainian forces in August 2024, according to the head of the Russian General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov. Kiev’s remaining units in the area have been largely “encircled” and “isolated,” he claimed. Putin suggested that discussions with his American counterpart Donald Trump will be necessary to find a viable solution. “The idea of ending the conflict through peaceful means is something we support,” he stressed.

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It’s simply not that simple..

“Who will give orders to stop hostilities? And what is the price of these orders? Can you imagine? Almost 2,000 kilometers. Who will determine where and who broke the potential ceasefire? Who will be blamed?”

Putin’s Statement On Trump’s Ukraine Ceasefire Proposal (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed on Thursday that Russia is ready to discuss a ceasefire but that the terms of such an arrangement should be clarified. Putin has said as far back as July 2024 that Moscow is not interested in short-term pauses but is ready to engage on addressing the causes of the conflict. Washington and Kiev both endorsed a 30-day temporary truce following a meeting between their respective delegations in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. Here’s a full transcript of the Russian president’s response:

“Before I assess how I view Ukraine’s readiness for a ceasefire, I would first like to begin by thanking the President of the United States, Mr. Trump, for paying so much attention to resolving the conflict in Ukraine. We all have enough issues to deal with. But many heads of state, the president of the People’s Republic of China, the Prime Minister of India, the presidents of Brazil and South African Republic are spending a lot of time dealing with this issue. We are thankful to all of them, because this is aimed at achieving a noble mission, a mission to stop hostilities and the loss of human lives. Secondly, we agree with the proposals to stop hostilities. But our position is that this ceasefire should lead to a long-term peace and eliminate the initial causes of this crisis. Now, about Ukraine’s readiness to cease hostilities. On the surface it may look like a decision made by Ukraine under US pressure.

In reality, I am absolutely convinced that the Ukrainian side should have insisted on this (ceasefire) from the Americans based on how the situation (on the front line) is unfolding, the realities on the ground. And how is it unfolding? I’m sure many of you know that yesterday I was in Kursk Region and listened to the reports of the head of the General Staff, the commander of the group of forces ‘North’ and his deputy about the situation at the border, specifically in the incursion area of Kursk Region. What is going on there? The situation there is completely under our control, and the group of forces that invaded our territory is completely isolated and under our complete fire control. Command over Ukrainian troops in this zone is lost. And if in the first stages, literally a week or two ago, Ukrainian servicemen tried to get out of there in large groups, now it is impossible.

They are trying to get out of there in very small groups, two or three people, because everything is under our full fire control. The equipment is completely abandoned. It is impossible to evacuate it. It will remain there. This is already guaranteed. And if in the coming days there will be a physical blockade, then no one will be able to leave at all. There will be only two ways. To surrender or die. And in these conditions, I think it would be very good for the Ukrainian side to achieve a truce for at least 30 days. And we are for it. But there are nuances. What are they? First, what are we going to do with this incursion force in Kursk Region? If we stop fighting for 30 days, what does it mean? That everyone who is there will leave without a fight? We should let them go after they committed mass crimes against civilians? Or will the Ukrainian leadership order them to lay down their arms. Simply surrender. How will this work? It is not clear.

How will other issues be resolved on all the lines of contact? This is almost 2,000 kilometers. As you know, Russian troops are advancing almost along the entire front. And there are ongoing military operations to surround rather large groups of enemy forces. These 30 days — how will they be used? To continue forced mobilization in Ukraine? To receive more arms supplies? To train newly mobilized units? Or will none of this happen? How will the issues of control and verification be resolved? How can we be guaranteed that nothing like this will happen? How will the control be organized? I hope that everyone understands this at the level of common sense. These are all serious issues.

Who will give orders to stop hostilities? And what is the price of these orders? Can you imagine? Almost 2,000 kilometers. Who will determine where and who broke the potential ceasefire? Who will be blamed? These are all questions that demand a thorough examination from both sides. Therefore, the idea itself is the right one, and we certainly support it. But there are questions that we have to discuss. I think we need to work with our American partners. Maybe I will speak to President Trump. But we support the idea of ending this conflict with peaceful means.

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Kellogg is an ex-army guy, who comes in with pre-conceived ideas. “Not our kind of person, not of the caliber we are looking for.”

Witkoff is a business man.

Moscow Banned Trump’s Ukraine Envoy From Peace Talks – NBC (RT)

Keith Kellogg, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Russia and Ukraine, has been barred from taking part in peace talks at Moscow’s request, NBC News reported on Thursday, citing sources. According to the report, Russian officials view Kellogg as too hawkish and “too close to Ukraine.” The retired US Army lieutenant general was absent from both last month’s Russia-US talks in Saudi Arabia and this week’s US-Ukraine talks in Jeddah. The White House also confirmed that Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, will attend the next round of negotiations with Russia instead of Kellogg. Witkoff arrived in Moscow late Thursday. “Kellogg is a former American general, too close to Ukraine,” an unnamed Russian official reportedly told NBC. “Not our kind of person, not of the caliber we are looking for.”

An official in the Trump administration reportedly confirmed that Moscow did not want Kellogg involved in the peace process. Another source claimed that Kellogg’s exclusion “stung” him. Neither Kellogg’s office nor Moscow have commented on the report. While Kellogg has supported Trump’s calls to end the Ukraine conflict, his views on achieving peace have not aligned with Moscow’s. He has backed continued US aid to Kiev, which Russia argues only prolongs the conflict, and advocated for freezing the conflict along the current front lines, which Moscow has rejected in favor of a lasting settlement. Kellogg has also pushed for using frozen Russian sovereign assets to rebuild and rearm Ukraine – an idea that Moscow has called theft.

In an interview with RT Russian on Wednesday, political analyst Malek Dudakov suggested that Kellogg could be permanently removed from negotiations following last month’s tense meeting between Trump and Vladimir Zelensky, which devolved into a shouting match after the Ukrainian leader pushed back against Trump’s demand for peace talks with Russia. This prompted Trump to accuse him of “gambling with World War III” before cutting the meeting short. The fallout reportedly delayed a key US-Ukraine rare-earth minerals deal and led to a temporary suspension of US military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kiev. “Basically, Kellogg was responsible for communication with the Ukrainian side, he instructed the Ukrainians, and we see that all this led to a grand failure. And now he will no longer participate in any new negotiations,” Dudakov told RT.

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“The EU establishment has spent years positioning itself as the defender of Kiev, and to be excluded from decisive negotiations would be nothing short of humiliating. However, this is precisely what is happening.”

Zelensky’s Last Stand? Trump’s Push For A Ukraine Settlement (Kortunov)

As high-stakes diplomacy unfolds between the United States and Ukraine, one thing is clear: President Donald Trump has little personal sympathy for his Ukrainian counterpart, Vladimir Zelensky. Their last meeting at the White House in February only reinforced this reality, with Trump once again treating Zelensky with thinly veiled disdain. There are rational reasons for Trump’s attitude. Zelensky bet too heavily on Joe Biden, tying Ukraine’s fate to the Democratic party. When Biden’s second term never materialized, and Kamala Harris crashed and burned, Kiev was left without a reliable sponsor in Washington. Trump’s instincts – both personal and political – place him in direct opposition to figures like Zelensky, who, despite also being an unconventional political outsider, represents a style of governance fundamentally at odds with the US president’s worldview.

What is particularly striking is Trump’s open criticism of Zelensky, a direct violation of established diplomatic norms. The White House has even floated the idea of his resignation – a notion recently reported by the German media outlet Bild. According to these reports, Trump no longer sees Zelensky as a viable ally and is exerting significant political pressure to force him out. The administration has not denied these claims. However, gaining Trump’s approval is no easy feat. Among today’s political heavyweights, very few leaders have managed to earn his genuine respect. The capricious and ego-driven 47th president of the United States has little patience for the leadership class of the European Union, nor for the leaders of America’s immediate neighbors, Mexico and Canada.

Trump appears far more at ease with strong, authoritative figures who project power – leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and, most notably, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yet, in politics – as in business – one does not always get to choose one’s partners. Throughout his career in the highly competitive and often ruthless New York real estate market, Trump had to engage with individuals with questionable reputations. In that sense, his approach to international politics is no different from his business dealings: pragmatism trumps sentimentality. Trump’s interest in Ukraine is not about personal affinity; rather, he views the country as an asset in which the US has made a substantial investment. While he did not personally decide to back Kiev, he now finds himself responsible for managing America’s stake in the conflict, and like any businessman, he wants a return on investment.

This is why Trump’s approach is not one of immediate disengagement. He is looking for ways to extract value – whether through Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, transport and logistics infrastructure, fertile black soil, or other material assets. He does not want to simply write it off as a sunk cost, at least not before attempting to recoup some of America’s losses. Thus, his administration is attempting to force Kiev into a settlement on terms dictated by Washington. This effort culminated in Tuesday’s meeting in Riyadh, where Trump’s negotiators presented Zelensky’s team with a stark choice: accept the US conditions – including a ceasefire or partial cessation of hostilities – or risk complete abandonment.

Before this crucial meeting, Zelensky reportedly sent an apology letter to Trump, attempting to smooth over the tensions which followed their embarrassing White House encounter. According to US special envoy Steve Witkoff, this was an effort to salvage what remains of Ukraine’s negotiating position. Trump remains deeply skeptical of Zelensky’s ability to deliver on any agreement. The Ukrainian president’s credibility has been severely undermined, and his capacity to negotiate on behalf of his country’s political elite is far from certain. After all, Trump has learned from past experience that promises made by Kiev do not always translate into action. Following the Riyadh meeting, Trump’s attention turned to the far more consequential issue: negotiations with Moscow. Unlike Zelensky, Putin is negotiating from a position of strength, which makes any agreement far more complex. The days when the West could dictate terms to Russia are long over, and Trump likely understands that his leverage with Moscow is limited.

If Trump can reach an understanding with Putin, then the next stage of this process will involve forcing Western European nations to accept the new geopolitical reality. For Washington’s European allies, who have invested heavily in Ukraine, this will be a bitter pill to swallow. The EU establishment has spent years positioning itself as the defender of Kiev, and to be excluded from decisive negotiations would be nothing short of humiliating. However, this is precisely what is happening. The bloc’s leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have been reduced to spectators, offering empty declarations of support for Ukraine while having no real influence over the outcome of events. For them, a settlement brokered by Trump without their participation would be the ultimate confirmation of their diminishing role in global affairs. Worse still, much of Western Europe’s investment in Ukraine – both financial and political – will likely be lost. While the Biden administration at least attempted to keep European allies involved in decision-making, Trump has no such inclination.

His goal is to conclude a deal that serves American interests, and he is unlikely to show concern for the reputational damage this will inflict on the EU’s political elite. The situation now presents Trump with one of the biggest diplomatic challenges of his presidency. Unlike in business, where deals can be walked away from, geopolitical agreements have long-lasting consequences. His ability to navigate this complex landscape – balancing pressure on Kiev, negotiating with Moscow, and sidelining Western Europe – will determine whether he can claim victory as a peacemaker. Ultimately, Ukraine’s fate is no longer in its own hands. The decisions made in Washington, Moscow, and – ironically – Riyadh will shape the country’s future. Whether Trump can strike a deal that satisfies all parties remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: Ukraine’s days as the central pillar of the West’s confrontation with Russia are coming to an end.

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Any paper he signs comes (pre-)loaded with legality questions.

Zelensky In Political ‘Final Act’ — FT (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky’s leadership is coming to an end, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing a senior Kiev’s official. The article comes amid growing concern in Washington over Zelensky’s legitimacy. Zelensky’s presidential term expired in May 2024. However, he has refused to hold a new election, referring to martial law imposed during the conflict with Russia. The current US administration has recently been trying to negotiate a path toward ending hostilities. US President Donald Trump briefly halted military assistance and intelligence sharing with Kiev, but resumed it following a bilateral meeting in Saudi Arabia earlier this week.

“We are in the final act [of Zelensky’s presidency],” a senior Ukrainian official told FT, confirming growing speculation in the country’s political circles over how long he will stay in office. The official also described the conflict with Russia as currently in a “hot phase.” According to Ukrainian soldiers, analysts, and officials cited by the newspaper, Kiev would be able to keep fighting for “at least six months” in case of a complete halt of military assistance from the US. They said, however, that it could be longer if the EU fills the gap and domestic arms production intensifies. Unnamed Western officials told FT that apart from a lack of weapons and ammunition, Zelensky’s leadership could be challenged by a shortage of men in the ranks, which remains Ukraine’s most pressing problem.

In November 2024, the administration of then US President Joe Biden urged Kiev to draft more troops and reduce the minimum conscription age from 25 to 18 to tackle a manpower shortage. The Ukrainian authorities rejected the proposal at the time, claiming that the main problem for the country’s forces was a lack of weapons. FT noted that Zelensky’s political opponents are currently “preparing for elections, forming alliances, and testing public messaging.” Several politicians have reportedly begun outreach to officials in the Trump administration.

Zelensky, whose presidential term expired in May 2024, has refused to hold new presidential and parliamentary elections, citing martial law due to the conflict with Moscow. Last month, US President Donald Trump questioned Zelensky’s legitimacy, branding him a “dictator without elections.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has cast doubt on Zelensky’s position as well. Shortly after his official term as the country’s head of state expired nearly a year ago, the Russian president called the Ukrainian parliament the only legitimate authority. Putin recently reiterated that the Ukrainian leader no longer has the right to sign official agreements.

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“5 of Russia’s top foreign relations experts and actors react to US-Ukraine talks.”

‘A Ceasefire Only Benefits Those Who Are Retreating’ (RT)

Political analyst Sergey Markov: Reasons why Russia might refuse a ceasefire:

1. A ceasefire would be exploited by the West and Ukraine to halt the advance of the Russian army, strip it of its initiative, supply the Ukrainian army with more weapons, continue extensive mobilization in Ukraine, and strengthen the repressive and anti-Russian nature of the Ukrainian political regime

2. The experience of the Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 agreements clearly demonstrates this pattern

3. The consistent dishonesty of Western politicians and media regarding the conflict, as well as their refusal to acknowledge their own and Ukraine’s culpability, strongly suggests that history will repeat itself

4. Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have repeatedly stated that what Russia needs is lasting peace, not just a temporary ceasefire

5. The West cannot really be trusted

6. Russia is advancing. A ceasefire always benefits those who are retreating.

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“If Putin doesn’t agree to a cease fire, he risks offending Trump’s ego. Does Trump then become coercive because he is on the line with his promise to end the conflict?”

Is Putin Being Boxed In by Trump and Zelensky? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Trump and Zelensky have agreed on a cease fire, a pause in the conflict. How does this benefit Russia? It doesn’t. The Ukrainian military is collapsing on all fronts. 86% of the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk has been retaken, and the remaining Ukrainian forces are surrounded. What remains of the Ukrainian military is retreating from the few kilometers of Russian territory still occupied in the Donetsk and Zaporozhye regions that have been reincorporated into Russia. A cease fire is the last thing Russia needs when Russia is on the verge of total victory. Russia should be imposing surrender terms on Zelensky, Trump, and Europe. Russia has won the conflict. Why agree to a negotiation? The victor dictates the surrender terms. If Russia’s surrender terms are not accepted, Russia should proceed with the conquest of the entirety of Ukraine and reincorporate Ukraine into Russia where it historically belongs.

It was Washington taking advantage of the Soviet collapse that cut out Ukraine from its historic multi-century home as part of Russia. Are Putin and Lavrov too besotted with good will toward the West, which has been trying to destroy Russia, to understand the basics? Does Putin understand that Trump should first have come to him, worked out the terms of surrender between them, and imposed them on Zelensky, who in fact is not a legitimate head of government as his term in office has expired? Putin is correct. There needs to be a Ukrainian election that installs a legal government to whom to dictate the terms of surrender. What is the worth of a document signed by an illegal occupant of office? If Putin agrees with the Trump-Zelenzky cease fire, will it obligate Putin to agree to a settlement that is less than victory?

A cease fire would halt the Russian advance, provide Ukraine with time to rebuild with the weapons now again supplied by Trump. Will negotiations be a repeat of Putin’s Minsk mistake which cost Russia so dearly? If Putin denies Russia a victory, could he be removed from office? Peace must be conclusive. Cease fires never are. If memory serves, the Korean War in the 1950s is still governed by a cease fire, and antagonisms still exist between North and South Korea with Washington still adding to the confrontation. From what I know of Russia’s Westernized intellectual class that influences Putin and Lavrov, they are Westernized to the point of treason. Putin needs a Russian government occupied and advised by Russian nationalists. Otherwise Russia will remain a target despite its unrivaled weapons systems. In my column on March 11, I asked, “What should Trump do about Ukraine?” I answered:

“To end the conflict Trump doesn’t need to be holding meetings and talking about meetings with Putin, Zelensky, EU or anyone. It is extremely simple for Trump to end the conflict as far as the US is concerned. All he has to do is to make the hold he has put on delivery of weapons permanent and withdraw all US operatives in the proxy conflict with Russia. Without the US supplying weapons, intelligence, targeting information and money to keep the conflict alive, the conflict will quickly end. This is what Trump needs to tell Putin: “I know Washington is responsible for this conflict. I am withdrawing Washington’s participation. The conflict would not have happened if the Democrats had not stolen the 2020 election. I am cancelling the sanctions. I will be accused by the Democrats and the presstitutes of selling out Ukraine to you. Your job is to be merciful to Ukraine. As the US is responsible for the conflict, the US will help you to rebuild a demilitarized Ukraine in which economic advancement takes precedent over war. You must not fail my good intentions, or the Cold War will resume.”

As I asked later in my column, can Trump’s ego permit him to allow the settlement on Putin’s terms? For three years Putin has been slowly fighting a conflict that a capable war leader would have ended in three weeks. Putin’s failure as a war leader is clear. Putin, being sufficiently Westernized, never realized that his never-ending war would result in negotiations in which he was the last participant included. As Trump and the illegitimate Zelensky have arrived at a cease fire, the pressure is on Putin to join in, or Russia will be reviled for blocking a settlement with intentions of proceeding from the conquest of Ukraine to the conquest of Europe. If Putin joins in the cease fire, he risks Russia’s victory being watered down by the terms of a negotiated settlement.

Russia has been in many ways an easy target for the West. Soviet Communism having bred distrust of Russian government, has left Russian intellectuals easy pickings for Western propaganda. Many Russian intellectuals represent the West, not Russia. This Russian vulnerability has been skillfully exploited by the West. The question remains: How serious are Putin’s mistakes in his dealings with Washington? By permitting a conflict to continue until the initiative for its end passed into Washington’s hands, Putin has lost the initiative. If Putin doesn’t agree to a cease fire, he risks offending Trump’s ego. Does Trump than become coercive because he is on the line with his promise to end the conflict? Does Putin submit to Trump’s coercion? The outlook for this conflict being resolved is not as good as it seemed.

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Better call Elon.

US Deficit Sets Record With $1.1 Trillion In First 5 Months Of FY 2025 (jTN)

The United States’ deficit increased by a record-breaking $1.1 trillion during the first five months of the current fiscal year, new data from the Treasury Department showed. The new numbers, released Wednesday, showed the deficit between October 2024 and February 2025. The unadjusted increase saw a surge of $1.147 trillion, while the deficit for the same period in fiscal year 2024 was $828 billion. The deficit for February alone was $307 billion. The deficit is largely driven by spending on interest, military programs, public benefits and security, according to the financial news outlet Barron’s. The largest spending costs came from interest paid on the public debt and higher tax credits.

A Treasury department spokesperson told CNBC that there has been limited impact from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is attempting to reduce wasteful government spending. But the department’s operations have only been active for one month. One exception has been the Education Department, per Barron’s, where expenditures were lower by $5.6 billion in February compared to the year before. President Donald Trump’s tariffs also did not appear to impact February’s deficit, but could impact March’s. The current fiscal year runs from October 2024 through September 2025.

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“President Jose Raul Mulino stated that the canal is part of Panama’s “inalienable patrimony”..

But Americans built it..

Trump Demands ‘Military Options’ To Control Panama Canal (RT)

The Panama Canal, a vital maritime route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, has been under Panamanian control since 1999 following the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, which stipulated that it would remain neutral and open to all nations. Trump has repeatedly threatened to take back control of the waterway, citing the “ridiculous fees” and concerns over China’s increasing presence in the region. Earlier this year, Trump refused to rule out the use of military force to take control of the canal, stating that all options are on the table to protect US economic and national security interests. In an Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance memo obtained by CNN on Thursday, the White House formally asked the Pentagon to “immediately” provide options to ensure unlimited US access to the canal.

“Provide credible military options to ensure fair and unfettered US military and commercial access to the Panama Canal,” one of the directives in the memo reportedly stated. US Southern Command is already developing potential plans, ranging from “partnering” closely with Panamanian security forces to a scenario in which US troops seize the canal by force, unnamed officials told NBC. Sources cited by Reuters also said the Pentagon had been ordered to explore military options to secure US access to the waterway.

Panamanian officials previously rejected Trump’s assertions and threats, while the Panama Canal Authority maintains that the canal is operated solely by Panamanians, with no evidence supporting claims of Chinese control. President Jose Raul Mulino stated that the canal is part of Panama’s “inalienable patrimony” and stressed that Panama maintains full control of its operations. However, after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally delivered Trump’s ultimatum to Panama in February, Mulino made a concession to Washington by refusing to renew the country’s 2017 agreements with China under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

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Chuck is shrinking before our eyes….

Schumer Throws Contrived Tantrum After Caving To GOP (ZH)

Update (2145ET): After bending the knee to the GOP and agreeing to vote ‘yes’ on the House-passed continuing resolution to fund the government through September, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) offered a contrived outburst on MSNBC, calling Republicans ‘bastards’ before quickly correcting himself. “To have the conflict on the best ground we have, summed up in a sentence, that they’re making the middle class pay for tax cuts for billionaires?” said Schumer. “It’s much, much better not to be in the middle of a shutdown, which should divert people from the number one issue we have against these bastards, sorry, these people, which is not only all these cuts, but they’re ruining democracy.” How many times did he practice that in the mirror? Schumer also raged on X after bending the knee, writing that “a shutdown would be a gift,” and “the best distraction he could ask for from his awful agenda.”

Whatever you say Chuck…

* * *
Update (1800ET): And there it is… in a complete reversal following a closed-door lunch, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told fellow Democrats that he would vote for cloture tomorrow morning on the GOP stopgap, according to Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman – who notes that 6 more Democrats will need to follow their leader after Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) already said he would (see below). “I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down,” Schumer announced on the Senate floor Thursday, adding that a shutdown “would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk carte blanche.” As we noted below, the most likely scenario looks to be the case; Dems will provide the necessary votes to pass the GOP bill, in exchange for Senate Republican leaders granting them a performative amendment vote on the Democrats’ separate CR proposal (which means absolutely nothing aside from putting their dissent on record).

* * *
With tomorrow’s shutdown deadline looming (and the House gone on recess until March 24), Senate Democrats are scrambling to both kill the GOP bill that passed the house, and avoid the optics of a shutdown falling squarely on their shoulders after minority leader Chuck Schumer categorically rejected the bill on Wednesday, and instead floated a 30-day continuing resolution which would allow Democrats to stuff it full of their own pork to include in a revised package (that he doesn’t have the votes for)… As the Senate opened Thursday, Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) – who filed cloture on the House-passed CR on Wednesday – said, “It’s time to fish or cut bait.”

And as the Associated Press notes, debates over funding the federal government routinely erupt in deadline moments but this year it’s showing the political leverage of Republicans, newly in majority control of the White House and Congress, and the shortcomings of Democrats who are finding themselves unable to stop the Trump administration’s march across federal operations. Given that the Senate has 53 Republicans, one of whom is a definite ‘no’ (Rand Paul of Kentucky), at least eight Democrats need to cross party lines to avert a shutdown at midnight on Friday. According to the chaps at Punchbowl News, there’s really two ways this can play out at this point:

Option one: Democrats can fold and take the deal on the table – providing the votes needed to advance the House GOP’s stopgap spending bill in exchange for a symbolic amendment vote on their own 28-day funding extension. This would be pure theater, giving Democrats the chance to go on record opposing a shutdown while letting Republicans push through their own bill anyway. The government stays open, Schumer saves face with progressives, and Republicans get what they wanted all along. But make no mistake – this wouldn’t be a win for Schumer (a “fake BBQ’ing Palestinian”), who floated a 28-day CR that doesn’t have the votes to pass, even with a simple majority. Meanwhile, Republicans can sit back and let the clock force the issue. Time isn’t on the Democrats’ side, and at some point, they’ll have to face reality.

Option two: Schumer and Senate Democrats hold the line, block the House CR, and force a government shutdown. That means federal workers furloughed, services delayed, and chaos come Monday morning when the full effects hit. And here’s the kicker – Trump’s people at the Office of Management and Budget get to decide exactly how painful this shutdown will be. White House sources are already warning that the former president will make sure Democrats feel every bit of the pressure. But here’s where it gets ugly for Schumer: what’s the exit strategy? There isn’t one. The House is gone, meaning there’s no magic fix coming. And at some point, Democrats will have to explain why shutting down the government over a short-term CR that never had a shot at passing was somehow worth it.

So those are the choices: take the loss now and move on, or hold out, take the blame for the shutdown, and likely still take the loss later. Either way, Trump and Musk are watching from the sidelines, ready to make their next move while Washington does what it does best—trip over itself in broad daylight. According to the White House, “They’re totally screwed.”

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You would hope the FBI is on it.

MTG-Led DOGE House Panel Urges DOJ To Investigate Recent Attacks On Tesla (JTN)

The House’s Department of Government Efficiency panel, led by GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, is asking the Justice Department to investigate Tesla vehicles being vandalized and destroyed since EV car company’s owner, Elon Musk, became a White House appointee. “These attacks, which seem to involve coordinated acts of vandalism, arson, and other acts of violence, seriously threaten public safety,” the DOGE subcommittee wrote in a letter Wednesday to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Multiple Tesla cars, charging stations and dealerships have been vandalized since Musk began leading the Trump administration DOGE, according to ABC News. The letter listed examples such as Tesla charging stations being set on fire in Boston and Tesla cyber-trucks being set on fire in Seattle. Greene asked whether non-governmental organizations were involved in the attack. “If NGOs are linked to these attacks, has federal funding been provided to any of them?” the letter reads. “The American public deserves transparency and assurance that their tax dollars are not being used to fund domestic political terrorism.”

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“The EPA will “reconsider” 31 major environmental actions ranging from emissions standards for automobiles to the legal theory underpinning climate change..”

EPA to Begin the ‘Biggest Deregulatory Action in US History’ (Moran)

On Wednesday, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin outlined the most ambitious deregulation scheme in the history of the U.S. government. The EPA will “reconsider” 31 major environmental actions ranging from emissions standards for automobiles to the legal theory underpinning climate change. It’s truly breathtaking. However, announcing the reconsideration is only the first step. Now must come the long, drawn-out rulemaking process that will set guidelines on how the agency can proceed to repeal the regulations. That process alone will take many months, if not years, and green groups will challenge it every step of the way.

“These are all rules and regulations. They can’t just wish them away with a press release. You have to tear a regulation down the same way it was built up. They have to make a proposal for each one of these things and explain the reasoning and show evidence, and they have to have public comment and respond to public comment and then reach a final decision and defend it in court,” said David Doniger, the senior strategist and attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and energy department. “We’re going to fight them every step of the way.” Indeed, the work it will take to “reconsider” these regulations and repeal them makes me think this move by Zeldin has more to do with politics than government. Some of these rules have been upheld by the Supreme Court, including the climate change “endangerment finding” that undergirds the bulk of climate law.

Zeldin can’t just wave a magic wand and get rid of it. “This is crazy. This is insane,” said Jason Rylander, the legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “There have been attempts to limit the authority of EPA, but the scale and scope and speed with which this administration is attacking environmental safeguards is unprecedented.” It’s not “crazy” by any means. Remember that these environmental advocates think any word ever turned into regulation is holy writ and can’t be changed, or Gaia will strike us down. “Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S., and more,” said EPA Administrator Zeldin.

“Alongside President Trump, we are living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, and work hand-in-hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission,” he added. As you might expect, some EPA staffers are approaching vapor lock. “Simply put, this is embarrassing,” one EPA worker said. “This is not the EPA we have dedicated our careers to. Instead of highlighting the importance of protecting human health and the environment, this administration is highlighting cutting cost in dollar figures while ignoring the human cost. The air we breathe and water we drink is a collective human right and more valuable than any dollar figure.”

No one is saying that air and water are not more valuable than dollars and cents. But neither are EPA regulations the word of god and can’t be changed. This particular employee actually believes that there’s no agenda attached to any of these regulations, an agenda that has little to do with protecting the environment. Even conservative judges are going to have a hard time with Trump’s EPA getting rid of most of these regulations. That’s why I suspect politics is the driving force in these actions by Zeldin and Trump, giving heart to the faithful and confusion to the enemy.

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“..(NDFs), a financial derivative that allows investors to bet on a currency’s future value without actual exchange. By not involving physical Russian assets or individuals, they remain outside the scope of current sanctions.”

Investors Betting On Russian Return To Western Markets – Bloomberg (RT)

Investors are quietly betting that US President Donald Trump’s recent initiatives to negotiate a peace deal in the Ukraine conflict could lead to Russia’s return to Western financial markets, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The US and its allies have slapped numerous rounds of sanctions on Moscow since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Russia has been cut off from Western investments and its largest stock exchange has been sanctioned. In recent weeks, traders at a London brokerage have been seeking to buy Russian securities, an asset largely avoided over the past three years, Bloomberg reported. Their focus has been on buying dollar-denominated bonds issued by Russian energy giant Gazprom.

Investors are speculating that heavily discounted Russian securities could surge in value if Ukraine-related sanctions imposed on Moscow are lifted, the outlet stated. Investors “understand that as soon as there’s a thaw, these discounts will collapse,” Iskander Lutsko, Dubai-based head of research and portfolio management at Istar Capital, told Bloomberg. Money managers report that sales teams are assessing interest in staking on the ruble through non-deliverable forwards (NDFs), a financial derivative that allows investors to bet on a currency’s future value without actual exchange. By not involving physical Russian assets or individuals, they remain outside the scope of current sanctions.

Major US investment banks Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase have reportedly been brokering ruble-linked derivative contracts to meet growing investor interest in Russian-related assets. “There’s an aggressive search for securities of Russian issuers around the world,” Evgeny Kogan, a Moscow-based investment banker, told Bloomberg. “Investors in general are asking how quickly they can enter the Russian market.” According to the report, Russia’s potential reintegration into the Western financial system could unlock hundreds of billions of dollars.

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Uh-oh, there goes Mutti’s promised land..

EU Seeks To Intensify Immigrant Deportations (RT)

The European Commission has formally proposed to harmonize deportation rules across the EU. The current regulations, which vary by state, allow those who have been denied the right to remain in the bloc lawfully to exploit the system, resulting in a 20% deportation rate. President Ursula von der Leyen has labeled the figure “by far, too low.” The proposed rules “will ensure that those who have no right to stay in the EU are actually returned” to their countries of origin, EU Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration, Magnus Brunner, has claimed.

The 87-page document unveiled on Tuesday will require immigrants to cooperate with authorities, permit the extended detention of asylum seekers, and introduce the mutual recognition of deportation orders among member states. The reforms aim to encourage voluntary returns and close loopholes currently exploited by illegal immigrants who evade forced repatriation by moving between EU countries.The plan will establish “return hubs” – deportation centers in third countries willing to accept expelled individuals from the EU. If approved by the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, the new system is set to take effect in mid-2027.

Illegal immigration has remained a hot-button issue in the EU since the 2015 crisis, which saw over a million people arrive in member states. The authorities’ decision to welcome this influx sparked a backlash from several Eastern European nations, citing threats to security and culture. Political guidelines issued by von der Leyen last July pledged to strengthen the EU’s borders and crack down on human trafficking, a significant driver of illegal immigration.

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Interesting when compared to Paul Craig Roberts yesterday, who said:

“Trump has spoken of substituting tariffs for the income tax. This is a brilliant thought.
The income tax taxes labor and capital, factors of production. Thus income tax reduces GDP and living standards.”

Tariffs are Theft (Ron Paul)

The US and China came closer to a full-fledged trade war last week when China imposed tariffs of up to 15 percent on key US agricultural exports. This was retaliation for President Trump’s increasing of tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States from 10 percent to 20 percent. China’s retaliatory tariffs show how export-dependent industries are harmed by protectionist policies. Even if other countries refrain from imposing retaliatory tariffs, exporters can still suffer from reduced demand for their products in countries targeted by US tariffs. Businesses that rely on imported materials to manufacture their products also suffer from increased production costs thanks to tariffs. President Trump acknowledged how tariffs harm US manufacturers when he granted US automakers’ request for a one-month delay in new tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada.

Many American consumers who are struggling with high prices are concerned that President Trump’s tariff policy will further increase prices. They are right to be concerned. Contrary to popular belief, foreign businesses do not pay tariffs. Tariffs are paid by US businesses that wish to sell the imported goods. When tariffs are increased, the importing businesses try to recoup their increased costs by increasing their prices. Consumers then must choose whether to pay the higher price, find a cheaper alternative, or do without the product. Whatever they choose, consumers will be worse off because they cannot spend their money the way they prefer.Tariffs may provide a short-term benefit to the protected businesses. However, tariffs could keep businesses alive that should be allowed to fail so the business owners and workers can put their talents to use in other endeavors that would more greatly benefit and the whole economy.

Defenders of tariffs, including President Trump, claim the revenue from tariffs can be used to “offset” the revenue government loses from tax cuts. Some even claim that tariffs can generate enough revenue to allow the government to repeal the income tax. The problem with this is that a tariff brings in more revenue to “pay for” tax cuts only to the extent the tariff does not cause consumers to cease buying imported goods. Thus, the tariffs, to bring revenue to the government, must not be large enough to discourage Americans from buying foreign products. The more tariffs increase government revenue, the more they will tend to fail in bringing about another often promoted tariff goal — an increase in the purchase of domestic goods.

According to the Tax Foundation, if President Trump’s tariff plan for China, Mexico, and Canada were fully implemented, it would increase federal tax revenue by 142 billion dollars this year — an average tax increase of over one thousand dollars per household. The tariffs would also decrease economic output. This does not account for the decline in consumer satisfaction caused by consumers being forced to alter their consumption choices because of government-caused price increases. It also does not account for the new businesses, products, and jobs that could have been created had government not drained resources from the productive economy via tariffs. The economic effects are a good enough reason to oppose raising tariffs. However, the main reason to oppose tariffs is that tariffs, like all taxes (including the inflation tax), are theft.

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Mr. policy-maker. He should move into the White House. ‘You can only fire people if i say so’..

Clinton-Appointed Judge Slams Trump “Sham” (ZH)

San Francisco based… check. Clinton appointed… check. So how do you think the case against President Trump firing federal probationary staff went? Bingo… U.S. District Judge William Alsup described the mass firings as a “sham” strategy by the government’s central human resources office to sidestep legal requirements for reducing the federal workforce. Politico reports that Alsup, a San Francisco-based appointee of President Bill Clinton, ordered the Defense, Treasury, Energy, Interior, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs departments to “immediately” offer all fired probationary employees their jobs back. The Office of Personnel Management, the judge said, had made an “unlawful” decision to terminate them. The order is one of the most far-reaching rejections of the Trump administration’s effort to slash the bureaucracy and is almost certain to be appealed.

“You will not bring the people in here to be cross-examined. You’re afraid to do so because you know cross examination would reveal the truth,” the judge said to a DOJ attorney during a hearing Thursday. “I tend to doubt that you’re telling me the truth. … I’m tired of seeing you stonewall on trying to get at the truth.” The judge called the move “a gimmick.” Alsup also said the Office of Personnel Management couldn’t give guidance on who to terminate, according to ABC News. “It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” Alsup said. Do those sound like the findings of a non-partisan, legally-trained, judicially-independent member of the bench? And on it goes…

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“Washington is increasingly making it clear that Western Europe must contribute more while receiving less in return.”

America and the EU Are Drifting Apart – Moscow Is Watching (Bordachev)

The geopolitical unity of the West, often perceived as a monolithic front against Russia, is showing visible fractures. The question now is whether Moscow should actively encourage the widening rift between the United States and Western Europe – or simply sit back and let history take its course. For now, the EU states are desperate to avoid responsibility for the crisis in Ukraine. This was evident in Brussels’ immediate endorsement of the latest US-Ukraine talks, signaling relief that Washington is still managing the situation. European leaders had feared that the new American administration under Donald Trump might offload the burden onto them, forcing them to take direct responsibility for confronting Russia. That nightmare, at least for now, has been postponed. But the larger strategic question remains: How long can this uneasy balance last?

Is the US-Europe rift temporary or permanent? The unity of the collective West – a term used to describe the US and its European allies acting as a single political and military bloc – was never an absolute certainty. It was always dependent on American leadership, which is now undergoing major internal shifts. Trump’s return has signaled a profound shift in Washington’s strategic thinking. While the US remains the most militarized and economically powerful country in the Western alliance, it is now experiencing an identity crisis. The ruling elite in Washington knows it must redefine its role in a world where its global dominance is being challenged. This raises a critical question: Can the US and Western Europe continue as a united front, or is their strategic divergence inevitable? For Moscow, this is more than just a theoretical debate. If the West’s unity was merely a temporary phenomenon – a product of post-World War II security arrangements and Cold War politics – then it follows that Russia must consider whether and how to encourage this fragmentation.

The US political crisis and its impact on Europe The deepening internal crisis in the US is one of the main reasons the EU is being forced into an uncomfortable position. First, America’s economic model is under strain. For decades, Washington sustained its dominance by attracting cheap labor from Latin America while maintaining global economic hegemony. But the mass migration crisis has turned into a politically explosive issue, with growing resistance to uncontrolled immigration. Second, the old neoliberal model of globalization is breaking down. Many nations no longer accept a US-led order that imposes unequal economic relationships. This has led to an emergence of independent power centers – from China and India to Middle Eastern states – that refuse to play by Washington’s rules. Finally, the conflict in Ukraine has exposed the limits of American power. Russia’s ability to withstand three years of Western pressure – economically, militarily, and diplomatically – has forced Washington to reconsider its strategy. The US has never faced a direct geopolitical confrontation with China, and its approach toward Beijing remains one of cautious engagement. But with Russia, it has now met a determined adversary that refuses to bend.

Western Europe’s dilemma: dependence or independence? For the EU, any major shift in US policy is a cause for alarm. Since World War II, Western European elites have relied on American military protection while enjoying economic prosperity under the US-led global order. In exchange for this security umbrella, these states surrendered much of their foreign policy independence. Despite its economic weight, the EU has largely functioned as a political appendage of Washington. This has come at a cost: Western European leaders have little say in critical global decisions, and their fate remains tied to decisions made in the US. Now, with Washington signaling it wants to shift its focus – both in military and economic terms – the bloc finds itself in a precarious situation.

Western Europe lacks the demographic and financial resources to turn itself into a military superpower. The idea of building an independent EU defense structure is often discussed but remains unrealistic. Without U.S. support, these states cannot sustain a large-scale conflict with Russia. Also, Washington is increasingly making it clear that Western Europe must contribute more while receiving less in return. The US political class knows that economic resources are finite, and American taxpayers are questioning why they should continue subsidizing European security. The rise of populist and nationalist movements across Europe – many of which favor detente with Moscow – adds another layer of complexity. Washington’s support for non-mainstream European politicians, such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) or Romania’s banned presidential candidate Calin Georgescu, signals an emerging divide.

How should Russia respond? Moscow must recognize that any long-term fracturing of the West works to its strategic advantage. History shows that Russia has been most successful in its geopolitical struggles when the West was divided. During the Northern War, Peter the Great’s Russia exploited divisions within Europe’s anti-Swedish coalition; in the Napoleonic Wars, Russia aligned with Britain – normally a rival – to defeat France. During World War II, the Soviet Union benefited from the split between the US and Nazi Germany’s former allies. Conversely, when the West has acted as a single entity, Russia has faced its most significant challenges – such as during the Cold War, which led to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. Given these historical lessons, it would be unwise for Moscow to ignore opportunities to accelerate the split between Washington and its European allies. Russia must continue engaging with Trump’s team while indirectly supporting voices in Europe who favor a more balanced approach to Russia. Moscow should deepen its bilateral economic ties with individual European countries, bypassing Brussels’ restrictive policies wherever possible. Any serious attempt by Western Europe to build an independent military bloc should be closely monitored – though in reality, such plans remain far-fetched.

The future of the West is uncertain While Trump’s arrival has disrupted the status quo, it remains unclear whether this is just a temporary setback for transatlantic unity or the beginning of a permanent shift. If Washington continues down the path of reducing its commitments to Europe, the EU will face an identity crisis – one that may ultimately lead to a loss of American influence over EU politics. For Russia, this presents an opportunity. By carefully navigating these developments, Moscow can ensure that any cracks in the Western alliance become permanent fractures – shaping a world where American and Western European interests no longer align as they once did. Russia does not need to rush or force the split – the US is doing that on its own. But Moscow can and should help accelerate the process where possible. After all, a divided West is a weaker West – and that is something Russia has always understood.

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What an invitation! Now imagine Marco Rubio, or Macron, von der Leyen, reaching out to new media this way. Trump might…

A Conversation with Foreign Minister Lavrov (Larry Johnson)

What an honor. I was invited, along with Judge Napolitano and Mario Nawfal, to interview Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on Monday. Mr. Lavrov is smart, charming, funny and quite approachable. He ain’t a bullshitter. There was no pretense about him. After spending more than 90 minutes conversing with him, I came away with a new appreciation of his skill as the consummate diplomat. Although we each had prepared a couple of questions in advance, those went out the window once the conversation started. There were no constraints on what we could ask. There was an added treat before Mr. Lavrov arrived… we spent thirty minutes chatting with Maria Zakharova in a casual environment. She is equally charming and tough as a rhinoceros hide. I think of her as an iron fist wrapped in a luxurious velvet glove. A formidable diplomat in her own right.

Here is a summary of the key points Mr. Lavrov made during our discussion:
• I think what is going on in the United States is a return to normalcy. <…> The fact is that a normal administration without any, you know, unChristian ideas came to power and the reaction was such an explosion in the media, in the politics all over the world is very interesting and very telling.
• When we met in Riyadh with Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz and Steve Witkoff they suggested the meeting and they said, look, we want normal relations in the sense that the foundation of the American foreign policy under the Donald Trump administration is the national interest of the United States. But at the same time, we understand that other countries also have their national interest.
• It is very well understood that countries like the United States and Russia would never have their national interest the same. They would not coincide maybe even 50 or less percent. But when they do coincide this situation must be used to develop this simultaneous and similar interest. But when the interests do not coincide and contradict each other then the responsible countries must do everything not to allow this contradiction to degenerate into confrontation, especially military confrontation which would be disastrous for many other countries.
• The beginning of the special military operation was a decision because all other attempts, all other alternatives to bring things into some positive dimension failed for ten years after the illegal coup in Kiev, in violation of the deal signed the night before and guaranteed by the Germans, French and Poles.
• I don’t think the Americans would drop from NATO. At least President Trump never hinted that this might be the case. But what he did bluntly say was that if you want us to protect you, to give you security guarantees, you pay what is necessary.
• But President Trump doesn’t want to provide these security guarantees to Ukraine under Zelensky. He has his own view of the situation which he bluntly presents every now and then, that this war should never have started – that pulling Ukraine into NATO in violation of its constitution, in violation of the Declaration of Independence of 1991, on the basis of which we recognized Ukraine as a sovereign state. For several reasons including that this Declaration was saying no NATO, no blocs, neutral status. Another thing which this Declaration also confirmed and solidified – all rights of Russian and all other national minorities are to be respected.
• Europe and the UK, they certainly want this to continue. The way they received Zelensky in London after the scandal in Washington, it’s an indication that they want to raise the stakes and they are preparing something to pressure the Donald Trump administration back into some aggressive action against Russia.
• It’s not about the territories, it’s about the people who were deprived of their history by law. Territories are important only because people live on these territories. The people who live on the territories are descendants of those who for hundreds of years were building Odessa & other cities on those very lands who were building ports, roads, who were founding those lands and who associated with the history of this land.

! The Americans know that we would not betray our commitments, legal commitments, the political commitments which we develop with China.

Mario Nawfal, the young man seated between the Judge and me, was a delight to be with. At the ripe old age of 30, he treated Judge Nap and me like two respected grandfathers. Being able to spend five days with Judge Napolitano — it was the first time we have been together physically in the entire time that I have known him — was a special treat. The Judge and I met for breakfast every morning in the room pictured above during our time in Moscow. While eating, we were serenaded by a talented harpist, which added a surreal quality to the experience. The staff at the Metropol are superb as well. I will provide a more detailed account of our time in Moscow in a forthcoming post.

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Flu shot
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1899889092911129014

 

 

 

 

Happybird
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1900074009003188539

 

 

Table

 

 

Origami
https://twitter.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1900239757554442694

 

 

AI Hepburn
https://twitter.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1900059437622063208

 

 

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Dec 272024
 
 December 27, 2024  Posted by at 11:02 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Giuseppe Arcimboldo Four elements – Water 1566

 

Musk Backs Idea That Trump ‘Should Be Able To Fire’ Any Official (RT)
The Musk-Led Manufacturing Revolution Nobody Is Talking About (ZH)
Trump Defines A ‘New Geography’ For American Security (JTN)
‘Stop Donating To Wokepedia’ – Musk (RT)
Musk Issues Bankruptcy Warning (RT)
Putin Reveals Biden Offered To Postpone Ukraine’s NATO Entry (ZH)
Western Europeans Losing Faith In Ukraine (RT)
Germany Is Doomed Because Of This Grave Mistake (Romanenko)
Milei Unveils Ambitious Plan To Make Argentina Global Nuclear Energy Player (ZH)
A Christmas Prayer (James Howard Kunstler)
Preservationists Say Wind Energy Is Harming America’s Historic Sites (JTN)
What Was So Different This Time About Trump’s Election? (VDH)
Mollie Hemingway Takes House Ethics Report on Matt Gaetz APART (Twitchy)
CNN Loses Chunks of Viewership as Ratings Dive Into Death Spiral (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

Rogan Vance

Dems

Nvidia

O’Leary

 

 

 

 

It’s Chris Wray who broke neutrality and politicized the FBI director role by turning against Trump. It would be crazy if he stayed on.

Musk Backs Idea That Trump ‘Should Be Able To Fire’ Any Official (RT)

Elon Musk believes US President-elect Donald Trump should be able to make any personnel changes in the executive branch of the government that he deems necessary, according to a post he made on X on Thursday. Musk’s statement came in response to an idea voiced by Utah Senator Mike Lee, who wrote in an earlier post that “the president of the United States should be able to fire any person employed in the Executive Branch… at any time for any reason,” with the exception of the vice president. Musk seconded the notion, responding “Absolutely.” The executive branch consists of the president, his or her cabinet, as well as various executive departments, independent agencies, and other boards. Lee was commenting on Trump’s plans to make several personnel changes in the government upon returning to the White House that some view as unconventional.

Following his victory in the November election, Trump started naming nominees for senior positions within his administration. However, according to the Washington Times, at least two of the positions are not scheduled to be vacated for several years, including the position of FBI director, currently occupied by Christopher Wray, and IRS commissioner, held by Danny Werfel. According to the New York Times, under Congress rules officials in these and several other posts have fixed terms and do not traditionally change as part of a transition when a new president comes in. Ousting and replacing the heads of these agencies is considered a breach of tradition. However, experts note that the president has the legal power to so. “Historically, there was more of a political constraint on removing someone before their term was over unless there was some bad behavior. The political handbrake is eroding, and it may be no longer functioning,” David Lewis, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University who studies presidential nominations, told the Washington Times.

Trump repeatedly vowed throughout his presidential campaign to completely remake the US government. He pitched Musk and fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy to co-head the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a body that will be tasked with reducing government waste and streamlining the federal bureaucracy. Ramaswamy recently unveiled a plan to slash the federal workforce by 75%. Trump’s pick for the next FBI director is his former adviser Kash Patel, an ultra-loyalist who slammed the agency as a “government gangster,” accusing it in his most recent book of being behind the “deep state corruption” in the US. Billy Long, a former Republican congressman from Missouri, was pitched by Trump as the next head of the Internal Revenue Service. Long previously co-sponsored bills to abolish the federal tax authority and replace the federal income tax system with a national sales tax.

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Tesla doesn’t just optimize the -new- product, but also the production process. Seems obvious, but isn’t.

The Musk-Led Manufacturing Revolution Nobody Is Talking About (ZH)

When most analysts discuss Tesla, they focus on new vehicles or the electric vehicle company’s advancements in autonomy. Yet, according to Launch i/o CEO Jeff Lutz, one of the most significant—and under-discussed—developments at Tesla is happening not in its design studios or on the road, but in its factories. Lutz, a former executive at Google and Motorola, argues that Tesla’s true innovation isn’t just the electric vehicles or robots it’s building, but how those products are being made. The company’s first-principles approach to manufacturing is a radical departure from the industry norm, focusing not just on cheap labor or existing models, but on rethinking the entire production process.

Tesla is creating factories that are the product—designing, testing, and perfecting every element just as they do with their cars. This focus on manufacturing efficiency, Lutz believes, will lead to a dramatic reduction in production costs, potentially bringing them closer to zero. And this shift in how products are built—rather than merely assembled—could set a new standard for the entire manufacturing world.

FARZAD MESBAHI: It’s no wonder that innovation has been lacking so much it’s because we’ve brute forced essentially manufacturing by leveraging globalization because we had that $2 an hour rate in China or Mexico wherever else like we’re not like well we have to just get really good at building stuff to be competitive I was like nah just let him do it like we’ll get get our margins just let them do it.

JEFF LUTZ: The most under-discussed thing in the analyst world about Tesla is not the new vehicles coming, nor the growing discussions about autonomy, but rather Tesla’s next product: their new way of manufacturing. It’s a big deal, a huge step in how products are made today, and I don’t think many investment firms have the right research people actually looking into what this impact is and what it’s going to enable. It’s going to enable the variable cost to build products to shrink further and further, approaching zero.

This is the step function needed for cost reduction to achieve further scale, and I don’t think enough people are talking about it. It’s going to be how the Cybertruck is made, how Optimus will be made. Tesla versions its factories like they version their product. They spend time perfecting it and have design reviews of their factory designs just as they do with their products. They have specs and performance attributes they are trying to meet. This is very different from what happens at other companies at the executive level.

FARZAD MESBAHI: This is such a profound statement because a lot of the stories that I hear are related to, like, say Tesla capitalizing on making manufacturing the product—really just honing in so much on the factory that it becomes the product, the you know, and where we throw around 2 million cars per year, five million cars per year per factory, tens of millions of bots per year sooner than people think. The usual narrative is crazy, pie-in-the-sky; they can’t do that, look at Ford, look at BYD, they can only do so much.

But what we’re missing here is that we’ve had decades of just sitting on our asses, leveraging cheaper labor versus going out of our way to really push the boundaries of engineering and manufacturing. And now that we have a company that’s willing to do that because the leader is viewing that as a first principles approach to manufacturing, right? Instead of like, okay, cheap labor is good, but why aren’t we pushing manufacturing and engineering as much as we can to make this as efficient and as productive as possible?

Of course they’re extremely talented, they’re doing something very unique, but it’s also on the backs of 30-40 years of, I’m going to call it laziness. Like, you’re just taking the easy way out, and I get it, more profits, you’re taking care of shareholders—I get it—but you’re not really pushing the boundaries of manufacturing. I think what this leads to is, if companies and leaders truly take this to heart, we’re going to see an explosion in manufacturing across the board. It’s not just going to be a Tesla thing; I think we’re going to see it all over the place.

JEFF LUTZ: I’m advising companies on this now, you’re going to see massive localization of manufacturing. People think costs just instantly go up when you do that. They do unmitigated, but if you’re a company like Tesla and you’re thinking about it the way they do, they’re actually focused on localizing and making costs go down. Think of it, how many auto factories are expanding in Germany? Just answer that question.

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“Trump’s posts on Christmas Day were intentionally provocative, designed to push Americans to think bigger and to create an environment for deal-making..”

Trump Defines A ‘New Geography’ For American Security (JTN)

Making Canada the 51st state. Retaking control of the Panama Canal. Buying Greenland. Donald Trump made a series of Christmas pronouncements that legacy media dismissed as classic bravado unworthy of serious consideration, but those who advise the President-elect say there is a more calculating intent behind his recent social media flurry. America’s soon-to-be-47th president is laying the groundwork, they say, for a new strategic map designed to guarantee the security of America and western democracies in an era in which an aggressive China is imposing influence far outside its traditional Pacific region. “I think Trump is looking at the world from a new geography standpoint and asking how do we increase the zone of countries that are truly committed to freedom, and how do we make sure, how do we provide a very deep security belt around the United States,” former Trump State Department policy adviser Kiron Skinner told the John Solomon Reports podcast in an interview slated to be aired Friday.

In that mission, Trump is trying to educate the public with his provocative statements about the need to look at the world in a new light as American influence in Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia has waned under the Biden administration, experts said. The Cold War paradigm that dominated more than a half century is no longer operative. A nuclear North Korea, an aspiring nuclear power in radically Islamist Iran and a Beijing communist government that craftily placed its contractors on the entries and exits of one of the world’s most important shipping passages requires a jarring change to strategic thinking, something the State Department has lacked for years, experts said.

“People forget that this issue has been a key one for President Trump. He has talked about the Panama Canal throughout the campaign, and he repeatedly and correctly noted that this remarkable geostrategic asset was frittered away gratis under Jimmy Carter,” Seb Gorka, who will soon join the National Security Council as Trump’s counterterrorism chief, told Just the News. “The fact that the port facilities at both ends of the canal would fall under the control of entities tied to China was never part of original agreement with Panama,” Gorka added. “The President has been clear that America’s economic might and full pallet of tariffs tools may be used to guarantee that the canal is operated in ways that comport with the economic and national interests of the United States.”

Trump’s posts on Christmas Day were intentionally provocative, designed to push Americans to think bigger and to create an environment for deal-making when he comes president, retired Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said. “He always goes in from a position that gets people’s attention. And then once people kind of flail around … people settle down and they start having a realistic, adult discussion,” Shaffer told Newsmax on Thursday Calling unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “governor,” suggesting Canada would become America’s 51st state and proclaiming America will buy Greenland from Denmark set the stage for making realistic security gains in the near future, one of Trump’s former advisers predicted.

“These are strategic areas that the United States needs to have dominant influence over,” former Deputy National Security Adviser Victoria Coates told the Just the News, No Noise television show on Thursday night. “Start with the Panama Canal. That was President Reagan originally. That was the hallmark of his 1976 primary campaign. It’s ours. We paid for it, and that is all true. It was President Carter who subsequently just unilaterally gave it back to Panama.” “We pay exorbitant fees. Meanwhile, Panama has gone into agreements with China for special economic zones on either side of the canal. That’s intolerable. All that has to change,” she added.

“As for Canada, which should be a great partner to the United States, hopefully they’ll be under new leadership next month, and … we could really dominate the world energy market.” She predicted Trump’s comments on Greenland might soon expand the U.S. military relations there to an energy and resource collaboration like what America struck in Saudi Arabia with the company Aramco. “Think about Aramco, for example, in Saudi Arabia, how successful that was of a partnership between Saudi and the United States,” she said The “am” in Aramco stands for America, that you can develop resources that way and keep China out. “There are lots of reasons that the former and now President-elect should be talking about these places. These are all direct interests for national security for America, and thank heaven he’s doing it,” she added.

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“..he offered $1 billion to Wikipedia if it renames itself ‘Dickipedia’ for at least a year..”

‘Stop Donating To Wokepedia’ – Musk (RT)

Elon Musk has urged internet users to stop supporting Wikipedia over what he sees as disproportionate spending on promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. In a series of posts this week, the billionaire owner of Tesla, Space X and X vented his frustration over the online encyclopedia’s financial report, which showed that it spent more than $50 million of its total $177 million – or almost one-third of its 2023-2024 budget – on such goals as ‘Equity’ and ‘Safety and Inclusion’. More than 90% of the platform’s funding comes from donations. Commenting on the report on Tuesday, Musk wrote on X: “Stop donating to Wokepedia until they restore balance to their editing authority.” On Thursday, Musk suggested that Wikipedia “sucks” for spending $50 million on DEI.

DEI, a collection of business practices designed to promote workforce diversity, has faced criticism from conservatives who argue it enforces reverse discrimination against white people and undermines merit-based systems. In recent months, several major corporations, including Boeing, Ford Motor Company, Nissan and Walmart, have scaled back their DEI initiatives.Wikipedia claims it is taking steps to address barriers to free knowledge caused by racial inequality, while also striving to close the gender gap and ensure equal representation of knowledge and people on the platform. It has also sought to “defend our people and projects against disinformation and harmful government regulation” and other “external threats.” Musk has had a long-running beef with the encyclopedia, which he has called “broken.”

In October, he argued that Wikipedia is overtly promoting a narrative labeling US President-elect Donald Trump – whom Musk endorsed – as a “fascist,” claiming that the website is “controlled by far-left activists.”The same month, he offered $1 billion to Wikipedia if it renames itself ‘Dickipedia’ for at least a year, while accusing it of bias. Last year, Larry Sanger, Wikipedia’s co-founder, alleged that the platform is being used by US intelligence community as an instrument of “control” and to further the agenda of the left-liberal establishment. Wikipedia, however, insists that it adheres to a set of core principles, including providing information from a neutral point of view and in a verifiable and balanced manner.

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Not the first time.

Musk Issues Bankruptcy Warning (RT)

The US government will “go de facto bankrupt” unless it reins in its rising debt, Elon Musk has warned. The billionaire is set to co-lead a new department tasked with curbing spending under President-elect Donald Trump. Musk was reacting to a post by Kalshi, a financial service that allows users to bet on future events and which makes a prediction on how likely these events are to happen. It hailed the fact that the market estimated at 36% the chance of annual federal spending being cut by at least $250 billion under Trump. Kalshi flagged the future Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which Musk is set to co-chair with fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, as the entity that would help slash expenditure.

The US gross federal debt surpassed the $36 trillion benchmark in November, a development that Musk called “terrifying” at the time. Last week, he leveraged his social media influence to weigh in on a debate in the US Congress over a stop-gap spending bill. Musk urged his more than 200 million followers on X who are American citizens to contact their representatives on Capitol Hill and express opposition to a proposed spending bill that he said “should not pass.”

The 1,500-page measure ultimately didn’t proceed, but neither did an alternative proposed by Trump and backed by Musk, which put the US government on the verge of a new shutdown. A compromise 118-page short-term solution was passed after the Friday midnight deadline and was signed into law by President Joe Biden on Saturday. “President Trump will return to DC and to the White House, and we will have Republican control of the Senate and the House,” Speaker Mike Johnson commented on the outcome. “Things are going to be very different around here. This was a necessary step to bridge the gap.”

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Not a chance:

“Ukraine’s admission into NATO would be unacceptable “whether it’s in one year or ten years.”

Putin Reveals Biden Offered To Postpone Ukraine’s NATO Entry (ZH)

Russian President Vladimir Putin fielded questions from journalists Thursday at the conclusion of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council meeting held outside St. Petersburg. The Russian-led EEU economic bloc includes member states Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Among the more interesting moments was when Putin revealed what President Biden previously offered him in order to avert the Ukraine conflict, regarding the question of Kiev’s NATO membership. The comments came in the context of a question over Trump’s reported peace plan and the idea of freezing the front lines. Putin described that such a plan is nothing new, and added the following per state media translation:

“I know that the current President Biden spoke about this, it’s no secret, back in 2021. He proposed exactly this to me – to delay Ukraine’s admission into NATO by 10-15 years, because [Kiev] is not ready yet,” Putin said, referring to the midsummer meeting he had with the US leader in Switzerland. He stressed that no matter the timeline, Ukraine’s admission into NATO would be unacceptable “whether it’s in one year or ten years.” “We, too, are striving to end the conflict,” Putin added, but stressed that this should happen by achieving all of Moscow’s military and political objectives, according to RT. Toward this end, Putin during the Q&A proposed Slovakia as a ‘neutral’ potential host country for future peace talks:

Last week Putin met with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in Moscow. Fico, who survived an assassination attempt on May 15 of this year, has been blasted by European leaders as cozying up to Putin. But Fico in response has proclaimed that Putin has been “wrongly demonized” by the West. He also characterized the Moscow visit as about defending Slovakia’s sovereignty and energy security. Fico described in the meeting’s aftermath Russia is willing to continue supplying gas to Slovakia, but that Ukraine’s refusal to renew a key gas transit deal with Moscow makes getting the supplies “practically impossible”.

Putin on Thursday reiterated that Russia is willing to sell gas to anyone… Hungary too looks also bear the brunt of the negative consequences resulting from gas transit cutoff through Ukraine. Oil Price explains of both Slovakia and Hungary, “Slovakia has a long-term gas supply contract with Gazprom. The expiry of the transit deal with Naftogaz would interfere with that contract’s terms, which probably led to the visit to Moscow. Landlocked Slovakia and neighbor Hungary have few gas supply options that can compare on price with Russian pipeline gas.” As for Putin’s fresh comments rejecting even the possibility of future Ukraine membership in NATO, this means that in any future dealings with Trump, the Kremlin is certain to press this point hard.

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$100 billion later…

Western Europeans Losing Faith In Ukraine (RT)

Public support for backing Ukraine “until it wins” the conflict with Russia has fallen dramatically in seven Western European nations, a YouGov poll has found. In four of these, more people now support a peaceful resolution even if it means forcing Kiev to accept territorial losses. The poll was conducted earlier in December in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark and the UK, and published by The Guardian on Thursday. In Sweden, Denmark, and the UK, 50%, 40%, and 36% of respondents, respectively, said that they would favor supporting “Ukraine until Russia withdraws, even if this means the war lasts longer,” down around 10% in all three countries since February. Meanwhile, 24%, 34%, and 32%, respectively, said that they would “encourage a negotiated end to the fighting, even if Russia still has control of some parts of Ukraine,” figures that are up by a corresponding amount.

In Germany, Spain, France, and Italy, however, support for a Ukrainian victory has tanked, and peace talks are the most favored outcome in all four. Some 28% of Germans want Ukraine to keep fighting, while 45% support a negotiated settlement. Less than a quarter of respondents in Spain, France, and Italy want to prolong the conflict. The gap in public opinion is most stark in Italy, where 55% of respondents support peace talks, and only 15% want to continue arming Kiev. The governments of France and Germany have collapsed between February and December, while Britain’s former prime minister, Rishi Sunak, was ousted in a landslide defeat for his Conservative Party in July. Despite reports suggesting that Vladimir Zelensky wants to end the conflict this year, the Ukrainian leader has publicly rebuffed calls to negotiate, and insists on what he calls a “just peace.”

His conditions for this peace are the return of four former Ukrainian regions that joined Russia in 2022, and an invitation to join the NATO bloc – conditions that Moscow deems unacceptable. Russia maintains that any settlement must begin with Ukraine ceasing military operations and acknowledging the “territorial reality” that it will never regain control of the Russian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, as well as Crimea. In addition, the Kremlin insists that the goals of its military operation – which include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification – will be achieved. US President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly promised that he will end the conflict within “24 hours” of taking office, without explaining how he plans to achieve this.

However, he has said that he intends to speak to both Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and hinted that Ukraine should prepare for a reduction in US military aid. Trump has also suggested that Kiev should abandon its territorial claims, as “there is not a single building in good condition left” in some of the battle-scarred cities under Russian control. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday that Moscow is open to any deal that respects the national interests of Russia and the “legitimate interests of other countries.” However, he added that he has not seen any “serious, concrete proposals” from the West.

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“Berlin did not just turn against Russia – it forgot what made it successful in the first place..”

Germany Is Doomed Because Of This Grave Mistake (Romanenko)

For decades, Germany was the envy of the world: a shining example of how a war-torn nation could rise from the ashes to become Europe’s economic powerhouse. This success was no accident. Germany’s prosperity rested on three key pillars: access to cheap Russian energy, unfettered free trade with the United States and other Western allies, and minimal military spending thanks to American security guarantees during the Cold War. These factors allowed Germany to build an unparalleled industrial economy, maintain a generous welfare state, and dominate global markets.

But Germany’s decision to sever ties with Russia following the Ukraine escalation threatens to dismantle this carefully constructed foundation. By aligning itself entirely with the US-led NATO strategy against Moscow, Germany has unwittingly sealed its economic fate. The consequences are already visible, and the worst is yet to come. Germany is doomed because of this grave mistake. The German economy has always been a giant built on energy-intensive industries like chemicals, automobiles, and heavy manufacturing. These industries relied on one key advantage: affordable Russian natural gas. For decades, Berlin fostered a close energy relationship with Moscow, importing vast quantities of cheap gas through pipelines like Nord Stream. This mutually beneficial arrangement kept Germany’s factories humming and its export economy highly competitive.

That relationship is over. In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany abandoned Russian energy almost overnight, shutting down Nord Stream and scrambling for alternatives. The result? Soaring energy prices and a manufacturing crisis that is crippling German industry. Without cheap energy, the very sectors that made Germany an industrial giant – automotive, steel, and chemicals – are no longer globally competitive. To make matters worse, Germany’s ideological commitment to a rapid green energy transition has only exacerbated the problem. While renewable energy has its merits, it is nowhere near ready to replace the reliable baseload energy that Russian gas provided. Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear energy – a reliable and carbon-free power source – further undermines its energy security. The result is an economy that is buckling under the weight of its own short-sighted policies.

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“..blackouts will be just a bad memory..”

Milei Unveils Ambitious Plan To Make Argentina Global Nuclear Energy Player (ZH)

In a bold move to transform Argentina into a global energy powerhouse, President Javier Milei introduced the “Argentine Nuclear Plan” on Friday, with the goal of harnessing nuclear energy as a core component of the nation’s future. The plan outlines the construction of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), compact nuclear units designed to provide power to commercial sectors and other large-scale operations. “After years of stagnation, nuclear energy is making a powerful comeback, and we are determined to lead, not follow,” Milei declared confidently, emphasizing the country’s abundant natural resources, skilled workforce, and Patagonia’s cold climate, which he described as ideal for housing energy-intensive technologies like AI.

“Nuclear energy is the only source that is sufficiently efficient, abundant and rapidly scalable to cope with the development of our civilization,” he added. The project will have the backing of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi joining Milei and his key advisor, Demian Reidel, during the plan’s official launch. Reidel stressed that the increasing demand for energy, particularly from AI advancements, makes nuclear power crucial to Argentina’s energy strategy, jpost.com reports. The first phase of the plan will focus on the construction of a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) at the Atucha Nuclear Power Plant. The reactor is expected to help meet rising energy demands and alleviate power shortages throughout Argentina.

Reidel emphasized the significant contribution of Argentine nuclear engineers to the initiative. “We will do so with 100% Argentine technology, developed by our nuclear engineers, who are recognized among the best in the world,” he stated, according to Rosario3. He added that the plan “will give us energy sovereignty, will allow us to export this technology to the world,” and assured that “blackouts will be just a bad memory,” according to La Nación. In the second phase of the initiative, Argentina aims to capitalize on its untapped uranium reserves to meet domestic needs and establish itself as a leading exporter of nuclear fuel. The government envisions positioning Argentina as a global leader in the peaceful use of atomic energy, while also advancing its aspirations to become an international hub for AI innovation.

Currently, Argentina operates three nuclear power facilities—Atucha I, Atucha II, and Embalse—which together supply around 9% of the nation’s electricity consumption, according to government data from July 2023. The announcement comes as Argentina has officially emerged from a severe recession, a milestone that marks a major success for Milei and his bold economic reforms. According to data from Argentina’s statistics agency, GDP grew 3.9% in the July-to-September quarter compared to the previous three months. This growth was driven by robust performances in agriculture, mining, and consumer spending, signaling a recovery in key sectors of the economy, the Financial Post reports.

On Monday, Milei eliminated a 30% “inclusive” surcharge tax on foreign currency debit and credit card purchases imposed by the previous socialist government. The now-repealed “Tax for an Inclusive and Solidary Argentina,” or “PAIS” for short, was a temporary surcharge introduced by former socialist President Alberto Fernández. He enacted it in December 2019 during the early days of his administration. “I have more good news, and that is that the lowering of taxes will continue, as is our irrevocable commitment, to return the surplus in the form of relief to the taxpayer, because less taxes is more competitiveness,” the president said in a statement announcing the move.

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“If it’s time for you to go, leave willingly, as you would to accomplish anything that can be done with grace and honor.” — Marcus Aurelius

A Christmas Prayer (James Howard Kunstler)

The longest and coldest night of the year is upon us with its portents of endings, the death of things, of people like ourselves, and also bodies of thought, movements of culture and politics. And for all the cold and darkness, you feel the stirrings of things waiting to be born. Christmas is the lovely distraction for a brief spell, and after that, the difficult labor of the nation commences for-real in the long night of the year. This moment in the cold and dark is also the climax of the Great Pretending. You knew it would come to this for “Joe Biden,” that he would be found-out. That in the waning days of his woebegone term in office, the people around him in the White House would betray him with the truth: that he was mentally unfit for the job from even before the get-go, from those drear days in the fall campaign of 2020 when he hid himself at home in Delaware while the FBI covered-up the massive bribery-and-treason story concealed in Hunter’s laptop.

And that for four years since then those people around “Joe Biden” have pretended to the world that he was doing his job, that he was okay, when he was absolutely not okay, as they well knew. It was only one big lie among the thousands of lies put over by the conspiracy between that gang in the White House and the perfidious organs of the news, especially The New York Times. If you want to see how stupendously dishonest the employees of that newspaper are, read this “roundtable” column of several Times pundits attempting to chew over the state of their patron, the Democratic party. Forgive me for quoting myself in the comment I posted there a half hour ago:

You’re all quite remarkably clueless and dishonest. Your party is in ruins because your policies are intolerable and often insane: censorship, war, gender lunacy, flooding the country with illegal immigrants – no, not “undocumented” in your parlance, as if it was just some clerical error. And you: Democratic Party aligned journalists are even worse than the politicians, because you’re supposed to make an effort to determine the truth, and you deliberately gaslight the public instead. Shame on you and the Democratic Party. It’s that simple. It’s hard to know for sure, but it looks an awful lot as though these journalists — in fact, the whole elite intelligentsia across America — are gaslighting themselves, still pretending that they didn’t know what went on, a coup against their own country. Everything they have been saying and publishing is the opposite of reality. And now it is about to all spill out because other people are about to take over the levers of power.

For instance: can the CDC and other agencies of public health continue to lie about disastrous Covid-19 vaccines, about the deaths and disabilities they have caused in millions of people? Under “Joe Biden,” there was no other way for the likes of Rochelle Walensky and Mandy Cohen except to lie. And get this: women were chosen to front for the CDC because you’re not supposed to believe that “Mommy” would lie to you, especially in matters of life and death. There was no other way because the crime was so great and they were all in it so deep — not just Rochelle and Mandy but the hundreds of high-ranking bureaucrats in CDC, FDA, and NIH who went along with all this. Of course, it’s hard to know whether the Covid-19 affair was just a venal and insane project by Anthony Fauci and his colleagues to play “hero” while making a ton of money. . . or whether it was actually a deliberate effort by the Intel Blob to queer the 2020 election by forcing a change in the voting procedure that would allow for wholesale fraud, in the service of cancelling Donald Trump. Possibly, it was a mash-up of both.

The truth about all this, and a lot more, is going to come out, whether or not Bobby Kennedy, Kash Patel, and other nominees get confirmed in their jobs, because there are many other figures just as capable behind them who would be nominated and eventually confirmed to run these departments. Those New York Times journalists are gaslighting themselves further if they think that blocking a few nominations is going to save their reputations. This populist revolution is bigger than that. It’s about overturning a paradigm of lies.

We really don’t know if our country is too far gone. The wreckage accomplished under the fakery of “Joe Biden” is prodigious. The financial quandaries alone are enough to sink the Republic in penury, and it will be hard to dodge the truth about that, too, because individual citizens and households know when they are hurting. When they hurt enough, they move to action, visibly, loudly, and you will not miss it. This ought to be a sobering Christmas then. This is the pause at the end of things when we might consider how important it is to tell ourselves the truth. Chew on that with the sugarplums of the season while we wait for that something that is busy being born.

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“..it’s not about the environment, it’s about Joe Biden’s and the elitist eco-left making sure their friends get paid..”

Preservationists Say Wind Energy Is Harming America’s Historic Sites (JTN)

The Bureau of Land Management earlier this month approved a 241-turbine wind farm near Twin Falls, Idaho, about a two-hour drive from Boise. From the time it was announced, the project was met with opposition from ranchers, environmentalists and Native American tribes. This managed to get the developers to shrink the size of the project down by approximately half its proposed size. Another group of opponents in the fight against the project were historical preservations, a growing voice in the increasing opposition to the buildout of renewable energy across the U.S. The Lava Ridge Wind Project will be constructed near the Minidoka National Historic Site, where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II. Friends of Mindoka, a nonprofit group that seeks to preserve and educate the public about the history of the site, was among the opponents of Lava Ridge.

The group explains on its website that the remoteness of the concentration camp helps visitors experience the sense of isolation felt by those who were incarcerated there by Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, signed on February 19, 1942. The wind project, they argue, will minimize “the trauma, loss, and humiliation suffered by American citizens based solely on racial discrimination.” Larry Behrens, communications director for Power the Future, a nonprofit energy advocacy group, told Just the News that the environmental left will fight against any impact on historic sites when it involves oil and gas, but they typically look the other way when it comes to renewable energy projects.

“It’s funny how when it’s a new oil well or gas pipeline the eco-left is quick to cry crocodile tears over claims from select local residents or perceived historic significance. However, when these concerns are legitimate, but there’s billions in green dollars to burn, the green agenda can’t ignore the red lights fast enough. This all proves it’s not about the environment, it’s about Joe Biden’s and the elitist eco-left making sure their friends get paid,” Behrens said. The impacts of renewable energy development on historic sites is a nationwide issue. In September, the Preservation Society of Newport County and Southeast Lighthouse Foundation filed a lawsuit against Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Revolution Wind, LLC, the owner of a wind project under construction 15 miles off the coast of Rhode Island. The project proposes 96 turbines nearly 900-feet tall. The project is part of a trio of offshore wind projects that will place over 200 turbines between Rhode Island and Martha’s Vineyard.

The lawsuit argued that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) failed to properly consider the project’s impact on National Historic Landmarks and other historic properties. “Among other errors, BOEM has reviewed each project separately, effectively minimizing Revolution Wind’s projected harms. BOEM compounded this error by not taking a hard look at cumulative impacts and finding appropriate ways to lessen the harm of those impacts, even though the combined visual impacts of South Fork, Revolution Wind, and Sunrise Wind will harm the context and setting of some of the nation’s most valued NHLs,” the lawsuit stated.

According to the lawsuit, Rhode Island’s coastline is home to multiple historic and cultural resources, including Newport and Block Island. For the past century, the State of Rhode Island and local governments worked to protect and maintain the historic character of the area, which millions of people come to see each year. “Newport is inseparable from the Atlantic Ocean and its uninterrupted views. Known as ‘The City-By-The-Sea’ and for its ‘spectacular assemblages of architecture,’ Newport’s beauty and connections to the sea have inspired not only writers and other artists, but also property owners whose families have treasured their houses and history for hundreds of years…The Preservation Society owns historic properties, operated as museums, within the Bellevue Avenue Historic District, one of the most recognized NHL districts in the country,” the lawsuit explained.

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“The change is welcomed by an electorate exhausted by past presidential stumbling, wandering, incoherence, mind freezes, and angry, “get-off-my-grass” aged fragility..”

What Was So Different This Time About Trump’s Election? (VDH)

In the weeks before the 2016 Trump Electoral College victory, Trump was polling between 35 and 40 percent. He would average only about 41 percent approval over his tumultuous four-year tenure. No one knows what lies ahead over the next four years. But for now, Trump already polls at well over 50 percent approval. Trump’s inauguration in a few weeks likely will not resemble his 2016 ceremony. In the 2016-7 transition, Democratic-affiliated interests ran commercials urging electors to become “faithless” and thus illegally reject their states’ popular votes and instead elect the loser, Hillary Clinton. Massive demonstrations met Trump on Inauguration Day. In less than four months after assuming the presidency, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate the hoax of Russian collusion. That wasted 22-month, $40 million investigation found no collusion but did derail the first two Trump years.

What followed the collusion ruse was a consistent effort to undermine the Trump presidency—two subsequent impeachments, the laptop “disinformation” hoax, the COVID-19 nationwide lockdown, and news suppression of any mention of the Chinese lab origin of the virus or questioning the closing of schools. In the Trump administration’s last summer of 2020, 120 days of riot, arson, looting, assault, and murder followed, with the denouement of the January 6 turmoil. In contrast, during the 2024-2025 transition, Trump has all but assumed the presidency. Over 100 foreign leaders have elbowed each other to be invited to Mar-a-Lago or to phone in their congratulations to the newly elected Trump. Remember that in 2016 the left screamed “Logan Act” if a Trump transition appointee even talked with foreign officials. So why is newly elected Trump a veritable cultural hero in 2024 in a fashion unimaginable eight years ago when the media had rendered him a near demon?

One, Trump is now seen as a welcome relief. A departing and unpopular Joe Biden will leave with about a 36 percent approval rating. The prior Biden years are now seen as abnormal, if not disastrous. The left’s cultural revolution championed fringe policies never quite seen before: destroying the border, welcoming in 12 million illegal aliens, nihilist critical race and legal theories, institutionalizing a third sex, and mandating woke/DEI quotas and indoctrination sessions. Yet Biden had inherited from Trump a secure border, an economy rebounding after the COVID quarantines, 1.23 percent inflation, no wars abroad, and cheap energy. Four years later, the outgoing Biden administration is widely unpopular. Almost every one of its policies polls below 50 percent. In response, Trump promises not just to restore his first-term success but to expand it.

Two, Trump personally remains transparent, upbeat, and energetic—eager to meet with anyone, anytime, anywhere, to talk about anything. His energy offers a sharp contrast with the era of the non-compos-mentis Biden. The change is welcomed by an electorate exhausted by past presidential stumbling, wandering, incoherence, mind freezes, and angry, “get-off-my-grass” aged fragility. Three, Trump is grudgingly admired, now even by some of his enemies who once sought but failed to destroy him. He endured two impeachments, five civil and criminal court indictments, incessant lawfare, a 95% negative media, attempts to remove him from states’ ballots, and two assassination attempts. Yet all these unprecedented hostile efforts to end Trump may only have made him stronger—and more empathetic when seen as a target of increasingly fanatical enemies.

Four, Trump has expanded his MAGA base and permanently branded it as an ecumenical movement that welcomes shared class interests rather than fixates on the tired old tribal racial and ethnic chauvinism. Trump also brought in disaffected Democrats, independents, and minorities in a way the Democrats could not with the evaporating and bitter Never Trump dead-enders. Trump’s veritable campaign menagerie of RFK, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Dana White, and Kid Rock made it impossible for the left to demonize MAGA Republicans as right-wing aristocrats, warmongers, or laissez-faire capitalists. Fifth, the endorsements of the Biden-Harris legacy media, calcified Hollywood endorsers, blowhard university faculties, and tech barons proved overrated. It was trumped by more popular and dynamic internet influencers, podcasters, bloggers, and maverick entrepreneurs.

Sixth and finally, Trump himself proved more experienced and reflective than in 2016. His team too was more disciplined and street smart, led by savvy chief of staff Susan Wiles. 2024 saw truly pivotal moments of Trump as everyman—posing for a mug shot after being railroaded by a weaponized lawfare indictment, serving McDonald’s drive-through customers, riding in a garbage truck cab, and raising his fist and yelling “fight, fight, fight”—after having his head near blown off by a would-be assassin. Add all of these once unimaginables up, and the people trusted more—and liked better—the Trump reboot than grouchy Joe Biden or inane, inauthentic Kamala Harris and their shared extremist agendas.

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“..there are so many flags around this report we’re not even sure where to begin … luckily, Hemingway did the work for us..”

Mollie Hemingway Takes House Ethics Report on Matt Gaetz APART (Twitchy)

As Twitchy readers know, the House Ethics Committee magically decided to release their Matt Gaetz report … the day before Christmas Eve. Yes, the very report even Biden’s own corrupt and weaponized DOJ decided not to act on. Hey, think what you want about Gaetz and whether or not this report is true and his actions unethical (it is certainly not our place to defend or condemn him), but the way this has been done is shady AF. Mollie Hemingway was front and center taking the entire mess apart:

Read that again. “… completely lacked any credibility whatsoever.” BIDEN’S DOJ which would obviously be looking for any reason to go after Gaetz did not believe the evidence was credible. C’mon. She probably feels that way because from what we can tell she WAS the only reporter to look into the details of the Gaetz allegations.

Color us SHOCKED. And ultimately, that’s the point. Whether or not you like a person should not impact or influence their innocence or guilt. Even if you dislike Gaetz, the fact they released this report the day before Christmas Eve, a report Biden’s own corrupt DOJ obviously considered a nothing-burger, tells us all this was sneaky, dirty, and likely all-too-personal. To Hemingway’s point, it’s INSANE that they’d take seriously any sort of testimony from a witness who is currently in prison for making the same false sex-with-minors accusations against someone else. While we’re certainly not experts, this definitely sounds like a red flag. In fact, there are so many flags around this report we’re not even sure where to begin … luckily, Hemingway did the work for us. Sadly, we’ve been seeing this in the ‘elitist’ class for decades.

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Will it survive in 2025?

CNN Loses Chunks of Viewership as Ratings Dive Into Death Spiral (Sp.)

CNN, just like a bunch of other liberal news networks, has been hemorrhaging viewership at lightning speed since Donald Trump’s electoral victory in November. The Cable News Network (CNN) has seen overall prime-time viewership plummet by 45% scooping up only 394,000 total viewers since November 5, according to Nielsen Media Research. When it comes to the prime 25-to-54 age demographic, CNN suffered a 52% decline, with just an average audience of 77,000 having tuned in after Trump’s win. Overall, CNN witnessed its worst-ever performance among viewers in this key demographic. Audiences feel that CNN “didn’t meet the mark” when covering Trump during the campaign, The Washington Post cited one journalist as saying.

Trump’s campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt had repeatedly criticized the “hostile environment” the network offered to the Republican contender. CNN is also reportedly heading for major layoffs as part of an overhaul by its corporate parent Warner Bros. Discovery, which is up to its eyeballs in debt after its Warner Brothers and Discovery merger deal in 2022. By the end of the third quarter of 2023, WBD’s gross debt stood at $45.3 billion, according to Forbes. MSNBC’s ratings have also collapsed post-election, with the audience down 46% compared with the first 10 months of 2024, according to Nielsen.

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Cars
https://twitter.com/i/status/1871930959505096929

 

 

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Dec 242024
 
 December 24, 2024  Posted by at 10:38 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Giuseppe Arcimboldo Four elements – Air 1566

 

Musk Derangement Syndrome (AmG)
Musk Makes Startling AI Prediction (RT)
Elon Musk Is Winning The War Against The MSM. RT Was There First (Tarkhanov)
Elon Musk: “The Fed Is Absurdly Overstaffed” (ZH)
Musk Congratulates Durov On Telegram Milestone (RT)
Tesla’s Market Cap Nears Half Of Global Auto Industry (ZH)
Trump Adviser Says Ukraine Narrative Is Changing (RT)
Kiev Increasingly Sees Conflict Ending In 2025 – WaPo (RT)
Moldovan President Eyeing Attack On Russian Peacekeepers – Moscow (RT)
AfD Chancellor Candidate Tops German Poll – Bild (RT)
The Joy is Gone: A Liberal Hate-Fest for the Holidays (Turley)
Half of the West Is Doomed: Here’s Why (Timofey Bordachev)
The “King-Makers” Pull The Rug From Syria, Yet Again… (Alastair Crooke)
House Ethics Committee Releases Its Report Into Matt Gaetz (ET)
Biden Commutes Sentences Of Dozens On Death Row (ZH)

 

 

 

 

VDH
https://twitter.com/i/status/1871045510078824872

Woke

Puppet

Loopholes

Rand Paul

Pepe Nap

 

 

 

 

They can’t help themselves. It’s all they have left.

Musk Derangement Syndrome (AmG)

Move over, Trump Derangement Syndrome! It is time to make room for the latest pathology: Musk Derangement Syndrome. The hysteria has been building for some time. It wasn’t so long ago that Elon Musk enjoyed enviable street cred among the brotherhood of snotty, self-congratulating elites. A green energy guru, he made the hearts of the Sierra Club Sultans go pit-a-pat with his talk of “sustainable transport” and solar roofs. Then Musk made several missteps. The first was buying Twitter and restoring open discourse to a platform that was started to encourage, well, open discourse but had become a headquarters of government surveillance and censorship during the first Trump administration.

Musk never recovered his progressive credentials after he came out as a supporter of free speech. But the atmosphere of left-wing disapproval that was swaddling Musk since his purchase of Twitter turned toxic and hysterical this past summer when, following the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, he announced that, gasp, he was supporting Trump’s reelection bid. Could you believe it? Supporting Trump’s reelection—especially actively, ostentatiously, effectively supporting Trump’s reelection bid—was like the sin against the Holy Ghost: unforgivable.

And then Musk compounded the perfidy by joining forces with Vivek Ramaswamy to form DoGE: the “department” of government efficiency, a time-limited initiative to help bring government spending and regulation under control. They have set an expiration date of July 6, 2026, by which date they hope to have been able to give America a 250th birthday gift of fiscal solvency and rational regulation. Many people have wondered what DoGe would be able to accomplish since it would just be making recommendations with no real power to enforce them. We have just been vouchsafed a glimpse of its possible potency.

For several years now, the approach of Christmas has brought not just visions of sugar plums and Santa sightings but also the annual Congressional budget snit known as CR, short for “Continuing Resolution.” The exercise now seems almost venerable. In fact, though, it is an admission of failure, begotten in legislative irresponsibility, bred in malodorous sluices of pork-laden, politically correct greed. Every year, Congress is supposed to deliver a budget before it breaks for Christmas. America’s last real budget was passed in 1996. The usual expedient is the stopgap measure of a “continuing resolution” in which Congress says it will just continue funding things at more or less the same level as it had been, kicking the can down the road and into the next fiscal year.

Contemplating the embarrassing sideshow that was this year’s CR squabble, a friend reminded me of the old quip. If “con” is the opposite of “pro,” what is the opposite of “Congress?” This year, as has become the usual practice, Congress waited until the last possible moment to plop the text of the Continuing Resolution on the desks of our Conscript Fathers. What had started as a twenty-page document had lizzoed into a 1547-page behemoth. This was no “continuing resolution” but a porker full of self-serving giveaways to Congress as well as numerous woke initiatives designed to stymie the incoming Trump administration.

Among many noxious items were a provision to scuttle any serious inquiry into the activities of Liz Cheney’s January 6 investigation and another provision to continue funding the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. This innocuous-sounding initiative (we’re all in favor of “global engagement,” right?) funds the Britain-based Global Disinformation Index, which encourages advertisers to flee media outlets of which the guardians of the Narrative disapprove. This includes the Washington Examiner, RealClearPolitics, Reason, the New York Post, Blaze Media, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the American Conservative, Newsmax—and American Greatness. It is, as Vivek Ramaswamy observed, a “key node of the censorship industrial complex.”

This monstrosity was stopped, but how? Critics of Musk blame him. “He tweeted about our beloved monstrosity,” they skirled. “He killed the bill.” But this is wrong. Musk did indeed post, with Olympic assiduity, about the egregious piece of self-serving lard. But what scotched the original bill was the public outcry. Musk may have been the catalyst, the tocsin in the night. The fire brigade was manned by ordinary citizens. As one social media poster put it, “All Elon did was read a bill, post on a public platform that the reckless spending in it was unacceptable, ask others to contact their representatives if they agreed, and made clear that he will help primary Ds + Rs who support it.”

This is exactly right. But to listen to the Dems, you would think the world was coming to an end. On December 18, Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), knickers twisted tight, asked angrily, “Can you imagine what the next two years are going to be like if every time that Congress works its will and then there’s a tweet? Or from an individual who has no official portfolio, who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary? And they succumb?” Yes, just imagine, Dick, if it is the people themselves, and not your little club of coddled thumb suckers, who shed light on the activities of Congress as it pretends to go about the people’s business?

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How do we prevent for-profit AI? Even if we might succeed in the US, what good would that do in the rest of the world?

Musk Makes Startling AI Prediction (RT)

Artificial intelligence could become smarter than any single human by the end of next year, according to tech billionaire Elon Musk. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO made the prediction shortly after his AI company, xAI, officially launched its first image generation model, Aurora, earlier this month. Aurora, an updated version of the first image generation model that xAI introduced in October, allows users to create photorealistic visuals. Compared to other AI models, Aurora has fewer restrictions and can accurately generate images at almost any prompt, including depictions of famous personalities and copyrighted characters.

‘It is increasingly likely that AI will superset the intelligence of any single human by the end of 2025 and maybe all humans by 2027/2028,” Musk wrote on Monday, in a post on his social media platform X. According to him, the probability that AI will exceed the intelligence of all humans combined by 2030 “is ~100%.” Earlier this year, Musk’s xAI launched Colossus, described as the world’s most powerful AI training system, setting a new benchmark in the rapidly advancing field of AI. Colossus boasts 100,000 liquid-cooled H100 graphics processing units (GPUs), the chips provided by Nvidia, which places xAI well ahead of its competitors, including those from OpenAI.

Meanwhile, high-profile figures and scientists have been raising concerns in recent years, over the potential dangers posed by the unregulated adoption of AI technology. Last month, renowned computer scientist and professor at the University of Montreal Yoshua Bengio warned that machines could soon have most of the cognitive abilities of humans and thus pose grave risks to humanity as it becomes harder to control AI. The computer scientist cited a common fear that the AI machines currently being trained “would lead to systems that turn against humans.”

Bengio also highlighted potential risks of social and political disparity stemming from AI, pointing out that a limited number of organizations and governments could afford to build powerful and costly AI machines. This would lead to a concentration of economic, political and military power, eventually threatening geopolitical stability worldwide, the scientist warned. In June, addressing the G7 summit in Italy, Pope Francis warned humanity against depending on choices made by machines. The Pontiff stressed that the algorithms “can only examine realities formalized in numerical terms,” while humans who have wisdom and can listen to Sacred Scripture “not only choose, but in their hearts are capable of deciding.”

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“..the scale of X’s influence and Musk’s ability to reach a global audience has elevated this struggle to new heights. RT walked so X could run..”

Elon Musk Is Winning The War Against The MSM. RT Was There First (Tarkhanov)

The tragic terror attack at the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, which claimed several lives and left hundreds injured, was not just an attack on innocent civilians – it was also an attack on truth. In the aftermath of the atrocity, a predictable yet disturbing pattern emerged: the mainstream media, in lockstep with political authorities, immediately attempted to frame the narrative in a way that avoided uncomfortable truths. They downplayed the attacker’s background, obscured his motivations, and redirected public focus towards safer, more politically convenient storylines. But one figure cut through the fog of misinformation – Elon Musk. In recent years, the tech billionaire has emerged as one of the most prominent critics of legacy media and its increasingly transparent biases.

In the wake of the Magdeburg attack, Musk did what most global leaders and prominent media outlets refused to do: he publicly raised the questions everyone was asking and pointed out the contradictions in the official narrative. The mainstream media’s response to the attack followed a depressingly familiar script. Initial reports focused on generic descriptions of the attacker, avoiding critical details about his ideological background, motivations, and long history of suspicious behavior. When conflicting evidence emerged – suggesting the attacker was not the ‘ex-Muslim atheist’ he claimed to be but rather someone deeply entrenched in extremist ideology – the media still hesitated to shift its tone.

Musk, however, did not hesitate. Using his platform X (formerly Twitter), he called out the inconsistencies in the reporting, criticized the German government’s inaction, and directly challenged Chancellor Olaf Scholz. His posts, viewed and shared by millions, forced a public reckoning. Instead of allowing the narrative to settle into the comfortable grooves carved by mainstream outlets, Musk shattered the illusion and amplified the voices of those who had been warning about the attacker’s background for years. Musk’s engagement in this discourse is significant for several reasons. First, it demonstrates the power of decentralized platforms like X, where influential voices can bypass traditional media gatekeepers.

Second, it reveals the extent to which public trust in legacy media has eroded. Millions of people no longer turn to CNN, BBC, or Der Spiegel as their first source of information – they look to independent voices on social media, and Musk has become one of the most powerful of those voices. Mainstream media outlets, accustomed to being the sole arbiters of public narratives, now find themselves unable to suppress dissenting views. Musk’s immense following and his willingness to confront uncomfortable truths mean that attempts to obfuscate or spin events like the Magdeburg attack are no longer guaranteed to succeed.

While Musk and X are currently at the forefront of this information battle, it’s worth remembering that RT has been challenging mainstream narratives for years. Long before Musk took over X, RT was often one of the few major outlets willing to question Western governments and expose stories that mainstream media preferred to ignore. Despite being heavily criticized, de-platformed, and even banned in multiple countries, the network has persisted in providing alternative perspectives on global events. This isn’t to say RT is without its flaws – like any media organization, it cannot escape some of its own biases – but its contribution to breaking the monopoly of Western media narratives cannot be ignored.

While Musk and X have brought this fight into the mainstream, RT was already in the trenches, challenging the narrative before it was fashionable. In this sense, Musk is building on ground already broken by others. However, the scale of X’s influence and Musk’s ability to reach a global audience has elevated this struggle to new heights. RT walked so X could run, and while Musk is rightly celebrated for his courage and transparency, it’s worth acknowledging that he’s not the first to challenge the system – just the most impactful so far.

The Western elites understand one undeniable truth: power in the modern world is not merely about political or military might – it’s about controlling the flow of information. Historically, legacy media served as the perfect tool for this purpose. Carefully curated stories, selective reporting, and strategic omissions allowed those in power to guide public perception seamlessly. However, that era is fading. Social media platforms and figures like Musk have democratized access to information. In the aftermath of the Magdeburg attack, it wasn’t state broadcasters or newspaper editors who exposed the full story – it was ordinary people online, sharing evidence, raising questions, and amplifying voices that the mainstream ignored.

It’s no wonder, then, that the elites have turned their focus towards silencing alternative sources of information. Media outlets like Russia’s RT have been relentlessly targeted, de-platformed, and demonized. The justification is always the same: fighting misinformation. But one must ask – who decides what constitutes misinformation? In a world where even basic facts are twisted to serve political ends, it’s clear that this battle is not about truth but about control. Elon Musk’s actions in the aftermath of the Magdeburg attack were not just those of an outspoken billionaire – they were those of someone who understands the stakes in the battle for information.

By refusing to bow to the narrative enforced by the mainstream media, Musk has demonstrated that the power to control the public discourse is slipping from the hands of legacy institutions. This is not just a victory for Musk, nor is it merely a battle over one tragic event in Germany. It’s a symbolic moment in a larger war – a war over whether information will remain free and decentralized or be corralled and curated by a handful of powerful actors.

Despite mainstream journalists’ best efforts to steer the public away from questioning their narrative about the Magdeburg attack, one man with power and influence refused to stay silent. As long as platforms like X exist and influential figures like Musk are willing to speak out, there is hope that the truth will continue to break through the carefully constructed walls of mainstream narratives. The legacy media may still have power, but they no longer have a monopoly on the truth. And that, in itself, is a victory worth celebrating.

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For every critical voice, they have 400 Economics PhD’s claiming they are The Science.

Elon Musk: “The Fed Is Absurdly Overstaffed” (ZH)

The Ron Paul ‘Revolution’ could be on the horizon as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office next month. Elon Musk, one of Trump’s top advisors, wrote on X about creating efficiencies at the Federal Reserve. “The Fed is absurdly overstaffed,” Musk wrote on X early Monday morning, responding to Chamath Palihapitiya’s post about the Fed’s latest interest rate decision. A recent note from the Mises Institute pointed out that about 23,000 people work at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington and 12 regional reserve banks across the US. “But there’s more to it than that. The financial statements reveal that the Board of Governors expenses and currency costs were $2 billion. If this constitutes salaries, then total salaries and pension costs at the Fed become closer to $7 billion. Dividing this figure by 23,000 people equals around $304,000 per employee,” Mises said.

Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been tasked with streamlining federal operations through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The department aims to create a leaner, more efficient government, including $2 trillion in spending cuts. The wish list of potential efficiencies continues to grow – with a ‘really bold plan for day one ‘ … Days before the presidential election, Ron Paul asked on X if he could join DOGE in Trump’s second term. Musk responded: “Would be great to have Ron Paul as part of the Department of Government Efficiency!”

https://twitter.com/alx/status/1852454701943423287

Last week, Ron Paul wrote on X, “We should wean ourselves off The Fed, like we weaned ourselves off the mainstream media.” Musk responded: “Yes!! Ron Paul ftw.” Let’s not forget about 400 PhD economists at the Fed failed to forecast the inflationary storm triggered by the rapid expansion of the money supply by trillions—only for them to dismiss it as “transitory.” Such a massive misreading underscores the urgent need for restructuring. Errors of this magnitude are unacceptable. With a workforce of 23,000, the Fed still manages to lose money—upwards of $200 billion. Perhaps Fed chair Jay Powell’s days are numbered.

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What deals has Durov made with French justice?

Musk Congratulates Durov On Telegram Milestone (RT)

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has offered some words of praise to Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov after the Russian-born entrepreneur’s company turned a profit for the first time in its three-year history of monetization. Durov announced the news in an X post on Monday. Describing 2024 as a “very successful year,” he explained that the privacy-focused messaging app made more than $1 billion in revenue this year, and that “we are closing the year with more than $500 million in cash reserves, not including crypto assets.” “Well done,” Musk responded under Durov’s post. Despite his company’s achievements, Durov has faced serious legal challenges this year. In August, he was detained after landing at a Paris airport and released on bail several days later. He faces 12 criminal charges, including complicity in distributing child pornography, drug dealing, and money laundering.

French prosecutors claim that Telegram’s supposedly lax moderation rules have enabled rampant criminality to flourish on the platform. Durov testified before a French court for the first time earlier this month. The Russian national, who is also a citizen of France, the UAE, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, refused to comment on the case to reporters. He has, however, denied any wrongdoing. Commenting in August on Durov’s detention, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov highlighted the absurdity of holding the entrepreneur accountable for crimes committed using his network. Prosecuting Durov for these crimes would be the same as French authorities arresting the heads of Renault or Citroen because “terrorists also use cars,” Peskov argued.

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“In 2023, Tesla sold 1.8 million vehicles, while Toyota sold 11.2 million..”

“Year-to-date, Tesla’s stock is up 57%..”

Tesla’s Market Cap Nears Half Of Global Auto Industry (ZH)

Tesla shares just reached a new all-time high following Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, propelling the company to a massive $1.5 trillion valuation as of December 18, 2024. This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu, highlights the most valuable automakers by market cap worldwide as of Dec. 13, 2024, based on figures from CompaniesMarketCap.com.

Trailing far behind Tesla, the four other top automakers on the list are Toyota ($231 billion), BYD ($107 billion), Xiaomi ($98 billion), and Ferrari ($81 billion). Investors believe Elon Musk’s close relationship with Trump, along with Musk’s growing role in government, will serve as a powerful catalyst for Tesla. Additionally, some of the stock’s recent gains hinge on expectations that Trump’s planned corporate tax cuts will benefit U.S. manufacturers, including Tesla.

Tesla’s stock has also regained popularity due to investor expectations that its Robotaxi and Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology will drive a new phase of growth. Year-to-date, Tesla’s stock is up 57%. However, Tesla’s massive market cap is not reflected in its production numbers. In 2023, Tesla sold 1.8 million vehicles, while Toyota sold 11.2 million vehicles during the same period. Tesla’s success has further extended Elon Musk’s lead as the richest person on Earth. In December 2024, Musk’s net worth reached $462 billion, far ahead of Jeff Bezos in second place at $243 billion.

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“..slated to serve as national security adviser..”

Trump Adviser Says Ukraine Narrative Is Changing (RT)

The stances taken by EU and NATO nations on handling the Ukraine conflict have changed since Donald Trump won the US presidential elections in November, according to Representative Mike Waltz. “We’ve seen everybody’s narrative go from ‘As long as it tanks (sic), blank check, don’t dare say anything else, or you’re somehow pro-Russian’ to ‘How do we get this to a deal?’” the Florida lawmaker, who is slated to serve as national security adviser in the incoming administration, told political commentator Ben Shapiro on Sunday. The President-elect has made it clear the war must end, Waltz said.

He also emphasized that part of his role, along with Trump’s team, is to identify key players in peace negotiations, to bring them to the table, and to establish terms for a resolution that align with American interests. Waltz criticized the administration of outgoing President Joe Biden, saying it wanted more funding of its Ukraine policy, but declined to define the specific outcome that pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the conflict should produce. He also said he has been receiving questions from his constituents about that. ”Is it in America’s national interest to expect every Russian off of every inch of Ukraine, including Crimea? How long is that going to take? How much money is that going to cost? How many lives will be lost? Is that even a realistic goal at this point?” he quoted the inquiries, calling them “valid” and “something we’re certainly talking about.”

Crimea voted to reunite with Russia in 2014, following a US-backed armed coup in Kiev, which was rejected by people living in the peninsula. The government of Vladimir Zelensky is demanding full control of the Russian region in return for what the Ukrainian leader calls “just peace” with Moscow. Both Shapiro and Waltz claimed that Russia was seriously weakened by the fight against its NATO-backed embattled neighbour, giving Trump leverage on both Kiev and Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin stated last week that his nation’s military is in a very good shape, supported by a reinvigorated defense industry and military technology that the West cannot match.

The Shapiro-Waltz interview was focused on Trump putting pressure on nations that the US perceives as adversaries, primarily China, after he is inaugurated in January. ”One of the lessons we should learn from Ukraine is you don’t try to arm your allies after they’ve been invaded. You, maybe, arm them before to prevent the invasion in the first place,” Waltz mused, pledging more arms to the self-administered Chinese island of Taiwan. The increased arming of Kiev by NATO nations was one of the triggers that pushed tensions with Russia into open hostilities in February 2022, according to Moscow.

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“We’ve seen everybody’s narrative go from ‘As long as it [takes], blank check, don’t dare say anything else, or you’re somehow pro-Russian’ to ‘How do we get this to a deal?’” – Mike Waltz.

Kiev Increasingly Sees Conflict Ending In 2025 – WaPo (RT)

Ukrainian officials are “starting to believe” that the conflict with Russia will be resolved next year, a senior member of Vladimir Zelensky’s government has reportedly told the Washington Post. The shift in attitude is a direct result of US President-elect Donald Trump’s public talk of a settlement, the official added. Trump promised on the campaign trail to end the conflict within a day of taking office, although he has since admitted that doing so may take longer. The US president-elect has revealed few details about how he plans to achieve this, but media leaks and comments from his closest advisers suggest that he will push to freeze the fighting along the current line of contact, using the leverage of US military aid to Ukraine to force Zelensky into talks with Putin.

“I wouldn’t believe we’re anywhere close to negotiations” were it not for Trump’s repeated comments on peace talks, the official continued, adding: “I just don’t think it’s possible to come to any agreement with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.” Since 2022 Zelensky has maintained that no compromise is possible with Russia: first by insisting on restoring Ukraine’s 1991 borders by force, which would place Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions as well as Crimea under Kiev’s control; and by pushing a punitive ‘peace formula’ that would involve Russia agreeing to such a territorial change, paying reparations, and handing its officials over to face war crimes tribunals. Moscow has rejected outright all of Zelensky’s proposals.

However, the Ukrainian leader has recently abandoned his talk of “victory,” claiming instead that he wants a “just peace” coupled with security guarantees from the West in the form of NATO membership, with the status of the former Ukrainian regions undetermined. Moscow maintains that any settlement must begin with Ukraine ceasing military operations and acknowledging the “territorial reality” that it will never regain control of its former regions. In addition, the Kremlin insists that the goals of its military operation – which include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification – will be achieved. After meeting Zelensky in Paris earlier this month, Trump claimed that the Ukrainian leader “would like to make a deal and stop the madness.”

Zelensky immediately denied seeking a settlement, declaring that the conflict “cannot simply end with a piece of paper and a few signatures,” and that Putin “can only be stopped by strength.” Trump has since confirmed that he may cut military aid to Kiev once he takes office in January. “We’ve seen everybody’s narrative go from ‘As long as it [takes], blank check, don’t dare say anything else, or you’re somehow pro-Russian’ to ‘How do we get this to a deal?’” Trump’s nominee for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said in an interview on Sunday. Expecting “every Russian off of every inch of Ukraine, including Crimea?” might not be a “realistic goal at this point,” he added.

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This has NATO all over it.

Moldovan President Eyeing Attack On Russian Peacekeepers – Moscow (RT)

Moldovan President Maia Sandu has openly discussed planning a military operation to seize control of the breakaway region of Transnistria, which hosts a Russian peacekeeping contingent, Moscow’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has claimed. According to the agency, Sandu became “emotionally unstable” at a recent meeting with government officials over Ukraine’s decision to cut the flow of Russian gas to Moldova, triggering fears of an energy crisis in the EU candidate state. Kiev has refused to reopen talks with Moscow on any future transit, prompting Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico to accuse Ukraine of graft. The news met with reported exasperation in Moldova, which is heavily reliant on Russian gas.

In a statement on Monday, the SVR claimed that Sandu’s government is preparing to escalate tensions in the region, potentially targeting the Cuciurgan power plant, which supplies around 75% of Moldova’s electricity. According to the agency, Sandu has discussed removing Russian peacekeepers and reasserting Chisinau’s control. EU officials were allegedly “clutching their heads” and “do not know how to calm down the emotionally unstable Sandu,” according to the agency. Sandu “categorically refused to discuss this issue with Ukraine and unequivocally pinned the blame on Russia,” threatening to “take it out on Transnistria” if Moscow fails to deliver gas to Moldova.

She reportedly ordered criminal cases against the breakaway region’s leaders for “separatism” and instructed officials to harass residents crossing the border. The SVR claimed the EU is deeply alarmed by Sandu’s alleged plans. “The meeting ended with Sandu discussing the need for a military operation to seize control over Transnistria and remove Russian peacekeepers,” leaving EU officials visibly shocked, the SVR alleged. Transnistria declared independence from Moldova in the early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. A brief war in 1992 ended with a ceasefire and the deployment of around 400 Russian peacekeepers.

Moldova does not recognize Transnistria’s independence and has periodically sought to reintegrate the territory. Sandu, who won Moldova’s presidency in 2024 after a contentious election, has previously faced criticism from Moscow, which accused her government of obstructing the voting rights of citizens of the country who live in Russia. Moldovan officials have not responded to the SVR’s latest claims, and no independent confirmation of the allegations has been made. Transnistrian authorities and international observers have yet to comment on the situation.

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“Weidel accused the EU of destroying the German auto industry, the country’s economic pillar, and proposed winding back the bloc to a free-trade zone..”

AfD Chancellor Candidate Tops German Poll – Bild (RT)

The co-leader of the right-wing AfD (Alternative for Germany) party, Alice Weidel, is ahead of her rivals in the campaign to become the next chancellor, according to the latest survey conducted by the INSA polling institute for Bild. The results of the poll, published by the tabloid newspaper on Sunday, showed that Weidel has the support of 24% of respondents, putting her ahead of the leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Friedrich Merz, who received 20%. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who represents the Social Democratic Party (SPD), was reportedly backed by 15% of respondents. His coalition partner and Green Party leader, Robert Habeck, was favored by 14%.

The AfD named Weidel, 45, as its first chancellor candidate on December 7, setting out the bid for power ahead of snap elections scheduled for February 23. Weidel is due to be confirmed as the AfD’s nominee at a party conference next month. In an interview with Bloomberg last week, Weidel accused the EU of destroying the German auto industry, the country’s economic pillar, and proposed winding back the bloc to a free-trade zone. Earlier this month, the AfD stated in its draft election manifesto that Germany should leave the bloc and the euro in Brexit-like fashion, calling for a referendum on the issue.

AfD membership has swelled by 50% to about 50,600 over the past year, the party’s spokesperson told Reuters earlier his month. That number, however, only represents about 14% of the membership of Germany’s biggest parties, the CDU/CSU conservative bloc and the SPD. In recent years, right-wing, anti-immigration parties have gained traction across the EU, coming to power in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, and Slovakia.

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“People do not like to admit it, but they like being angry.”

The Joy is Gone: A Liberal Hate-Fest for the Holidays (Turley)

“May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.” Those words, from Disney’s new Snow White actress Rachel Zegler, came shortly after half of the country, roughly 77 million Americans, voted for Donald Trump. Only a few weeks ago, Kamala Harris and her supporters were rallying the country to choose “love over hate.” Now, the “joy” is gone. Tis the season of the liberal hate-fest. As Washington prepares for the inauguration, we are seeing a return to rage. During the first Trump administration, liberal servers and restaurant owners pledged not to serve Trump officials. Now, the Washingtonian is reporting on the planned resumption of the harassment of those serving in the Trump administration. Zac Hoffman, manager at the National Democratic Club and “D.C. restaurant veteran,” told the magazine that abusing conservatives was only natural and understandable:

“You expect the masses to just ignore RFK eating at Le Diplomate on a Sunday morning after a few mimosas and not to throw a drink in his face?” One bartender stated that Trump people may “theoretically [have] the power to take away your rights, but I have the power to make you wait 20 minutes to get your entrée.” Suzannah Van Rooy, a server and manager at Beuchert’s Saloon on Capitol Hill, declared that she would not serve some Trump officials. “It’s not, ‘Oh, we hate Republicans,’” she said. “It’s that this person has moral convictions that are strongly opposed to mine, and I don’t feel comfortable serving them.” Beuchert’s later fired Van Rooy. This campaign of hate is all too familiar to conservatives.

Many remember when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family were kicked out of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. As others were denied service or chased from restaurants, Democratic members like Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, supported such harassment. For those restaurants not willing to follow the Red Hen model, the response was equally unhinged. Mariya Rusciano runs a D.C. pizza restaurant. She posted congratulations to Trump on X after the election to encourage everyone to come together as a nation. The response from Democrats was furious, filled with pledges to boycott the restaurant and force it out of business. It is not just service and civility that are scarce in Washington.

Even while accusing Trump of putting his political and personal interests ahead of the nation, Biden is now reportedly moving to veto a bipartisan bill to relieve pressure on our overwhelmed court system. The Judges Act, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, would add 66 new judgeships to an over-worked court system. The White House supported the bill right up until Trump won the election. While some Democrats are still trying to get the White House to change its mind, liberal groups are applauding the expected veto “to prevent President Trump from having more vacancies.” If Biden carries out his threat, it will be not only gratuitous but illogical. The bill deliberately staggers the addition of judges over the next decade so that presidents of both parties will presumably be able to appoint them.

Moreover, the Senate is still closely divided, and “blue-slipping” (whereby senators can hold up some nominations) remains in effect. More importantly, the reason for this bipartisan effort is due to a dire need for our courts. Judges are drowning in dockets with rising caseloads. In 2004, the number of cases in district court pending for more than three years was 18,280. This year, there are 81,617. If justice delayed is justice denied, our court system is becoming a tar pit of injustice, with litigants left without verdicts or relief for years.

The word of the intended veto stripped away any pretense of the White House putting the public interest before politics. A veto would put rage before reason. In my recent book, I discussed how addictive rage is. People do not like to admit it, but they like being angry. Sometimes, people can choose madness as a release from reality. It offers a righteous license to slip from the bounds of civility and decency. It allows people to harass Republicans in restaurants or to scream profanities outside of their homes. It allows a president to say that he might block judgeships for a struggling court system, just because he does not want his successor to make any of the appointments. It is the reason 41 percent of adults under 30 believe that killing others, like healthcare executives, is justified, according to an Emerson College poll.

We cannot seem to shake this rage addiction even after an election or during a holiday committed to peace and understanding. One liberal site, Crooked Media, is actually selling holiday items featuring the violent extremist group Antifa — one of the most anti-free speech groups in history, which routinely attacks journalists, speakers, and conservative demonstrators. Created by former Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor, the Crooked Media site is selling a line of Antifa items for liberals, including Antifa onesies for infants and “Antifa Dad” shirts to seemingly celebrate political violence. It seems the joy, bipartisanship, and civility have all expired like last year’s eggnog. Even Disney’s new Snow White seems to have taken the cue from the Evil Queen and treated this election as “a blast of wind to fan my hate.” And we are not even at the inauguration yet.

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“Western Europe faces a growing contradiction: its political insignificance clashes with its still-considerable material wealth and intellectual legacy.”

Half of the West Is Doomed: Here’s Why (Timofey Bordachev)

Only a few years ago, most of Western Europe seemed like a fortress of stability in international politics. With robust economies, solid social systems, and the grand edifice of “European integration,” it gave an impression of permanence, impervious even to major geopolitical upheavals. Now, however, it has become an inexhaustible source of peculiar headlines and confusion. We see endless talk of sending “European peacekeepers” to Ukraine, drawn-out dramas over forming a government in France, or pre-election storms in a teacup in Germany. There are attempts to meddle in the Middle East, and above all, a deluge of irresponsible, often meaningless statements from Western European politicians. For outsiders, these developments provoke a mix of bemusement and concern. In Russia, the Western side of our shared continent’s apparent decline is met with suspicion but also a certain sadness.

For centuries, Western Europe has been both an existential threat and a source of inspiration for Russia. Peter the Great famously reformed the country to borrow the best from European thoughts and culture. In the 20th century, the Soviet Union, despite great sacrifices, secured victory over Nazi Germany during World War II. And for many Russians, Western Europe has long been an “Eden,” offering respite from what were often harsh realities back home. But a Western Europe that is economically unstable, politically chaotic, and intellectually stagnant is no longer the same as what once inspired reforms or envy. It’s no longer a place Russia can look to as a neighbor worth emulating or even fearing. For most of the world, Western Europe’s problems provoke only curiosity. Major powers like China and India are happy to trade with its various countries and benefit from its technology and investment.

But if Western Europe were to disappear from the global stage tomorrow, it wouldn’t disrupt their plans for the future. These nations are vast civilizations in their own right, historically shaped far more by internal dynamics than by European influence. Meanwhile, African and Arab nations still view Western Europe through the lens of colonialism. For them, its decline is of material interest but little emotional consequence. Türkiye sees European countries as prey, aging and weakened rivals. Even the United States, a supposed ally, approaches the continent’s crises with a businesslike detachment, focused solely on how to maximize its own interests at Europe’s expense. It’s tempting to blame Western Europe’s odd behavior on the degeneration of its elites. After decades under US patronage, its leaders have lost the ability to think critically or strategically.

The end of the Cold War allowed them to govern without serious competition, leading to complacency and mediocrity. Many of the brightest minds went into business, leaving politics to those less capable. As a result, Western European foreign policy departments now resemble provincial bureaucracies, out of touch with global realities. The expansion of the EU in the early 2000s, which brought in several small former Eastern European nations, only exacerbated this problem. Their provincial outlook often dominates discussions, reducing complex issues to simplistic, parochial concerns. Today, Western Europe’s politicians are adept at convincing the world – and perhaps even themselves – of their own incompetence. But the root of the problem runs deeper. Western Europe faces a growing contradiction: its political insignificance clashes with its still-considerable material wealth and intellectual legacy.

For centuries, its countries have accumulated vast resources and developed unparalleled intellectual traditions. Yet its strategic irrelevance renders these assets useless. Even France’s nuclear arsenal, once a symbol of power, now garners little respect on the world stage. Germany, the EU’s economic powerhouse, exemplifies this impotence. Despite its wealth, it has failed to translate economic strength into political influence, even over its own affairs. The destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline in 2022, allegedly at the hands of its American allies, symbolizes the bloc’s inability to defend its interests or hold its partners accountable. The United Kingdom, often touted as Western Europe’s most active foreign policy player, plays this role largely under American patronage. Brexit, for all its drama, did little to change this dynamic.

More than 100 years after the First World War dismantled Europe’s empires, the continent finds itself with resources it can no longer wield. The EU’s most recent foreign policy “victory” — the difficult absorption of impoverished Moldova — highlights its limitations. Meanwhile, Georgia, with its defiant government, remains beyond Brussels’ grasp. Even in the Balkans, the EU’s influence is limited to countries subdued by NATO and completely encircled by the US-led geopolitical order.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of modern Western Europe is its lack of reflection. Even the continent’s intellectual elite seems to live behind a wall of denial, detached from reality. This attitude extends to domestic politics, where the rise of non-mainstream parties is dismissed as voters “choosing the wrong way.” In foreign policy, its leaders continue to act as though their opinions still shape global politics, despite clear evidence to the contrary. The EU states march on, oblivious to their diminishing power and the shifting global environment. In theory, such persistence might seem admirable. But world politics is not a Glass Bead Game, as Hermann Hesse would have put it, and clinging to outdated behaviors will only hasten Western Europe’s decline. At some point, even its vast material and intellectual wealth will no longer be enough to sustain it.

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“..their ‘true-believers’… in the Sunni identitarian diaspora haven’t yet clocked that they’ve been sold out – as was always the plan..”

The “King-Makers” Pull The Rug From Syria, Yet Again… (Alastair Crooke)

James Jeffrey, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, in a March 2021 interview with PBS Frontline, laid out very plainly the template for what has just happened in Syria this month: “Syria, given its size, its strategic location, its historical importance, is the pivot point for whether [there can be] an American-managed security system in the region … And so you’ve got this general alliance that is locked in with us. But … the stress point is greatest in Syria”. Jeffrey explained (in the 2021 interview) why the U.S. shifted its to support to Jolani and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS): “We got Mike Pompeo to issue a waiver to allow us to give aid to HTS – I received and sent messages to HTS” -The messages coming back from HTS were: “We [HTS] want to be your friend. We’re not terrorists. We’re just fighting Assad””.

The PBS Frontline interviewer asks: The U.S. was “supporting indirectly the armed opposition”? To which Jeffrey responds: “It was important to us that HTS not disintegrate … our policy was … was to leave HTS alone … And the fact that we haven’t targeted [HTS] ever, the fact that we have never raised our voice to the Turks about their cohabitation with them — in fact, I used this example the last time I was talking to very senior Turks – when they started bitching about this relationship we [the U.S.] have with the SDF [in eastern Syria]”. “I said to them, “Look, Turkey has always maintained that you want us in northeast Syria, which they do. But you don’t understand. We can’t be in northeast Syria without the platform, because we only have hundreds of troops there”; … I said: “It’s just like you in Idlib …”.

“We want you to be in Idlib, but you can’t be in Idlib without having a platform, and that platform is largely HTS. Now, unlike the SDF, HTS is a UN-designated official terrorist organisation. Have I ever, or has any American official ever, complained to you about what you’re doing there with HTS? No …”. David Miller, a British academic, has noted that in 2015, prominent Syrian Sunni Muslim scholar, Shaykh al-Yaqoubi (who is anti-Assad), was unconvinced by Jolani’s efforts to rebrand Al Qa’ida as Jabhat al-Nusra. Jolani, in his al-2013 Al-Jazeera interview twice confirmed his allegiance to al-Qa’ida, saying that he received orders from its leader, Dr Ayman [al-Zawahiri] … and those were to not target the West. He confirmed his own position as being that of hardline intolerance toward those who practiced a ‘heretical’ Islam.

Miller comments: “While ISIS put on suits; allowed Syria to be carved up by the U.S.; preach peace with the Zionist state; want free markets; and cut gas deals with their regional patrons – their ‘true-believers’… in the Sunni identitarian diaspora haven’t yet clocked that they’ve been sold out – as was always the plan”. “In private, the planners of this war in NATO states laugh about sending young Salafi cannon fodder from around the world into a meat grinder. The $2000 salaries are a mere speck of sand compared to the gas and construction wealth that is expected to be returned to Turkish, Qatari, Israeli and American coffers. They killed Palestine for this, and they’ll spend the next 30 years justifying it, based on whatever line the very expensive PR firms hired by the NATO and Gulf states shill to them…The Syrian regime change operation is the rug pull of the century”.

Of course, James Jeffrey’s account was nothing new. Between 1979 and 1992, the CIA spent billions of dollars funding, arming, and training Afghan Mujahideen militia (like Osama bin Laden) in an attempt to bleed the USSR dry by pulling it into a quagmire. It was from the ranks of the Mujahideen that al-Qa’eda emerged. “And yet, by the 2010s, even as the U.S. was ostensibly at war with al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan – it was secretly working with it – in Syria on a plan to overthrow Assad. The CIA spent around $1 billion per year training and arming a wide network of rebel groups to this end. As Jake Sullivan, told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a leaked 2012 email, “AQ [al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria”, as Alan Macleod observes in Consortium News.

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A whole list of alleged criminal activities they had ready to go after him, and keep him from becoming AG. But not one single charge.

“Not even a campaign finance violation. And the people investigating me hated me,” Gaetz wrote..”

House Ethics Committee Releases Its Report Into Matt Gaetz (ET)

The House Ethics Committee unveiled its report into the past conduct of former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) on Dec. 23 after he filed a last-minute lawsuit in federal court to block its release. “The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” panel investigators wrote in the report. Gaetz has denied wrongdoing. The committee voted on Dec. 10 on whether to release the report publicly. Several members voted against releasing the report but the majority were in favor of its release. The report alleges that Gaetz paid tens of thousands of dollars to women for drugs or sex in at least 20 instances but that investigators did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that Gaetz had violated the federal sex trafficking statute.

The report noted that Gaetz had declined a voluntary interview. The committee investigators wrote that they found substantial evidence that Gaetz regularly paid women for sexual activity between 2017 and 2020. The report alleges he engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl in 2017; possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and MDMA, also known as ecstasy, between 2017 and 2019; accepted gifts, including transportation and lodging related to a 2018 Bahamas trip; and sought to impede and obstruct the committee’s investigation. The committee cited potential violations of federal and state laws, including regulations that prohibit obstruction of Congress and tampering with witnesses in a congressional proceeding, and Florida law that makes unauthorized possession of controlled substances a criminal offense.

The committee said the Department of Justice originally instructed it to defer its review until the department had completed its investigation. In February 2023 the committee resuming its investigation after the DOJ closed its investigation into Gaetz without bringing charges. Gaetz said in a Dec. 18 post on X that he was fully exonerated. “Not even a campaign finance violation. And the people investigating me hated me,” Gaetz wrote. “In my single days, I often sent funds to women I dated—even some I never dated but who asked. I dated several of these women for years. I NEVER had sexual contact with someone under 18. Any claim that I have would be destroyed in court—which is why no such claim was ever made in court. It’s embarrassing, though not criminal, that I probably partied, womanized, drank, and smoked more than I should have earlier in life. I live a different life now.”

After resigning from Congress last month following his nomination by President-elect Donald Trump for U.S. attorney general, Gaetz on Dec. 23 filed the lawsuit, which asks the judge to issue an emergency order to block the committee from releasing the report. Now that Gaetz has resigned from Congress, he argued in the lawsuit that the House Ethics Committee is reaching beyond its constitutional authority because it lacks jurisdiction over him as a private citizen. His attorneys maintain the report includes “untruthful and defamatory information” that could “significantly damage” Gaetz’s standing and reputation. Gaetz’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, names the Ethics Committee and its chair, Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.), as defendants.

“The Committee’s apparent intention to release its report after explicitly acknowledging it lacks jurisdiction over former members, its failure to follow constitutional notions of due process, and failure to adhere to its own procedural rules and precedent represents an unprecedented overreach that threatens fundamental constitutional rights and established procedural protections,” Gaetz’s attorneys wrote. The committee has said its singular mission is to “protect the integrity of the House.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1871385251718533349

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There are tons of people who want to abolish the death penalty. But a president cannot say ‘I don’t like this law, so I’ll circumvent it’. Only Congress can make/change laws. That makes this a scary precedent.

Biden Commutes Sentences Of Dozens On Death Row (ZH)

President Joe Biden on Monday announced that he is commuting the sentences of 37 out of 40 prisoners currently sitting on the federal government’s death row – which will reclassify their sentences to life without the possibility of parole. The three men who were not spared for “terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder” are: “Robert D. Bowers, 52, who in 2018 gunned down 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dylann Roof, 30, who opened fire on Black parishioners in 2015 at a church in Charleston, SC, killing nine people; and Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 31. The decision comes weeks before Biden is set to leave office.

“I’ve dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system,” Biden said in a statement – before suggesting that the US must abolish the death penalty at the federal level except in cases of terrorism and mass murder. “Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden continued. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”

[..] As the Epoch Times notes further, President-elect Donald Trump made it clear during his campaign that he would resume the death penalty and expand its use to include child rapists and illegal immigrants who kill U.S. citizens and law enforcement officers. Biden’s commutations are final and cannot be overturned. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” the president said in his statement. In July 2020, President Trump’s Justice Department resumed federal executions after a 17-year pause. During the final six months of his first term, Trump oversaw the execution of 13 federal death row prisoners. After Biden took office, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memorandum in July 2021, imposing a moratorium on all federal executions.

“The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely,” Garland said. “That obligation has special force in capital cases.” In his statement, Biden said his decision was consistent with the moratorium his Justice Department has imposed on federal executions. Among the individuals whose sentences have been commuted to life imprisonment are Jorge Torrez, a former Marine convicted in 2014 for the killing of a fellow service member; Thomas Sanders convicted in 2014 for the killing of a 12-year-old girl; and Kaboni Savage, a drug dealer convicted in 2013 for his role in the deaths of 12 people.

In recent weeks, the president faced increasing pressure from civil rights groups to commute federal death sentences, a campaign promise he made in 2020, before Trump takes office. The announcement, made just before Christmas, is also significant for Pope Francis, who recently urged Biden to commute the sentences of death row inmates. “Today, I feel compelled to ask all of you to pray for the inmates on death row in the United States,” the Pope said in his weekly address in early December. “Let us pray that their sentences may be commuted or changed. Let us think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord for the grace to save them from death.” Biden spoke with the Pope on Dec. 19 and scheduled to meet with him during his trip to Italy from Jan. 9 to 12, according to the White House.

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Santa’s helper
https://twitter.com/i/status/1871091668994425135

 

 

Joke

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Dec 112024
 


Johannes Vermeer Woman holding a balance 1662-63

 

Pressure Mounts For Support Of Trump’s Cabinet Picks During Honeymoon (JTN)
250 Conservative Veterans Sign Letter Backing Tulsi Gabbard Nomination (Hill)
Pete Hegseth Lashes Out At Media ‘Smear’ Campaign (RT)
Pete Hegseth Will Be Confirmed As Secretary of Defense, Predicts His Lawyer (JTN)
DOJ Spied On Kash Patel, Staffers Without Telling Courts (JTN)
How Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Plans To Keep Trump Case Alive (ZH)
Giuliani Says Jury Verdict In Penny’s Case Is A Black Eye To Bragg (JTN)
Russia Close To Winning Ukraine Conflict – Spy Chief (RT)
Obstruction of Immigration Enforcement Could Prove Costly for Citizens (Turley)
Bernie Sanders Says Musk Is Right On Military Spending (JTN)
Boeing Reportedly Restarts 737 Max Production (ZH)
State Dep. Scrambles To Scuttle $100M Censorship Network Before Trump (ZH)
Putin-the-Unready Is Beginning to be Held Accountable (Paul Craig Roberts)
Elon Musk Jokes Bill Gates Could Go “Bankrupt” On Short Tesla Bet (ZH)
SCOTUS Asked to Block State From Probing Doctors Who Question COVID Policies (ET)
Western Conservatives Find Asylum In The Russian Federation (SCF)

 

 

 

 

Newt

Judge+Sachs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866257322798100761

Putin

Freak out

Elon AI

 

 

 

 

“..the first Democrat to join the House’s newly-formed DOGE caucus..”

Pressure Mounts For Support Of Trump’s Cabinet Picks During Honeymoon (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump seems to finally be enjoying the honeymoon period he didn’t get after his 2016 victory, with Democrats publicly expressing willingness to work with him on key initiatives and public polling showing broad approval of his plans. After winning the White House the first time, Trump didn’t experience the traditional polling bump and sense of public optimism that often comes with a new president. The post-2024 transition period, however, has been discernibly different. In a recent Rasmussen Reports survey, 55% of voters expressed the belief that Trump’s election win had given him a mandate to implement his agenda, while 32% disagreed and 13% were unsure. A separate Napolitan Institute survey, found that 53% approved of how Trump is handling the transition while 43% disapproved.

As he goes to war with some Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans over his Cabinet nominees, public support for his agenda seems to be giving him momentum to push through the controversial personnel picks who will implement it. Some Democrats, moreover, have expressed openness to specific nominees and interest in participating in some of his initiatives. The incoming commander-in-chief has repeatedly pointed to his landslide electoral victory that saw him carry both the Electoral College and the popular vote to support claims of a mandate for change. To that end, he has selected nominees for key departments with unconventional backgrounds and has rattled upper chamber lawmakers in doing so. The confirmation hearings won’t begin until January, but in the meantime, lawmakers face a pressure campaign from Trump supporters to get on board with his efforts.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., last week became the first Democrat to join the House’s newly-formed DOGE caucus, a group of lawmakers dedicated to trimming the size of the government and working with Trump’s planned Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “I’ve been clear that there are ways we can reorganize our government to make it work better for the American people,” he said at the time. “The Caucus should look at the bureaucracy that the DHS has become and include recommendations to make Secret Service and FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] independent federal agencies with a direct report to the White House.” Potentially driving lawmakers like Moskowitz to get on board with the DOGE agenda is public polling data suggesting it enjoys broad support. The Napolitan survey also found that 52% of Americans approve of the way Trump is managing the transition.

Some of the specific proposals from DOGE co-leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, such as bringing federal employees back to the office, have majority support. Fifty-seven percent of Americans backed requiring federal employees to cease remote work, while just 28% opposed the move in the Napolitan survey. Fifty-three percent backed firing those who refused to work in-person. Another 60% supported moving some federal agencies out of the Washington, D.C., area. The public is, at best, cautiously optimistic about DOGE’s prospects, even if they support its efforts. Only 45% think the new department can “easily eliminate” trillions in waste. Forty-nine percent think eliminating waste fraud and abuse will balance the budget.

At least some of Trump’s cabinet picks seem to have picked up support from upper chamber Democrats, notably Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., whom he tapped for Secretary of State. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., had positive words for the Florida Republican, as did other lawmakers across the aisle. “Unsurprisingly, the other team’s pick will have political differences than my own,” Fetterman said. “That being said, my colleague [Rubio] is a strong choice and I look forward to voting for his confirmation.” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., moreover, has also expressed interest in Rubio’s potential confirmation. “I look forward to talking to him. You know, Marco Rubio, you have strange bedfellows, and you have strange alliances,” she said.

Fetterman also expressed openness to Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Oz and Fetterman squared off for one of the Keystone State’s Senate seats in 2022. Fetterman insisted he doesn’t have “any kind of bitterness” toward Oz and was “open to dialogue” on the issues relevant to CMS. To be sure, Democrats haven’t signed up to back some of his more contentious nominees. Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, R, had to drop his bid for Attorney General in the face of intransigent Democrats and moderate Republicans who refused to support him.Now, Defense Secretary-designate Pete Hegseth faces uncertain prospects as Democrats largely oppose him and some of the same Republicans concerned with Gaetz have not committed to his confirmation.

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“A warrior whose vote cannot be bought, and whose integrity cannot be folded,” the letter reads. “We are honored to call her one of our own.”

250 Conservative Veterans Sign Letter Backing Tulsi Gabbard Nomination (Hill)

More than 250 veterans have signed a letter supporting former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), President-elect Trump’s nominee to be director of national intelligence. The letter offers a fierce defense of Gabbard’s “lifelong devotion to service” and blasts critics who call into question her loyalty. “We are appalled by the baseless attacks questioning Tulsi’s loyalty to our great nation. For over 20 years and across multiple combat deployments, Tulsi has risked her life to defend the safety, security and freedom of the American people,” the letter reads. “These attacks insult not only her, but every one of us veterans who have served our country.” The support comes as Gabbard faces growing scrutiny for her past comments on Moscow and her 2017 visit with the former Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad.

Gabbard — who served in the House for eight years as a Democrat — has made remarks about the Russia-Ukraine war that were sympathetic to Moscow and echoed by Russian state news, which has praised her nomination. In the Middle East, Gabbard visited Syria in 2017 and said Assad was not an enemy of the U.S. — though she later labeled him a “brutal dictator.” The remarks have gained renewed attention in recent days, as the Syrian government collapsed and Assad was driven out of the country by rebels. The letter comes days after a group of nearly 100 former national security officials issued their own letter about Gabbard, urging the Senate to “carefully scrutinize” the former congresswoman. They raised concerns about her experience level, her past comments and meeting with Assad, and that she has “publicly cast doubt on U.S. intelligence reports.”

“Her sympathy for dictators like Vladimir Putin and Assad raises questions about her judgment and fitness,” the letter last week read. The veterans, in their letter Monday, push back against “so-called ‘experts’ in Washington” who have criticized Gabbard, saying their attacks are “baseless lies and smears.” “Unable and unwilling to challenge the substance of her views, her critics resort to baseless lies and smears, exposing the weakness of their arguments,” the letter reads. “Tulsi’s patriotism, shaped on the battlefield, mirrors the values and aspirations of the American people far more than the failed policies of so-called ‘experts’ in Washington, who have been part of the problem for too long.”

The veterans praise Trump in the letter for selecting Gabbard as the nominee, saying, “As Director of National Intelligence, she will be a fearless reformer and a true patriot, ensuring that the intelligence apparatus serves the American people and protects our Republic.” “We are deeply grateful to President Trump for appointing Tulsi Gabbard to this critical role and proud to stand beside her—a leader whose courage and convictions we know firsthand. A warrior whose vote cannot be bought, and whose integrity cannot be folded,” the letter reads. “We are honored to call her one of our own.” The letter was signed by former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, both of whom served for short periods of time in the first Trump administration. Reps. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) and Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) signed the letter, as did Rep.-elect Abe Hamadeh (R-Ariz.).

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“They take something, then add anonymous sources, and contortions, and flat-out lies and then they try to try you in the media..”

Pete Hegseth Lashes Out At Media ‘Smear’ Campaign (RT)

Donald Trump’s nominee to be US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has accused the media of staging a libel-based show trial to prevent him from becoming the next Pentagon chief. The US president-elect’s naming of Hegseth has led to a series of negative news reports that have raised questions about his fitness for the job and likelihood of being confirmed by the Senate. Among the accusations leveled at the army veteran and television presenter are alcohol abuse and sexual misconduct. In 2017, then Fox News host Hegseth was accused of raping an unnamed woman after a Republican convention in California. Police investigated the claim and did not file any charges. It was reported recently that Hegseth paid the woman an undisclosed sum, and both parties signed a confidentiality agreement. In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Hegseth insisted that “the left” is trying to use the case to stage a show trial in the media.

”This is what the left does… It’s the anatomy of a smear. They take something, then add anonymous sources, and contortions, and flat-out lies and then they try to try you in the media before you can even get into the doors with senators,” he said.Hegseth went on to say that Trump urged him to “keep fighting” and “stand up for the change that needs to come to the Defense Department.” During his re-election campaign, Trump accused the Democrats of damaging America’s standing on the world stage and vowed to restore the country’s prestige under a “peace through strength” banner.Under the US constitution, presidential appointments to significant offices must be confirmed by the upper chamber of the US Congress, the Senate. Historically, the Senate has confirmed most nominations, with only three exceptions in the past 100 years.

Hegseth

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“The most effective army is the one that the enemy does not want to face on the battle [field]..”

Pete Hegseth Will Be Confirmed As Secretary of Defense, Predicts His Lawyer (JTN)

Timothy Parlatore, the attorney for Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, on Monday said that he believes his client has enough support in the Senate to get him confirmed early next year. President-elect Donald Trump nominated Hegseth, a former Fox News host, for the position last month, but reports of allegations of sexual misconduct and heavy drinking have threatened to derail his confirmation. Parlatore said that the nominee has had some positive discussions with Republican senators in recent weeks that have focused on policy, which have helped them feel more confident in confirming Hegseth. The lawyer did not have a specific count for how many Republicans are now on board with Hegseth, but said his team was “feeling very good” about the numbers.

The attorney also said that Hegseth had a good discussion with Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, who described the conversation on Monday as “encouraging.” “I think that once … you kind of strip away all of the anonymous, you know, fake claims, then that gives him the opportunity to sit down with Senator Ernst and others and start talking about policy,” Parlatore said on the “Just The News, No Noise” TV Show. “Let’s talk about what we’re going to actually do to improve the Pentagon. And I think that that is one place where the two of them really have found common ground.” Parlatore said that some of the policy ideas that Hegseth has would get “politics” out of the Defense Department, and that he is focused on returning the department to military readiness and projecting a strong military to deter enemies from attacking. “The most effective army is the one that the enemy does not want to face on the battle [field],” Parlatore said.

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“.. because the DOJ sought court approval ex parte to keep its surveillance secret, he wasn’t alerted until earlier this fall, six years after the initial subpoena.”

DOJ Spied On Kash Patel, Staffers Without Telling Courts (JTN)

The Justice Department spied on two House members and and several congressional staffers in a leak investigation without telling the courts, the agency’s inspector general found in a sweeping investigation released Tuesday. As a result, the department obtained phone records from the two members of Congress and 43 staff members including President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, who worked as a staffer on the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee at the time. The department initiated the probe to investigate leaks to the media of FBI classified information as part of the now-discredited Trump-Russia probe which had recently been shared with Congress.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that the Justice Department, in filings with the court, did not reference “the fact that they related to requests for records of Members of Congress or congressional staffers,” despite implicating constitutional separation of powers between two government branches. Patel, who is poised to become the new director of the FBI if confirmed, previously sued former Trump Justice Department officials and FBI Director Christopher Wray, accusing them of violating his Fourth Amendment right to protection from unreasonable searches and seizures when they tried to obtain Patel’s personal records, Just the News previously reported. Patel said he was completely unaware of the subpoena until December 2022, when Google notified him about it.

Another former staffer, Jason Foster, previously told Just the News that he confirmed that the government successfully asked a federal court to hide its spying on Congress for five consecutive years. Foster is now the head of the Empower Oversight whistleblower center. In 2017 at the time of the secret surveillance, he was the chief investigative counsel for Sen. Chuck Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The seizure of his personal data occurred in 2017 while he worked for the Senate, and ordinarily under the original court order, Foster would have been notified a year later. But because the DOJ sought court approval ex parte to keep its surveillance secret, he wasn’t alerted until earlier this fall, six years after the initial subpoena.

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He should not be allowed to keep this hanging over Trump’s head.

How Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Plans To Keep Trump Case Alive (ZH)

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg – who had a Biden DOJ plant in his legal case against former President Donald Trump – is trying to ensure his hush money case doesn’t vanish into thin air as Trump prepares for his return to the White House. According to court filings revealed Tuesday, Bragg’s office is fiercely opposed to dismissing the case outright but is open to pausing proceedings while Trump serves his second term as president. The 82-page legal brief, prosecutors’ most detailed argument yet, stops short of recommending an explicit course of action but outlines several ways to keep the case alive. Among them: delaying sentencing until after Trump leaves office in 2029 or freezing the case while leaving the jury’s guilty verdict intact, The Hill reports.

“The extreme remedy of dismissing the indictment and vacating the jury verdict is not warranted in light of multiple alternative accommodations that would fully address the concerns raised by presidential immunity,” wrote Assistant District Attorney Christopher Conroy. The filing comes as Trump, now president-elect, wages a legal battle to quash the 34 felony charges stemming from hush money payments to an adult film star. Trump’s lawyers claim his status as president-elect grants him immunity and demands immediate dismissal. Prosecutors, however, aren’t buying it. They argue that immunity doesn’t apply until Trump is inaugurated, meaning the case could theoretically proceed to sentencing before January 20, 2025 — a prospect Trump has vowed to fight tooth and nail. Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial, will now decide the case’s fate, with a ruling expected any day.

The DA’s office acknowledged the complications of prosecuting a sitting president but stopped short of saying the case should be completely shelved. Trump was convicted by a Manhattan Jury ‘of his peers’ on 34 counts of falsifying business records, however his reelection to the highest office in the land has put a damper on prosecutors’ plans. Sentencing was initially scheduled for last month, only to be postponed indefinitely by Judge Merchan, making it increasingly unlikely Trump will face punishment anytime soon. That would leave open the possibility that Trump could still proceed to sentencing in 2029, after he leaves office. Alternatively, state prosecutors said the judge could terminate the case without tossing Trump’s conviction, noting a jury verdict removed the presumption of innocence, he was never sentenced and his conviction was “neither affirmed nor reversed” on appeal because of presidential immunity. -The Hill

Trump’s legal team is crying foul, claiming the prosecution disrupts his transition efforts and his ability to govern effectively. “Wrongly continuing proceedings in this failed lawfare case disrupts President Trump’s transition efforts and his preparations to wield the full Article II executive power authorized by the Constitution pursuant to the overwhelming national mandate granted to him by the American people on November 5, 2024,” Trump’s attorneys fumed in a recent filing. Prosecutors hit back, accusing Trump of using delay tactics to muddy the waters. “Having filed those motions to dismiss and then sought repeated adjournments of sentencing to permit their determination by this Court, it is particularly brazen for defendant to argue that the Supremacy Clause bars the Court from taking any action on the motions defendant himself filed,” Conroy wrote.

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“.. the judge had wanted the jury to convict Penny, but that jurors, who ride the subways, understood Penny acted to save others.”

Giuliani Says Jury Verdict In Penny’s Case Is A Black Eye To Bragg (JTN)

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Monday night claimed that a New York City jury sent a strong message to the city’s ruling elite by finding Daniel Penny clear of any wrongdoing in the death of Jordan Neely. Penny, a former Marine, was acquitted by the Manhattan jury earlier Monday, after he kneeled on Neely’s neck on a subway last year, which prosecutors argued resulted in the man’s death. The jury was deadlocked on a more serious charge last week, which resulted in the charge being dismissed, but they only debated the lesser charge briefly on Monday before finding Penny innocent. Giuliani said that the verdict was a “shocker” given how fast it was reached, but that it was “great day … for justice.” He also claimed the judge had wanted the jury to convict Penny, but that jurors, who ride the subways, understood Penny acted to save others.

“The jury of New Yorkers, and they ride the subways and you can be the most left wing wacko [but] you ride the subways, you’re scared,” Giuliani said on the “Just The News, No Noise” TV show. “And Penny, they know Penny did the right thing. This is a person to person, human reaction above the heads of the fools that have run the city for so long. The crazy, silly, criminal-loving liberals.” Giuliani also said that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg should have resigned or been removed from office the second he claimed he would not prosecute people “for beating up cops” or “resisting arrest.” “He’s probably not prosecuted half the cases that come before him,” Giuliani said. “He’s responsible for any number of murders in New York, and beatings. There are probably seven to 10,000 criminals walking the streets of New York that would not [be] if I were the mayor or Mike Bloomberg and Ray Kelly.”

The former mayor added that Neely, who has a history of mental illness and had been arrested himself in the past, should not have been on the street to begin with. “The person who caused this is number one, the New York system, and then the people who didn’t deal with his mental illness,” Giuliani said. “Mr. Penny didn’t have anything to do with this. He just tried to save people. [Neely’s] father had years to try to save us from this guy, and didn’t do a damn thing.”

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“..the regime of Vladimir Zelensky has completely lost its legitimacy and, as a result, its ability to be negotiated with.”

Russia Close To Winning Ukraine Conflict – Spy Chief (RT)

Kiev’s military is now close to complete collapse, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin has said, adding that the current Ukrainian government has completely lost its legitimacy and is unfit for talks. In an interview with the Russian magazine Razvedchik (“Spy”) released on Tuesday, Naryshkin reiterated that the Ukraine conflict is essentially not a battle against Kiev but rather a struggle against the collective West, and that Russia’s freedom and sovereignty is at stake. The intel chief expressed optimism about Russia’s progress on the battlefield. “The frontline situation is not in Kiev’s favor. The strategic initiative in all areas belongs to us, we are close to achieving our goals, while the Ukrainian army is on the verge of collapse.”

According to Naryshkin, the regime of Vladimir Zelensky has completely lost its legitimacy and, as a result, its ability to be negotiated with.” The Ukrainian leader’s presidential term expired this past May, after he refused to hold a new election, citing the ongoing martial law. Russian forces have been making steady progress in recent weeks. Ukrainian commanders, meanwhile, have been complaining about a lack of manpower and exhaustion in their ranks, despite the draft age having been lowered from 27 to 25 and mobilization rules tightened this past spring. Moscow has said that its main goals in the conflict are Ukraine’s neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification. It has also signaled that it is ready to declare an immediate ceasefire and begin peace talks as soon as Ukraine withdraws from all Russian territories, including Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye Regions.

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If woke is the only identity you have left…

Obstruction of Immigration Enforcement Could Prove Costly for Citizens (Turley)

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston recently became the latest Democratic leader to engage in a chest-pounding call to arms in resistance to the incoming Trump administration’s plan to deport people who entered the United States unlawfully. While a post-election poll by YouGov for CBS News shows that a massive 73% of adults want President-elect Donald Trump to prioritize the repatriation of illegal migrants, the mayor pledged to not only have Denver police “stationed at the county line to keep (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) out” but also that “you would have 50,000 Denverites there.” Johnston said it would be like a “Tiananmen Square moment” and answered yes when questioned whether he’d be ready to go to jail. That moment soon passed, however, as lawyers apparently explained to the mayor that armed resistance to the federal government is often called – wait for it – insurrection.

It appears that Johnston was not keen on becoming the Jefferson Davis of the left, so he backpedaled, stating, “Would I have taken it back if I could? Yes, I probably wouldn’t have used that image.” Yet, Johnston is not alone in pledging resistance to repatriation efforts. Cities are reaffirming or adopting sanctuary city status, including most recently Boston. The cities pledge to continue their ban on any cooperation with the federal government in detaining or removing unlawful migrants. Other mayors are pledging to use city funds to pay for the defense costs of those fighting deportation. The doubling down on sanctuary city promises will likely draw more migrants to those communities, which some mayors have welcomed despite the heavy costs of housing, education and other city services.

Immigration proved to be one of the top issues for voters in this year’s election, which brought control of both houses of Congress and the White House to the GOP. Citizens overwhelmingly supported new tough immigration measures, including deportations. With Democratic cities joining the “resistance,” they may find the costs even higher. Congress cannot compel cooperation without triggering constitutional concerns. In Federalist #46, James Madison recognized the right of state officials to oppose federal policies, including “the refusal to co-operate with officers of the Union.” In cases such as Printz v. United States (1997), which involved federal requirements that states cooperate on gun control measures, the Supreme Court enforced an anti-commandeering line that allowed states to refuse such federal orders.

However, this is a two-way street. Just as cities and states do not have to carry water for the federal government, the federal government does not have to supply the water to the states. The second Trump administration and Congress can play hardball by barring federal funds in various areas for these cities. With their status as sanctuary cities, housing, law enforcement and social programming costs will continue to rise. Many of those budgets are heavily infused with federal funding. However, if cities resist or frustrate federal policy, there are ample reasons why the federal government might restrict funding. Such measures can go too far. The Supreme Court has warned that financial penalties can be so coercive that they effectively commandeer states. However, the federal government is not required to spend money on services where costs are rising at least in part because of resistance to federal law.

Under constitutional law, the federal government cannot be a bully, but it does not have to be a chump.It’s clear that elected leaders like Johnston did not think very long or well before starting a war with the incoming administration. In addition to the possible loss of federal funds, acts of resistance can trigger criminal liability if they amount to actively shielding or hiding unlawful migrants sought by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Under federal immigration law, it is a felony when anyone in “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation.”

That is not triggered by a simple refusal to cooperate, but some officials have been accused of crossing the line, including state judges. It also could endanger private groups that work closely with these cities in housing and transporting unlawful migrants. Moreover, as I wrote recently, Trump can cite a curious ally in this fight: Barack Obama. During the Obama administration, the federal government largely triumphed over states in barring their interference with federal immigration policies. Back then, Democrats supported President Obama in claiming that the federal government had overriding authority on immigration in cases like Arizona v. United States. The pressure on cities could grow if the Trump administration prioritizes members of violent gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) or Tren de Aragua for deportation. To resist those efforts would be politically unpalatable in cities dealing with crime associated with such gangs. It could take years to hash out these efforts. However, if Denver’s Mayor Johnston is any measure of the resistance, the chest-pounding may decline when the federal funding dries up.

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“Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.”

Bernie Sanders Says Musk Is Right On Military Spending (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency has energized Republicans, but it’s also receiving attention from some liberal lawmakers, including Bernie Sanders. Sanders, the independent from Vermont, wants to help Trump’s DOGE, which is co-led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Sanders has his eye on the U.S. military budget. “Elon Musk is right,” Sanders wrote on X. “The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions. Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.”

Sanders’ comments come before the U.S. House is set to vote on a compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes nearly $900 billion to support U.S. military service members, infrastructure, and defense capabilities during the 2025 fiscal year. The 1,813-page document released Saturday by the Senate and House Armed Services Committees outlines U.S. defense policy priorities and their costs for 2025. Most of the proposed funds, $849.9 billion out of the $895.2 billion topline, would go to programs within the Department of Defense. Ramaswamy and Musk wrote in a November op-ed that the military is on their list. “The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent,” they wrote.

The U.S. Department of Defense’s annual audit once again resulted in a disclaimer opinion. That means the federal government’s largest agency can’t fully explain its spending. The disclaimer this year was expected. And it’s expected again next year. The Pentagon previously said it will be able to accurately account for its spending by 2027. Musk has gone even farther in his criticism of military spending. He called the military’s most expensive ever project, the F-35 stealth fighter, “obsolete.” “The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things to too many people,” Musk wrote on X. “This made it an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none. Success was never in the set of possible outcomes. And manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed.”

In May, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found the cost of the Pentagon’s most expensive weapon system was projected to increase by more than 40% despite plans to use the stealth fighter less, in part because of reliability issues. The U.S. Department of Defense’s F-35 Lightning II is the most advanced and costly weapon system in the U.S. arsenal. It’s a joint, multinational program that includes the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, seven international partners and foreign military sales customers. The Pentagon has about 630 F-35s. It plans to buy about 1,800 more. And it intends to use them through 2088. DOD estimates the F-35 program will cost over $2 trillion to buy, operate, and sustain over its lifetime. The Pentagon hasn’t responded to Musk’s comments. Late last month, a reporter asked Defense Department Press Secretary Air Force Major General Pat Ryder about Musk’s comments on the F-35.

“Yeah, as I’m sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently a private citizen, I’m not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35.” Trump set lofty goals for the new group. “It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project,’ of our time,” Trump’s announcement said. “Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time.” The original Manhattan Project was a research and development project during the second World War that led to the creation of nuclear weapons. Ramaswamy and Musk have previously outlined their plans for DOGE, which could include mass federal layoffs and reductions in federal regulations. Musk and Ramaswamy said they won’t rely on action from Congress and will instead “focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws.”

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There will be another accident. And then?

Boeing Reportedly Restarts 737 Max Production (ZH)

Boeing has reportedly resumed production of its 737 Max aircraft at its Renton factory in Seattle, Washington, a little more than a month after a seven-week strike by 33,000 unionized factory workers concluded with a new contract. This marks a critical step in the company’s recovery efforts during a particularly turbulent year. Reuters was the first to report on Boeing’s restart of production of its best-selling commercial jet. According to three sources familiar with the situation, production at the Renton factory resumed last Friday. “Production resumed on Friday, said one of the sources, who all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with media. Boeing declined to comment.” -RTRS. Analysts at Jefferies forecast that Boeing will likely average around 29 737 Max jets per month in 2025, falling far short of the company’s pre-restriction goal of 56.

Earlier this year, the FAA capped 737 Max production at 38 per month due to safety vulnerabilities within Boeing’s production line at Renton. Two Max crashes, Covid travel downturn, supply chain snarls, financial challenges, and multiple Max jet incidents — including a door panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 — have been mounting headwinds for the struggling planemaker. On top of this all, a seven-week strike sent the company to the brink of a devastating stall. The good news is that Boeing is under new leadership, with newly appointed CEO Kelly Ortberg dismantling disastrous DEI initiatives and shifting the focus to safety as the era of wokeism comes to an abrupt end. As of mid-November, Goldman’s Noah Poponak and Anthony Valentini still had a “Buy” rating on the planemaker with a 12-month price target of $200.

“Our 12-month price target of $200 is derived from targeting a 4.5% free cash flow yield on 2026E free cash, discounted back one year at 12%. Key risks: (1) the pace of air traffic growth, (2) supply chain ability to ramp-up production, and (3) contract operating performance within the defense segment,” the analysts said. Shares of Boeing were up 1% to $158 handle in premarket trading. However, on the year, shares were down 40%. Shares have been locked in a multi-year lateral between $100 and $250 following the Max jet crashes. FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker recently told Reuters that he wouldn’t be surprised if it took the company a couple of months to ramp production at Renton to the FAA’s production limit.

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“[Elon] Musk put the GEC on the map in March 2023, when he deemed it to be the “worst offender in U.S. government”..

State Dep. Scrambles To Scuttle $100M Censorship Network Before Trump (ZH)

The State Department revealed in a Monday filing that they are “substantially likely” to shut down their $100M Global Engagement Center (GEC), which was revealed in early 2023 to have been funding a “disinformation” tracking group which worked to pressure advertisers to demonetize outlets it accuses of spreading “disinformation.” Except, they’re really just “realigning” the “Center’s staff and funding to other Department offices and bureaus for foreign information manipulation.” The move comes amid a lawsuit from Texas AG Ken Paxton and several conservative media outlets listed a GEC-funded “dynamic exclusion list” of websites it doesn’t like, which it would then distribute to ad tech companies – such as Microsoft’s Xandr – in order to try and “defund and downrank these worst offenders,” and deprive said sites of ad revenue.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1864036564579561767

As Headline News’ Ken Silva notes further; it’s unclear how the GEC’s closure will affect the lawsuit. Monday’s court filing said lawyers for all parties are still discussing the implications. [Elon] Musk put the GEC on the map in March 2023, when he deemed it to be the “worst offender in U.S. government” when it comes to censorship and media manipulation. According to revelations from the “Twitter Files”—a trove of internal records about the censorship decisiosn made within the social media company—the GEC funded groups such as the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which in turn compiled blacklists of Twitter accounts that were supposedly tied to foreign disinformation campaigns. The Digital Forensic Research Lab sent those blacklists to Twitter so that the company could deactivate the accounts listed.

Federalist senior legal correspondent Margot Cleveland further revealed in April 2023 that the GEC marketed anti-conservative censorship products to private-sector tech firms. Cleveland also noted that the GEC apparently worked with infamous FBI Agent Elvis Chan, who was revealed in the Twitter Files to be in constant touch with the social media firm about censorship issues. Despite those scandals, Democrats had been pushing to renew the GEC’s $100 million budget before it expires at the end of the year. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who drafted the original legislation in 2016 that led to the GEC, argued last year that the censorship network was crucial to counter foreign disinformation. “There’s no way to combat Russian and Chinese misinformation without the GEC,” Murphy insisted.

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The Russians weren’t going to save Assad yet another time. Cost/benefit.

Putin-the-Unready Is Beginning to be Held Accountable (Paul Craig Roberts)

John Helmer’s December 8 report from Moscow substantiates my conclusion that the Russian government’s inability to acknowledge reality, instead relying on agreements with Russia’s enemies, results in failure . In Ukraine by trying to minimize conflict, the Kremlin maximized conflict. In Syria relying on diplomatic rather than military means resulted in a massive strategic defeat for Russia and Iran. The Middle East, where the correlation of forces were moving against US/Israeli dominance, has been lost to Greater Israel and US control of oil flows and waterways. From Moscow John Helmer reports that recriminations are running high for Putin’s loss of Syria. And it is not only Putin who is being held accountable but also the commanders of Russia’s forces in Syria, head of the General Staff General Valery Gerasimov, Russian military intelligence (GRU), and the Defense Ministry.

They are all damned for failure to detect, warn, and act to prevent the Israeli-American-Turkish overthrow of Assad and the Syrian government. The same group of failures are damned for failure to prevent the Israeli air force from preventing the resupply of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards from providing reinforcements. Putin, like American presidents, puts the defense of Israel before the interests of his own country. Putin is so fearful of offending Israel that he constantly refused to provide his Syrian ally air defense from Israeli attacks. Now that Putin and Lavrov, essentially two 20th century American liberals, have brought a massive strategic defeat down on their heads and Iran’s, Russia’s last remaining Middle East ally, it is likely that Netanyahu and Trump’s Zionist appointees will behave more aggressively against Iran and Russia.

The Zionist are on a roll, having reversed their declining fortunes in one fell swoop while again Putin sat on his butt. As much as I admire Putin, he is certainly not proactive, or sometimes even aware, and thus lacks the leadership ability that a leader of a threatened country needs. Putin would be perfect in peace time, but he is not up to dealing with an existential threat. Putin and Lavrov are too fearful of offending someone to be able to act. I don’t know how far the recriminations will go. But if Washington should also succeed with its color revolution in Georgia, the Zionist neoconservatives could succeed in their plan to destabilize Putin. Whether Putin’s fall would help the neoconservative agenda depends on his replacement. The chance is high that Putin would be replaced with a more determined war leader. Regardless, the Russian defeat has caused a loss of confidence in Putin’s leadership, and it will encourage more provocations that are not good for peace.

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“If Tesla does become the world’s most valuable company by far, that short position will bankrupt even Bill Gates..”

Elon Musk Jokes Bill Gates Could Go “Bankrupt” On Short Tesla Bet (ZH)

The rivalry between two of America’s top billionaires, Elon Musk and Bill Gates, continued on Tuesday morning when Musk jokingly suggested on X that Gates’ alleged short position on Tesla might lead to his financial demise. “If Tesla does become the world’s most valuable company by far, that short position will bankrupt even Bill Gates,” Musk wrote on X, referring to a multi-billion dollar equity short Gates put on Tesla a couple of years ago.

According to Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography of Musk, Gates held an undisclosed short position in Tesla, allegedly worth billions. In late 2023, Musk wrote on X: “Gates placed a massive bet on Tesla dying when our company was at one of its weakest moments several years ago. Such a big short position also drives the stock down for everyday investors,” adding, “To the best of my knowledge, Gates *still* has that massive bet against Tesla on the table. Someone should ask him if he does.” Musk noted, “The lack of self-awareness and hypocrisy of Gates who had the nerve to ask me to donate to his mostly window-dressing environmental causes, while simultaneously aiming to make $500M from Tesla’s demise, boggles the mind …”

[..] There is still no word on whether Gates has doubled or tripled down – or possibly cut his Tesla short bet. Tesla shares have surged 62.5% this year, primarily due to President-elect Donald Trump’s victory and Musk’s increasing relationship with the incoming administration. In terms of wealth, Bloomberg data shows Musk is number one on the Billionaire Index at $376.2 billion, while Gates is number six at $165.9 billion. Regarding Tesla, the company’s market capitalization is nearing $1.3 trillion, and it ranks eighth on the list of the world’s most valuable companies. Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas wrote in a June note that Tesla is much more than an EV company, with tailwinds in the powering up America theme in the era of AI data centers. Naomi Seibt, a German teen who denounces the woke agenda, wrote on X, “Can’t imagine a greater form of retribution than bankrupting the vaccine vegan.” Another X user asked: “Why would someone who constantly talks about protecting the environment short the stock of one of the most environmentally friendly companies on the planet?”

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“It’s a disfavored practice to go to a second Supreme Court justice after the first one has turned down the request, so it was a long shot..”

SCOTUS Asked to Block State From Probing Doctors Who Question COVID Policies (ET)

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas this week revived an emergency application to block the Washington Medical Commission from investigating licensed physicians in the state over their criticism of COVID-19 policies. The Washington state commission deems the doctors’ dissenting views on the disease as potentially dangerous misinformation that should be suppressed. The physicians counter that just because they have medical licenses they don’t forfeit their free speech rights under the First Amendment. The Dec. 4 order by Thomas regarding the application in Stockton v. Ferguson was unusual in that Justice Elena Kagan rejected the same application on Nov. 20. The applicants renewed their request in a court filing directed to Thomas on Nov. 22. Supreme Court rules allow an application that has been denied by one justice to be presented to another justice. Neither Thomas nor Kagan explained their respective decisions.

The application is now scheduled to be considered by all nine justices at the court’s private judicial conference on Jan. 10, 2025. The justices could grant an injunction against the commission, deny the injunction, or schedule the case for oral argument. As of Dec. 6, the Supreme Court had not requested a reply from the commission. The application was brought by former professional basketball player John Stockton along with Drs. Richard Eggleston, Thomas Siler, and Daniel Moynihan and another 50 unidentified medical doctors, as well as Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. President-elect Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025, has nominated Kennedy to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, an attorney, is also listed as co-counsel on the application.

The applicants filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, which denied the injunction on May 22. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied the injunction on Sept. 3. An appeal remains pending in the Ninth Circuit. The application states that it concerns the state’s program that targets “Washington-licensed physicians for expressing public views on COVID-19 that diverge from prevailing orthodoxy.” The state calls the doctors’ viewpoint “misinformation” and claims that it may “regulate this speech,” which is something the Supreme Court ruled in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra (2018) that it cannot do, according to the application. “The Court should speak clearly and decisively to state actors, professional organizations, other non-state actors, and the national media: Public speech does not lose its constitutional protection from government action simply because it is uttered by a healthcare professional, even if it is at odds with medical orthodoxy,” the application stated.

In September 2021, based on its authority under Washington state’s Uniform Disciplinary Act, the Washington Medical Commission began enforcing a policy against doctors “for public speech critical of COVID-19 policies,” which has resulted in “disciplinary actions against at least ten healthcare practitioners,” it stated. Around the time the enforcement actions began, Washington Secretary of Health Dr. Umair A. Shah said, “It has never been more vital for trusted healthcare professionals to band together against the threat of misinformation.” “As we battle COVID-19, with so many tools at our disposal to protect ourselves and others, it is viral misinformation, rooted in unfounded scientific claims, that often stands in our way.”

The commission is prosecuting Eggleston and Siler for opinion articles that they wrote in The Lewiston Tribune and American Thinker, respectively, that criticized COVID-19 policies. The applicant Children’s Health Defense, which has a Washington state medical doctor as a member, joined the application because “[the nonprofit group] is actively involved in advocacy and protecting freedom of speech and Covid vaccine related issues and educates the public on these issues,” the application stated. The applicants’ attorney, Richard Jaffe of Sacramento, California, told The Epoch Times that he is “hopeful” about the application. “It’s a disfavored practice to go to a second Supreme Court justice after the first one has turned down the request, so it was a long shot,” he said.

But Thomas “seems to think it’s an important issue” that needs to be heard, Jaffe said. There are many articles in the mainstream media “talking about how they’re not sanctioning enough doctors for speaking out in public against vaccination or repeated boostering,” he said. “The country needs some guidance from the Supreme Court as to what the First Amendment means in terms of a physician’s free speech,” Jaffe said.

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“Offering asylum to these foreigners is simply giving ordinary people a chance to live in freedom..”

Western Conservatives Find Asylum In The Russian Federation (SCF)

Defending family and traditional values has long been a central guideline of Russian policy, both domestically and diplomatically. Moscow is expanding its efforts to counteract the degrading cultural influence of the West in the country, as well as offering a safe haven for foreigners interested in living in accordance with their ancestral values. Recently, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree that makes it easier to obtain visas and citizenship for conservative-minded citizens from countries of degrading neoliberal ideologies. The goal of the Russian initiative is above all humanitarian, providing an opportunity for like-minded citizens to live in peace, away from the psychological and ideological challenges imposed by Western countries that have adhered to the so-called “woke agenda”.

As part of this initiative, Russian state organizations have been implementing various initiatives to provide refuge to foreigners interested in living in the country. A major press conference was recently held, bringing together Russian and foreign citizens interested in sharing their experiences of living in accordance with traditional values in Russia. The conference was led by State Duma deputy Maria Butina, who currently heads the Russian Parliament’s Committee on International Relations, and brought together a number of foreigners and members of civil society, including businesspeople from different sectors. Together with Russian authorities and journalists, foreigners who have taken refuge in Russia were able to share their impressions of life in the country, job opportunities and other personal experiences.

Among the foreign citizens who participated in the event were some public figures, such as the German journalist Anna Lipp, who suffered severe persecution in her country due to her support for the special military operation in Ukraine, and Martin Held, an Austrian citizen and author of the social project “Moya Rossiya”. In addition to them, the Frenchman Alexander Stefanesco, businessman and founder of the project “Ruspatriation”, also participated in the conference, as well as several other distinguished foreigners who were well received in Russia due to their common mentality with the local people. As a result of the conference’s discussion, participants announced the creation of the “Welcome to Russia!” project, which aims to show Russian reality to foreigners interested in living in the country, as well as to assist with processes such as legal bureaucracy and cultural adaptation.

In the end, Russians and foreigners showed interest in contributing to the arrival of more conservative-minded citizens in Russia, which is welcomed by both migrants, who can finally live the way they believe is right, and by natives, who can interact with like-minded foreigners and develop deep cultural ties that strengthen Russia’s image as a civilizational pivot. There is certainly a deep strategic Russian interest in receiving such immigrants. In recent years, Russia has faced a major challenge in integrating thousands of immigrants from the post-Soviet space, mainly from the Caucasus and Central Asia, into its society. On the other hand, Western immigrants, who are almost always Christian and conservative, certainly show fewer cultural barriers to adaptation than Central Asians, which facilitates a balance in the migration scenario, avoiding tensions in public opinion regarding the reception of foreigners.

However, the main point of the Russian project is humanitarian. Conservative people are being persecuted in the Western Hemisphere simply because they do not agree with so-called “progressive” ideas, such as woke culture and the LGBT agenda. Offering asylum to these foreigners is simply giving ordinary people a chance to live in freedom, without the state violating their values and beliefs. In the past, the US has created a strong anti-Russian propaganda campaign advocating a false conservatism, which it justified by the claim that the USSR and post-Soviet Russia were examples of moral degradation. History has shown which side in the world arena really defends traditional values. Today, it is clear to an increasing number of Western citizens that it is not in the US or Europe that Christianity and conservatism are truly valued and protected.

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Cat maze
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866310477749555559

 

 

Grass
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866327339568976354

 

 

Octopus
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866290032614809600

 

 

Spike
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866273168563876321

 

 

Change

 

 

 

 

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Sep 082024
 


Pieter Bruegel the Elder The Triumph of Death 1562

 

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Poland Aims at ‘World Record’ for Military Spending in 2025 (Sp.)
Top German MP Threatens X and Telegram With Bans (RT)
Massive Free Speech Protest In Brazil After Supreme Court Bans X (ZH)
Social Security Facing $63 Trillion in Unfunded Liabilities (ET)
Tesla Announces Full Self-Driving Coming To China, Europe In Early 2025 (ZH)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beck&Bret

 

 

RFK


https://twitter.com/i/status/1832147230960316928

 

 

Kamala Ad

 

 

Bidenomics

 

 

Sachs

 

 

Biase

 

 

BBee

 

 

 

 

Well, that won’t stop them. They go seamlessly from “directly interfering” to “indirectly interfering” in 2 seconds flat. Without playing off Russia, Iran and China, the US wouldn’t know its own identity. It would be lost.

No Foreign Attempts To Interfere In Presidential Election Detected – US Intel (RT)

US authorities have not detected any attempts by foreign actors to directly interfere in the upcoming presidential election, representatives of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) have stated. Intelligence officials did, however, claim that Russia, Iran and China are trying to sway public opinion and sow discord in American society.During the 2016 and 2020 elections, US intelligence agencies repeatedly alleged that Moscow was deploying hackers and using “information warfare” to swing the vote in favor of Donald Trump.None of these claims have been proven true; a report released by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 2019 found them to be baseless.

During a multi-agency press briefing in Washington DC on Friday, an unnamed representative of the ODNI said: “We have not observed any foreign actors seeking to interfere in the conduct of the 2024 elections.” “Instead of interference, the IC assesses adversaries so far are focused on using information operations and propaganda to try to shape voter preferences or undermine confidence in the election,” the official added. When making similar claims in the past, US authorities have rarely bothered to define what they meant by disinformation when leveling accusations at Russia, Iran and China. These were the top three nations supposedly attempting to “exacerbate divisions in US society for their own benefit.” The ODNI official added that there are several other countries that “are considering activities that at minimum test the boundaries of election influence,” while stopping short of naming them.

The official singled out Moscow as the “pre-eminent and most active foreign influence threat to this year’s US elections.”As for Iran, the US intelligence agency believes the country is “making a greater effort than in the past to influence this year’s elections,” looking to “stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process.”China, by contrast, is more “focused on influencing down-ballot races” at the state and local levels, according to US authorities. Beijing is allegedly seeking to “counter US politicians viewed as anti-China and to support others viewed as pro-China.”

Earlier this week, the US government imposed sanctions on two RT employees over their alleged role in disseminating video clips that sowed “discord and division” in the country. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova insisted at around the same time that Russia is not in the habit of meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. China and Iran have similarly denied previous American claims.

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Trump should simply be himself. And be wary of trickery.

Tuesday’s Debate Looms Large for Both Candidates (RCW)

For six weeks, Kamala Harris’ campaign has been running circles around Donald Trump’s efforts. Democrats have raised tons of money, energized their base, and protected Harris from unscripted interviews and political risks. All the while, Trump’s campaigning has been lackluster.True, Trump has been through a lot over this past year – indictments, trials, contested primaries, and an attempted assassination; the strain is showing. But the time has come for him to make the sale. Despite Trump’s lack of focus and Harris’ early momentum, polls continue to show a close race. This is why Tuesday’s presidential debate is so important. It could make or break either campaign. As we’ve learned over the years, debates are more often lost than won. The Biden-Trump showdown in June proved it.

For Trump, the debate is an opportunity to recharge, a chance to unveil a strong, disciplined message. For Harris, it’s an opportunity to broaden her base and reassure skeptical voters. Pundits tell us, incorrectly, that voters have already made up their minds, but the truth is otherwise. Recent polling finds that a sizable part of the electorate (18%) could still swing either way.Right out of the box, each candidate should lay the predicate for the entire night. Starting aggressively is the best way to take the offense, regardless of questions asked or time limits. Debate messaging should reflect the campaign’s central theme – assuming a campaign has one. Trump’s central theme has yet to be honed, so the debate is an opportunity for him to do so. Harris’ messaging has been working well, but it’s hollow, mostly a collection of slogans. This debate is a chance for her to tie her themes together.

The first words out of Trump’s mouth should frame the election as a choice between his record and the Biden-Harris record. Polls tell us that most voters prefer the Trump record, especially on the economy, immigration, and national security. This could be Trump’s version of Ronald Reagan’s famous debate line, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Trump also needs to make the case that Harris is too far left by citing specific policies she’s supported. He should end a line of rapid-fire attacks with a pithy summation, something like: “Biden went along with the progressive left, but Harris will be their champion.” Harris’ first words should focus on the future, reinforcing her message that “we’re not going back” to the Trump era. From the start, she needs to inoculate herself against likely attacks; that will make it easier to respond when they arise.

She should be ready to defend her own views – from Gaza to Ukraine, taxes to fracking, grocery prices to deficit spending. Harris needs to show a depth of knowledge she rarely displays.At times, the most important thing Trump should do is shut up. Time limits and microphone mute buttons may help him do that. He needs to avoid distractions, such as relitigating the 2020 election. There is no reason for him to bring up his criminal cases. These are potential traps; Harris will have ready-made retorts for all of them. Unpredictability is Trump’s strength. Harris expects him to be rambling and disruptive. But if, instead, he’s rational and concise, and his attacks are coherent and focused – not his usual word salad of overstatements and distractions – he could force Harris off her game.

Harris should employ two techniques that could throw Trump off stride. One is humor. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Joe Biden effectively used wit against Trump in previous debates, and it was a missed opportunity. The second is for Harris to make her points in the form of questions. As a lawyer and senator, she knows how to do this. Even though debate rules don’t allow cross-questioning, nothing prohibits candidates from posing questions to the audience in the form of statements. After the endless ads and unremitting smears that often cancel out one another, debates serve as tiebreakers for undecided voters. This may be the only presidential debate left in this election. A bad night for either candidate could be fatal. Tune in on Tuesday and decide for yourself.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1832150412096368769

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No better endorsement than having Cheney endorse your opponent.

Dick Cheney Endorses Kamala Over ‘Depraved’ Trump (ZH)

Look who slithered out of his neocon lair of no regrets to publicly endorse Democrat Kamala Harris for president. Former Vice President and “lifelong Republican” Dick Cheney announced Friday that he will vote for Biden’s VP over Republican candidate Donald Trump, issuing a stern warning to the public that the former president “can never be trusted with power again.” The blood-curdling pot meet kettle irony of that statement coming from Dick-shock-and awe-Cheny aside… it’s entirely to be expected in a post-“Global War on Terror” world (apparently everyone conveniently forgot) where GW Bush regularly pals around with the likes of Ellen DeGeneres. 83-year old Cheney said in his statement: “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”

“He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” old man Dick continued. “He can never be trusted with power again.””As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” he concluded.And of course, the Harris campaign stated in response that she is “proud” to receive Republican Cheney’s support and “deeply respects his courage to put country over party.” Earlier in the day Liz Cheney, the daughter of Mr. Deep State and former Wyoming Rep., also endorsed Harris at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.Her remarks were even more colorful, as she described Trump as a “a depraved human being” and called him along with his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance, “misogynistic pigs”.

Here’s what she said:”Every Republican, anybody who’s contemplating casting a vote for that ticket, you know, really needs to think about what they are enabling, what they’re embracing and the danger of electing people who will only honor election results if they agree with the outcome, and who are willing to set aside the Constitution,” she said in Austin.”And you know in the case of Donald Trump, promote, provoke, exploit violence in order to seize power.” The Cheney family has long been on record as vowing to do everything possible to prevent Trump from entering the Oval Office again…As for Trump, he responded briefly and fairly quickly on his Trump Social platform, dismissing both: “Dick Cheney is an irrelevant RINO, along with his daughter.”Meanwhile…

https://twitter.com/i/status/1555268168473460741

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“A Vote For Trump is a Vote For Kennedy..”

The Impact of RFK Jr. Remaining on the Ballot in Swing States (ET)

Veteran Democrat strategist Lis Smith was hired to spearhead an aggressive communication plan to combat Kennedy, independent Cornel West, and Green Party nominee Jill Stein. In the weeks preceding Kennedy’s decision to suspend his campaign in battleground states and endorse Trump, he found himself in courtrooms across the country testifying in DNC-backed lawsuits that were filed to keep him off the ballot. The Aug. 23 press conference, in which he announced he would back Trump, was held on a Friday. Earlier that week, he appeared in Pennsylvania and New York regarding ballot access hearings. Kennedy criticized the Democrats for aligning with Biden and then nominating Harris without a primary during his Aug. 23 address. He also chastised the DNC for backing lawsuits in multiple states aimed at blocking him from the ballot.

On Aug. 26, Kennedy told The Epoch Times that Trump would make a series of announcements that other Democrats are joining his campaign. The next day, Trump’s campaign confirmed that Kennedy and former Democratic Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard accepted the former president’s offer to join his transition team if he wins in November. Kennedy told The Epoch Times on Aug. 26 that he would actively campaign for Trump and that there is no defined role he would have in a Trump administration. He says fighting chronic disease, improving children’s health, and addressing corporate capture of government agencies are his top priorities. Kennedy joined Trump on stage at a rally in Glendale, Arizona, on Aug. 23 when the former president announced he would appoint Kennedy to a panel investigating the rise in chronic disease in children if he won his White House bid.

While Kennedy said on Aug. 23 that he still encouraged supporters to vote for him in non-battleground states, he said in an email on Sept. 6, “No matter what state you live in, I urge you to vote for Donald Trump. The reason is that is the only way we can get me and everything I stand for into Washington DC and fulfill the mission that motivated my campaign.” Kennedy added that it will be a “close election” and “a disputed election result would be a disaster for our divided nation.” Kennedy’s online messaging has shifted messaging away from “Declare Your Independence,” even though he will appear on the ballot in many states.His website now centers around the “Make America Healthy Again” campaign and reiterates his belief on how to accomplish that objective. “A Vote For Trump is a Vote For Kennedy,” a banner atop the home page reads.

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“..Putin insisted earlier this week that “no other [US] president has ever imposed so many restrictions and sanctions against Russia” as Trump.”

Trump Pledges To Scale Back Use of Sanctions (RT)

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has promised to drastically reduce the use of sanctions by the US if he wins the election in November. During an appearance at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, Trump was asked if he plans to “strengthen or modify” Washington’s economic restrictions on Russia and other countries. “I want to use sanctions as little as possible,” he replied, explaining that there is “a problem” with the extensive reliance on such penalties by the US, because “ultimately it kills your dollar and it kills everything the dollar represents.” It is “important” for the dollar to remain the international reserve currency, the former president insisted.

“If we lost the dollar as the world currency, I think that would be the equivalent of losing a war, that would make us a third world country. And we cannot let it happen,” he said. Trump, who slapped various restrictions on Russia, Iran and North Korea during his term in office between 2017 and 2021, acknowledged that he himself has been the “user of sanctions.” “I use sanctions very powerfully against countries that deserve it. And then I take them off because, look, you are losing Iran, you are losing Russia. China is out there trying to get their currency to be the dominant currency… all of these things are happening,” he said. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin insisted earlier this week that “no other [US] president has ever imposed so many restrictions and sanctions against Russia” as Trump.

Commenting on Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, Putin said she has “a very contagious laugh, which shows that everything is fine for her… but if everything is so great for Ms Harris, maybe she would refrain from acting this way [if she wins the election]?” The US and its allies have imposed a record 22,000 sanctions on Moscow since 2014, when Crimea rejoined Russia and a conflict between Ukraine and the Donbass republics broke out following a Western-backed coup in Kiev. The number of curbs skyrocketed after the launch of Moscow’s military operation against Ukraine in February 2022. Russian authorities have condemned the sanctions as illegal, responding with travel bans on Western officials and other moves.

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“So, it is sanctions forever. Or rather, until the US collapses during an imminent new civil war. After all, Hollywood makes films about this for a reason..”

Russia Sanctions Will Stay… Until US Collapses – Medvedev (RT)

Wide-reaching sanctions on Russia will remain in place no matter who wins the US presidential election in November, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said.Earlier this week, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump pledged to “use sanctions as little as possible” if he makes a return to the White House. In a Telegram post on Saturday, Medvedev insisted that Trump’s comment does not mean he will lift the penalties in force against Moscow. “For all his apparent bravado as an ‘outsider,’ Trump is ultimately an establishment insider. Yes, he is an eccentric narcissist, but he is also a pragmatist,” the official, who now serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, said. The former US president understands that sanctions harm the dollar’s role as the international reserve currency, but for him it is still an “insufficient reason to stage a revolution in the US and go against the anti-Russian line of the notorious Deep State, which is much stronger than any Trump,” Medvedev argued.

As for the Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, one “should not expect any surprises from her” if she wins the election, Medvedev predicted. “She is inexperienced and, according to her enemies, just plain stupid. Beautiful meaningless speeches and boring ‘correct’ answers to questions will be prepared for her, which she will read off a teleprompter while laughing contagiously,” he said. The former Russian president noted that the Soviet Union was under sanctions for most of the 20th century. Now, Russia is facing similar treatment from the US and its allies, but on a much larger, “unprecedented” scale, he added. “So, it is sanctions forever. Or rather, until the US collapses during an imminent new civil war. After all, Hollywood makes films about this for a reason,” Medevedev wrote.

He appeared to be referencing the recent ‘Civil War’ movie directed by Alex Garland, which tells the story of a team of war reporters traveling across America to interview the president amid fighting between the federal government and a Texas- and California-led secessionist movement. The US and its allies have imposed a record 22,000 sanctions on Moscow since 2014, when Crimea rejoined Russia and a conflict between Ukraine and the Donbass republics broke out following a Western-backed coup in Kiev. The number of curbs spiked after the launch of Moscow’s military operation against Ukraine in February 2022. Russian authorities have condemned the sanctions as illegal, responding with travel bans on Western officials and other moves.

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‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ is a one trick pony.

Sanctions Against Russian Media Aimed at Discrediting Trump Victory (Sp.)

The recent US sanctions against Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya international media group and the RT broadcaster is an effort by Democrat-leaning federal government to contest a potential win by former President Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election by rehashing anti-Russia narratives, historian and political analyst Paul Gottfried, told Sputnik. “It is clear why the departments of our federal government, which are now subsidiaries of the Democratic Party, are screaming ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ for the umpteenth time. They are being mobilized to contest the presidential election if they can’t prevent Trump from winning. Unfortunately [for them], the same actors were involved in the same farce throughout the Trump presidency and may be losing credibility,” Gottfried, who is the editor-in-chief of “Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture” and Raffensperger professor of humanities emeritus at Elizabethtown College, said.

On September 4, the US Department of the Treasury announced sanctions against the editor-in-chief of Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya international media group and the RT broadcaster, Margarita Simonyan, and her deputies Anton Anisimov and Elizaveta Brodskaia. Deputy Director of the RT English-Language Information Broadcasting Andrey Kiyashko, RT’s Digital Media Projects Manager Konstantin Kalashnikov and a number of other employees of the broadcaster were also added to the sanctions list. The US State Department, in a parallel move, tightened the operating conditions for Rossiya Segodnya and its subsidiaries, designating them as “foreign missions.” Under the Foreign Missions Act, they will be required to notify the department of all personnel working in the United States and disclose all real estate they own.

US authorities also announced restrictions on the issuance of visas to individuals they allege are “acting on behalf of Kremlin-supported media organizations.” However, the Department of State refused to disclose the names of those subject to the new visa restrictions. Commenting on the new sanctions, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller claimed the measures did not target any particular individual Russian journalists, but rather the employees of the targeted companies who were involved in “covert activities.”

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“For Moscow, Britain is the most hostile NATO country because the UK is involved in all major projects to damage Russian infrastructure, and the civilian population and troops to the maximum..”

Britain ‘Thinking Head of Western Hydra That Helps Zelensky Regime’ (Sp.)

It’s safe to say that London is directly involved in hostilities against Moscow, military journalist, Alexey Borzenko, told Sputnik. He was commenting on Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s recent statement that the preliminary adjustment of the flight controllers (of the Ukrainian drones that attacked an oil storage facility in Russia’s Rostov region) was carried out in Salisbury and Newport, UK. “For Moscow, Britain is the most hostile NATO country because the UK is involved in all major projects to damage Russian infrastructure, and the civilian population and troops to the maximum,” Borzenko, who is also deputy chief editor of the Literary Russia newspaper, said. He stressed that it is in the UK where Ukrainian specialists in electronic warfare, missile technology, and strike systems using long-range artillery are trained.

The UK can be called “the thinking head of the entire Western hydra”, which helps the Kiev regime by providing it with military hardware, the journalist pointed out, recalling that Britain was the first to supply grenade launchers to Ukraine, followed by deliveries of tanks, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles and even poison in ampoules. Borzenko expressed hope that “on a certain stage”, Britain will bear responsibility for its actions. When it comes to Moscow’s retaliatory steps, the journalist subscribed to Zakharova’s stand that “in response to the Zelensky regime’s strikes on Russian territory using UK-made weapons, Russia reserves its right to strike any British military facilities and vehicles in Ukraine and beyond.” Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said that London is trying to be at the forefront among those who continue to send weapons to Ukraine; he added that the UK’s military aid to the Kiev regime will not change the course of Russia’s special military operation.

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X thread. Elon Musk:”Accurate analysis by @Naval”

@Naval Ravikant (Kanekoa)

.@Naval Ravikant says the Democrat Party’s lawfare against President Trump is “disgusting behavior” that could “end the Republic” and lead to a “one-party state better known as a dictatorship.” “If you look at the charges brought against Trump, and I actually read them quite carefully. These were really Trumped-up charges. They were really made up. You violate the statute of limitations. You try to drum things up into a felony when there was no evidence of such. It was a miscategorization of business expenses. It’s this selective prosecution.”

“If you want the case against Kamala Harris, it’s the fact that she was the DA of San Francisco, and San Francisco is a mess. And, in fact, after she advocated for George Gascon, the guy who is destroying LA by basically not prosecuting criminals and going after business owners. This selective prosecution thing is a disaster.””The moment you start breaking down this wall, you get into weaponizing justice. You know, Hillary Clinton blew up her email server and then wiped it with bleach bit. There are no consequences for that. Turns out the Hunter Biden laptop is real. Who knew? Even though we were told, it was all misinformation by the intel agencies. This is the scary stuff. This is the stuff that ends the Republic or turns it into a one-party state, better known as a dictatorship.”

“The weaponization of the justice system and the engagement and willingness to engage in lawfare will lead to violence, disillusionment, a breakup, and something worse for the United States. When these guys start playing with going after their political enemies.” “When Alvin Bragg runs on the explicit campaign to take down Trump and then they go hunting through and looking for anything and drumming up any charge to go after him with the most favorable juries in the most favorable part of the country and then just control the evidence and control the narrative that is the beginning of the end. And the people who are in Silicon Valley and the donors who are supporting this lawfare, they’re dead to me. These people are destroying the ground on which they stand.”

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“From the beginning to the end, it is a series of total failures produced by sheer hubris..”

Hunter Biden Discovers There is No “Nicer” Way to Say “I’m Guilty” (Turley)

“Guilty.” That word repeated nine times by Hunter Biden in a federal courtroom in California represented something that he had evaded for much of his life: accountability. Five years ago, Biden had to explain the rule to ABC News reporter Amy Robach, who had the audacity to ask about his history. Biden instructed the TV journalist to “say it nicer.” The president’s son spent his adult life with his father, his family, political allies, and reporters enabling every corrupt deal and human debauchery. Even at his plea hearing, Biden was closely shadowed by his so-called “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, who bankrolled his lavish lifestyle for years. This week, Biden was still demanding that even prosecutors “say it nicer” on the eve of his criminal trial. He created chaos at the start of jury selection by announcing that he would plead guilty but demanded an “Alford plea.” The Alford plea allows a defendant to accept that there is sufficient evidence to convict while declining to admit guilt.

Roughly 17 percent of state cases and 5 percent of federal cases end in Alford or no contest pleas. However, as a criminal defense attorney, I have never heard of a defendant seeking an Alford plea without previously discussing the option with prosecutors. These pleas ordinarily require the approval of prosecutors and Justice Department rules require the approval of high-ranking officials or the Attorney General himself. Prosecutors were gobsmacked by Biden’s sudden announcement and told the judge that they had not been consulted on the demand. Not surprisingly, they were miffed and quickly opposed any such plea. The result was all too familiar for those of us who have witnessed the chaos of the Hunter Biden defense. After causing a stir, the effort failed and Biden was left standing in the courtroom repeating a standard guilty plea nine times.

It is the continuation of a legal strategy that could be best described as controlled chaos. In 2023, Biden stood with his lawyers in open defiance of a congressional subpoena outside of Congress. He demanded that the House committees meet his demands for appearing as a witness. After all the drama, the effort failed. Facing a criminal contempt sanction, he appeared as demanded by Congress and was later accused of perjury. It was the same pattern that emerged when Biden secured a sweetheart plea deal that avoided any jail time, avoided a host of federal charges, and gave him sweeping immunity for unnamed offenses. It collapsed in court when the judge asked the prosecutor if he had ever seen such a deal offered to any other defendant. He admitted that he had not. The response from the Biden team was the same privileged fit.

One lawyer told prosecutors to “just rip it up.” Later the Justice Department attorneys stated that they still tried to reach a new plea deal but that Biden gave them the stiff arm. The result? An unmitigated failure. Biden was convicted on every gun count before a sympathetic jury in the hometown of the Biden family. This burning train then continued down the track to California where the team insisted that it would make the same addiction defense that failed in Delaware. It then pulled another jump scare with the Alford plea demand. From the beginning to the end, it is a series of total failures produced by sheer hubris. As I wrote in 2023, Biden ultimately was undone by his entitlement and appetite.

He expects everyone from reporters to representatives to prosecutors to “say it nicer.” At every stage, his bravado and defiance led to the worst possible result. Ironically, he had a prosecutor in David Weiss who fought to help him avoid any prosecution or jail time. Weiss allowed major felonies to expire for now explicable reasons and refused to indict Biden for being an unregistered foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Yet, somehow, Biden succeeded in forcing Weiss to prosecute him against every apparent inclination to the contrary.

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Oh wait, there’s a war going on…

Poland Aims at ‘World Record’ for Military Spending in 2025 (Sp.)

Poland wants to set a “world record” for military spending next year by ramping up procurement of weapons and military equipment, Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Tuesday. “Next year, 4.7% of Polish GDP will be allocated to defense. This will be the absolute record and a world record that Poland will set,” he said on the margins of a defense industry exhibition in the Polish city of Kielce. Poland has already earmarked a record-breaking 4.1% of gross domestic product for the military spending in the 2024 budget. Polish media reported in August that the government intended to hike military expenditure to nearly 5%. Only five allies in 32-member NATO spend more than 3% on their military needs: Poland, Estonia, the United States, Latvia, and Greece. Two-thirds of NATO member states have met the alliance’s requirement of spending at least 2% on defense.

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This Green Party MP sees an opportunity to go after the AfD, which is winning all the polls.

Top German MP Threatens X and Telegram With Bans (RT)

Germany must act to stop the dissemination of extremist content online and block major social media platforms if necessary, a senior MP from the country’s Green Party has said. MP Anton Hofreiter, the chairman of the Bundestag’s European policy committee, made the remarks on Saturday while speaking to reporters from Funke Media Group. The politician called for tighter control over social media, up to the outright blocking of certain platforms. “One of the biggest problems of extremism is online radicalization,” Hofreiter stated, adding that the dissemination of “anti-constitutional content on the Internet” must be stopped. “We need to tackle the root of the problem and push back radicalization in digital space as well as in society,” he stressed. Those social media platforms that refuse to abide by German laws and remove “extremist content” must be blocked altogether, Hofreiter argued, specifically singling out X, formerly Twitter, among the potential targets.

However, blocking platforms must only be a last resort measure, the MP noted, urging the government not to distance itself from modern technology. Instead, the government should use them for its own benefits, namely deploying “digital agents” to infiltrate private groups on Telegram to identify potential criminals, Hofreiter suggested. The call to toughen Germany’s stance on social media comes after a new series of incidents, including a shooting outside the Israeli consulate in Munich, as well as a knifing rampage in Solingen that left three dead. In recent days, several countries have taken steps to rein in social media platforms. Earlier this week, Brazil slapped a blanket ban on X; the platform had failed to comply with local political misinformation and hate speech laws by refusing to delete certain offending messages.

In late August, the Russian tech entrepreneur and founder of Telegram Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris. The businessman now faces a multitude of charges related to complicity in drug trafficking, money laundering, fraud, and various forms of child abuse, stemming from the actions of Telegram users. While Durov was ultimately released on bail, he has been ordered to stay in France while the investigation is ongoing.

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“We all know that we are imperfect and do not know everything. We know that we rely on others to discover the truth. Why, then, do so many people want censorship?”

Massive Free Speech Protest In Brazil After Supreme Court Bans X (ZH)

Thousands of Brazilians flooded city streets on Saturday to protest against the government’s censorship crusade against Elon Musk’s ‘free-speech’ X platform. The demonstration, held Saturday on Independence Day, was led by former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro – who said in response to Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes: “I hope that the Federal Senate puts the brakes on Alexandre de Moraes, this dictator who does more harm to Brazil than Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva himself.” Several notable X accounts, including journalist Michael Shellenberger, are reporting from Sao Paulo’s main boulevard, where tens of thousands have gathered today in opposition to far-left Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes that recently blocked X nationwide.

Here’s more from Shellenberger on the situation: “Brazilian President Lula and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes say they must block X to protect Brazil’s independence. X is a platform for dangerous, false, and hateful words, they say, and many of those words violate Brazil’s laws and Constitution. But their censorship goes far beyond what Brazil’s constitution allows. The government demanded that X and other social media networks censor and ban individual people, including journalists and politicians. Such bans are immoral, illegal, and unconstitutional. They constitute election interference and undermine democracy by preventing candidates from getting the word out. I agree that lying is wrong, hate speech is ugly, and there are limits to freedom of speech. We must not allow people to use words that directly result in physical violence.

But everybody lies, everybody engages in hate speech, and the limits to free speech must never include elections. Imagine what would happen if it were illegal to lie: everyone should go to prison starting with the journalists and politicians. As for hate speech, did Lula express hatred when he praised Adolf Hitler? Does he not express hatred every time he speaks of Elon Musk and Jair Bolsonaro? People blame speech for the chaos of January 6 in the United States and January 8 in Brazil. But the events of those days resulted from inadequate security, not anything anyone said online. And if the government can censor disfavored election information, how would anyone ever know if the government stole an election?

Democracy and secure elections depend on freedom of speech. The idea that we must censor speech to protect democracy ranks with other Orwellian ideas like “War is peace” and “Slavery is freedom.” For thousands of years, democracy and freedom walk hand in hand, as do censorship and dictatorship. Everybody knows in their heart that censorship is wrong. We all know that we are imperfect and do not know everything. We know that we rely on others to discover the truth. Why, then, do so many people want censorship?

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“It’s like operating on half of the cancer, removing half a cancer, and telling your patient to come back in 10 years, and when they do, it’s twice as big..”

Social Security Facing $63 Trillion in Unfunded Liabilities (ET)

Social Security is facing $63 trillion in long-term unfunded liabilities, according to the 2024 Old-Age, Survivors, Disability Insurance (OASDI) trustees report. The report looked at two things: how much money will be missing indefinitely and how much will be missing in the next 75 years. The report determined that there will be a permanent $62.8 trillion deficit and about a $23 trillion shortage for the next 75 years. Officials explained that these numbers show how much less money they will have after the money saved up in trust funds runs out. “The annual shortfalls after trust fund reserve depletion rise slowly and reflect increases in life expectancy,” the report reads. “The summarized shortfalls over the infinite horizon, as percentages of taxable payroll and GDP, are larger than the shortfalls for the 75-year period.”

OASDI trustees noted that the shortfall could be eliminated if the combined payroll tax rate was raised to “about 17.0 percent” or if there was a “permanent reduction in benefits for all current and future beneficiaries by about 26.5 percent.” Laurence Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston University, told The Epoch Times that assessing the current infinite unfunded liability is imperative. “There’s nothing in economics that says you should just look at 75 years and assume everybody’s going to be dead the day after,” Kotlikoff said. “It’s like operating on half of the cancer, removing half a cancer, and telling your patient to come back in 10 years, and when they do, it’s twice as big, and you’re operating out on half. “[That’s] the practice here in our country dealing with Social Security.”

This is not the first report to spotlight the deteriorating fiscal state of the retirement scheme and other federal programs. In February, the Treasury Department released the “Financial Report of the United States Government.” It concluded that U.S. taxpayers face more than $78 trillion in long-term unfunded obligations for Social Security and Medicare. The problem, according to Mark Warshawsky, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is that these outlooks are based on rosy scenarios, meaning that the United States will not grapple with a financial crisis, a major military conflict, or another pandemic. “To make matters worse, the [Financial Report] is based on optimistic, indeed unrealistic, assumptions,” he wrote, adding that the report suggests that the Trump-era tax cuts will completely lapse, income tax revenues will rise over time, and defense spending will not increase.

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Will we still be able to drive ourselves? If you get into an accident with an FSD vehicle, who gets the blame? Man or machine?

Tesla Announces Full Self-Driving Coming To China, Europe In Early 2025 (ZH)

Tesla AI said pending FSD rollouts in China and Europe are “due to popular demand,” adding that regulatory approval will first be needed to push the over-the-air update in both regions. The update would enable drivers to activate the advanced driver assistance software.In July, CEO Elon Musk said FSD regulatory approval for both regions was likely achievable by the end of the year. He said on Thursday that FSD could be launched in right-hand drive markets sometime in the first half of next year.In April, Beijing gave Tesla the ‘green light’ to roll out FSD and partner with Chinese tech giant Baidu for mapping and navigation software. Tesla has satisfied multiple data security and privacy requirements to operate in the world’s largest EV market.

The approval in April came just days after Musk unexpectedly visited Beijing and met with Premier Li Qiang, who was previously the Communist Party chief in Shanghai when Tesla was setting up its automobile manufacturing plant there. Also in April, Wedbush Securities senior analyst Dan Ives told Bloomberg TV that Musk’s visit to China was a major “watershed moment.” “This could open up FSD in China, which I view as unlocking what really could be the golden opportunity for them,” Ives said. At the time, Bloomberg reported that Musk’s move to seek FSD approval in China was to stem Tesla’s revenue slump. Tesla AI also provided a roadmap for near-term rollouts:

https://twitter.com/Tesla_AI/status/1831565197108023493

Looking ahead, the long-awaited Tesla robotaxi is set to be unveiled on October 10 at the Warner Bros. Discovery movie studio in Burbank, California.

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RFK Bill Gates

 

 

Micrometer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1832073422362358088

 

 

Eyes
https://twitter.com/i/status/1832311120402477301

 

 

Lion
https://twitter.com/i/status/1832205088598732906

 

 

Elephant

 

 

Analemma
https://twitter.com/i/status/1832323979639505211

 

 

 

 

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